Agritourism

Linda Rider from Coeur d'Alene talks agritourism. Today we live in the Coeur d'Alene area and as a way to survive in ranching and farming in North Idaho, we needed more eggs in our basket than just a small herd of cattle and the trees that we were doing almost 40 years ago, we chose to start doing agritourism in the form of a guided ride with a dinner or just a guided ride. Activities for families, doing a wagon ride lead the kids on horses and hot dogs over a campfire. So we've done lots of those over lots of years until the last few years, and we finally decided that we were getting old and the horse herd was getting old and it was time to rethink what we were doing. So we've kind of retired from doing that, but early on we did some tour buses that have 50 people in them, and they're going down the road looking for something to do. Years ago, we did it for a group that was the Cadillac of the tour bus business, and we did a wagon ride and a horseback ride and a lunch for them, and that was pretty interesting when you had elderly people who wanted to get on a horse to say that they had done it, and it was not the best choice. But anyway, the economy took a nosedive, and that business is very tied to the economy because older people are spending their income, and if all of a sudden they've lost their income from their investments, like mama, we got to stay home. We can't go take a trip. Speaker1: So sad, but so true.