Pumpkin Farmers and Agritourism

Pumpkin Farmers and Agritourism

Rick Worthington
Rick Worthington
Pumpkin Farmers and Agritourism

With the farm and ranch report, I'm Rick Worthington. Farmers are taking advantage of agritourism, which basically involves any agriculturally based operation or activity that brings visitors out to the farm or ranch. More specifically, people who will pay to visit a farm or ranch this time of year. The biggest agritourism in farming has to do with pumpkins. RR Farms is one such farm and they don't just grow pumpkins, but they offer a corn maze, a hay ride through the pumpkin field and games for the kids to play. Jerry Ruiz is the owner.

I love the kids. I do. I just love especially the preschool age because everything is discretion brand new to them. They've never experienced this before and a lot of cases.

But Ruiz says it wouldn't be possible for her to continue without the agritourism factored in.

And for somebody who's really plays it safe and probably picked up, probably picked the wrong things because it's a gamble at this. You put all the money out all year long and you've got a very short amount of time to recoup, first of all, the expense, all expenses that you've paid out and then to make a profit on top of that. The weather is crucial in the month of October. And I think it might shock my dad if he were still alive that people would pay money to go through a corn maze or walk through corn. I mean, that's something new. Just wasn't around when I was a kid.

Ruiz says her pumpkin farm will remain open to the public through Halloween.

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