New Mexico Farm and Heritage Museum is located at:

4100 Dripping Springs Road
Las Cruces, NM 88011
Voice: 505-522-4100
Website: www.frhm.org
E-mail: foundation@frh.state.nm.us

The New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum is 47 acres packed with real stories about real people. The interactive museum brings to life the 3,000-year history of farming and ranching in New Mexico.

Fun and learning go hand in hand as visitors can watch a cow being milked, stroll along corrals filled with livestock, enjoy several gardens or drop by the blacksmith shop or another venue to watch one of a number of demonstrations.

The Adventure Corral exhibit is designed for children ages 3 to 10 and includes developmentally appropriate activities for each of the following age groups, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8 and 9-10. Among the items in the Adventure Corral are a fiberglass cow that children can milk, a windmill, a library, teeter-totter with saddles, peddle-powered tractors, wool samples with audio components and weights and measurements interactives.

As part of the dairy barn exhibit, the milking and dairy demos run at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and at 3 p.m. only on Sunday. One of the museum's dairy cows is brought into the barn and visitors can see how a cow is milked with modern equipment. The milking demonstration is preceded by a video presentation. On some occasions after the demonstration, the milk is bottle-fed to the museum's calves.

"Generations", the Museum's first permanent exhibit, uses the biographies of 33 people to tell the story of 3,000 years of New Mexico agriculture. The exhibit features hundreds of artifacts, photographs and interactive displays.

The exhibit, "The Inside Story of the Roadside View: Agriculture in the Lower Rio Grande Valley," provides museum visitors a behind-the-scenes look at agriculture in the Las Cruces area. The aim of the exhibit, located in the museum's main gallery, is to help visitors make sense of the constant agricultural activity that takes place up and down the valley and how this activity meets their needs for food and fiber. Chile, pecans, alfalfa, corn, cotton, lettuce and onions are highlighted, as well as dairy farming and cattle ranching. Irrigation plays a prominent role in the exhibit, along with cultivating and harvesting crops, management of livestock and production methods.