This website serves Farmers and Ranchers in the Kansas AgriTourism Industry.
For family outings, go to http://www.travelks.com

Welcome to Kansas AgriTourism!

This website has been developed specifically for Kansas farmers and ranchers involved in AgriTourism, rural properties where the traveler has an opportunity to experience farm and country life far from the hustle of the city.
The site is a project of the Kansas Agritourism Advisory Council, working in cooperation with:
the Kansas Agriculture Marketing Division and the Travel and Tourism Division of the Department of Commerce
and with financial assistance from Frontier Farm Credit.
We invite you to explore this website to find a variety of articles and resources that will help you succeed in agritourism.
If you have any questions, please contact the Department of Commerce, Travel and Tourism Division, and ask for the Agritourism Liaison.
The Kansas AgriTourism
Advisory Council
 
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Kansas AgriTourism News

November 2007

Greetings!

This newsletter, along with the companion resource website, www.kansasagritourism.org, were initiated in 2006 as an extension of the 2004 Kansas Agritourism Initiative, begun by the Department of Commerce Travel and Tourism Division and the Agriculture Marketing Division.

In 2006, Frontier Farm Credit stepped forward to finance both the new website, and this electronic newsletter, providing a means of ongoing communication and continuing education for you, the state's agritourism industry. Frontier Farm Credit has generously funded these farm resources for two full years.

It is time to find new partners to assist in funding this effort. Frontier Farm Credit has agreed to match 50% of the costs, but we are looking for new sponsors beginning January 1, 2008. In the interim, Frontier Farm Credit has agreed to retain the website online, although the newsletter, the online calendar, and the news listings will be discontinued until new partners identify themselves.

If you would like to see this monthly newsletter and the Kansas Agritourism website continue, please contact Sarah Larison, agritourism liaison, as soon as possible. (phone: 785-296-8132)

In This Month's Issue:

Featured Farm: Cottonwood Farms, "Just Good Hunting"

Kansas Farm Bureau
Agritourism Workshops

Agritourism Health & Safety Guidelines for Children

Deep South Fruit & Vegetable Growers Conference
 

Featured Farm: Cottonwood Farms
Just Good Hunting

Not every hunter is looking for an expedition or a "hunting package" that includes a guide, dogs, elaborate home cooked meals, game cleaning services, and satellite TV in the lodge. Some folks just want to hunt. In fact, a lot of hunters like to go into a sort of survival mode-"roughing it" might be an exaggeration, but at least they are willing to cook their own food, stalk game on their own, clean their own birds, and then just settle in for a quiet evening swapping stories in comfortable surroundings.
 
From November 1, right up to January, there will be a lot of hunters just like this who choose to spend several pleasant days at the Cottonwood Farm in Alton, Kansas. The farm, owned by Doug and Linda Norris, is located in the rolling grasslands of North Central Kansas, north of Hays between Osborne and Stockton off highway 24.
 
"We provide a clean, comfortable house for the hunters to stay in, clean linens, and lots of land with plenty of game for the folks to hunt," said Linda. "When we first opened the farm to hunters, we were providing home cooked meals, but we quickly learned that a lot of hunters wanted to bring their own favorites and cook for themselves. Many of them have the meals all planned out, and seem to enjoy the cooking almost as much as they do the hunting. However, I always have a full cookie jar out-filled with homemade cookies-which they do seem to appreciate a great deal."
 
The hunters stay in homes that were already on the farm land. According to their website, when Doug and Linda were married and combined their farms, it left them with an extra couple of empty houses. Knowing that empty homes tend to go downhill pretty fast, they started furnishing the houses and making them available to hunters.
 
"Between our own land and the farms where we have permission to take hunters, we can show them over 7 or 8 thousand acres," said Doug, addressing the hunting. "We have a lot of quail, along with turkey, pheasant, deer, prairie chicken, and some waterfowl."
 
Click here to read more about Cottonwood Farms, who hunts free, and how it's going.

 

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Kansas Farm Bureau Annual Meeting

Here's a reminder to members of the KFB to contact your county office and register for this year's annual meeting, if you have not already done so.  The conference will be Nov. 7-10 at the Clarion Hotel in Manhattan.  (click here for more information.)
 
If you currently provide agritourism on your Kansas farm or ranch, or you are considering it, make special note of two agritourism presentations at the conference.  Agritourism expert Jane Eckert will present the Best of the Best, a visual and descriptive review of some of the best agritourism enterprises in North America.  Jane will be talking about why these best farms are successful, and how you can move your business in the same direction.
 
Eckert will also present a workshop for both agritourism novices, and those who are ready to discover the next step, in a session titled "Providing the Farm Experience: Agritourism That Pays Off."

 

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Agritourism Health & Safety Guidelines for Children

The National Children's Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety, at the Marshfield Clinic in Wisconsin, recently released a new publication titled "Agritourism: Health and Safety Guidelines for Children."
 
ManualThis is a full color, 37 page guidebook that should be a must-read for agritourism farmers.  Guidelines include protecting visitors from injury, and providing proper facilities and sanitation to prevent spread of pathogens found on plants or animals (zoonotic diseases).
 
The manual is available in pdf form on the web that you can download to your computer, and print yourself (click here), or you can contact the National Children's Center at 1-800-662-6900, or email Tammy Ellis.

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Deep South Fruit & Vegetable Growers Conference 


Mobile, Alabama
December 5-6, 2007
 
Presentations, workshops and trade show, http://deepsouthfruitveg.com/. Preregistration prior to November 23 is $80, and $60 for additional coworkers and family members. Late registration is $95 and $70, respectively. Hosted at the Renaissance Riverview Plaza Hotel, Mobile, Alabama. Hotel reservations conference rate-reservations should be submitted by November 4.
Click here for complete agenda. Click here for Pre-Registration form.