100 visitors/ 22 acres/ Croft

Our enter­prise

Riv­er Croft is 1000ft above sea-lev­el in the moun­tains and the weath­er can be pret­ty harsh, but we only use native breeds so all our ani­mals are free-range. Our work is for the con­ser­va­tion of our coun­try­side and our native endan­gered species and our croft’s biose­cu­ri­ty is incred­i­bly impor­tant to us. 

Effec­tive­ly engag­ing with the public

We first took part in Open Farm Sun­day in 2017, then again in 2018 and we plan to open this year too. The major­i­ty that come along are fam­i­lies with chil­dren. The best part of the day for us is the hap­pi­ness on the faces of chil­dren and the love­ly feed­back we receive after the event from peo­ple who have learned some­thing from their visit. 

Vis­i­tors are inquis­i­tive and want to know more about farm­ing. They come to see the real­i­ty of small-scale farm­ing and what that involves. We have peo­ple from all walks of life who come pri­mar­i­ly for a free day out for their chil­dren, which is fine with us. We have a reg­u­lar vis­i­tor with a dis­abled child who absolute­ly loves to see the ani­mals – being able to offer such a sim­ple plea­sure is tru­ly heart warm­ing. We also like the edu­ca­tion­al aspect and just see­ing the pure joy that kids get when they get out into the countryside.

Many of our fol­low­ers on social media have been with us since we start­ed – so open­ing our croft is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet them. As our fol­low­ers know us quite well already, it feels like we’re invit­ing fam­i­ly and friends, rather than open­ing our doors to com­plete strangers. 

Man­ag­ing vis­i­tor num­bers & the LOFS Tick­et­ing service

Vis­i­tor num­bers are so unpre­dictable and the weath­er dic­tates num­bers too. In our first year, we ran two one-hour long tours and had around 80 vis­i­tors – a lot more than we were expecting! 

In 2018, we decid­ed to use the OFS Tick­et­ing sys­tem that LEAF offers (using Try­book­ing) and it real­ly is bril­liant! We set-up 2 book­able tours but with a more man­age­able num­ber of 35 vis­i­tors on each and pro­mot­ed the link on Face­book. Each event was booked up quick­ly, but we also main­tained a wait­ing list on the sys­tem. Some vis­i­tors did can­cel at the last minute and were kind enough to let us know, which meant that we were able to con­tact those on the wait­ing list the evening before our event and offer them a place on the tours. 

It also real­ly helped us with know­ing when peo­ple were arriv­ing too. The track to our croft is a mile long with very few places for cars to pass – so before the sec­ond tour start­ed, we asked the vis­i­tors from the first tour not to leave until the sec­ond wave of vis­i­tors had arrived. 

The tick­et­ing sys­tem was sim­ple to use and real­ly helped man­age everybody’s enjoy­ment. We will def­i­nite­ly use it again this year.

Our event

We take vis­i­tors for a walk around the croft and to meet the piglets and our breed­ing stock. Although vis­i­tor can­not bring food along on the tours, they can bring their own pic­nic and stay on for a lit­tle while longer. Our local police come along to talk to vis­i­tors about rur­al issues, putting a par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on the impor­tance of peo­ple to put dogs on leads around live­stock. They bring their police van with its cage in the back for chil­dren to sit in and they also put on their flash­ing lights and sirens too. 

The free Sci­ence on the Farm posters from LEAF were dot­ted around the place and were bril­liant. We cre­at­ed a quiz for the chil­dren using the infor­ma­tion on the posters, so vis­i­tors were read­ing and learn­ing as they went. Some plas­tic medals, crayons and colour­ing books were giv­en as prizes.

We don’t ask vis­i­tors for an entry fee or dona­tions to our event but in 2018, we held a rub­ber duck race down the riv­er for £1 per duck, with dona­tions going to the British Heart Foundation.

Pro­mot­ing our event

Our event is pro­mot­ed on the web­site www​.farm​sun​day​.org. We use Face­book to engage with Riv­er Croft’s cus­tomer base and we send out the link to the tick­et­ing ser­vice through Face­book. The resources we use from LEAF are the gate ban­ner and the Sci­ence on the Farm infor­ma­tion posters. 

A help­ing hand

We have a small group of friends who sup­port us on the day. A cou­ple help with traf­fic man­age­ment and park­ing, anoth­er on an infor­ma­tion table that we cre­at­ed and anoth­er who super­vis­es hand-wash­ing. Biose­cu­ri­ty is so impor­tant to us that as soon as the vis­i­tors come off their tour, we ask them to queue up and wash their hands and drop their paper tow­els in the bin. 

Unex­pect­ed visitors

All our vis­i­tors were rel­a­tive­ly local, but we did have an unex­pect­ed sit­u­a­tion. On the morn­ing of our event we took a call from a tour oper­a­tor whose plans for the day had fall­en through and they asked if they could bring a coach-load of Amer­i­can tourists to the Croft! We said yes and those vis­i­tors stuck around for most of the day! 

Health & Safety

We were lucky to have a vis­it­ing police pres­ence and so from a secu­ri­ty point of view, we were able to turn our back and get on with our event. Poten­tial haz­ards are the riv­er flow­ing through the mid­dle of the croft, three big ponds and a junk yard. We ran an elec­tric fence line around a chunk of the croft that includ­ed the res­i­dence, the junk yead and the ponds near the res­i­dence. We cre­at­ed a dis­claimer that every­one arriv­ing on our croft read and signed. It includ­ed infor­ma­tion about the elec­tric fence and that vis­i­tors were respon­si­ble for their chil­dren. We ensured that cars drove through dis­in­fec­tant. We asked that wellies were cleaned and vis­i­tors dipped their boots in a dis­in­fec­tant foot dip too. 

We gave a talk at the begin­ning of each tour explain­ing that they were on a work­ing croft. Even though we’d informed vis­i­tors in advance that dogs weren’t allowed, a sur­pris­ing num­ber still pitched up with their dogs. The dogs were put back in the vehi­cles and not allowed out. Peo­ple real­ly need to be informed of the health risks – it’s part of learn­ing what farm­ing is about and the coun­try code too.

Ques­tions from visitors

A lot of ques­tions were about us – what we do in our day; are the days long; what time did we start? Oth­ers want to know what farm ani­mals ate – peo­ple seem to think that you can feed farm ani­mals what­ev­er you want. One vis­i­tor asked if he could buy a pig, take it home to slaugh­ter and butch­er him­self — but we declined! 

How would you encour­age oth­er farm­ers to get involved? We were con­tact­ed last year by anoth­er farmer think­ing of tak­ing part in Open Farm Sun­day. They then ran their first event in 2018 and we have stayed in touch and talk about what we’re doing at each of our events.