KINGSTON, Ontario — It is easy to pick out the short-timers from the lifers on Jeff Peters’s beef and pork farm. The 14 black-and-white Holstein dairy cows stand in sharp contrast to the farm’s regular herd of chocolate brown Limousin beef cattle in the open winter barns.

The dairy cows are ex-cons of a sort, and look the part in their old-time prisoner colors. Mr. Peters is one of eight Ontario farmers who, for more than five years, have hosted the remnants of the dairy herd that once lived on a farm at an 85-year-old prison complex here. And for most of that time, the farmers, along with hundreds of local residents and a few celebrities, have been fighting to reopen the farm and send the cows home.

Years of weekly protests and fund-raisers had led nowhere. In October, however, the Liberal Party defeated the Conservative government, which had closed the farm. While the new government has yet to make any firm commitments, the new Liberal member of Parliament from the Kingston area campaigned to bring farming back to the prison. Among Mr. Peters and the rest of the protesters, there is a growing feeling that their efforts will finally be rewarded.

On a recent winter day, in a barn shared with a handful of noisy chickens, Mr. Peters fed one of the newest members of the prison farm herd, Terry, with an oversize baby bottle.