Rachel & Richard Risdon - Woodrow Barton Farm
Woodrow Barton Farm is a 20-year Farm Business Tenancy, with Richard and Rachel in their 9th year. The farm is 400 acres in a block and was arable and sheep, but has been converted to an all grass spring-calving dairy.
First OFS in 2017 with 60 visitors, promoted in local parish magazine and school newsletter
The farm is located near Exeter, has the mainline railway to London through it and the River Exe going through our flood meadows. We are a closed herd and so keep all our dairy youngstock, but we sell all other calves.
When we started Open Farm Sunday in 2017, we chose not to advertise the event on the Open Farm Sunday website. Instead, we promoted it in the local parish magazine and school newsletter, which led to 60 local visitors. Since COVID, we have used the free booking site (Trybooking) which the OFS team recommend to manage numbers as we now limit our event to 150 visitors. We do Open Farm Sunday each year because we firmly believe that people need to connect to where their food comes from and we really enjoy meeting visitors and talking about our farm.
Our Open Farm Sunday consists of two guided walks looking at the grazing cattle, livestock, and parlour to show visitors the processes of our dairy farm. After the farm walk we hand out free milk and milkshake samples. My favourite moment is always when one of our cows comes up to someone for a stroke or cuddle.
We have changed the event slightly over the years by showing different things each time. One year, we had our contractor come and silage one of the fields in front of the house for people to watch. We have four people who work on the farm who all help on the day, our children, and a couple of friends/relatives who help hand out the milk samples as we now sell some of our milk directly to consumers.
We have gone through phases of worrying about protesters and various anti-farming groups, and so far, after six Open Farm Sundays, we haven’t had any adverse comments. In fact it is really rewarding to get lots of positive feedback.
Top Tip: Use the booking system and restrict numbers to something you can cope with for the first year. Don’t feel like you have to provide a whole day of entertainment.
Keen to take part and host an event this year? Register your event here.
Questions? Contact the Open Farm Sunday team: OpenFarmSunday@leaf.eco or phone 07912 463151
Sign up to our mailing list(s)
You are now subscribed!
You are signed up to the mailing list(s) you selected.
If you no longer wish to receive emails from us, every email we send contains a link at the bottom allowing you to unsubscribe with one click. Privacy Policy.