Corn mazes, apple picking, and hayrides: More farms are leaning into "agritourism"

Every year, Allison Hall comes out to Patterson Fruit Farm, about a half hour east of Cleveland.

“It's no different from my childhood,” she said. “Fruit farms were just a thing that you did.”

These days she comes with her husband and her five-year-old son, who’s a big fan of the farm’s tractor ride.

Agritourism includes corn mazes, farm stays, petting zoos, wine tours, and other things that attract the public to visit and spend money at working farms.

Patterson’s has been a farm since the mid-19th century, but the tractor rides, slide barn, and tire swings started showing up in the 1990s when the on-site farmer’s market got a little too crowded.

“Our market was flooded with people, and we said, ‘OK, how do we move some people out of the market?’” said Bill Patterson, who’s part of the sixth generation to own the farm. “So we took 50 straw bales, and we put them in a pile, and there were hundreds and thousands of kids crawling on 50 straw bales. And we're like, ‘Huh, there's something here.’”

Today, Patterson said about a fifth of the farm’s revenue comes from its ticketed “fun fest” area, weddings, and the pick-your-own apple orchards. The rest is sales in the market on the property, or in local grocery stores.

The goal is to find more ways to make money on the same property, to generate consistent revenue in a very inconsistent industry.

“Agriculture prices are going down, there are issues with weather, and also input costs are rising. Diesel prices are in the news at the moment,” said Claudia Schmidt, who teaches agricultural economics at Penn State.

The USDA gathers data on agritourism every five years. Between 2017 and 2022, the number of farms in Ohio that do it in some way went up 27%. The number of people who are paying to visit those farms has gone up too, by 33%.

“Initially it was about kids,” said Lisa Chase, who directs the Vermont Tourism Research Center. “With the local food movement, the interest in local food, all of a sudden, college students, teenagers, adults were interested in, ‘Where does my food come from and how is it produced?’”

Then, the pandemic made buying food from grocery stores feel risky, and buying food from a farm feel wholesome.

“People also began to take an extra interest in vacationing in remote, peaceful, safe environments,” she said.

For some farmers, agritourism is a lifeline.

MaryEllen Hamlin manages Derthick’s Farm and Corn Maze, about 40 minutes southeast of Cleveland. Her great-great-great-great grandparents started the farm in 1806. Today, she said virtually all of her profits come from agritourism.

“I make about 40 acres of hay, but there's no income in that,” she said. “We sell the corn after we're done with it for the season, but the price of corn is not great either. So we depend on people to come and support our small business so that we can continue to be in the area.”

The 17-acre corn maze started in the late-2000s. Now, there’s also a zip line, slides, and farm animals to pet. But the insurance she needs to do agritourism keeps getting more expensive every year. And two competing corn mazes have popped up on nearby farms.

“Now, more families are needing that extra income to survive,” she said. “People are doing agritourism because they need to support their passion: farming.”