1st time host farmers

What is Open Farm Sunday?

Open Farm Sun­day gives you the oppor­tu­ni­ty to wel­come the pub­lic onto your farm and show them what farm­ing is all about, so that vis­i­tors can ful­ly appre­ci­ate and val­ue the work you do. It was set up in 2006 and con­tin­ues to be man­aged by LEAF (Link­ing Envi­ron­ment And Farming).

What do I have to offer?

Every farm has a sto­ry to tell – your work on the farm, the crops you grow and what they are used for, the sea­son­al­i­ty of pro­duce, the jour­ney of your prod­uct from farm to fork (or how­ev­er it impacts on our lives eg. fuel), your farm machin­ery, how you man­age your soil, water and habi­tats for wildlife, the his­to­ry of your farm. Your vis­i­tors will be fas­ci­nat­ed to learn about the every­day activ­i­ties you do on the farm.

Why would I take part?

Research shows that get­ting peo­ple out onto a farm to meet a farmer and see real farm­ing up close has a huge pos­i­tive impact: chang­ing people’s atti­tudes to buy­ing more British pro­duced food; build­ing com­mu­ni­ty rela­tions; edu­cat­ing the pub­lic, rais­ing the pro­file of your farm and the whole farm­ing industry.

Now, more than ever, farm­ers need to gain pub­lic sup­port for the vital work you do and Open Farm Sun­day pro­vides the ide­al plat­form to do just this. Join hun­dreds of farm­ers across Britain and take part in the farm­ing industry’s annu­al open day.

This web­site has lots of infor­ma­tion to help you start think­ing about organ­is­ing an event for Open Farm Sun­day. Make sure you reg­is­ter your event then you will receive the Open Farm Sun­day Hand­book packed with lots of hints and tips to help you organ­ise an event.

Inter­est­ed, but not ready to reg­is­ter yet?

If you’re keen to host an event, but you’re not ready to reg­is­ter yet, why not sign up to our mail­ing list at the foot of this page and we’ll keep you up to date with our plans, and give you an occa­sion­al nudge to help you get started! 

Take part…

If you have any ques­tions or want to speak with an expe­ri­enced host farmer please get in touch with LEAF: 024 7641 3911 [email protected]. When you’re ready, please reg­is­ter your event here.

Do you want to talk it through?

Do you have ques­tions or would like to know more? We’d be hap­py to help so please call the LEAF office 024 7641 3911 or email us: [email protected].

What vis­i­tors said…

• “The tech­nol­o­gy now for milk­ing cows is amaz­ing! I had no idea!”
• “That all the brus­sels sprouts grown had already been sold — all 48 acres of them!”
• “The role of robot­ic milk­ing, feed­ing the ani­mals, repro­duc­tion of pigs, anato­my of a cow, sheep shear­ing and price of its coat — it was end­less — I learnt so much!!!”
• “How much LEAF Mar­que farm­ers do to help the environment.”
• “Some of the equip­ment is so expen­sive that it is shared.”
• “Just how farm­ers real­ly pull togeth­er to make these events as great as they pos­si­bly can.”
• “To sum it up in one sen­tence — a phe­nom­e­nal and edu­ca­tion­al day out. Girls and me would come again.”

New resource packages

We offer 3 dif­fer­ent sizes of resource pack­ages for any farmer who may not be sure on what type of resources, or quan­ti­ties of resources, they might use at their event.

Remem­ber a small farm walk is just as impor­tant as a larg­er event.

About the visitors

Each year hun­dreds of vis­i­tors com­plete our vis­i­tor sur­vey. Here is some insight into the poten­tial vis­i­tors who might attend your event.

• 49:51 urban rur­al split; from: City (10%); Town (39%); Vil­lage (36%); Coun­try­side (15%)
• 59% of vis­i­tors were vis­it­ing their first OFS event
• 18% of vis­i­tors had nev­er vis­it­ed a farm before
• 86% of vis­i­tors learnt some­thing new dur­ing their visit
• On a scale of 1 to 5, 74% of vis­i­tors rat­ed the event as excel­lent (5)
• The major­i­ty of vis­i­tors (69%) spend between 1 & 3 hours at the event; data: up to 1 hour 4%; 1 – 2 hours 36%; 2 – 3 hours 33%; 3 – 4 hours 18%; 4 – 5 hours 7%; over 5 hours 3%

The main rea­sons for attend­ing a Open Farm Sun­day event were:

• 48% I want­ed to show my sup­port for British farmers
• 34% I want­ed to find out more about British farm­ing and what farm­ers do
• 25% A free day out
• 16% Educate/​entertain family

Num­ber of vis­i­tors per event:

• Small­est Open Farm Sun­day event had 8 vis­i­tors; the largest events had over 5000 visitors
• Aver­age 762 vis­i­tors per event

Thou­sands of vis­i­tors expressed their thanks to the farm­ers involved, call­ing the day ​“unex­pect­ed and very much appre­ci­at­ed”, ​“well organ­ised”, ​“a phe­nom­e­nal and edu­ca­tion­al day out” and ​“the best day out in a long time for the family”.