Hallockville Museum Farm in Riverhead is a working historic farm where kids spend the summer among 500 acres of gardens, animals, historic buildings, and shoreline — with a different theme to explore each week.
Week 1: Celebrate on the Farm · June 29 – July 3
The first week celebrates early summer and the 4th of July. Kids learn about traditional farm festivities by crafting, taking beach walks, playing old-fashioned games, enjoying music, and setting up a small farm stand with their own harvest.
Week 2: Farm to Table · July 6–10
This week, kids learn how food goes from the garden to the table. They work in the gardens, cook their own meals, and explore old ways of storing food in the root cellar, smokehouse, and at Hallock Pond. The week ends with a cooking competition.
Week 3: Trades and Their Tools · July 13–17
Guest tradespeople visit camp this week, including a blacksmith, a woodworker, and a weaver. Kids try each craft, explore antique tools and exhibits around the farm, make potato chips from the harvest, and end the week with a tractor wagon ride around the property.
Week 4: Farming by the Sea · July 20–24
Hallockville is close to both farmland and the water, and this week takes advantage of that. Kids explore the shoreline with a local marine expert and use natural materials they collect along the way.
Week 5: Wild by Nature · July 27–31
This week, three guest experts join the camp: a beekeeper, a birdwatcher, and a master gardener. Kids spend time on the farm and at the beach, learning to identify birds, follow animal tracks, and observe insects and caterpillars. The week includes a honey tasting.
Week 6: History Tells a Tale · Aug 3–7
This week explores different parts of North Fork history. Kids visit the 1700s Homestead with a local historian, cook in the wood-stove kitchen, hike at a former battle site, spend a day at a nearby dairy farm, explore the shoreline with a local geologist, and plant the Three Sisters.
Week 7: Build Me a Farm · Aug 10–14
The final week highlights the buildings that help a working farm run, such as the smokehouse, barn, coops, workshop, and carriage house. Kids learn what each building was used for and who used it, harvest from the kitchen garden, and finish the week by making pizzas with a local chef.
The camp runs Monday through Friday from 9:00 am to 2:00 pm and costs $460 per week. Scholarships and discounts are available.