50 Years of Growth – January ’26

From a community-saved farm to a living landmark

This year marks 50 years since community members came together to save Queens County Farm Museum from development, protecting a rare piece of New York City’s agricultural past and ensuring it would remain a place of learning, joy, and connection for generations to come. To understand the timeless spirit the Farm carries forward today, it helps to look back.

In May 1990, The New Yorker captured a spring afternoon at the Farm that feels both of its time and utterly familiar. The crowds were smaller then, but the essence was already clear: a place where city and countryside meet, where children and adults alike reconnect with the rhythms of the natural world.

Today, that same mission reaches further than our founders could have imagined welcoming more than 500,000 visitors each year, including tens of thousands of students experiencing hands-on farm education in the heart of New York City.

THEN: A Spring Afternoon, 1990
From “Talk of the Town,” The New Yorker

To understand the timeless spirit the Queens County Farm Museum carries forward, we look back to a sun-dappled afternoon in May 1990. Three hundred visitors, a stark contrast to the thousands we see now, gathered on the lawn for the annual Rites of Spring. Morris dancers performed to folk tunes, a sapling Maypole, determinedly splinted by dancers when it broke, was wrapped in ribbons by laughing children and adults, and the crowd marveled at Carolyn Bowman Stebe’s performing bantam hens traversing tiny roller coasters and trapezes.

That day, riding a hay wagon with visitors, our Founder and President James Trent put words to the purpose that had already saved the Farm from development: “It’s vital for us to maintain vestiges of rural life in this enormous, hyperactive city. And farming is very soothing to the nerves.”

The seed protected by community action in 1975 has grown into a mighty tree. Now, we tend its branches for the next generation. We invite you to help us write the next chapter by visiting, volunteering, and supporting the work that keeps this place thriving.

David Hughes,
Executive Director