Old MacDonald Has a Farm and Rents Rooms Too

Willa Cather. Laura Ingalls Wilder. If names like these touch off nostalgia for a past you never had, you are ready for a farm vacation. It’s a growing trend among urbanites who are taking off a week or a weekend to milk cows, feed chickens or just relax on a porch.

Here are four organizations--one domestic, three foreign--whose Internet sites link you with working farms that welcome visitors.

The Pennsylvania Farm Vacation Assn. is partly funded by that state’s Department of Agriculture. Its Web site, https://www.pafarmstay.com, lists about two dozen farms that accept visitors. While a few seem more like luxurious bed-and-breakfasts that have a couple of chickens roosting in the yard, most are true working farms.

My favorite is the Olde Fogie Farm, which lists “indoor plumbing and fly swatters in each room” among its amenities (jokingly, I assume). Here, a stay in the “pig pen” room is just $30 per person, including a hearty breakfast. Besides helping with the farm chores, you can also arrange dinner with a local Amish family.

At Elver Valley Farm, a dairy with 50 Holsteins, rates start at $40 a day for the “Acorn Rock” cabin (can sleep a family of four) or $50 per couple in the guest room, including breakfast. Nearby attractions include Amish country and the Brandywine River Museum.

Agritours, on the Internet at https://www.agritour.com, is a source of farm stays overseas. The typical vacation is at a place like Oxley Farm in Australia. There guests can relax at table tennis or in the pool at night and help, if they wish, with farm chores during the day. Rates are $120 a night for two, including breakfast.

More adventurous travelers might visit a spice and coconut farm in southern India. Haritha Farms charges about $28 per person for accommodations and the experience of visiting an advanced farm community that experiments with “sustainable agriculture.”

Agritours also lists farms in Argentina, Belgium, France, Britain, Italy, Kenya, Malta, Mexico, New Zealand and South Africa.

The German Agricultural Society, Web site https://www.landtourismus.de/e/e.htm, supplies more than 2,000 addresses for farm and home stays. For example, in Bavaria: Rothhof Estate, a poultry and sheep farm, charges about $37 per adult per day and offers pony rides, a “look and touch zoo” and a playground; a 16th century mill that is now a modern farm rents out four units at $34 to $63; and an organic farm with a sauna, playground and fishing nearby charges $26 to $52.

Finally, a Dutch group called ECEAT (European Center for Eco-Agro Tourism) attempts to promote ecological sensitivity in farming. Worried about the fate of small, traditional farms in Europe, ECEAT is especially active in what it sees as a war against big agribusiness and bioengineering.

ECEAT thinks the answer is to send travelers to stay with farmers, giving the latter a boost to their income, which helps them continue tending their almond orchards, beekeeping and winemaking in the traditional manner without using hazardous chemicals.

Through ECEAT, you might find yourself staying with a fig grower in Portugal, a sheepherder in England, a dairy farmer in Estonia or Latvia. In any case, you’ll get a moderately priced (or even a very low-priced) farm stay that few people have the chance to experience, often in one of the most beautiful parts of the continent.

ECEAT publishes only six of its Green Holiday Guides in English--those on Britain, Ireland, the Baltic countries, Norway, Poland and Southeast Europe. You can order the guides for $9 each, paying with cash or international money orders from the U.S. Postal Service or American Express.

Details: ECEAT, Post Box 10899, 1001 EW Amsterdam, the Netherlands; telephone 011-31-20-668-1030 (9 a.m. to 5 p.m. their time--midnight to 8 a.m. in California), fax 011-31-20-463-0594, e-mail eceat@antenna.nl, Internet https://www.pz.nl/eceat.