In the 1970s, agricultural activity resumed when David Rockefeller's wife Margaret "Peggy" McGrath began a successful cattle breeding operation.

[3] In 2017, Stone Barns published Letters to a Young Farmer, a compilation of essays and letters about the highs and lows of farming life, including Barbara Kingsolver, Bill McKibben, Michael Pollan, Temple Grandin, Wendell Berry, Rick Bayless, and Marion Nestle.

The farm grows 300 varieties of produce year-round, both in the outdoor fields and gardens and in the 22,000-square-foot (2,000 m2) minimally heated greenhouse that capitalizes on each season's available sunlight.

Among the crops suitable for the local soil and climate are rare varieties such as celtuce, Kai-lan, hakurei turnips, New England Eight-Row Flint seed corn, and finale fennel.

[citation needed] Stone Barns raises cattle, chickens, sheep, pigs, goats and bees suited to the local ecosystem.

The cattle, chickens, sheep and goats are raised on pastures kept healthy and productive through carefully managed rotational grazing.

Strategies for maintaining the pastures include intensive paddock management so the grazed area has ample time to recover and provide a natural refuge for birds and other wildlife, essential for the maintenance of ecological balance.

The first season saw a multi-species intensive grazing program where pigs forage and consume food waste including spent grain from the Captain Lawrence brewery in Elmsford, New York.