Before they leave home: search follows the crop
People plan farm trips around what is ripe. They look for berries in summer, pumpkins in fall, a place to take children on a weekend. If your farm is on the Circle Farm Tour, or sells from a roadside stand, your first job is to be the clear answer to those seasonal questions on your own website.
Keep one page for each seasonal offer and reuse its address every year, changing dates and details instead of starting over. A page that has been live for years earns more trust than a brand-new one. Say what is available now, when you are open and how to get there.
- What is ripe or available this week
- Opening days and hours, and when the season ends
- Parking, accessibility and whether dogs are welcome
- Payment methods, so nobody arrives without cash
- Directions in plain words as well as an address
On the road: maps that do not send people down the wrong lane
Rural addresses are tricky for map apps. A pin that lands in the middle of a field or at the back gate costs you visitors. Open your Google Business Profile, drag the marker to your real entrance and test it on a phone. Use special hours for the season, and mark the end of the season so nobody drives out to a closed gate.
Add a photo of your entrance and your sign, since that is what drivers look for at the last turn. Check Apple Maps and other map apps too, because visitors use more than one. If the Circle Farm Tour lists your farm, keep the details there identical to your own. Mismatched hours are the quickest way to disappoint a family.
At the gate: turn a visit into a follower
Once visitors arrive, make it easy for them to stay in touch. A sign with a QR code can lead to your Instagram, your email sign-up or both. Put it where people wait or pay, and tell them what they will get: opening-day news, what is ripe, a seasonal offer.
Create a spot that begs for a photo: a painted sign, a wagon, a bright row of crops. Ask visitors to tag the farm. A picture shared by a happy family reaches the kind of people who would visit you, and it reads as more believable than your own advert.
Instagram: show the season as it happens
Skip the stock imagery. Post the real thing: this morning's picking, the first strawberry of the year, a child grinning behind a pumpkin bigger than their head. Short videos of the work feel more honest than polished brochure shots. Tag your location so people browsing the area can find you.
Choose a rhythm you can keep through the busy weeks, such as three or four posts a week in season. Answer comments and messages, because many visitors ask about hours before they drive out. Our social media team can plan a season of posts around your harvest calendar.
Between seasons: keep the list warm
When the gate closes, your audience should not vanish. Send a short email at season end with thanks and a photo, and another when you announce next year's opening. Farms with year-round stands or indoor sales can share what is available in cooler months. Collect sign-ups at the stand all season, and then use them.
Look back at the season: which posts were saved and shared, which page brought visitors, which products sold out. Use that to plan next year. Our media production team can shoot a full set of photos in your peak weeks, so your calendar is covered before the first crop.
Where farm visits are heading
Trip planning is moving onto phones and into AI assistants that summarize options for a family in seconds. They pull from map listings, reviews, photos and your own pages. A farm with accurate hours, a clear entrance, recent photos and honest reviews is easier for those tools to recommend. The work is seasonal, but the habit of keeping details current should run all year.
- 01AI trip summaries drawing on map listings and recent reviews
- 02Photos and short video deciding which farm a family picks
- 03Seasonal pages that stay live year after year gaining trust
Questions & answers
No. The tour is one way for visitors to discover farms, but many people find farms through search, maps and social media. Whether or not you take part, your own website, map listing and photos should be complete and consistent, so every route to your gate leads to correct information.
Describe what you offer in the words visitors use, on a dedicated page with your location, season and hours. Complete your map profile, add photos and ask visitors for reviews. Keep pages live year-round and update them each season rather than deleting them every autumn.
Picking and harvest scenes, what is ripe this week, behind-the-scenes work, visitor photos shared with permission and clear reminders of hours. Mix them so the feed is not all selling. Use location tags, answer messages promptly and save your best posts as highlights for newcomers.
Yes. Start with the free pieces: a complete map profile, a seasonal page and a posting routine. Our projects start from $1,000, and we offer a free marketing audit first so you can see which steps matter most for your farm. We serve farms across the valley from Abbotsford.