There's always lots to be learned by visiting other farm shops and garden centres, but we never dreamed that we'd be travelling all the way to the USA to see how its done! Next week James and Sarah are traveling as part of a small group of farmers and rural food businesses all the way to Virginia on a ten day expedition to see what our american counterparts are up to.
The North American Farmers Direct Marketing Association Convention
It sounds a mouthful, but quite simply this annual event brings together anyone in agriculture who is involved in selling their produce directly to consumers. This includes farm shops (it looks like they're called "Farm Markets" over there), a whole variety of exciting "pick your own" farms (we especially like the sound of the pick your own peach farm!), vine yards and farm based tourist attractions.
We're Off to Williamsburg!
Our base during our time in Virginia will be the historic city of Williamsburg. Over 4 million visitors find their way here every year, making it one of Americas most important tourist destinations so we're really looking forward to sampling the whole ancient colonial atmosphere!
Networking Bus Tour
After a day in Williamsburg to get our bearings we head off for 3 days on one of the conventions many bus tours. We're on the "Food, Drink and Retail" tour, which stops at a number of food and drink producers and some farm shops too. We were particularly gutted to discover that both a vineyard and a cider maker are among the first stops on our tour, no doubt followed by numerous other opportunities to discover more local fayre! Most of our travelling companions will be our american counterparts and rumour has there's lots of things laying in store to encourage us to intermingle so we're wondering just what kind of accent we might return home with!
The Conference
Back off the bus and we return back to Williamsburg for the remainder of our stay when we'll be attending a variety of presentations and seminars including such topics as farm to school programs, on-farm weddings, QR tags and Facebook. The highlight will be a day with the world renowned retail guru John Stanley.
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