Word: farm
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...wife) Camilla fly to the U.S. for their first big official outing as a married couple. They will attend a seminar on youth enterprise at the U.N., see President Bush for a fancy White House dinner, probably inspect clean-up work in New Orleans and visit organic farms near San Francisco. No remark, no camera angle that can be nailed down in advance has been left to chance, but the tabloids sending their reporters on his plane (at $11,000 apiece) are on high gaffe alert. Will Charles, who asked 12 years ago, "How can any realistic person not take...
Third-generation corn farmer Paul Siegel says working the land will always be his true love. "There's nothing like planting a seed, nurturing it and harvesting it," says the owner of Siegel's Cottonwood Farms in Crest Hill, Ill., near Chicago. But Siegel admits that it is his annual Pumpkin Fest that keeps his farm afloat. Started in 1990, with a pumpkin patch and hayrides, Siegel's fall festival has mushroomed into a full-fledged theme park complete with haunted barns, a petting zoo, a 10-acre corn maze and snacks such as smoked turkey legs, kettle corn...
...Wilson, 31, who visited the farm with her husband and kids, ages 2 and 5, on a recent Sunday, Cottonwood Farms is just good, old-fashioned fun. "The idea of being outdoors, the animals, the nature--except for reading about it in storybooks or seeing pictures, this isn't something the kids would get to experience," she says. Such enthusiasm has helped thousands of farmers like Siegel to thrive in the growing business of agricultural tourism. At a time when profit margins for crops have been slashed razor thin by rising costs, "you have to consider agritainment," says Kay Hollabaugh...
Although there are a few Christmas attractions, such as reindeer and sleigh rides on tree farms, the weeks leading up to Halloween and Thanksgiving are the peak season for agritourism, especially in the Midwest, where the phenomenon is booming. Young's Jersey Dairy in Yellow Springs, Ohio, attracts more than 1.4 million visitors a year to its dairy farm, which also offers baseball batting cages, a miniature-golf course and homemade ice cream. Eckert's Country Farm & Stores, near St. Louis, Mo., brings in $10 million annually, about 80% of the farm's revenues, from its restaurants, bakery and gift...
While most tourists visit farms for a taste of country life, often the experience is not entirely authentic. Bates Nut Farm in Valley Center, Calif., which gets more than 10,000 visitors on weekends in October, doesn't actually grow any nut trees but sells more than a dozen varieties of nuts that it buys from around the world. The farm does grow 15 acres of "Big Mac" pumpkins weighing 50 lbs. or more, but owner Tom Ness admits that 60% of the pumpkins he sells are shipped in from other growers. "It kind of bums me out that they...