One Preschool Field Trip Grew Into 15,000 Kids a Spring: Why Farm Kids Make the Best Tour Guides (and How to Turn Yours Into Paid Junior Farmer Days)
In the mid-1980s, Glenn Tanaka was in trouble. His family farm in Irvine, California, had just come through two bad crop years, and the numbers weren't working.
So he tried something small. His son Kenny was in preschool, and Glenn thought the class might enjoy a morning on the farm. His wife Shirley walked the children through the fields and let them pick vegetables.
The kids loved it. The next year, the class came back. Then the teachers told other teachers.
Early school visits brought in a dollar or two per child. By 1998, 80 to 90 schools were coming. By 2022, about 15,000 schoolchildren were picking strawberries at Tanaka Farms every spring, and 300 to 350 schools were visiting in pumpkin season. Kenny, the preschooler whose class started it all, now runs the farm's agritourism and tour side.
Glenn put it bluntly to a reporter: "Without the agritourism, we wouldn't survive."
Look at who opened that gate. Not a consultant. Not an ad. A small child who belonged to the farm, and a class of children who wanted to see where he lived.
The Short Answer Farm kids make the best tour guides because visitors come for the real farm, and nobody is more real than the child who grew up on it. They know every animal by name, they talk to visiting children at eye level, and many are already trained in public speaking, animal care and record keeping through 4-H, FFA or Young Farmers' Clubs. The smart way to use them is not to hand a child the whole tour. Make them co-hosts: each child runs one short station, with a parent close by. Package it as a paid Junior Farmer Day, the way real farms already do, charging from US$30 per child for 90 minutes up to US$375 for a week of farm camp. Check your child-work rules and your insurance first, then stop letting the best help on your farm go to waste. |
The Family Help Nobody Puts a Price On
Most farm families already have a second workforce. It just never shows up on a spreadsheet.
In the United States alone, an estimated 893,000 young people under 20 lived on farms in 2014, and about half of them did farm work. Those kids feed calves before school, collect eggs, fix fences and answer their parents' phones. They know the place better than any hired hand ever will.
Now look at the other side of the farm. The average U.S. producer is 58.1 years old, and 38% are 65 or older. Only 296,480 producers, about 9%, are under 35. In Malaysia, 45.6% of agricultural producers are 60 or older. In Japan, more than 70% of farm businesses have not secured a successor.
Put those two facts side by side and you see the waste. On one end, older farmers worn out from doing every job themselves. On the other, young people who could be doing the one job visitors love most, and who are quietly deciding whether the farm has a future for them.
The newest national study of U.S. agritourism operators, published by the University of Vermont in August 2026, ranked labor as the No. 1 challenge: 40% of operators called it very challenging and another 47% somewhat challenging. In the same study, 41% said providing family employment was very important to them.
That's the opening. You may not have a labor problem. You may have an unused family.
Reality Check: This Is About Co-Hosts, Not Child Workers Nothing in this article means handing a ten-year-old your tour, your cash box or your liability. The model that works is simple: an adult owns the visit, and the kids own a moment inside it. A five-minute egg station. A goat they know by name. A story only they can tell. That's where children shine, and it's where visitors remember them. |
7 Reasons Farm Kids Make the Best Tour Guides
1. They're the real thing visitors came to see
Families don't drive an hour to look at a field. They come for the people and the story behind it. In the University of Vermont study, operators described a new kind of visitor who wants to "see where their food's coming from." Tours were the most common educational activity, offered by 83% of farms that teach.
A child who was up at six feeding the calves is living proof that this is a working family farm. You can't fake that, and you can't hire it.
2. Kids speak "kid"
Visiting children listen to children. A 12-year-old saying "This is Daisy, she's my favourite, and she kicks if you stand behind her" lands harder than any safety sign.
Families with young children are the heart of this market. In a Missouri study, they were a visitor type at 85.7% of busy agritourism farms. Put a farm kid in front of them and the little visitors stop being an audience and start being friends.
3. Many are already trained for the job
This is the part most farm parents overlook. Clubs like 4-H, FFA and Young Farmers have spent decades teaching exactly what a tour guide needs.
4-H reaches nearly 6 million young people in the U.S. The long-running Tufts University study found 4-H'ers were nearly four times more likely than their peers to make contributions to their communities.
FFA had 1,053,847 student members in 9,591 chapters in the 2025–26 school year. Members can compete in prepared public speaking, extemporaneous speaking and creed speaking, and every agricultural education student is expected to run a Supervised Agricultural Experience (SAE) project.
Young Farmers' Clubs in England and Wales bring together more than 23,000 young people in over 560 clubs. In the federation's own 2024 member survey, 89% said they felt more confident speaking in public.
Here's a detail worth knowing. FFA doesn't have a separate award for agritourism, but its Outdoor Recreation proficiency area names agritourism, vacation farms and guest ranches. A teenager can turn your Junior Farmer Day into an award-eligible SAE project. That means records, goals and a teacher checking in, at no cost to you.
4. They know the animals, and the animals know them
A hired guide reads a script. A farm kid knows which hen lays the brown eggs, which goat steals hats and which calf was born during the storm.
That's storytelling, and it's what turns a 20-minute walk into something a family talks about all the way home. If you want the bigger picture on telling your farm's story, read why sharing your farm story is essential.
5. They make the content you never have time to make
In 2012, three brothers on a Kansas family farm, Greg, Nathan and Kendal Peterson, made a parody music video to show friends who didn't grow up on farms what farming really looks like. Their younger sister Laura ran the camera. "I'm Farming and I Grow It" passed a million views in three days.
Today the Peterson Farm Brothers say their videos have passed 300 million combined views. Their family farm now sells private tours with the brothers at US$75 per family or group, about an hour long, run only from November to May because summer and fall are too busy. The family has also added a wedding venue and a sunflower trail, which is taking 2026 off.
Your kids already carry the cameras. Point them at the farm. Our guide to using YouTube to market your agritourism farm shows what to film first.
6. They bring the first visitors through the gate
Go back to the Tanaka story. The first school group came because a farm child was in that class.
The same thing happened in Iowa. At Cinnamon Ridge Farms, a sixth-generation Jersey dairy, John Maxwell gave his first farm tour to his daughter Amy's preschool class. In 2011 the farm ran 70 tours for about 2,500 people, at US$10 a person with a US$150 minimum. By then, visitors had come from nearly 50 countries outside the U.S. In 2018 it welcomed about 2,000 foreign visitors, about 2,000 domestic visitors and nearly 1,800 children on school tours.
Every child's class, team and club is a ready-made audience. For the full playbook on school groups, see the farm experiences schools happily pay for.
7. It helps keep the next generation on the farm
This is the reason that matters most, and the research backs it up.
A U.S.-wide survey of 873 diversified farms by Carla Barbieri, published in 2013 using 2005 data, compared agritourism farms with other diversified farms. The agritourism farms were more likely to be multigenerational, more likely to be willing to pass the farm on to their children, and more likely to have adult children still living on the farm. They also had nearly twice as many family employees.
That survey shows a link, not proof of cause. But it fits what researchers who study farm succession have found: real, valued farm work early in life helps children see themselves as the farm's future.
Most farmers haven't connected these dots. In a Missouri survey of agritourism farms, "provide jobs for family members" was among the lowest-rated benefits. That's the gap. Agritourism isn't only extra income. It may be the job that brings your kids home.
Field-Tested Play: Give Each Child a Title "Helps out on the farm" is a chore. "Head of the Egg Station" is a job. Give each child a named role, a badge or a coloured cap, and put their name on your booking page. Visitors ask for them by name, and children rise to a title. |
10 Farm Families Who Put Their Kids at the Gate
None of these families planned to build a business around their children. In every case, the kids were part of how visitors arrived, what they remembered or who took the farm forward.
A 4-H project that paid for four college degrees
In 1975, Janet and Larry Schaake's four children in Lawrence, Kansas, took on a 4-H horticulture project. They sold their extra pumpkins off the back of a truck by the road. That roadside stand grew into Schaake's Pumpkin Patch, a pick-your-own patch of about 30 acres with close to 100 varieties. All four children put themselves through college with pumpkin patch money.
A 10-year-old who was the farm stand's first salesman
In 1985, the Harbes family on Long Island was spending about US$4 to grow 100 pounds of potatoes that sold for about US$2. In 1989 they switched to crops for their own farm stand. Their oldest son, Jason, was ten years old and the stand's first salesman. Today Harbes Family Farm runs three farms on 300 acres with pumpkin and apple picking, a corn maze and a barnyard attraction, and a younger son, Ed, joined the business after Cornell.
One kindergarten class, then 100,000 visitors a season
McCall's Pumpkin Patch in Moriarty, New Mexico, started when the family hosted a kindergarten class in 1998. It grew from about 2,000 visitors on early weekends to more than 100,000 a season. Their son Caleb, a past president of the Moriarty FFA chapter, credits FFA for helping him talk about the farm with confidence. By 2024 the farm's success had drawn him back into the business.
The son who came home and said "let's grow pumpkins"
Lucas Dull grew up on his family's farm near Thorntown, Indiana. After a short stint in a regular job, he came home with a pitch: grow pumpkins for visitors. The first harvest came in 2014, and by 2019 the family had stepped out of traditional row crops. Dull's Tree Farm now draws about 80,000 visitors a year, with 45 activities and 115 seasonal staff. In 2024, one of those staff was a local FFA member who first came to the farm as a child visitor and was working there as an entertainer for his own SAE project.
Cousins who grew up running pony rides
At Great Country Farms in Bluemont, Virginia, cousins Hailey Zurschmeide and Andrew Taylor helped with pony rides and kettle corn as kids. Today they run the business. About half of the 19 cousins work there. "Everyone's involved whether they want to or not," Andrew told a local paper.
A granddaughter at the register
At Filasky's Produce and Farm Market in Middletown, Delaware, agritourism has become one of the family's main income drivers. Grandmother Cindi Filasky says her granddaughter Juno helps her run the register. That's a third generation learning the business at the cash box, where every customer conversation happens.
Teenagers who built the attraction
When the Penton family opened Penton Farms Pumpkin Patch in Verbena, Alabama, their children Austin, 19, and Courtney, 16, helped paint signs, build wagons, plant 9 acres of pumpkins and cut 2.2 miles of corn maze trails. With other family members, they also posted the farm's updates on social media.
A 12-year-old with his own farm stand
Brayden Nadeau opened a vegetable stand at the edge of his grandparents' farm in Auburn, Maine, in 2020. A year later, he used US$7,000 of his own savings to buy a bigger stand. "I plan to farm for the rest of my life," he wrote in Scholastic News at age 12.
A daughter who took on school visits
On Ridgeway Farm near Blackpool in England, an 80-cow dairy supplying Arla, daughter Helen Kirkham started hosting school visits in 2019 after seeing so much wrong information about farming online. By 2022 the farm had welcomed 1,000 schoolchildren that year, and 66% of them had never been on a farm. The family was shortlisted for Family Farming Business of the Year at the British Farming Awards.
A farm the bank said to sell
In 1984, the bank told the Nicholson family to sell Cannon Hall Farm in Yorkshire while they still had a little equity. Instead, they opened to visitors in 1989. They took £20 on the first day and £40 on the second. Today the brothers who grew up there run it with their father and the wider family, and the farm draws about 320,000 visitors in a normal year. One paid experience: a one-hour lamb bottle-feeding session at £49 a person, for ages six and up, limited to six people.
For more stories like this, read 10 young farmers who proved farming isn't dying and the Kuipers Family Farm case study.
Not Just an American Idea: Farm Families in Japan and Malaysia
Japan: farm families host school trips by the thousand
Japan has turned farm hosting into national policy, with a government programme since 2008 that sends school children on rural stays. In Ajimu, Oita, where farm stays began in 1996, about 50 farm homes take in guests, including school groups, at about ¥7,800 a night with two meals. The town's farm-stay society reported 9,500 guests in a recent year.
In Iida, Nagano, hundreds of farm households host school-trip students overnight. A 2009 government study of farm stays in Iida and another town found host households could earn up to about ¥500,000 a year. When researchers asked hosts what they got out of it, many said the visiting children gave them energy, which they described as a gift. The same study advised hosting only as much as your spare labor allows, which is exactly why a family team matters.
In Miyama, a rural district of Kyoto Prefecture, 20 to 25 host families take in visiting students, mostly from overseas, and charge ¥11,000 for one night with two meals. Look at how fast it has grown:
And here's a line that should stop every farm parent. A writer visiting a school farm stay in Tono, Iwate, met a 16-year-old student who said there was nothing outside agriculture he wanted to do. One stay won't decide a teenager's future, but days like that plant the idea.
Malaysia: the host's children are part of the product
Malaysia's Homestay Experience Programme has been running since 1995. Its official description invites guests to spend time with the host family's children after school, play kampung games such as kites and tops, and help harvest fruit or feed livestock.
In the first four months of 2026 alone, the programme covered 598 villages and 3,579 operators, earned about RM16.95 million and hosted 243,693 tourists. The children aren't a side note. They're written into the experience.
In Sepang, HL Dragon Fruit Eco Farm shows the next-generation side. The farm was founded in 2014, and Eugene Chia, the youngest of the founders' three children, officially joined in 2020 after helping part-time while studying. By 2024 he was its managing director, and visitors were planting and harvesting on its farm tours.
Turn 4-H and FFA Skills Into Paid Farm Experiences
Every club ribbon on your fridge is a skill a visitor will pay to see. Here's how they line up.
What your child already does | What you can sell | Price idea |
|---|---|---|
Shows a calf, goat or lamb | Animal meet-and-greet or bottle-feeding session | Per child, per 30 minutes |
Gives 4-H demonstrations or FFA speeches | Short station talks on a guided walk | Built into the tour ticket |
Keeps a project record book | Runs the farm stand or check-in desk with a parent | Lifts shop sales per visitor |
Judges livestock or crops | "How to pick the best" harvest or tasting lesson | Add-on per family |
Makes videos for a club project | Farm social media and behind-the-scenes clips | Brings bookings, not tickets |
Helps teach younger members | Leads a Junior Farmer Day for visiting kids | Per child, per session |
The point isn't to put a price on your children. It's to put a price on the experience they help create, so the farm earns from what the family already does well.
The Junior Farmer Program: What to Sell and What to Charge
A Junior Farmer Day, sometimes called "Farmer for a Day," is the simplest paid product a farm family can build around its kids. Visiting children spend 90 minutes to a morning doing real, safe farm jobs, guided station by station by your own young hosts.
Here's what real farms and farm programmes charge:
Farm or programme | Where | What visitors get | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
Ashbourne Farms | Kentucky, USA | Farmer for a Day, 90 minutes: eggs, animals, garden | US$30 per child |
Simmons Farm | Pennsylvania, USA | Little Farmers Camp morning session, ages 5–9 | US$55 per session (2023) |
Peterson Farm Brothers | Kansas, USA | Private farm tour with the brothers, about 1 hour | US$75 per family or group |
White Oak Pastures | Georgia, USA | Young Farmers Summer Camp, 3 mornings, ages 5–8 | US$140 |
Underwood Family Farms | California, USA | Farm Camp, 5 mornings, ages 5–12 | US$375 per child per week |
The Jersey Barnyard | Texas, USA | Guided dairy tour, plus calf bottle-feeding | US$10 per child, US$14.50 per adult, US$3 to feed a calf |
Cannon Hall Farm | England | Bottle-feed a lamb, 1 hour, ages 6+ | £49 per person |
Greenmeadow Community Farm | Wales | Farmer for a Day, half day, ages 4–12 | From £25 per child |
The Farm Byron Bay | Australia | Mini Farmers day, ages 5–12 | A$130 per day |
Prairie Gardens | Alberta, Canada | Junior Farmer Program school tour, 3 hours | C$20 per student plus GST |
Notice the pattern. Short taster sessions sit around US$30 to US$55. Multi-day camps run from US$140 to US$375. Your first product should be the short one: two hours, one Saturday a month, six to ten visiting children.
Here's a sample schedule your family can run:
A few design rules make it work:
Keep each station short. Five to fifteen minutes of talking, then hands-on time. Our guide on how long a farm tour should be explains why shorter tours sell better.
Let visitors do, not watch. Collecting eggs beats looking at hens. See 10 ways to make your farm tour more interactive.
Wash hands after every animal stop. Put the handwashing station between the animals and the snacks. Here's the petting zoo handwashing system that keeps children healthy.
End at the farm stand. A certificate photo, then the shop. That's where a US$30 ticket becomes a US$60 family visit.
Watch your ratios. UVM Extension's farm-camp guide quotes the American Camp Association's day-camp ratios: one staff member for every 8 children aged 6 to 8, and one for every 10 aged 9 to 14. My advice: count only adults toward that ratio, not your young hosts.
Field-Tested Play: Sell the Certificate Print a simple "Junior Farmer" certificate with the visiting child's name and the name of the farm child who taught them. Parents photograph it, post it and stick it on the fridge. That one sheet of paper does more marketing than a month of ads, and it costs a few cents. |
Give Every Child the Right Job: The Junior Guide Ladder
Not every job suits every age. Match the role to the child, and move them up the ladder as they grow.
Ages 5 to 8, Little Helper: greets families, hands out feed, shows off one favourite animal. Always right beside a parent.
Ages 9 to 12, Station Host: runs one short station, like the egg basket or the goat pen, with an adult in sight.
Ages 13 to 15, Junior Guide: co-leads the walk, tells the family story, helps at the stand.
Ages 16 to 18, Lead Guide: leads small groups and trains younger brothers and sisters, with an adult on site and on call.
And one rule at every age: no tractors, machinery, chemicals or big-animal handling with visitors around. This isn't fussiness. In the U.S., about 33 children are seriously injured in agriculture every day, and one child dies about every three days. Nearly two-thirds of those injuries happen to young children who weren't even working. They were bystanders. On a busy visitor day, that means your kids and your guests' kids.
For a fuller safety plan, use our guide to 10 common agritourism safety hazards and our first aid and emergency plan template.
Pay Your Kids Like Partners, Not Helpers
If a child helps make the money, a child should see some of it. The Schaake kids paid for college with pumpkins. Brayden Nadeau saved enough to buy a bigger stand. Money teaches business faster than any lecture.
Three simple ways to share it:
A station share. Each young host earns a set amount, say a dollar, for every visiting child at their station.
A project account. Put their share into a savings account they can see, with a goal: a heifer, a laptop, college.
A record book. Teach them to log visitors, money and costs, just like a 4-H record book or an FFA SAE. Next year, let them set one price themselves.
Before you pay, though, read the next section. In some places, paying your child, or running the tours through a separate company, changes which rules apply.
Reality Check: Unpaid Can Still Count as Work In the UK, child employment rules apply whether or not the child is your own, and many councils require a work permit. In the U.S., the family-farm exemption covers farm work, but tour, shop and café jobs may be treated as non-farm work with stricter hours. Ask before you assume. |
Child Labor Rules, Insurance and Safety: Questions to Ask First
I'm not a lawyer, and nothing here is legal advice. Rules differ by country, state and council, and they change. What I can do is show you where the traps are, so you ask the right questions before your first paid day.
United States
Farm work: under federal law, young people of any age may work in any job on a farm owned or operated by their parents. That's the family-farm exemption.
The grey zone: agricultural law specialists at Ohio State, writing about wage law, say corn maze, farm store, event and educational tour workers are typically not considered agricultural employees. If the same thinking applies to your tours, the stricter non-farm child labor rules may apply instead. For 14- and 15-year-olds that means limits such as no more than 3 hours on a school day and 18 hours in a school week.
The parent-owned exception: children under 16 working in a business solely owned by their parents are generally exempt from those hours limits, except in hazardous jobs. But if your farm is an LLC, a partnership with non-family owners or a separate agritourism company, ask whether "solely owned by the parents" still fits.
State law: many states add work permits, minimum ages or stricter hours. Check yours.
United Kingdom
Children can usually work part-time from 14, and from 13 in some council areas, where council byelaws list permitted "light work" such as agricultural or horticultural work.
In term time, children can work a maximum of 12 hours a week.
Many councils require a work permit, even when the child is your own.
On safety, the Health and Safety Executive is clear: no child under 13 may drive or ride on a tractor.
Malaysia and elsewhere
Malaysia's Children and Young Persons (Employment) Act was amended in 2019. Children from 13 can do light work that isn't likely to harm their health, and they may not work between 8 p.m. and 7 a.m. Ask the Labour Department (JTKSM) how those rules apply to your own children helping on a family farm. In Australia, child-work rules vary by state, so check with your state's employment office.
Insurance: the 7 questions to ask your agent
Many standard farm policies don't cover agritourism unless you add an endorsement or buy separate cover. In a 2024 national survey of more than 2,000 U.S. agritourism operators, 17.8% said they had no liability cover for agritourism, 11.7% weren't sure, and 60.7% didn't know whether their state even had an agritourism liability law. More than half of U.S. states now have agritourism laws on the books. Ask your agent:
Does my farm policy cover paying visitors on a tour, or do I need an agritourism endorsement or a commercial general liability policy?
When my children lead part of a paid tour, are they covered as family members, or treated as employees?
Does it change anything if I pay them?
Does workers' compensation apply to family members doing tour or shop work in my state?
Does my state's agritourism law protect me when family members act as guides, and does it require warning signs or staff training?
Do I need a signed waiver from parents for a Junior Farmer Day, and who signs for a child?
Are animal contact, hayrides, ponds or machinery excluded from my policy?
Go deeper with our guides to agritourism insurance, agritourism laws by state, whether liability waivers protect your farm and hiring seasonal staff legally.
What My Own Farm Taught Me About the People You Already Have
At Bloopy Durians, my durian farm in Bentong, Malaysia, the seasons are short. We get about four to five months of durian a year, from December to February and from June to August, and up to 100 visitors a week during durian season. The farm runs with three farm workers, along with our chickens, geese, ducks and fish.
When you run a farm that size, you learn one lesson fast: the owner can't be on every walk. If only one person can tell the farm's story, the visitor experience stops at that person's energy. When Taylor's University and TAR UMT each sent a busload of students to the farm, I saw the same truth on a bigger scale. A group that size needs more than one voice.
That's the real point of this article. It isn't about cute children. It's about the people already living on your land who know the place better than any hired guide ever could. Before you hire, look around your own dinner table. And if you're the older generation, read why your grey hair is a selling point too. The best farm teams put grandparents and grandchildren on the same walk.
Your 30-Day Plan to Launch a Paid Junior Farmer Day
Week 1: Pick the jobs and check the rules
Sit the family down and ask each child one question: "If a visitor could see only one thing on our farm, what would you show them?" Their answer is their station. Then make two calls, one to your insurer and one to your local labour or agriculture office.
Week 2: Write and practise a 3-minute talk
Each station gets a three-part talk: what this is, one surprising fact, and one thing the visitor gets to do. Practise on grandparents, neighbours and friends. Our guide on how to speak to farm visitors has phrases your kids can borrow.
Week 3: Run a free test day
Invite two or three friendly families with young children. Time every station. At the end, ask the parents one question: "What would you tell a friend about today?" Write down their exact words. Those words become your marketing.
Week 4: Price it, list it, open bookings
Set a price per child, list it on your Google Business Profile and Facebook page, and open your first paid date. If you've never sold a farm experience before, start with how small farms make their first $1,000 from visitors.
5 Mistakes That Turn Farm Kids Off the Farm
The goal is a child who wants to stay. These five mistakes do the opposite.
Forcing a shy child to perform. Give quieter kids a behind-the-scenes job: setting up stations, taking photos, running the certificate table. Confidence comes later.
Turning every weekend into work. Limit tour days, and protect family time. A burnt-out teenager leaves the farm and doesn't come back. Our guide to running agritourism without burning out applies to children too.
Leaving them alone with groups. A child should never be the only responsible person with a group of visitors. Adults supervise, kids host.
Posting too much about them online. Use first names only, never their school, and ask your children before posting their photos.
Never paying them or giving them a say. Children stay where they feel like partners. Let them own a station, a price, a product. That's how Great Country Farms ended up run by the kids who grew up there, and why the Schaake children still help run their pumpkin patch.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do farm kids make good tour guides?
They know the farm, the animals and the family story firsthand, and visiting children relate to them instantly. Many are also trained in public speaking, animal care and record keeping through 4-H, FFA or Young Farmers' Clubs. Used as co-hosts, with an adult leading, they make a farm visit feel personal and real.
What is a Junior Farmer Day or Farmer for a Day?
It's a paid, hands-on farm session for visiting children, usually 90 minutes to half a day. Kids collect eggs, feed animals, plant seeds or help with harvest. Real examples include US$30 per child for 90 minutes in Kentucky and from £25 per child for a half day in Wales.
How much should I charge for a junior farmer program?
Look at local farm camps and children's classes. Real farms charge around US$30 to US$55 for a short session and US$140 to US$375 for multi-day camps. Start with a short session, run a free test day and raise the price once you have reviews.
Can my children legally help with tours on our family farm?
Usually yes, but the details matter. In the U.S., children may do farm work on their parents' farm, but tour, shop and event work may fall under non-farm rules unless the business is solely owned by the parents. In the UK, many councils require permits even for your own children. Check with your local labour office and a lawyer.
Does my farm insurance cover my kids leading tours?
Not always. Many standard farm policies don't cover agritourism without an endorsement. Ask your agent whether your children are covered as family members or treated as employees, and whether paying them changes that.
What age can a child start helping with farm visitors?
Young children of five or six can greet visitors and hand out feed beside a parent. Teens of 13 and up can co-lead walks. Whatever their age, keep children away from machinery, chemicals and large animals when visitors are present.
Does agritourism help keep the next generation on the farm?
Research suggests a link. A U.S. survey found agritourism farms were more likely than other diversified farms to be multigenerational and to be willing to pass the farm on to their children, and they had more family employees. Giving children a real role early helps them see a future on the farm.
Your Next Step
The help you need may already be living under your roof. The question is whether your farm is ready to put it to work.
Take the free Farm Readiness Quiz to see where your farm stands today, including whether your family and time are ready for visitors. Then grab the free 21-Point Agritourism Blueprint so you don't miss a step when you open your gate.
I'm also writing The Farm Host Playbook, a step-by-step guide to family roles, weekend schedules and exactly what to say to guests. Readers who download the Blueprint will be the first to hear when it's ready.
P.S. Glenn Tanaka didn't plan a business when he invited his son's preschool class out to the farm. He just opened the gate to the people closest to him. About forty years later, his son runs the tours. Who's sitting at your dinner table tonight?
Stephen Loke of AgritourismSuccess.com, whose farm is featured in Bloomberg News and Asahi Shimbun. This article is general information, not legal, insurance or tax advice. Rules differ by country, state and council, so check with qualified local advisers before you start.
Sources
California Bountiful: Cultivating connections (Tanaka Farms), May/June 2022
CodeBlue: Nearly half of Malaysia's farmers are aged 60 and above, 3 Aug 2026
MAFF Policy Research Institute: farm successors, 2020 Census analysis
University of Vermont: Agritourism Across the United States, Aug 2026
Barbieri and Tew: Missouri agritourism visitors report, 2010
National FFA: Agricultural Proficiency Award area descriptions
Barbieri (2013): Assessing the sustainability of agritourism in the US
Chiswell and Lobley (2018): farm succession, Rural Sociology
Tew and Barbieri (2012): The perceived benefits of agritourism
Lawrence Business Magazine: Schaake's Pumpkin Patch, 18 Jun 2014
FFA New Horizons: The corn maze craze (McCall's), 8 Sep 2020
National FFA: Brooks Johnson at Dull's Tree Farm, 19 Oct 2024
MAFF Policy Research Institute: Iida farm stays (Suzumura, 2009)
The Western Producer: Agricultural tourism catches on in Japan, 6 Dec 2018
Ohio State Farm Office: Revisiting minimum wage obligations, 24 Jun 2025
US Department of Labor: hours limits for 14- and 15-year-olds
Birketts: Can a child legally work in our family business?, 13 May 2021
Donovan and Ho: Amendments to the Children and Young Persons (Employment) Act 1966, 3 Sep 2019
National Agricultural Law Center: Agritourism state compilation, Dec 2025
Education Week: Study finds benefits for youth in 4-H programs, Jan 2014
Bangor Daily News (AP): Farming parody video goes viral, 6 Jul 2012
Tourism Malaysia: Homestay programme wins UNWTO Ulysses Award, 2012
Newcastle City Council: Byelaws on the employment of children
Photos: Unsplash (Christopher Stites, Portraits of Modern Dairy, Bayu Syaits, Kateryna Hliznitsova), free under the Unsplash License.
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