Visitors board the hayride at Farm City Day 2007, Lew-Lin Farm, Dryden NY.
Image by Sandy Repp

Farm City Day

In 2018, Farm City Day became a new 2-day event Open Farm Days.  You can learn more about farms we have featured in past years in this section of our website.  Thank you for your interest.


Farm City Day is a free, family-oriented educational event that offers the public a chance to visit a working farm and learn about agriculture. Visitors tour the farm and meet the farmers while learning about local agriculture, including farming practices that farmers use to protect the watershed, rotational grazing, animal husbandry, and cropland management. Children especially enjoy an "Farm Fact Passport to Fun" activity that encourages them to learn about the farm and farming while they get stickers in their passports for questions they answer correctly.

Other activities for the day usually include a sheep and border collie demonstration, and cheese and milk samples with the Tompkins County Dairy Princess and her court, who make and serve a giant ice cream sundae for the crowd. Local 4-H'ers provide the food concession for hungry attendees. A silent auction featuring goods and services donated by local businesses benefits the Tompkins County Ag-in-the-Classroom-Program in local schools, generating proceeds each year that enable the program to purchase high quality resources that are loaned free of charge to public and private school classrooms and home schoolers.

Since being established in 1999, Farm City Day has brought the public to some of Tompkins County's most interesting and diverse farms. Visit our pages featuring each of these farms, and watch our Upcoming Events page for the next Farm City Day location. We hope to see you there!

Farm City Day is coordinated by Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County on behalf of the County’s Agriculture and Farmland Protection Board. The event receives generous support from local farms, agricultural businesses, organizations and agencies.

Last updated December 9, 2019