Tours offer a chance to explore nature, history
Bob Miner never used to charge admission to the few visitors who would come to his 61-acre farm in Ashaway, though he could have. Solitude Springs–Miner’s Farm is an amusement park for anyone wanting to reconnect with nature.
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Rolling hills stretch out in all directions past a knee-high stone wall that separates Miner’s yard from the farmland. His flower gardens have hidden spaces with heart-shaped stones and a Japanese water garden with lily pads, frogs, fish, and a bamboo grove.
Hummingbirds whiz around a nearby hut. A peacock fans its feathers. He also has swans, emus, donkeys, ducks, chickens, miniature horses, pigs and turtles – plus all the wildlife.
And he’s got mysterious Native American ruins and stone culverts that colonists built under Old King’s Highway, which ran through the property.
Like many of Rhode Island’s farm owners, Miner said, he wants to see his property sustain itself as a farm. So he plans to soon open up the property to tours — $8 per adult and $5 per child – in part to help pay the high property taxes.
For that price, visitors will be able to take a guided tour with Miner, which includes a history lesson. They can hike through the woods, picnic at tables overlooking the view, take pictures and go fishing. Miner is even looking into adding horse-and-carriage rides, if things go well.
Solitude Springs is at the forefront of a small but growing “agritourism” industry in Rhode Island, an effort to create new income sources for farmers by catering to visitors eager to experience farm life, learn about nature, agriculture and local history, and buy fresh food directly from the source.
“It’s a business where farmers can make money by opening their property to tourists,” said Stuart Nunnery, director of the R.I. Center for Agricultural Promotion & Education, a nonprofit that provides resources and services to farmers, gardeners, agronomists, educators, chefs and others seeking to support local farms.
“It’s as much about conservation as it is about agriculture or tourism,” Nunnery said.
During the year individuals from about 80 farm sites took part in RICAPE’s professional development training series, which outlines things like agritourism 101, marketing and developing educational programs, said Nunnery.
Miner said he attended the training sessions. In addition, RICAPE worked directly with Miner on-site to help him walk through his property and identify what would be of interest to visitors. RICAPE helped him develop a narrative for the tour, and in the future it will help Miner organize events, schedule programs and develop products to sell.
He had not developed a database or a logo or any promotional material for mailings, Nunnery said. The organization will continue working with him in those efforts.
Of Rhode Island’s 860 farms, about 200 sell products directly to consumers, he said. To help those farms increase their sales and make the most of agritourism opportunities, the center, the University of Rhode Island and the R.I. Department of Environmental Management two years ago launched a program called Rhode Island FarmWays.
The program, which now has its own Web site, www.rifarmways.org, helps farmers develop business plans to cater to the tourism market by offering tours and special activities and adding amenities to make the farms more visitor-friendly.
“It’s about building an industry one farm at a time,” said Mary Beth Miller, master gardener at URI and marketing director for the center.
The Web site also helps tourists identify farms they’d like to visit, allowing them to search by region, by crops or animals, by focus (arts, organic farming, wildlife, history), and by attractions – hay rides, corn mazes, wine tasting.
For Solitude Springs, Miner said, getting into agritourism means he will be able to supplement his income now that he is retires. He had raised animals in his spare time while working full-time in the lace trade industry and raising six children with his wife.
Now, Miner said, the farm earns extra income through wood sales, by renting out pasture land and by boarding horses. He also sells exotic and domestic animals, such as llamas and Rhode Island Red chickens. He’s sold waterfowl to Burt Reynolds and Disney World.
“We use what we’ve got and try to get something out of it,” he said.
The site’s Native American artifacts have attracted attention from researchers at Princeton University, who Miner said visit regularly to see the cairns, circles carved in rocks and stones shaped like arrows on rocks.
“There are a lot of things through the woods that are question marks,” he said. “They say it might have been some spiritual place.”
Nunnery said he hopes agritourism helps keep farm owners from selling their highly prized land to developers.
Miner said he doesn’t plan to sell to developers, but “it would be good” if the farm earned enough not only to pay the taxes, but also earn enough income for his son, Terrill, to whom he hopes eventually to sell the farm, just as he bought it from his father, and his father from his grandfather. The farm has been in their family since 1923.
