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Welcome to Dilmun Hill. We are a student-run farm that has been practicing sustainable agriculture on Cornell University's campus for more than a decade. We provide students with opportunities for experiential learning, group collaboration and research.
- Stay connected - join our email list by sending an email to dilmunhill@cornell.edu
- See our Dilmun Hill brochure (pdf)
In this Section
We closely collaborate with on-campus organizations such as the Cornell Farmers' Market, Anabel's Grocery, the Cornell Food Pantry, and the Bee Club at Cornell.
Dilmun Hill donated all produce during the 2020 growing season
Most years, Dilmun Hill is buzzing with activities of student farmers and volunteers. But last season, the farm remained closed until mid-July, when just three student-farmers were permitted to resume operations – right in time to harvest the garlic planted by students last fall.
Despite the late start and the skeleton crew, we — co-farm managers Lily Cowen and Brian Caine with the help from Zoe Loomis — had an extraordinarily productive season, donating our entire harvest to the Cornell Food Pantry. Our growing season was jumpstarted when we received a generous donation of transplants from Blue Heron Farm, certified organic growers near Lodi, N.Y.
Just a month after reopening, we donated our first boxes of beets, chard, radishes, and strawberries to the food pantry. Later donations included summer staples like basil, beans, lettuce, leeks, and cucumbers, as well as less common crops like tatsoi, romanesco, and eggplants — in total over 80 large boxes. In collaboration with Cornell’s Small Farms Program we were able to add cultivated mushrooms to the mix of donations.
Donations have always been a part of our mission and as the pressure on food pantries increased around the country due to COVID-19 we realized the opportunity Dilmun had to contribute to food security on campus. As the university’s student farm, we felt an obligation to serve the Cornell community and found an ideal partnership with the Cornell Food Pantry. This season proved to us just how much you can do in a short period of time and the impact we can have as a small student farm, cementing our desire to make donations a larger part of our mission.
A new barn at Dilmun Hill
The new barn features working and storage space, and a covered porch with a great view of the farm. This project has been funded in part by a generous donation of Michael and Ellen Wolfson.
