New Hampshire Farm Museum
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The New Hampshire Farm Museum is a
farm museum A farm museum, or museum farm, is a museum based on a historical farm and its buildings, presenting agricultural history. Often the farm is still a working farm, for demonstration and educational purposes. See List of open-air and living history ...
on White Mountain Highway (
New Hampshire Route 125 New Hampshire Route 125 is a north–south state highway in Rockingham, Strafford and Carroll counties in southeastern New Hampshire. The southern terminus is in Plaistow at the Massachusetts state line, where the road continues south into Ha ...
) in
Milton, New Hampshire Milton is a town in Strafford County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 4,482 at the 2020 census. A manufacturing, resort and residential town, Milton includes the village of Milton Mills. The primary village in town, where 593 peop ...
, United States. Three centuries of New Hampshire rural life are presented in the historic farmhouse. The museum includes a three-story great barn with collection of agricultural machinery, farm tools, sleighs and wagons. There are also live farm animals, a
nature trail An educational trail (or sometimes educational path), nature trail or nature walk is a specially developed hiking trail or footpath that runs through the countryside, along which there are marked stations or stops next to points of natural, techno ...
and a museum shop. The museum is located on the former Plumer-Jones Farm, a traditional series of connected buildings with farmhouse dating to the late 18th century and barns dating to the mid 19th century, which was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
in 1979.


Setting

The New Hampshire Farm Museum is set on over of land between New Hampshire Route 125 to the east, and the
Spaulding Turnpike The Spaulding Turnpike is a north-south toll road in eastern New Hampshire. Nearly its entire length is overlapped by New Hampshire Route 16. Its southern terminus is at the Portsmouth Traffic Circle (Interstate 95 / U.S. Route 1 Bypass) in Port ...
to the west. This land is a subset of land settled in the 1780s by Joseph and Beard Plumer, two of the area's early settlers. The land they worked has been reduced by the construction of the turnpike. Most of the farm property consists of wood lots; about is open fields, used by the museum as a working demonstration farm. The focal point of the museum is the connected 19th-century farmstead, a series of structures beginning with a small barn near the road, and ending with the Great Barn, one of the largest barns in southeastern New Hampshire. The farmstead includes as one of its intermediate ells the 1782 house of Joseph Plumer, quite possibly one of the first wood-frame structures built in this part of Milton. The main block of the farmstead, located near its center, was built about 1810, and served as a local tavern. The museum also owns the
Plummer Homestead The Plummer Homestead is a historic house museum at 1273 White Mountain Highway in Milton, New Hampshire. Built in the 1810s and repeatedly extended, it dates to the early settlement period of Milton, and is, along with the adjacent Plumer-Jones ...
adjacent to the south; it was built by Beard Plumer.


Features

The museum functions as a working demonstration farm. The Great Barn houses three floors of exhibits of farm implements and machinery. The main farmhouse and the Plummer farmhouse are open to guided tours; the sections of the Jones house are each decorated in the style of a different era. Also on the property are a blacksmith's shop, with demonstrations on weekends, and a cider mill barn, which is used as an education venue. Walking trails wind their way through the wood lots at the back of the property.


Museum history

After its acquisition by the Plumers (later spelled "Plummer") in the 18th century, it was farmed by generations of Joneses and Plummers. The Jones heirs donated more than to the
University of New Hampshire The University of New Hampshire (UNH) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Durham, New Hampshire. It was founded and incorporated in 1866 as a land grant college in Hanover in connection with Dartmouth College, mo ...
, and the core of the farmstead to the
Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests The Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests (SPNHF) is a private, non-profit, land conservation and sustainable forestry organization based in the U.S. state of New Hampshire. It purchases or is given easements on property, or obtains ou ...
in 1973. It was acquired by the museum as its permanent home in 1979.


See also

*
Open-air museum An open-air museum (or open air museum) is a museum that exhibits collections of buildings and artifacts out-of-doors. It is also frequently known as a museum of buildings or a folk museum. Definition Open air is “the unconfined atmosphere†...
*
National Register of Historic Places listings in Strafford County, New Hampshire This is a list of the National Register of Historic Places listings in Strafford County, New Hampshire. This is intended to be a complete list of the properties and districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Strafford County, New ...


References


External links


New Hampshire Farm Museum website
{{NRHP in Strafford County, New Hampshire Farm museums in the United States Agriculture in New Hampshire Historic house museums in New Hampshire Museums in Strafford County, New Hampshire Farms on the National Register of Historic Places in New Hampshire National Register of Historic Places in Strafford County, New Hampshire Milton, New Hampshire