Recommendations from friends, family and co-workers remain by far the most common way people find the farms they visit, according to an Oregon State University survey of nearly 500 agritourism customers at 11 Oregon farms in 2025, carried out to help growers market their operations.

"We assumed that they learned about farms from Facebook or social media or doing online searches," said Audrey Comerford, OSU's agritourism programme coordinator. "One of the more surprising things was that it's more from recommendations." Education was the top reason respondents gave for visiting farms, followed by knowing where food comes from.

For The Thyme Garden, an herb and seed farm near Alsea started by their parents in the 1980s, sisters Emily Stimac and Bethany Glanville say opening the farm to visitors is what made it viable in a crowded seed market. "Without letting people in, I don't know how we would make it," Glanville said. Their marketing budget is small, Stimac said, so they rely on visitors telling others.

Scottie Jones of Leaping Lamb Farm, a sheep farm offering tours and overnight stays, said a visit must be more than a "petting zoo", balancing education and entertainment. At TMK Creamery near Canby, the Koch family lets customers walk to the dairy to see the cows and ask how they are managed, which Tess Koch said helps dispel misperceptions. The report was written by Mateusz Perkowski.

Photo: Finetooth / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Source: Capital Press