710 acre fruit farm | Aberdeenshire, Scotland

2014 was the first year we had ever con­sid­ered open­ing the farm for Open Farm Sun­day. It seemed a good time — we had gained our LEAF Mar­que cer­tifi­cate and won The Roy­al North­ern Agri­cul­tur­al Soci­ety Best Farm­ing Award so, we felt open­ing the farm would be a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to show the pub­lic what we were about.

It is fair to say that some of my team were scep­ti­cal about the task in hand – after all, we are farm­ers not pub­lic speak­ers! We spoke with the Scot­tish Region­al Co-ordi­na­tor which gave us an idea about what Open Farm Sun­day would involve and also inspired us! It real­ly helped answer some of our ques­tions and get us all moti­vat­ed. Our main issue was how to make soft fruit as warm and snug­gly as cows, sheep and lla­mas so that chil­dren (and adults!) would engage. Thank­ful­ly, the team did lots of brain storm­ing after read­ing the infor­ma­tion LEAF sent to us and on the web­site, and plans were quick­ly hatched. Although, like most farm­ers, I don’t like being inside – there is always some­thing more inter­est­ing to do out­side! – we did make sure that we had reg­u­lar meet­ings about our Open Farm Sun­day event and every­one on the team would bring some­thing new each time. On the day itself, just be enthu­si­as­tic, help­ful and infor­ma­tive. Not every­thing is going to go as you planned but heh, if you can laugh with your vis­i­tors at hav­ing to do a 3 point turn with a trac­tor and trail­er as you missed the gate, then that’s half the bat­tle! Above all enjoy your­self and look for­ward to the pint at 5pm!