The picking rows on Plumtrees Road closed with October. Jonagold, Granny Smith and Late Season Fuji were the last apples on the trees, and Mutsu was still for sale inside the store. The farm store isn't finished yet. Blue Jay Orchards says it is scheduled to stay open on weekends from November 1 through Thanksgiving weekend. That leaves four more Saturday-and-Sunday stretches to get donuts, pies, jams and sauces before the season ends.
Next fall's orchard will be shaped by a meeting in a Town Hall conference room on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. The family that bought Blue Jay last December has asked Bethel for a new zoning overlay. It would let a farm winery, a microbrewery, a restaurant, festivals and several other uses open "as of right," which means without a public hearing for each one. As the application is described, the November 24 hearing on the overlay is likely to be the main public hearing on how much Blue Jay can add.
Three Families Since 1935
The orchard has changed hands only twice in more than 90 years, according to the history Blue Jay publishes on its own site:
| Years | Owners | What changed |
|---|---|---|
| 1935 | Robert S. Josephy | Bought a 50-acre dairy and vegetable farm on Plumtrees Road and named it "Blue 'J' Orchards," with the J for Josephy |
| 1985 | Paul and Mary Patterson | Added pick-your-own |
| December 2025 | The Covino family | Took over 122 acres and more than 8,000 producing apple trees |
The Covinos paid $4 million for the property, the News-Times reported. Their first season brought one visible change. Blue Jay's site listed food trucks as new for 2026, with local vendors rotating through the orchard lot on picking weekends from late September through October, weather permitting. The site also states the orchard's long-held goal: "a real working farm that local families can visit, walk, and pick from every fall."
The Family Has Already Run the Bigger Version
The Covinos are not new to agritourism. In North Salem, New York, they run Harvest Moon Farm and Orchard. The News-Times reports it has become popular enough in the fall that its events are membership-based and need tickets bought in advance. The family also owns Hardscrabble Farm nursery half a mile away. Brothers Alex, Kevin and Ben Covino all have horticulture degrees, and they started making hard cider after the family bought Harvest Moon.
Hardscrabble Cider says its cider is made on the farm from start to finish, from picking and pressing through fermenting and bottling, using a blend of ten apple varieties grown there. The tasting room at 130 Hardscrabble Road is open seven days a week and serves pints of hard cider along with local beer and cocktails.
Alex Covino described Bethel's orchard to the News-Times by comparing it with North Salem:
"Our orchard here (in North Salem, N.Y.) has turned into this massive fall festival, but what we like about Blue Jay is it's slower-paced — it's more what New England apple picking should be. Our plan is not to build Blue Jay into this massive thing but to add some stuff to make it family friendlier."
He told the paper the family wants "to keep Blue Jay Orchards an apple orchard and keep the place going by bringing in some extra things." So the family running Blue Jay already operates a ticketed fall festival and a seven-day cider bar, and it says Bethel will get something smaller. The application asks the town to define how much smaller.
What the Overlay Would Change
The orchard sits in Bethel's R-40 residential zone. The land runs north and south of Plumtrees Road near the Newtown line, and the News-Times reports that single-family homes border the farm on every side. The owner of record is Mille Mele LLC. On October 7, its attorney, Peter Olson of Chestnut Law on Greenwood Avenue, filed to create a new zoning district called the Agricultural Heritage Overlay District, as Section 5.13. The filing also asks to change the zoning map for 108, 125, 0 and 0 Plumtrees Road from R-40 to R-40 plus the new overlay.
Here is how today's rules compare with what the application seeks:
| Current R-40 farm provisions | Proposed overlay | |
|---|---|---|
| Retail | Sales of products grown on the premises, with retail buildings generally capped at 500 square feet unless a special permit is approved | Restaurant, craft markets, food trucks |
| Production | Processing of produce, some on-site wholesale sales, regulated greenhouses | Farm winery making apple cider products, microbrewery |
| Visitors | Pick-your-own and farm store | Festivals, plus outdoor amenities "including play areas for children" |
| Approval path | Existing rules, with a special permit for larger retail | Ten farm-oriented uses allowed as of right |
"The purpose of the zoning district is to … support the longstanding agricultural use of the properties as an orchard," Olson told the News-Times. "This includes the ability to have a farm winery, which allows the production, sale and consumption of apple cider products, among others."
"As of right" still comes with requirements. Under the application, as the News-Times describes it, each approved use would need its own plan for parking, traffic management, lighting, hours of operation and other controls. What it removes is a separate public hearing for each use. Once the overlay's text is adopted, the conditions it contains are what would guide a cider room or a restaurant on that land.
What "Farm Winery" Means Under Connecticut Law
The term comes from state liquor law. Section 30-16 of the Connecticut General Statutes defines a farm winery as a place "located on a farm in the state in which wine is manufactured and sold." The statute requires the operation's own crop to equal "not less than twenty-five per cent of the fruit used" in its wine, measured as an average. That crop can be grown on the farm winery's premises, on other property under the permit holder's same ownership and control, or on land the permittee or its backer leases within the farm winery's principal state.
The same section lets a farm winery offer visitors free samples, sell sealed bottles to take home, and sell wine or brandy "by the glass and bottle" for drinking on site. It also lets a town prohibit those offerings through an ordinance or its zoning regulations. Cider has its own path. A separate subsection creates a manufacturer permit for wine, cider and mead that covers cider up to 6 percent alcohol by volume and also allows tastings and sales by the glass. With more than 8,000 trees on site, an orchard like Blue Jay has a large supply of its own fruit to draw on. This is general information, not legal advice, and anyone with a stake in how these permits apply should check with the right professional.
Why November 24 Matters
Bethel's Planning and Zoning Commission accepted the application, numbered PCZ-26-20, on October 13 and set the public hearing for November 24, 2026. The commission's October 27 agenda lists it under future public hearings. The News-Times expects commissioners to ask what other protections surrounding homeowners would have to preserve their quality of life.
For anyone who wants to attend:
- When: Tuesday, November 24, 2026. Commission meetings start at 7 p.m.
- Where: Denis J. Riordan Meeting Room, Conference Room D, Bethel Municipal Center, 1 School Street
- What: PCZ-26-20, Mille Mele LLC, a text amendment creating Section 5.13 and a map amendment for the Plumtrees Road parcels
- Documents: The application filed October 7 is posted on the town's website, and the commission's 2026 meeting schedule lists the date
The hearing falls two days before the Bethel Turkey Trot starts at the Municipal Center on Thanksgiving morning, and in the same weekend run when the farm store is scheduled to be open for the last time this year.
The Store Weekends Still Ahead
For now, Blue Jay looks much as it did under the Pattersons. Its own site says it currently offers apple picking, pumpkin picking and the farm store, plus this year's weekend food trucks. The store sells fresh donuts, pies and other baked goods, along with jams, jellies and specialty sauces. Its posted weekend hours this fall were 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Covinos wrote on the orchard's history page that "generations have walked these orchards, picked apples from these trees, visited the farm market, and enjoyed Blue Jay's cider donuts," and that keeping it "an active, working apple orchard is deeply important to our family." The weekends of November 7, 14, 21 and 28 are left on this year's store schedule, and the conditions for next fall will be discussed in Conference Room D on the 24th.
Plumtrees Road is part of what makes Bethel feel like home, and we follow decisions like this one because they shape the town our clients live in. If you'd like to talk about how a change on a farm road may matter for your own street, or about anything else in Bethel, Connie Widmann & Team is glad to talk it through with you.
