The best way to tell the calendar has flipped to August in North Saanich is not the temperature. It's the smell of split figs at the North Saanich Farm Market, the queue outside Fox & Monocle before nine, and the little chalkboard signs that appear at the ends of driveways off West Saanich Road advertising eggs, dahlias, and duck. The rhythm is already here. This year, a two-day festival gives it a name.
The Weekend The Peninsula Planned Around
Flavour Trails turns twenty in 2026, and the Saanich Peninsula event that grew out of a small community farm tour is now a weekend-long, self-guided expedition across the region on Saturday, August 15 and Sunday, August 16. Locals who have walked past the branded signs at the end of a farm lane for years already know how it works. Newer neighbours often don't, and the schedule is worth committing to memory before the weekend arrives.
In previous North Saanich editions, the festival ran through two trail hubs where visitors picked up a printed map, met the organizers, and figured out a route. Saturday's hub was the Sandown Centre for Regenerative Agriculture at 1810 Glamorgan Road. Sunday's was the Fickle Fig Farm Market at 1780 Mills Road. Both operated from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., which is also, coincidentally, when the light is best for a slow drive down Downey and Tatlow.
Practical note for anyone new to the trail: pick up the printed map at the hub. The trail is not linear, and the participating farms are scattered across roughly a dozen roads. A phone screen does not do it justice.
Saturday Belongs To West Saanich Road
The Saturday side of North Saanich food culture has one anchor: the North Saanich Farm Market at 10990 West Saanich Road, open Saturdays June through October. If you show up looking only for vegetables, you have misread the room. The market runs a rolling roster of bakers, honey producers, ceramicists, and seafood vendors alongside the produce, and the lineup shifts week to week.
A snapshot of what was scheduled the first Saturday of this season gives a sense of the range:
| Vendor | Bringing |
|---|---|
| Flour Power (baker Kathy) | Community Table baking |
| Heavy Meadow, Downey Road | Peaches, figs, bouquets, hand-printed market bags |
| Fruitful Fields at Sandown | Weekly CSA veggie boxes, 50+ fruits and vegetables |
| Captain Pete's | Wild-caught salmon and seafood, Saturdays only |
| Abeille Amour | Small-batch craft honey |
| Little Maple Farm, Deep Cove | Organic produce from a one-acre farm |
| Botanicals by Alison | Handcrafted skincare, small batches |
| Bough & Burl | Live-edge and epoxy woodwork |
Two operational details are new for the 2026 season and matter to residents more than they matter to tourists. The market is now part of the BC Association of Farmers' Markets Nutrition Coupon Program, and the CRD's Beyond the Curb pilot has set up on-site every week to accept styrofoam and flexible plastic recycling that the curbside program does not take. Come with a bag of clean styrofoam packaging, leave with tomatoes. That is a very North Saanich transaction.
If Saturday morning is already booked, Sandown runs a second market on Wednesday afternoons in summer, roughly 4 to 7 p.m., at 1810 Glamorgan Road. It is the smaller sibling of the Saturday market, and the vegetable selection reflects that, but it is the easiest way to buy directly from the growers working the 83 acres there.
Sunday Belongs To Mills Road
The Sunday geography of North Saanich in August tips east. Fickle Fig Farm Market at 1780 Mills Road handles the mid-day crowd with preserves, meat, baked goods, and a bistro cafe, and it has historically served as the Sunday Flavour Trails hub. About two hundred metres up the road at 1319 Mills, Holy Trinity Anglican Church, the heritage building anchoring one of the oldest working farm communities on the Peninsula, is on the 2026 trail with cemetery tours devoted to settler farming families and church tours covering the building's construction. The offering runs 12 to 4 p.m. on Sunday, August 16, with free lemonade and ice cream. It is one of the more genuinely unusual stops on the trail this year, and one of the few that costs nothing.
The Roost Farm Winery, Bakery, and Bistro has been a fixture on the North Saanich trail in past years and is the natural third stop for anyone building a Sunday route out of Mills Road. Between Fickle Fig, Holy Trinity, and Roost, you have breakfast, a heritage detour, and a lunch built out of things grown within a five-kilometre radius.
What's Actually In Season Right Now
Skip this section if you already grow your own. Peninsula figs, zucchini, melons, pears, and plums arrive in August, per Tourism Victoria's Flavour Trails guide, and distillers and vineyards begin harvest around the same time. That is the abstract version. The concrete version is that Heavy Meadow on Downey Road has been bringing peaches and figs to the Saturday market, and Fruitful Fields has been rotating carrots, beets, turnips, radishes, onions, lettuce, and squashes through its CSA box. If your household has a fig problem, this is the window.
For anyone stocking a fridge without going to a market, the informal driveway economy is at full strength. A partial list of North Saanich farm stands worth knowing:
- Noble Garden, 10819 Madrona Drive — vegetables, apples, flowers
- Millstone Organics, 710 Towner Park Road — organic gluten-free flour, eggs, personal care
- Smyth's Garden Market, 966 Downey Road — vegetables, preserves, dried fruit
- White House Stables, 9774 West Saanich Road — pasture-raised meat, chicken, eggs
- Two Little Birds Flower Farm, 375 Wain Road — seasonal flowers
- Hazelmere Farm Stand, 1208 Tatlow Road — vegetables and flowers, open year-round
- Stoneborough Family Farm, 9730 West Saanich Road — duck and chicken eggs, produce
- Kildara Farms, Deep Cove — organic produce, also sold through select retailers
Directory upkeep on these stands is a moving target. The North Saanich Currents community directory is the most reliable public list, and it is updated as new producers open and old ones wind down.
Stops That Are Not On The Trail Map But Should Be On Your List
Flavour Trails is a curated program. It is not the full food geography of the district. A few standouts worth building into any August weekend:
Fox & Monocle Cafe, near Canoe Cove Marina, was named to enRoute magazine's long list of Canada's 30 best new restaurants a few years after opening, and its current review score across major platforms sits near 4.8. Croissants and pastries move fast in the morning; regulars queue before the doors open. The dinner menu has drifted upmarket over the last two seasons.
Deep Cove Market, the neighbourhood grocery and deli that has anchored the Deep Cove crossroads for decades, is under an ownership group that took over the store in 2022 and committed publicly to keeping the property as a rural neighbourhood store rather than redeveloping. It remains the easiest place on the north end of the district to grab a sandwich, a coffee, and a bag of ice for the beach.
Deep Cove Chalet is the counterweight: a French fine-dining room with Saanich Inlet views, seasonal menu, reservations required. If you have out-of-town guests to impress and no plan for Saturday night, this is the answer.
If Your August Is Already Booked
The middle of the month gets the headlines, but the shoulder weekends are not empty. The RCMP Musical Ride is at the Saanich Fairgrounds at 1528 Stelly's Cross Road on August 7 and August 9. The Fairgrounds sit just across the district line in Saanichton, which is a fifteen-minute drive from most of North Saanich and a legitimate excuse to spend a Friday evening watching thirty-two horses execute maneuvers that predate Confederation.
For anyone who cannot free up a full Saturday or Sunday, the Wednesday Sandown market is the quiet substitute for the weekend one. Fewer crowds, slightly narrower selection, and the same growers.
One More Thing About This Particular August
North Saanich has always been agricultural. Holy Trinity's cemetery holds the settlers who planted the first orchards on Mills Road, and Saanich Fairgrounds has been running some version of the Saanich Fair since 1868. What has changed in the last few years is not the land use. It is the density of ways a resident can actually engage with it on a given weekend. Between the Saturday market's new recycling and coupon programs, the Sandown Wednesday market, Flavour Trails' 20th-anniversary weekend, and the Roost-Fickle Fig-Holy Trinity Sunday triangle, there is enough programming to fill every weekend of the month without repeating a stop. That is a new development, and it is worth noticing before September resets the calendar.
If your August plans include a longer conversation about what living in this part of the Peninsula looks like year-round, or you are curious what your own address is worth in the current market, Coastal Living Collective is a short call away. What's your property worth?
