In addition to grain, farms also grow herbs (thyme, lovage, camomile and mallow) and oil plants.

Ostrów became a royal town, holding a right to organise Saturday markets and collecting duty on the road from Lublin to Parczew.

Administratively it was located in the Lublin Voivodeship in the Lesser Poland Province of the Polish Crown.

In 1589, in order to increase colonisation, King Sigismund III granted Ostrów the right to organise three markets a week.

Cossack and Swedish invasions during the period known as Deluge as well as numerous conflicts and the greed of starosties resulted in a considerable deterioration of the town.

The devastation of Ostrów by the troops of Moszkowski, Capitain of Horse, in 1657 was one of the major factors contributing to its collapse.

Following the Austro-Polish War of 1809 it was included in the short-lived Polish Duchy of Warsaw, and after its dissolution it fell to the Russian Partition in 1815.

The first election to the Town Council took place in 1920 and Aleksander Samulik became a mayor of Ostrów.

In the same year, Ostrów was completely devastated and robbed by the Soviets during the Polish–Soviet War, depriving its inhabitants of all their property.

Ostrów was rebuilt and developed (concrete pavements along town squares, a bridge over the Tyśmienica, a school, community house, and fourteen new streets).

Among the protected traditional local foods, as designated by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of Poland, are: