Corn mazes and pumpkin patches provide additional revenue and interest on farms across West Virginia when harvest time has long past.
But other agri-tourism opportunities exist, as a group of West Virginia producers found out during a four month class that culminated on a two-day bus tour to Virginia and North Carolina this spring.
The trip was made possible in part by a grant through West Virginia University. It was a culmination of classes that were available at WVU’s campus in Morgantown, the Erma Byrd Higher Education Center in Beaver and an online course.
“We covered everything about agri-tourism (in the classes),” said Cindy Martel, marketing specialist for the West Virginia Department of Agriculture. “They did a lot before they ever got on a bus.”
“It became a classroom on wheels.”
Other partners were utilized in the training as well, including the West Virginia Division of Tourism, the WVU College of Agriculture, independent farmers and agri-tourism experts outside the state.
Tour participants were interested in implementing agri-tourism on their own farms.
“Farms can provide an experience that travelers are looking for,” Martel said. “It’s ripe for tourism. People want to learn about where their food comes from.”
There was one stop in Virginia and stops in the Triangle area of northeast North Carolina — Raleigh, Chapel Hill and Durham.
A research farm in Raleigh that doubles as festival grounds was one of the stops, along with a corn maze, a large produce wholesaler and a farmer’s market that hosts an onsite kitchen. Another stop included Celebrity Dairy, an agri-tourism operation in Silver City, North Carolina, that has an inn with bed and breakfast-style lodging, a goat farm and customized catering.
Brit and Fleming Pfann own Celebrity Dairy and were more than willing to share tips with the folks from the Mountain State.
“They told us that we were one of their favorite stops on the tour,” said Brit Pfann, who has been in business with his wife at the dairy turned tourist stop for 28 years. “We were their last stop, and hosted a lunch for them.
“There’s a lot available in our area, and we’re one of the old-timers. People love to bring their children up and see the goats. We’ve been a very public place all along.”
Question-and-answer sessions at each stop provided opportunities for gleaning information that could be brought back to the Mountain State.
“Our folks got to make valuable contacts there,” Martel said. “They were set up with a meeting with the North Carolina agri-tourism contact persons.”
The response was positive, with many participants incorporating ideas in their businesses already, Martel said.
“It was a great partnership and really fits (Agriculture) Commissioner Walt Helmick’s vision, who sees agri-tourism as a real valuable enterprise,” Martel said.
Doolarie Singh-Knights, a WVU Extension Specialist, was a leader in the classes and also participated in the trip.
“It was one of the highlights of my career thus far,” Singh-Knights said. “We saw the lights come on for a lot of people, in terms of how to work together. There was four months of training and this was sort of a capstone tour.”
Participants learned to think in terms of “clustering” themselves together when possible, with several attractions in one area being more likely to draw tourists than a singular one.
“As a business, you usually want to stand out,” Singh-Knights explained. “But you also want to harness that power of working in cooperation with similar businesses.
“We want people that are within close proximity to come together and form clusters. If you have people from the same area offering an agri-tourism product on different farms, you will be able to attract more visitors in that area because there are a lot more offerings in that area.”
More opportunities will be presented in the future for more interested participants, with a November target date to have cluster-type trainings in Greenbrier Valley area and one in the New River Gorge area, according to Singh-Knights.
Lisa Sickler, owner of Sickler Farm in Barbour County, was one of the participants in the classes who also took the trip south. Her farm regularly hosts hay rides and a pumpkin patch for families, scouts or school field trips each October.
But she is willing to look for even more opportunities year-round, and she said the class encouraged participants to continue opening their farms to the public.
Sickler Farm uses about 10-12 acres of its 140 acres for vegetable production and small fruits such as strawberries, raspberries and blueberries. It also grows flowers, with about 10,000 mums planted.
Building relationships with other farmers was another benefit of the trip for participants.
“It was very neat to listen to other people’s ideas, and what their plans are for agri-tourism,” Sickler said. “We need to work together. We’re not competitors, we’re cooperating. We need to help each other out.
“I’m not going to take business away from a dairy farm, because we don’t offer that. But people may want to come here and pick pumpkins and mums and go visit their farm. It was great to connect to the others.”
The concept of clustering was definitely one that Sickler caught hold of, she said.
“The tour inspired me to look for other attractions in our area where we could draw people into Barbour County to see all that we have to offer,” Sickler said. “We have some bed and breakfasts in Arden, by the river. Down the road from us, we have a community center that has hostel-type lodging. There is a deer farm in Arden and we have a friend that has a 1,000-acre cattle farm close by.
“We want to host a farm-to-table dinner in our greenhouse so we can get people to experience what it’s like to have a dinner that is all locally sourced.”
That tourists would be interested in coming to a working farm still seems far-fetched, Sickler said, but it’s something she is growing to accept, she said with a laugh.
“It’s amazing that people want to come to your farm, spend money at your farm and work on it — it just blows your mind,” said Sickler. “They’re willing to spend a weekend on a farm vacation, working for a weekend or during harvest time.”
Food awareness is a growing trend, with consumers wanting to eat local and support local farmers.
“People like to know where their food is coming from,” Sickler said. “They like that it isn’t traveling 1,500 miles to get to their plate.
“Local foods are becoming very important to people in our area. When we go to farmer’s market, people are very concerned about what is being sprayed on their produce. They want to make sure it’s organic. And they want to support the local economy and the local farmers. That’s very encouraging, because we are trying to make our living by farming.”
West Virginia is poised to take advantage of a growing trend, Singh-Knights emphasized.
“Agri-tourism is an important value-added agricultural product across the country,” Singh-Knights said. “It is growing faster than any other. With that kind of momentum, we are really poised in West Virginia to take agri-tourism to the next level, where it could be.
“When one hears the word ‘agri-tourism,’ he thinks of entertainment on the farm, like coming to a barn dance or a corn maze,” she added. “But we are taking it to another level that involves agriculture, tourism, education and economics.
“We want people to understand the full potential of agri-tourism in West Virginia.”
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