1000 Visitors

Show­cas­ing British Agriculture 

As a busi­ness we are pas­sion­ate about pro­mot­ing British agri­cul­ture and the work farm­ers do to pro­tect and man­age the coun­try­side. We have been a LEAF Demon­stra­tion Farm since 1997 so doing Open Farm Sun­day seemed the nat­ur­al next step. It’s a great way of show­cas­ing our indus­try and show­ing how we pro­duce the food that every­one eats, the work that goes into pro­duc­ing it and the stan­dards and safe­ty involved.

Com­mu­ni­ty Connections

Open Farm Sun­day is a great way of inter­act­ing with your local com­mu­ni­ty and get­ting them onside. They will go past the farm dri­ve and nev­er get a chance to come and see what actu­al­ly goes on here. If we can explain how we’re doing things and why we’re doing things, it gives us an eas­i­er ride for the rest of the year if we don’t quite get things right!

Plan­ning For Success

Our first plan­ning meet­ing gen­er­al­ly takes place in mid-Feb­ru­ary. We have a team of peo­ple involved and because we’re a 20 hectare site with mul­ti­ple busi­ness units on it, the ini­tial meet­ing includes the pota­to pack­ing unit, Manor Fresh and the group’s Health and Safe­ty coor­di­na­tor. We will explain to them what we’re plan­ning, space require­ments and what areas will need to be cleared. We use the min­utes and notes from last year’s event as the basis for the meet­ing and make sure we draw up a clear action list. We will also con­tact peo­ple who ran stands at pre­vi­ous events and con­firm whether they want to be involved again.

Spread­ing The Word

We utilise all the free resources on offer from LEAF and adapt the poster to fit our open day, which we dis­trib­ute to local schools. Social media is a big pro­mo­tion­al tool – we link up with local Face­book groups, use Twit­ter as well as do a big splash on our own web­site. I also con­tribute arti­cles to a local news­pa­per three or four times a year, so they cov­ered the event as well. Just think about the amount of vis­i­tors you want and plan your pro­mo­tion around that. 

Some­thing For Everyone

As an all arable farm, we gen­er­al­ly bring in ani­mals from neigh­bour­ing farms. But farm­ers with just crops to show, should not think they have to do this. In my expe­ri­ence, peo­ple are fas­ci­nat­ed to hear about what you grow, what the crops are used for and to see the machin­ery you use.

We try to involve a lot of our sup­pli­ers on the day who offer activ­i­ties rang­ing from pol­li­na­tor quizzes, pea har­vest­ing and machin­ery demon­stra­tions; our game­keep­er comes along with decoys and traps and talks to vis­i­tors about wildlife con­ser­va­tion and ver­min con­trol. The AD plant on site is open for peo­ple to look around and we run a farm tour cov­er­ing the key areas of the site with machin­ery on dis­play through­out. The Drain­ing Board brought a large 360 dig­ger to one of our events and we were able to show vis­i­tors how we clean out dykes run­ning across the farm. It’s impor­tant to remem­ber, that for many peo­ple, it will be their first vis­it to a farm and they are just inter­est­ed in learn­ing about what you do. 

A Team Effort

Our Open Farm Sun­day event is a real team effort. We gen­er­al­ly have about ten farm staff onsite allo­cat­ed to a range of jobs – car park­ing, book­ing in vis­i­tors, reg­is­ter­ing peo­ple for the quiz, man­ning machin­ery and pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion to vis­i­tors. We also run three trac­tor and trail­er rides with three staff in rota­tion on each trailer.

Health and Safe­ty is always a key focus. Our in-house H&S depart­ment will do a thor­ough risk assess­ment and we have a des­ig­nat­ed H&S offi­cer present on the day. Although we have toi­lets on site, we always hire in extra and set-up mobile sink units near the live­stock areas. 

Have A Go

I would urge oth­er farms think­ing about doing Open Farm Sun­day to just give it a go. There is no harm in try­ing. Do what you are com­fort­able with. If that is just invit­ing 25 peo­ple onto the farm, then that is bet­ter than noth­ing. It doesn’t mat­ter what you have on your farm – fruit, cat­tle, cere­als or veg­eta­bles – every farm has some­thing to offer. As farm­ers we some­times for­get the every­day things we do are fas­ci­nat­ing to the gen­er­al pub­lic. Just see­ing how many peo­ple come onto the farm from across the gen­er­a­tions — tod­dlers up to 90 year olds – and to see their gen­uine inter­est in what we do, is incred­i­bly rewarding.

Keen to take part and host an event this year? Reg­is­ter your event here.

Ques­tions? Con­tact the Open Farm Sun­day team: [email protected] or phone 07912 463151