Click on image to enlarge & scroll down for video

“My sister Merydith McMillan and I live at Steep Hollow Farm, 3 miles south of Ithaca. Our grandparents, William D. McMillan and Ruth Rice McMillan bought this farm from the Davis family in 1934, and named it Steep Hollow, in reference to the hemlock gorge on the west side of the property. Our soil is varied; this is where the glaciers 'stopped and dropped', so we have a field that could be mined for gravel right next to a sandy field which is virtually stone-free. Steep Hollow Farm is a reservoir of biodiversity, with many different plants, insects and animals. We appreciate the open space, the forest, the old barns and house. My great-grandfather Frank McMillan, took a barn down on Connecticut Hill and then raised and attached it to a smaller pre-Civil War era barn. Wish he was still here to teach us about carpentry, horse-training, and socialism! Bill McMillan worked for HE Babcock, who lived nearby at Sunny Gables, in the early days of Grange League Federation, which became Agway...we'd love to hear about their experiences building famer coops. My grandmother Ruth was a graduate of the then cutting-edge field for women, the College of Home Economics at Cornell, and we maintain her kitchen, which is just about the same as when she used it to feed big groups of family, students from Cornell, farm workers, all around the same table. My aunt Elsie McMillan worked for Cornell Magazine and we wish we could have overlapped with her more to learn more family, Ithaca, and Cornell history. We are always learning about managing for wildlife, removing invasive growth, what will grow well, and how we can supply future needs in the Town of Ithaca and Tompkins County community."