Having fun and learning valuable lessons about where our food comes from

Open farms growing in popularity as animals and other facilities prove a big draw for families.

THE weekly shopping trip is stressful enough.

You’re pushing a trolley around your local supermarket and while you try to tot up your total, pick out the freshest products and tick off your list, you’re faced with a barrage of questions from your little ones about the foods on the shelves.

How do you satisfy their curious minds, and concentrate on the task at hand? Well, you could show the children around a real farm.

Children learn best from seeing and touching. Tangible experiences are better at satisfying curiosity then anything else. However, the old showbiz saying comes to mind, ‘Never work with animals or children’.

Farming is not showbusiness, but while working with animals is unavoidable, the saying could be modified for farmers to: ‘never work with the general public or children’.

Visitors are problematic on farms, interfering with planning and preparation. Looking after your land is important, and maximising production from every corner of it.

So why are some farmers letting hordes of families people roam free upon their fields? Why are they sprinkling some exotic animals around the sheep and cattle?

Why are they building playgrounds for children, and cafés to feed them and their parents? These are crazy ideas, surely?

Maybe they’re not so crazy after all.

Open farms are an agricultural diversification that, if done in the right way, can provide local employment, and even foster a new market for other local farmers, suppliers and businesses.

They attract people from near and far and bring money into the community, while educating the general public about farming life.

There are quite a few open farms dotted around the country. Many of them incorporate local products and trades into their business, and there is a plethora of different activities on offer for families looking for a day out — which doesn’t involve clamouring for parking at the local shopping centre.

One of Ireland’s newest open farms, Rumley’s at Waterfall, near Cork, opened in 2012. It evolved from the simpler idea of a shop selling the farm’s products and a playground in the car park.

What was originally planned as a four-acre development has ballooned to 20 acres, as owner Ivan Rumley’s passion for exotic animals and farming has captured the imagination of visitors.

While Rumley’s has exotic attractions like monkeys, meerkats and camels, it is still very much a working farm, and Ivan is keen for visitors to see what really happens in day-to-day farm work.

“Our season runs from St Patrick’s weekend to November, and from May, we are fully booked with school tours. It’s important for kids to learn, and the next time they go into a supermarket they’ll be able to relate the products they see back to a farm, and understand where they come from,” says Ivan.

“People who normally don’t have any access to real farms can come here and see what it’s like. We have cow milking and feeding baby lambs, things that happen every day on a normal farm, but if you don’t live on one, it’s probably hard to get to see that. We can show them,” he adds.

In this age of information at the touch of a button, open farms can provide visitors with a genuinely unique experience that cannot be replicated by computer software.

“It’s important in this age of technology that we continue to educate people about agriculture, and where the food they eat comes from, and awareness of good food,” says Ivan.

Next year, a robot milking system will be installed at Rumley’s, which the public will have access to. Ivan believes it will be a big attraction.

“It’s amazing to see the look on children’s faces when they see milk coming from a cow into a churn, it’s not something they normally get to experience. A normal dairy farmer wouldn’t be able to have the public in and out of the farm.”

Leahy’s open farm, based in Dungourney, Co Cork, has been a local institution since 1996.

Eddie and Eileen Leahy’s farm began with just four cows and a few pigs. When the pig trade tailed off, Eddie decided to open up his land to show off his collection of vintage machinery, and Eileen’s love of home-baking was put to use in a café for visitors.

Now, 18 years on, they see nearly 30,000 visitors a year passing through their gates to enjoy the farm museum, crannóg, nine-hole crazy golf course, adventure trail, climbing frame, fairy fort and exotic animals such as camels and alpacas. Their new digger park development was officially opened by Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney this year, and a new indoor play area will allow Leahys to stay open nearly all year round. The animals, of course, are always the biggest draw.

“No matter what attractions we put in, the touching and feeding of the animals is still probably the highlight for the kids,” says Teresa Leahy, Eddie and Eileen’s daughter-in-law. “At one, three and five, every day, there’s a petting hour in the barn, and that’s the most popular thing here. The kids can hold, rub and feed the animals. The kid goats are fed with bottles and the monkeys are fed with straws and yogurt.”

Local employment and business links are important to both Rumley’s and Leahy’s.

Ivan attributes a lot of the farm’s success to the team he has working with him. Most of their visitors come through word of mouth, and staff strive to give visitors the best experience possible.

“The one thing that’s important is that you have a passionate love for what you’re doing. It’s a highly labour-intensive business, and you need a lot of staff,” says Ivan.

Leahy’s also employs local people, and they are very much involved in the local business community.

“We would work a lot with local hotel groups and develop package deals. We are always willing to develop good relationships with local businesses,” says Teresa.

Training, business advice and mentoring are sought from their local community development partnership, SECAD, and Leahy’s is a member of the Ring of Cork tourism organisation.

“Eddie and Eileen started it off, it’s very family orientated. We like to provide the personal touch for our visitors. We ask them how their day was. We don’t just take the money and leave them off,” adds Teresa.

Leahy’s reputation is such that it is attracting international interest. “We would get a lot of French students that come in groups of 30 to 40, and we’d get a lot of people who are on holiday here from England,” says Teresa.