ECKERT — Retired businessman Stan Miles could be sipping wine at leisure. But instead, on a warm fall day perfect for deck lounging, the 78-year-old is at work as a grape picker. For hours he has been steadily snipping off grape clusters and plunking them into a bucket as he makes his way down long rows of vines.
Simply drinking the wine that will be made from these grapes is not enough for Miles. He wanted to have a hand in the winemaking process. So he jumped at the chance to do this manual labor at a local winery on picking day.
“I have never had an opportunity like that before,” Miles said. “I’m interested in these hands-on type of situations.”
People like Miles are fueling a surge in agritourism across Colorado – be it picking pumpkins and apples rather than buying them from a bin, helping out with cattle branding, sticking labels on whiskey at a distillery, spinning sheep wool, learning to cook in Dutch ovens or eating dinner with a farmer beside a field where the food was grown.
Agritourism contributes $2.2 billion to Colorado’s economy, according to Colorado State University Extension researchers, with 13.2 million visitors engaging in some form of farm-related activity last year.
Those researchers found that 23 percent of surveyed visitors to Colorado reported agritourism was a primary or secondary reason for their trip. Beyond the hands-on farm experiences, agritourism includes winery tastings, fruit-stand stops, bird-watching, hunting and county fair visits.
The cost of agritourism opportunities varies widely depending on the experience.
A simple heritage dinner costs as little as $15; more elaborate winery dinners go for as much as $120. Include overnight stays and more hands-on work with livestock, and the prices rise. The Chico Basin Ranch, south of Colorado Springs, advertises an all-inclusive working ranch getaway for $1,495 a week for adults and $1,190 for children.
Agritourism will grow
The CSU survey projects the interest to grow, with 40 percent of those who visited Colorado last year saying they would include some form of agritourism in their visit this year as more ag-related enterprises look at ways to add visitor- drawing experiences.
“Suddenly we’re hot,” Brent Warner, an agritourism specialist with the British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture, recently told a tourism conference in Grand Junction. “Agritourism is the fastest-growing tourism product in the world right now.”
Warner attributes that in large part to nostalgia.
Farms and ranches are dwindling. Families can no longer take the kids to visit Grandpa’s farm. Too often, the farm is now a subdivision.
So they pay for the experience that will allow the youngsters to pet goats and colts, dash through cornfield mazes and pumpkin patches, or pick cherries and squash.
They are also paying for the chance to be where they can awaken to the sounds of roosters crowing and the smells of biscuits baking. They pay to get married in meadows unspoiled by wedding-chapel kitsch or to bird-watch far from the madding crowds.
Some are willing to pay because they have dreams of their own winery or truck farm. Picking the grapes and tossing them into crushers can be a learning experience. So can sorting and braiding garlic or gathering wildflowers for market.
Surface Creek Winery owners Dave and Jeanne Durr recognize that appeal because of the numbers of people asking to help out each year at harvest time. So the Durrs recently recruited Miles and half a dozen other pickers to help “practice” for what the Durrs hope to turn into a paying experience next year.
As they envision it, pickers will pay a fee to work the vineyards, help with crushing and be squired around the winery to learn about the entire winemaking process. The Durrs would provide meals and bottles of fresh-squeezed juice.
It looks to be a win-win for the Durrs, as it has proved to be for many ag enterprises.
“We have a problem hiring workers to pick. We can marry that to the fact that a lot of people are dying to have that experience,” said Jeanne Durr.
Duke Phillips, the owner of the Chico Basin Ranch, agrees, even though he was a skeptic when he began bringing tourists to his 87,000 acres, where he sells “the romance of ranching.”
“I was very apprehensive when we started the guest operation. I was afraid they would want us to carry their luggage and cater to them,” he said. “But they want to come and be part of what’s happening. They want to contribute to the real-life ranch experience where nothing is staged for their benefit.”
Feasting on heritage
In southeastern Colorado, a six-county agritourism and heritage group has developed numerous ag experiences in the past four years.
Around the small towns of Holly, Granada and Rocky Ford, visitors can stay in an old bunkhouse, watch the mating rituals of the lesser prairie chickens, inspect the remains of Dust Bowl sites, help with ranch work and eat “heritage dinners,” in which locally grown foods of different historical eras such as the Dust Bowl are served.
“It’s a growing thing in this corner of the state. Farmers and ranchers are beginning to realize it can potentially bring in a little more income,” said Norma Dorenkamp, who with her husband, Norm, a former rodeo star, leads tours and hayrides and offers rural getaways.
In Delta County, a farm-rich area that state officials call the “poster child for agritourism,” there is everything from a ranch where visitors can watch sheep shearing and then help with spinning and weaving, to a fruit farm where they can sample apple products from tree through processing.
Farm dinners alongside fields and winery dinners where attendees learn how to pair food and wine have also turned into popular attractions.
Kelli Hepler, director of the Delta County Tourism Cabinet, said the county looked at what it had to offer tourists and settled on farms.
“It’s working real well for us,” she said.
“Humanity” of food
For Sylvia Tawse, the owner of the Pastures of Plenty organic farm near Boulder, feeding paying dinner guests on the farm helps “bring out the humanity behind the food.”
“People sitting in front of a computer screen are getting more and more out of touch with nature,” she said. “They need sensorial experiences.”
Tawse, who founded Fresh Ideas Group, attributes the agritourism boom to several groups: “foodies” in search of the freshest and best; those committed to buying locally; those committed to green living; and the high-tech, high- touch bunch who want to reconnect with nature.
Tawse and others involved in these enterprises admit there are big challenges in agritourism because it is a relatively new phenomenon.
Liability issues can be very tough, as can restrictive regulations covering signs, roads, access and parking. The numbers of visitors allowed are sometimes limited by zoning.
And having paying visitors can add to, as well as help with, work – all problems that can be overcome, according to those working in agritourism, because there is such a growing demand.
“People want to get their hands in the dirt and feel like they’ve helped produce something,” Hepler said. “I think 9/11 set people back to a simpler time and a simpler way of doing things and doing them as a family. We can give them that.”
Nancy Lofholm: 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com
Fruit-bearing sites
Want to be an agritourist? Here are places to look:
Go to the “markets” page and click “agritourism.” The site breaks down Colorado agritourism opportunities into classes, including dude ranches, cornfield mazes, bird- watching, farmers markets, hunting and Christmas trees.
This site has winery lists, maps and tour advice by region of the state.
Look here for lists of Colorado producers of specific agricultural products and for restaurants and shops that feature these Colorado products.
