To Tour or Not to Tour; That is The Question (and the risk)

As seen in todays issue of http://www.therenegadefarmer.com/



When folks call us to ask about our farm, its products, location, etc...they invariably ask the toughest question of all, "Do you give tours?"

The answer is indubitably Yes, unless of course it is No, not really. Why so wishy-washy? I'll have to refer you to our insurance carrier, who gets nervous about tours. Where we see opportunity to educate city dwellers, share techniques with other farmers and provide children with the means of touching a real live animal, she sees it as a lawsuit waiting to take root and spread faster than a pack of Morning Glory Seeds.

School children love the opportunity to visit farms and help with chores
Make sure the parents come along to help.

Her advice to us is to avoid labeling it a "Tour" and whatever you do, don't charge for it. Instead, she suggests, call it a "Walk-a-Bout" and inform people they can leave a donation if they so desire. If we do decide to give real tours it could cause our liability insurance to double. She also strongly recommends we have all farm visitors sign a waiver, something like this;

Thanks for visiting us. Farms are highly dangerous and could kill you. A cow might gore you in the abdomen, a boar might bite off your arm, a chicken might peck your eyes out and our milk could curdle in your stomach before you get back down the driveway. We are not responsible for anything. Have a great day.

Or something similar to that. We understand her concern, farms can be dangerous, but then again so is life in general. We hate to assume the worst of people, that they might sue us if our turkey pecks at their open-toed sandal (and WHY would you wear those to the farm?) and we love teaching them about the benefits of free range eggs and pastured meat. We really love seeing a child pet the soft warm nose of a newborn calf.

We're just strange that way.

Stranger than many of our own farmer friends who don't allow visitors for fear of disease that might be brought onto their farm from outside sources. I've been on a few farms like that where visitors wore more masks, booties and gloves than a medical team did prior to open heart surgery.

Allowing Graduate students and journalists to visit your
farm can be a real asset, unless you see it as a risk

How did farms and folks get so leery and untrustworthy of each other? How will we ever foster the love of farming in our youth, enough so that they might want to own or at least work on a farm of their own, if we don't allow them to touch the farms livestock or taste its produce before giving full disclaimers and 10 page liability waivers?

What do you do at your farm? Do you give tours? Do you charge a fee for them? Do you have visitors sign waivers? Do you carry extra insurance against injury claims?

Or do you just put up a huge NO TRESPASSING sign at the end of your driveway, and be done with it? I'd love to hear what you are doing about this on your farm and why. You can comment publicly here or send me an email at opies99@gmail.com.

The More The Scarier

Farm tours, I'm talking about farm tours. Keith and I have always enjoyed showing folks our farm for all the reasons I talked about on yesterdays post but tours can be scary...scary in the eyes of the insurance carrier beholder that is.

When our farm products and offerings began to expand about three years ago we thought giving regular tours and charging for them would be easy enough way to pull in some more income.  Before moving forward I, the wet blanket of many an adventure, decided to ask our insurance agent about liability. I specifically wanted to know what would be covered under our home owners policy.

A friend of mine and her son who are at the top of my list for "Most Excellent Farm Visitors"

Basically, nothing would be covered.

Well, nothing would be covered if we CHARGED a fee for the tour because that would bump us into the world of "agri-tourism." Elevating ourselves to that height would require a separate and more expensive agri-tourism policy. Turns out once you charge for something you bear the brunt of liability.

 Facts are: tours take time and time spent doing tours is time taken away from other farm chores. Its hard for some folks, especially urban dwellers to understand the amount of work needed to tend a farm. Thus we ask folks to schedule a tour as we cannot always stop what we are doing to show people around.

So, instead we do not charge for tours but we tell folks that donations are happily accepted. We also happily accept purchases out of our farm store. In the last 5 years I can only think of one, maybe two (does family count?) groups who came for a tour and did not leave a donation. Probably because we didn't tell them one would be , once again, happily accepted.

Most folks are very pleased to contribute a small amount.

Our, oh OK, MY biggest concern is with the parents who bring the kids for a tour and take little responsibility for them. This is rare but even after I do my little dog and donkey show about electric fences (they hurt), animals in heat (they bite), tractors (no you may not turn it on and drive it) we still get folks who glare at me when I tell their children, politely; "Stop swinging the turkey around by its neck you little heathen !!" I meant to say "Heather", really I did.

But for the other 99.9% we are very willing to show them how we do things on this farm. We love telling the story of the nearly extinct Red Wattle hogs, the dairy cows that live 3-4 X's as long as feed lot cows, eggs that are laid in straw by hens they move freely in and out of the chicken house instead of living their entire short lives in a 2 foot square cage. So many wee ones have never seen farm animals up close let alone have the opportunity to actually touch and feed one. Their eyes light up, they giggle, they take pictures.

Their kids are pretty thrilled as well.