Mixed sheep and arable farm | Haddon, Cambridgeshire

Com­mu­ni­ty Focus

Get­ting involved in Open Farm Sun­day was an easy deci­sion for us. We’re seri­ous about our role with­in the local com­mu­ni­ty and so it was a nat­ur­al exten­sion of what we are try­ing to do to bring peo­ple clos­er to how their food is pro­duced. There is still a great divorce between farm­ers and the pub­lic so it’s imper­a­tive that farm­ers reach out when­ev­er they can. Open Farm Sun­day is a fan­tas­tic way to do just this. 

It Is All About Your Farm

We start­ed plan­ning in January/​February, when things were a bit qui­eter on the farm. As it was our first time open­ing and unsure about vis­i­tor num­bers, we want­ed to make sure things were scal­able so decid­ed to run the event as a fam­i­ly pic­nic and farm walk. This way, we knew we could cope with 200 to 300 peo­ple but equal­ly, we could han­dle less if we need­ed to. 

We kept things very low key with­out over com­mer­cial­is­ing things. It is the farm that we want­ed to show­case and its role in the com­mu­ni­ty, so we just asked peo­ple to bring their own pic­nic. Of course, if you offer food, you’re then respon­si­ble for a greater duty of care. We bor­rowed a toi­let and hand­wash­ing facil­i­ties from a neigh­bour but didn’t need to do much more oth­er than bring­ing some late born lambs out a cou­ple of times for peo­ple to bot­tle feed. 

Duty of Care

With live­stock, prop­er hand­wash­ing is always a con­cern. We had host­ed vis­its for adults before but this was always going to be a fam­i­ly day. What we realised is that when you invite fam­i­lies onto your farm, it doesn’t mean that par­ents are no longer respon­si­ble for their chil­dren. In fact, invit­ing fam­i­lies means that all chil­dren come with their own stewards! 

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion is key

We reg­u­lar­ly com­mu­ni­cate with peo­ple in the vil­lage, so they feel involved and part of the farm­ing that’s going on around them. For exam­ple, when we are spread­ing manure, we will push a note through doors explain­ing what we’re doing, why it’s impor­tant and how it’s all part of the work farm­ers do to recy­cle digestate. 

We did the same for Open Farm Sun­day; post­ed invi­ta­tions through each let­ter box, used social media, put up posters in local shops and adver­tised in com­mu­ni­ty mag­a­zines. We made it clear that the event would go ahead even if it was rain­ing and advised peo­ple dress for the weath­er. We had a rea­son­able sized gaze­bo for shel­ter (which blew over before the event and had to picked out of the barbed wire fence!). It was fair­ly breezy on the day too and there were a cou­ple of moments when we had near lift off! The ​‘windy weath­er’ plan def­i­nite­ly needs to be revis­it­ed next time. 

Break­ing Down Stereotypes

The main thing we need­ed help for was host­ing the walks. We are always look­ing at ways to break down stereo­types so recruit­ed young peo­ple in their 20’s from neigh­bour­ing farms and made sure we had a cou­ple of female guides as well. We had 4 tour guides, and 10 helpers in total, who we met with a week before our event, walked the route and gave them brief­ing notes cov­er­ing things like what fields were called, field sizes, what crops were grow­ing in them, what they would be used for. We also includ­ed some fun facts like how big the field was com­pared to foot­ball pitch­es – using lan­guage that our vis­i­tors could relate to. We also asked the guides to intro­duce them­selves as ​‘Farmer Han­nah’, rather than ​‘Han­nah’ which was a great way to bust myths around farm­ing being a male dom­i­nat­ed profession. 

Engag­ing With Visitors

Vis­i­tors were giv­en a paper bag of good­ies when they arrived which had a small dis­claimer note sta­pled to the out­side say­ing ​‘wel­come to our farm, we hope you have a great day, you are respon­si­ble for every­thing that hap­pens’. The infor­ma­tion book­lets aimed at dif­fer­ent age groups were kept sep­a­rate so that we could go around to the dif­fer­ent pic­nic groups, ask what age group the chil­dren were in and give them the rel­e­vant book­lets. This gave us anoth­er point of inter­ac­tion with vis­i­tors and the dis­claimer on the bag pro­vid­ed a lev­el of reas­sur­ance too. 

Give It A Go

Doing Open Farm Sun­day is a fan­tas­tic way to reach out to the local com­mu­ni­ty, to talk to your cus­tomers about what you do, how farm­ing impacts on their every­day lives and why it mat­ters. All farms – regard­less of size, enter­prise or loca­tion can take part. Just talk­ing to peo­ple, hear­ing their views and see­ing their gen­uine inter­est in what we’re doing to pro­duce food and man­age the coun­try­side is huge­ly reward­ing. Just give it a go and enjoy it! 

Pho­tos from Lisa Miosi photography.