Small community focussed event

Anne goes on to explain why she feels farm­ers should be doing more to change pub­lic per­cep­tion and attitudes; 

“As a farmer’s daugh­ter, I have a pro­found love for British Farm­ing and all that it stands for. Liv­ing and work­ing on our fam­i­ly farm in Northum­ber­land, I’d like to see the pub­lic per­cep­tion towards British Agri­cul­ture move in a more pos­i­tive direc­tion, chang­ing atti­tudes and understanding. 

This is why we will be open­ing the farm to the pub­lic for the third time this year as a part of Open Farm Sun­day (OFS). We also run school vis­its on farm, and it makes me think that we need more farm­ers to be doing this to allow more peo­ple to come out on farm and find out first-hand about what agri­cul­ture means, and what is involved in pro­duc­ing food.”

“The first year we opened our gates, we invit­ed the local rug­by club and did a small farm walk. This gave us con­fi­dence to wel­come more peo­ple, and now we run a slight­ly big­ger event, with more on offer.” 

Anne’s advice for any­one tak­ing part in OFS, is to ​“make it fun, remem­ber your audi­ence and make it relat­able. You can get seri­ous mes­sages across but don’t use jar­gon and, equal­ly, don’t dumb it down. Make what you are say­ing and show­ing tan­gi­ble, using exam­ples that build links, such as ​“this pack of diges­tives came from this crop”. Visu­al aids work real­ly well too as they make what you are say­ing stick.”

“LEAF Open Farm Sun­day is an amaz­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty to illus­trate that, far from being a low skilled man­u­al job as some may believe, farm­ing is a dynam­ic and vital indus­try. There aren’t many jobs where you need to be a farmer, vet, agron­o­mist, dri­ver, accoun­tant, engi­neer, math­e­mati­cian, project man­ag­er and midwife.

Of course, everyone’s got some­thing to say. Even if you start with the basics about how the farm came into the fam­i­ly and how it has changed over the years. How­ev­er insignif­i­cant you think it is, it may inspire someone.”