Around the Farm

The New Hampshire Farm Museum is a non-profit 501 c3 educational organization dedicated to preserving, promoting and carrying forward New Hampshire's rural and agricultural heritage. The New Hampshire Farm Museum consists of two adjoining farmsteads situated on 50 acres located on Plummer's Ridge in Milton, New Hampshire. The historic Jones Farm and the Plummer Homestead are listed on the National Register of Historic Places and were passed down in the same families for two centuries. The Museum operates a working farm growing heirloom varieties of vegetables for our Community Supported Agriculture Program and for sale in our Country store. We raise hens for eggs and keep a small selection of heritage breed farm animals to support our educational efforts. We have displays of agricultural implements and educational exhibits on rural life and agriculture for the visiting public and our many visiting school children. We offer guided tours of the historic Jones farmhouse as well as farm animal tours. Special events and programs, workshops, and day camps are offered throughout the year.

History

In 1970, the idea for the New Hampshire Farm Museum was germinated by a few local farmers who were troubled by the increasing number of old agricultural implements they noticed abandoned in fields. They began collecting and several years later found themselves with 17 barns around the state full of farming-related tagged-and-catalogued artifacts looking for a place to call home. That home appeared in 1979 when the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests inherited the 400-acre Jones Farm and sold the buildings and 28 acres to the New Hampshire Farm Museum. The Museum moved its offices to the Jones Farm and began the project of creating an active museum.

The Jones Farmhouse
The Jones Farm and connected farm buildings extend 275 feet and range in date from the 1770s to the early 1900s. Each part of the connected farm structure tells a different story about rural life and work in the past. A tour of the Jones farmhouse allows the visitor to walk through time from Joseph Plumer's Revolutionary War Era cape, to Levi Jones' early 19th-century tavern, into the Victorian parlor and dining room, and ending in the early 20th-century farm kitchen. In the Jones farmhouse you will find a vast collection of artifacts utilized in domestic production of textiles and preservation of food, furnishings and myriad household articles highlighting "Yankee ingenuity".

The Great Barn
Housed within the three-story, 104-foot Great Barn at the Jones Farm is one of New Hampshire's greatest treasures: a collection of farm tools, implements, and machinery that was used to clear land, plant fields, harvest crops, construct buildings, and maintain community roads. You'll also see perhaps the most extensive collection of milk bottles from the dairies the once proliferated the New Hampshire countryside.

Gardens
The museum maintains several large market gardens for the cultivation of vegetables which we sell to our CSA members and in our country store and at local farmer's markets. We also have an herb garden and flower gardens as well as a new children's garden for educational purposes. We have many old varieties of herbs as well as heirloom varieties of vegetables and flowers. We are currently working on restoring an historic flower garden behind the Jones Farmhouse.

The John York Cider Mill
Between the Jones and the Plummer farms sits a hexagonal-shaped timber frame building. The building was constructed by volunteers in 2001 and houses an apple exhibit and a massive horse-powered knob mill that dates to the early 19th century. Cider was the most common table drink of early New England and most towns had at least one or two cider mills. Our cider mill is dedicated to John York, one of the founders of the Farm Museum.

The Pole Barn Tractor & Carriage Display

The Blacksmith Shop
Although the blacksmith shop is not original to the Jones Farm (it was moved here from Winnisquam), it is representative of farm structures common to rural New Hampshire. Farmers often adopted a skill such as blacksmithing which allowed them to repair their own equipment, make their tools, and shoe their horses as well as diversify their income doing these tasks for others. This shop was built by Charles Cate in Winnisquam and was later moved to Belmont where it stood on the farm of the late Arthur Hill. Many of the tools in the shop came from these two owners and date to the mid- 19th century.

The Shoe Shop
The shoe shop was relocated to the Farm Museum from Newton Junction, NH, where it was built around 1870. Small structures like our shoe shop were common rural structures known as "ten footers" as they are about ten foot square. This shop was used for piecework and the assembly of shoes; this kind of skill allowed farm families to earn cash during the long winter.

The Forest Trails
The Farm Museum's 50 acres of fields and forest include a beautiful network of woodland trails. Bring your hiking boots and explore the trails as well as the adjacent 300-acre Jones Forest owned by the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests. You may also want to include a visit to the family cemetery on your hike. Ask for a map at our Country Store.

The Farm Animals
Guided tours are available to visit our livestock at the Plummer Homestead.

The Pigs: Dorcas and Clarabelle are Gloucester Old Spot pigs, a heritage breed traditionally used for keeping the orchards clear of dropped apples. These two female pigs (called sows) were obtained from Old Sturbridge Village.

The Sheep: Our current flock of five sheep includes Gulf Coast Merinos, a breed once common in New Hampshire and Vermont, that we obtained from the flock at Old Sturbridge Village. The sheep are shorn each year by a professional shearer at our annual Spring Farm Day event.

The Goats: Butch (the largest of the four goats, a Boer/Nubian cross), Bucky, Benny (both African pygmy goats), and little Bunny (a Nigerian dwarf) were given to the Farm Museum when their owned moved to California. These four friendly characters have become ambassadors for the museum’s farm animals.

The Chickens: The Farm Museum keeps a flock of chickens in the coop at the Jones Farm, including heritage breeds such as Rhode Island Reds, Barred Rocks, and Bantams. Our chickens are mostly free-ranging (except on days when the museum is closed and when our gardens are first planted!) and we sell their eggs in the Country Store.

The Rabbits: The newest addition to our farm animal collection are two rabbits, Thumper, and Junior. Their hutches are located outside the chicken coop and are a fun stop for kids on the way to visit the rest of the animals.

The Barn Cat: All farms need a barn cat or two. Butterscotch is the farm ambassador — friendly and industrious, and controlling the mouse population!

Keeping animals requires feed, bedding, and veterinary care. You can help by “adopting” any one or all of our farm animals (click “Join/Support” then “Adopt a Farm Animal”). Adopters will be invited to a special annual Farm Animal Tour. In the meantime, keep up with the Farm Museum animals on their Facebook pages—Dorcas the Pig has even been known to Twitter!

Contact Us
1305 White Mountain Highway
Route 125
PO Box 644 Milton, NH 03851
603-652-7840
info@farmmuseum.org

Archival photo of garden behind Jones Farm

Resident farmer Kirk Russell preparing for planting

One example of hundreds of artifacts in Jones Barn

Sleigh rides in the winter!

Butterscotch the farm cat

Ida Bean from the Farm Women, Farm Work exhibit

Dorcas and
Clarabelle snoozing