INSIGHTS WITH VICKIE MITCHELL
OFF-SITE, ON THE FARM
W
hen cities are small, they’re usually more connected and physically closer to their agricultural roots. A visit to those farms can bring a local touch to a meeting or convention. They can be a breath of fresh, sometimes fragrant air — ever been to a hog farm? Most of us live in cities now, so a trip to a farm might be a wake-up call for our dulled senses. Maybe you learn the difference between a Holstein and a Hereford, you meet chickens like the ones that lay your daily scrambled egg, you walk next to fields of your future food: These new experiences make brains expand like Indiana popcorn. Farmers can also teach city slickers a lot about business. One business strategy many of 2 million farms are trying is diversification, and that includes opening their gates for tours and finding ways to make their working farms places people want to visit. Here are a few things farms are doing in that respect.
Visiting an agricultural business can add unexpected joy to your next event
Field of Dining Dreams
Fargo, North Dakota, and its sister city Moorhead, Minnesota, sit in the Red River Valley, a highly fertile region known as the Breadbasket of the World. So it’s fitting, in fine weather — not winter, obviously — to take an opening reception or a final banquet into a field around there. A number of farms offer up their fields to groups that hunger for an eating experience that leans on locally grown foods like Wild Acres chicken thighs or duck bacon, catered by Fargo’s Luna restaurant. It’s also possible to have an agricultural experience within Fargo’s city limits at picturesque Bear Creek Winery, with a pond, a farmhouse and vineyards that small groups can tour as they sample the maker’s dry red and white blends, made from grapes that weather Northern winters. Slightly south of Fargo, the Solberg Farm has been around a century but sure isn’t oldschool. If anyone’s up for an afternoon yoga session followed by a snack of cider and local cheeses, this sheep and fowl farm on the Wild Rice River is happy to host it.
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