EVENDALE, Ohio – Evendale is about 13 miles north of downtown Cincinnati. The small village is not exactly an agricultural setting as it is home to GE Aviation, the largest manufacturer in Ohio, Indiana or Kentucky. It is also home to Formica Corporation, Gold Medal Products and 20 other large-scale businesses.

Nestled in the heart of this business metropolis in Hamilton County rests Gorman Heritage Farm, a working farm museum on 122 acres that includes 30 tillable acres, a farmyard, gardens, five miles of hiking trails and a wildflower preserve. The farm raises livestock, grows produces and flowers, and produces biochar.

“This farm is just what this urban area needs,” said Anita Barr, an Evendale resident who grew up on an Indiana farm. “My two young daughters are pre-schoolers and I want them to know about farming and what goes on at a farm. We live 20 miles from the closest farm so this works for our family because there’s so much for the ‘city slicker’ to do.”

In a county with the fewest farms in the state, Gorman Heritage Farm offers many educational programs, such as school field trips, summer day camps, summer farm tours, farm-to-school programs, scout programs, preschool story hour and family programs.

Gorman Heritage Farm is a significant example of historic agricultural production and farming practices that spanned 160 years in Hamilton County and embodies the era of diversified family farms.

The property consists of the original 99-acre farm, which was owned and managed by five generations of the Brown and Gorman families from 1835 until 1996, when it was deeded to the Cincinnati Nature Center to preserve it from encroaching residential, commercial and industrial development.

Agricultural records show that the Gorman Farm was exceptionally productive as a family-owned farm. The national average of implements on U.S. farms of a comparable size was $150 in 1860. The value of implements on the Gorman farm was reportedly twice that amount, over $300. During the same time period, the farm also exceeded the state average output for livestock volume and crop production.

A significant contributor to southwest Ohio’s early corn, wheat and swine economy, Gorman Farm endured development pressures that all but eliminated the working farms that once characterized the rural landscape of northern Hamilton County.

During the 19th and early 20th century, Hamilton County had among the most diverse, productive and valuable agricultural land in Ohio. Between 1850 and 1900, the cash value of the county’s farms ranked in the top three for the state.

From a peak in 1880, when there were 4,064 farms in Hamilton County, there has been a steep attrition of the county’s agricultural land, such that by the turn of the 21st century there were a scant number of remaining farms – and Gorman Farm was among those.

Visitors to this day are treated to the landscape at it was nearly 170 years ago. The original farm dwelling is an early version of a “pre-classic I house” type. The four-bay, two-story, stone house was constructed in 1835 and banked into a slope at the rear. Around 1858, a stone kitchen ell was added to one corner of the house and by the early 1900s the limestone bearing exterior walls and walnut lintels were stuccoed.

The Brown-Gorman farmstead represents a central courtyard farmstead plan, with the house and barn at opposite ends and outbuildings defining the perimeter of the courtyard. The large Pennsylvania-type barn was built concurrently with the stone house and was constructed on a rubble limestone foundation. The heavy timber oak framing of the barn is the original.

Barn scholars have traced this building tradition to central Europe, knowing that German and Swiss immigrants were the influence of bi-level barns of that time.

In addition to the barn, the farmstead retains two 19th-century stone springhouses, one build in 1835, the second one in 1890. Also remaining is an early-20th century alfalfa barn, a 1920 limestone smokehouse and a 1930s rabbit house.

Jim and Dorothy Gorman deeded 98 acres of the farm to the Cincinnati Nature Center in 1995, retaining the house and one acre as a life estate. In 2003, the deed of the property was transferred to the Village of Evendale. Since that time the farm has been operated by the Gorman Heritage Farm Foundation. Today the National Register-listed farm and adjoining property serve the community as an agricultural educational center open to the public.

The farm is open to the public Monday through Saturday. It is located at 10052 Reading Road in Evendale.