You are standing in front of a graphic panel titled “The Java Dairy Farm.” To your left is a reader rail titled “Window on the Past: Conservation.” On your right is a reader rail titled “Window on the Past: Modern Farming Techniques.”

The panel in front of you includes text and ten black-and-white images.

The main text reads:

The Java Dairy Farm

In 1915, entrepreneur Robert Lee Forrest purchased 368 acres of ailing farmland and turned it into a thriving dairy business, which supplied milk to Annapolis.

Forrest took a scientific approach to dairy farming. He developed a special building for hay-drying that maintained hay’s nutritional value, and he enforced strict cleanliness in milking and bottling.

Working on Java Dairy Farm became popular because Forrest paid his farmhands a dollar a day in 1915, almost twice the going rate. Upon his death in 1962, Forrest bequeathed the farm and $1.7 million to the Smithsonian Institution.

The images on the panel include:

The Java Dairy Farm seal

A photo of Robert Lee Forrest as an old man. The caption reads: Robert Lee Forrest was known for his eccentricities. He lived on a boat and often went barefoot, even to meetings at his bank in Baltimore.

A brochure advertising the Java Dairy Farm

A photo of the Java Dairy Farm in 1935

A photo of cows grazing on the Java Dairy Farm

A photo of Robert Lee Forrest as a young man

A photo of a hay dehydrator, ca. 1935

A photo of “Frosty” the milkman, 1935. The photo shows a milkman dressed in white standing in front of a car.

A photo of four Java Dairy Farm workers standing in front of farm buildings, 1939

A photo of farmhand William Henderson with a prize bull