want to support local, they know why things cost more, they’ve done the labor, they see the labor, so in turn it does equal out, but those hoops are big ones to jump through. Ann : So tell me about what else you offer as agritourism. Bailey : We offer year-round tours on the farm. There’s always something happening. We’ll do mint tours. We’ve also done onion shed tours. We do an asparagus festival. We also have Air BnBs on the farm. We’ve had people that come and stay on the farm and they didn’t realize how dark it got at night without street lights, or how quiet it can be without roads. Most of the Air BnBs are actually farmstead houses. They’re houses that we have renovated but it’s a true farm style house. There’s nothing fancy. The one that we have right now that’s really popular is by the river, and we haven’t changed anything, so they still have sulfur water. If you don’t know what that is, it’s water that smells like terrible rotten eggs the first like five minutes that you use it. And we get a lot of comments on that, but our purpose in that is, could we try and fix it? Maybe. It’s pretty hard, but we also want people to understand that when you live in this area, this is what you have. Ann : But I think authenticity is something that people really need to experience to bridge that gap between their own experience as somebody who drives to the grocery store and magically there’s all this produce in the produce section. Bailey : Authenticity has become really a hot topic in the last few years. I want to say we’re like four or five generations removed from a farm, on average. Bridging that gap is going to be crucial in having American agriculture survive. We’ve got to educate. We’ve got to get to where people can trust not just the farmers, but the farming. When they can understand that, not only will it be easier for American farmers, but I feel like Americans and the consumers of all these products are going to be grateful that they know where things come from. That education almost gives people peace of mind.
Ann : If a grower is listening to this and is like, ‘You know, I’ve thought about doing this before, but I have no idea where to begin.’ What do you think are the best first steps that growers can take in order to start an agritourism business? Bailey : Step back and be like, ‘Okay, what can I offer? What are my regulations?’ Those are the first two steps. Once you get an idea, you just have to run with it. There’s a farm locally where they do field trips and tours where you can go and learn how to set a siphon tube. As a farmer, I don’t care to set another siphon tube. [Laughs.] I’ve done it before. I’m terrible at it. My husband’s great at it. You know, we don’t want to do it, but to most people, that’s a great skill to learn and it’s fun and memorable. Ann : What are some of the hoops you needed to jump through to set up agritourism programming? Bailey : A lot of them come from food safety. We opened up our field of asparagus to the public to come and pick it. If you go back to one of [my brother] Shay’s videos [on TikTok], we had an issue getting our labor workers here one year and our crop was just going to go to waste without them, so we were trying to figure out a way to not have so much food waste and benefit the community. We had 6,000 people show up to pick this field. And what most people didn’t understand is we had to train them just like an employee. We had to go through our food safety training. We had to go through how and what not to do and what to wear. And there were people that came that we had to turn away. Like ‘You can’t wear jewelry into the field and you can’t have long nails on’ and all of these different things - and people were like, 'This is crazy.’ But it’s a great opportunity for them to understand you’ve got to follow these guidelines. We’ve seen the benefit of people having the chance to come and learn from the farm. They buy local, they
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23 Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com March | April 2025
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