On 7^th June 2020, hun­dreds of farm­ers across Britain will be open­ing their farm gates for the 15^th anniver­sary of LEAF Open Farm Sun­day. The farm­ing industry’s annu­al open day is a prime oppor­tu­ni­ty for farm­ers and crofters from Dum­fries to the Shet­land Isles to pro­mote our fan­tas­tic Scot­tish prove­nance sto­ry whilst build­ing rela­tion­ships and trust with consumers. 

LEAF Open Farm Sun­day has teamed up with Scot­tish Agri­tourism Mon­i­tor Farm Pro­gramme to host a spe­cial infor­ma­tion pre­sen­ta­tion dur­ing their ​“Telling your farm­ing sto­ry” event on Tues­day 10 March 2020. The pre­sen­ta­tion, which will be deliv­ered from 3.30pm to 5pm, will be led by Scot­tish LOFS Coor­di­na­tor Rebec­ca Dawes who will be joined by some pre­vi­ous LEAF Open Farm Sun­day host farm­ers to share top tips for plan­ning, activ­i­ties, health and safe­ty, pro­mo­tion and tak­ing those first steps. 

Rebec­ca com­ment­ed: ​“Host­ing an event on LEAF Open Farm Sun­day is ful­ly flex­i­ble to enable farm­ers to get what they want from it allow­ing you to decide if your event is for 10 peo­ple or 100, for one-hour or a full day. For farms with a diver­si­fi­ca­tion it is a no-brain­er: a recent sur­vey of farm­ers with a diver­si­fi­ca­tion who had host­ed a LEAF Open Farm Sun­day event showed that 96% of them report­ed a notice­able pos­i­tive impact on their diver­si­fied business.”

NFU Scot­land Vice Pres­i­dent Mar­tin Kennedy, along with his fam­i­ly, opened their gates at Lur­gan Farm in High­land Perthshire last year for the first time and, accord­ing to Mar­tin: ​“We’ve got the Open Farm Sun­day bug!”

“It takes a leap of faith throw­ing open your farm gates to the pub­lic as part of Open Farm Sun­day but now that we have done it once, the June event will be a per­ma­nent fix­ture on our cal­en­dar. With more than 200 vis­i­tors to our hill farm, where we treat­ed them to cows, ewes, seeds, soil, trac­tor and trail­er rides, bio­di­ver­si­ty and con­ser­va­tion, you can’t put a val­ue on what that kind of engage­ment means to the future of food and farming.” 

The LEAF Open Farm Sun­day infor­ma­tion ses­sion is on Tues­day 10 March 2020 from 3.30pm to 5pm at Kil­marnock Mil­len­ni­um Hall, Gar­tocharn, G83 8NF. Reg­is­tra­tion is encour­aged at https://​www​.try​book​ing​.co​.uk/QHU (more infor­ma­tion avail­able here) or phone Rebec­ca 07792 467730. If you would like to attend the full Scot­tish Agri­tourism Mon­i­tor Farm meet­ing it com­mences at 10am — please note this when you register.