Dairy farm | North West | 380 visitors

Bring­ing peo­ple clos­er to farming

I had always want­ed to do Open Farm Sun­day, but David had always been reluc­tant. He thought we did not have that much to offer, but hav­ing peo­ple come through the gate to use the milk vend­ing machine has helped to change his mind. 

We did not real­ly know what to expect so went into the whole thing just want­i­ng to show peo­ple what we do and what goes into pro­duc­ing a litre of milk. Nowa­days peo­ple don’t have any con­nec­tion with farm­ing and lit­tle under­stand­ing of where their food comes from. For us, tak­ing part in Open Farm Sun­day was all about doing what we can to change this. 

We got togeth­er as a fam­i­ly to talk about the kind of event we want­ed to run, signed up in Feb­ru­ary and my daugh­ter and I did most of the organ­is­ing. It was a lot eas­i­er than we thought! 

Mak­ing it safe 

Health and Safe­ty was a big con­cern. I enlist­ed the help of a friend who is respon­si­ble for Health and Safe­ty at an agri­cul­tur­al col­lege. She vis­it­ed the farm, looked over it with a pair of fresh (and crit­i­cal) eyes and alert­ed me to any poten­tial risks. The H&S risk assess­ment form in the Open Farm Sun­day Hand­book was also real­ly help­ful as a reminder of all the areas we need­ed to pay atten­tion to. Despite our ini­tial wor­ries, it turned out to be quite straight forward. 

Our event

We thought we would have any­thing between 50 and 250 vis­i­tors – in the end we had 380. We pro­mot­ed the event in all our local schools by putting up a poster and the schools also emailed details to par­ents. Our con­cerns about not hav­ing much to offer vis­i­tors could not have been more wrong. We cre­at­ed posters of milk­ing times and rou­tines, planned a tour route and had a des­ig­nat­ed ​‘meet­ing and greet­ing’ area. We offered milk­ing demon­stra­tions (select­ing cows that wouldn’t be upset by vis­i­tors), ​‘guess the weight of a calf’ com­pe­ti­tion and a trac­tor and trail­er ride – which was very pop­u­lar. Our local NFU rep­re­sen­ta­tive came with their tour­ing van and also ran a ​‘milk shy’. 

LEAF pro­vid­ed a lot of sup­port and free resources which were great for us as first-time host farm­ers. Two of the key things I picked up from one of their webi­na­rs was to get as many helpers on the day as pos­si­ble and that peo­ple will arrive early!

On the day 

I asked friends and fam­i­ly to arrive an hour ear­ly and allo­cat­ed a job to each one. We had lots of great dis­cus­sion and ques­tions from vis­i­tors and they were gen­uine­ly fas­ci­nat­ed in what we do. The whole event was real­ly reward­ing – we were amazed by how inter­est­ed and pos­i­tive every­one was. Hav­ing start­ed off quite hes­i­tant­ly about doing Open Farm Sun­day, we are now already plan­ning this year’s event. You just need to start small, get as much help as you can and just give it a go. You don’t need to have lots of activ­i­ties, peo­ple just want to see farm­ing as it is.