310 visitors | Dairy farm

Being involved in the SOS Dairy Cam­paign of 2012 opened my eyes to how you can influ­ence peo­ple in the food chain and how obvi­ous it was that peo­ple real­ly do want to know more about where their food comes from. I believe that every child (and adult for that mat­ter) should have the right to see and expe­ri­ence a farm and under­stand the work, care and respect that goes into run­ning one. Hav­ing now been involved in sev­er­al events and cam­paigns to get our dairy farm­ing mes­sages out there, I find these oppor­tu­ni­ties very enjoy­able and reward­ing – I even get Christ­mas cards from some of the peo­ple I have met! In my opin­ion we shouldn’t be com­plain­ing about con­sumers not under­stand­ing our indus­try; we should be get­ting out there and doing some­thing about it!

My Open Farm Sun­day experience

I ran our first Open Farm Sun­day event on our farm in 2014. Ini­tial­ly the thought of open­ing up the farm to the pub­lic was ter­ri­fy­ing. But there was so much ready-made sup­port out there that I felt encour­aged to go ahead with it. 

What help is available?

I first reg­is­tered our event at www​.farm​sun​day​.org. The organ­is­ers LEAF (Link­ing Envi­ron­ment And Farm­ing) then send newslet­ters with ideas in the build up to the day. They also pro­vide loads of free resources – it’s all there for you! You just have to choose the LEAF Open Farm Sun­day items you think you can use and then order them – from posters to t‑shirts and give­aways – then they arrive in the post – dead easy and free! Using the hand­book sent to me we start­ed plan­ning our event and chose to make scare­crows and nature plates. The scare­crows cost noth­ing, just wood and old clothes. The nature plates cost no more than £10 because we bought paper plates, glue and a few craft bits for colour. We also bought in small prizes (farm pen­cil and note­book) for the chil­dren that com­plet­ed a task. 

I also con­tact­ed my local Envi­ron­men­tal Health team to get some advice on how to ensure we got our health and safe­ty right on the day. They were bril­liant and came out in advance to see how they could help – they offered portable sinks so that we could ensure hand­wash­ing facil­i­ties were avail­able for all our visitors. 

How did the actu­al day go?

The day went real­ly well. We had 310 vis­i­tors. As well as the tour of the farm, the nature plate and scare­crow build­ing activ­i­ties were a big suc­cess, let­ting the chil­dren use their imag­i­na­tion. You can see some of the scare­crows here! 

In addi­tion to help from var­i­ous friends, Young Farm­ers, col­leagues and stu­dents, I also invit­ed our local vet­eri­nary surgery to get involved. They came along and ran a sim­ple refresh­ments stall and also had their own pro­mo­tion­al stand there. It was inter­est­ing to see that whilst Open Farm Sun­day events are free to attend, my vis­i­tors were keen to make a dona­tion of some kind. On the spur of the moment, dur­ing our day, we put a char­i­ty buck­et out for peo­ple to make vol­un­tary dona­tions if they want­ed to – this also worked real­ly well. With all the advanced sup­port and help on the day, the event was extreme­ly cheap to run; the biggest cost was the pro­vi­sion of por­taloos which cost around £80 to hire. 

What feed­back did you receive?

We had very pos­i­tive feed­back on the day with lots of vis­i­tors say­ing they would like to come back again. I guess the most sat­is­fy­ing moment for me came five months lat­er when I was on a train to Lon­don and a com­plete stranger came over to me. Her chil­dren had point­ed out the ​‘cow lady’ to her and she want­ed to come and tell me what a great and mem­o­rable day they had all had! 

Open Farm Sun­day is real­ly easy to organ­ise and such a reward­ing event for dairy farm­ers to get involved in. It def­i­nite­ly goes a long way to con­nect with local peo­ple and help them gain an under­stand­ing of the world of dairy farm­ing, and where their dairy prod­ucts come from. 

Foot­note

Abi finds the expe­ri­ence so reward­ing she takes part in Open Farm Sun­day each year. In 2017, Abi helped with nation­al pub­lic­i­ty and was the sur­prise guest for Chris Evans to inter­view live on his Radio 2 Break­fast Show a few days before Open Farm Sun­day. Her pub­lic fac­ing edu­ca­tion­al activ­i­ty doesn’t stop there! She has also been involved in a cam­paign to take farm­ing expe­ri­ences and mes­sages to city school chil­dren, includ­ing a vis­it to an inner city school in Lon­don which made nation­al news!