Agricultural Tourism

Unique Niches - Agritourism in Britain and New England

Section 5: Other Ranch and Farm Accommodations in the United States

While this area was not the focus of my project, I did discover several active agritourism groups in the west. Pat Dickerman has been promoting the ranch recreational experience for years through her book Farm, Ranch, and Country Vacations in America.

University Extension staff and Rural Development Specialists in the Southwest and Western states are much more experienced in this area. Private consultants in Wyoming such as RLS International have a business that specializes in "recreational ranching."

Western United States and Canada

In an article on Ranch Recreation (Tronstad, 1995), I found that Wyoming has an established ranch B&B industry with over 60 registered in the 1994 Wyoming Homestay and Outdoor Adventures guide. The state has also set its own standards for what constitutes a B&B. The state describes it as "a private home which is used to provide temporary accommodations for a charge to the public with not more than four lodging units or not more than a daily average of eight persons per night during a thirty day period." A minimum of 160 acres is needed to qualify for a ranch recreation enterprise. These are different from "dude ranches," and are businesses that earn their living growing crops or livestock. One rancher, Peggy Monzingo of Benson, Arizona, begin an operation to educate the public on public land issues: "Ranchers need to do their part in educating the public first hand and correctly since so many are misinformed."

Agritourism is gaining momentum across Canada, particularly in British Columbia and Ontario. Agriculture and horse ranch vacations are actively promoted through travel literature and the Internet. There is a growing interest in this tourism strategy in Nova Scotia, which led the government to call for a plan for the province. The report, An Agri-tourism Strategy for Nova Scotia (Nova Scotia Department of Agriculture and Marketing, 1996), can be obtained via the Internet. The address is provided in a sample website listing located in Appendix E.

California

There is no existing group that organizes farm B&B experiences in California, though I believe it is a wide open market with great potential based on the successes witnessed in New England and Britain. I spoke with Norma St. John-Verdini, staff member at the Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF), which published the now defunct California Farm Fresh Directory and currently publishes the National Organic Directory. She confirmed that CAFF had no section or listings for farm tours or farm accommodations and suggested I talk with county Cooperative Extension offices. I corresponded with all the small farm advisors in California and the Small Farm Center at UC Davis to see if they knew of any organizations or farm B&Bs in their counties. Eight counties responded.

In Plumas County, Barbara Scott and her family run the New England Ranch. As Barbara says it, "We love people and horses so the B&B is an easy fit for us." The Scotts run cows and horses on their property in rural Quincy. They just started to board horses after guests encouraged them to "remodel the old barn for boarding their horses." They advertise via word of mouth, local newspapers, tack shops and Ride magazine. Their customer base is primarily from Northern California.

In Yolo County, the Farm Bureau office manager responded that "board members feed enough school teachers, visiting farmers and county administrators with BBQS, luncheons and overnighters that they might qualify."

In Glenn County, Mary Glaeseman operates The Inn at Shallow Creek Farm, a farmhouse surrounded by three acres of mandarin oranges which she sells directly from the farm. She was the first to start a B&B in the county and advised, "Since we were first, we walked the planning commission through the process and convinced them by working with them, rather than being adversarial. We used the same tactic with our neighbors, talking with them first about what our plans were and what we wanted to do." In talking with other innkeepers, she found that regulations governing B&Bs are treated differently in each county. In Glenn, the Inn is inspected by the county health department every six months. Much of her business comes from her listing in Peggy van Hulsteyn's The Birder's Guide to Bed and Breakfast,since she is situated near the Sacramento Wildlife Refuge Complex.

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