Musgrave Research Farm
The Musgrave Research Farm provides productive
arable land for applied agricultural research, teaching and extension.
The farm is 35 miles north of Cornell's Ithaca campus, in the
southern portion of Cayuga County, in the township of Ledyard,
on the Poplar Ridge road two miles east of Aurora and Cayuga Lake.
The soils are representative of the high lime, highly productive
soils of central New York. The research farm provides 427 acres,
335 tillable in alfalfa, corn, wheat, barley and rye and has two
full time staff members. Significant facility improvements on
the the farm include a nine million gallon irrigation pond; new
field house; installation of approximately 100,000 feet of drainage
tile; and a bucket elevator and bin dryer for grains. There are
three annual field days held here each summer: the Small Grain
Management Field Day; Weed Days; and the Musgrave Farm Field Day
with total attendance to all three around 275 people.
Background history:
1949: Purchased by the Agronomy Department for experiments on
soils representative of the highly productive areas of the lime
belt of the Ontario Plain. Years of cash crop farming and inadequate
fertilization had left the soils in a depleted condition although
fairly uniform in structure and nutrient levels.
The original farm purchase included a house built in 1798 by Benjamin
and Mary Howland which was the site of the first Friends (Quakers)
county meeting in 1799.
One mile east is the house of Jethro Wood who, in 1819, patented
the first moldboard plow with replaceable parts. He married Benjamin
Howland's daughter, Sylvia, and moved with the Howland family
to Aurora.
