Homely Farm is a 140-acre living heritage farm that has operated continuously since 1784 — making it one of the oldest working agricultural sites in the region. The farm was established by freed enslaved person Thomas Birch and his wife Constance, who received the land grant as part of a post-revolutionary land redistribution scheme.

What makes Homely Farm historically remarkable is not simply its age but the extraordinary documentary record the Birch family maintained across eight generations: farm ledgers, correspondence, seed inventories, livestock records, and personal diaries that provide an unparalleled window into the lived experience of a free Black farming family over two centuries.

The farm continues to grow heritage crop varieties and rare-breed livestock, and its archive is considered one of the most significant collections of African-American agricultural history in existence.