Jessica Hula-Fredericks, owner of Insight Dairy LLC in Little Falls, NY, began offering farm tours about a decade ago. Hula-Fredericks and her husband Chris started the farm in 2007 with 145 milkers and steadily increased production to their current 2,700 milkers.

During a CCE agritourism meeting about conducting farm tours, Hula-Fredericks explained that her earliest tours were impromptu events because neighbors would stop by and start asking questions. Then, her friends started bringing their families to the farm. Eventually, word got out and school groups, youth groups and summer programs began reaching out to her. She now hosts about 25 groups a year and hosts an annual trunk-or-treat and food truck hoedown.

Hula-Fredericks feels that one of her responsibilities as a dairy farmer is to share the farm with the public.

“I grew up with the Dairy Princess Program. It’s always been in me to just keep educating the public on what we do, why we do it and how we do it,” she said.

The majority of the tours are for elementary to high school groups. A tour, usually led by Hula-Fredericks, begins when the school bus drops the kids off in the barnyard. They enter the rotary milking parlor to observe milking. The kids also get to learn about the milkhouse, cooling systems and the trailer bays and tankers where Insight holds their milk. The barnyard is also where they have a portable toilet and handwashing station.

The kids are then loaded onto a tractor-pulled wagon and head to the free-stall barns. Hula-Fredericks stresses animal welfare when talking about the barns – how the sprinklers, fans, roll-up curtains, free access to food and water and sand-bedded stalls – are all components of keeping the animals healthy and comfortable.

From the free-stall barns, the kids head to the grain infrastructure. During the majority of the tour, for safety reasons, the kids stay on the wagon, but at the grain buildings and silos they are allowed to step off the wagon so they can observe the electronics and control panels.

The tour then shifts to the “smelly part,” as Hula-Fredericks joked. The kids get to see the manure lagoon and learn about how the farm separates the liquids and solids and how eventually these materials are spread on the fields as fertilizer.

Then, the wagon will drive by the bunker silos. They often stop and watch as the crew uses heavy equipment to create total mixed rations. Hula-Fredericks tries to have some hands-on materials (like a sample of TMR) on the wagon, so the kids have a tactile experience in conjunction with what they are seeing and hearing.

“Anything they can touch physically, it will always stick with them,” she said.

The next stop is the calving pens and calf hutches. Here, the kids are also allowed to exit the wagon and let the calves suck their fingers and do some exploring.

“Most of the time, they’re really lucky and can see a calf being born. We kind of hold our breath as it’s happening. You really want it to go naturally and not have to assist, but at the same time it’s reality. And if we have to, we explain why we need to help,” Hula-Fredericks said.

The tour then crosses the street and heads to the shop. Hula-Fredericks explained that employee participation in these farm tours is voluntary and that not all of the farmworkers enjoy interacting with the tours. Her shop guy, however, loves sharing information and is known to tell the kids that “welders hold America together.”

The tour ends at the parlor where it began. At this point, some groups hop on their bus and head back to school. (Hula-Fredericks thinks a two-hour tour is about the maximum for the youngest kids.) Groups who have scheduled longer tours will have lunch at picnic tables. After lunch, they are divided into smaller groups and circulate through educational stations.

Hula-Fredericks partners with her local cooperative Extension office, nutritionist and veterinarian to create these stations. CCE Herkimer, for instance, has demonstrated cheesemaking. The nutritionist has had kids make their own TMR samples.

Katie Carpenter, who is director of NY Ag in the Classroom, was also present at the CCE meeting. She suggested reaching out to additional groups like FFA and county Soil & Water Conservation Districts because they often agree to participate in these types of educational experiences.

Hula-Fredericks thinks the opportunity to work with these smaller groups is invaluable. “You’re educating them on a whole other level. They begin to realize how many jobs exist that are related to the dairy industry,” she said.

After the stations end, Hula-Fredericks brings the group together and asks a pointed question to see how well the group was paying attention. For example, she will query, “How many fans were in a certain barn?” The winner is awarded an Insight Dairy T-shirt. All the kids go home with a plastic cup with the farm logo. On the back of the cup it says “This is my milk drinking cup.”

At this point in time, Hula-Fredericks offers the farm tours for free. Carpenter noted, however, that many farms do charge a fee for providing experiences like this. She sees ranges of $3 – $10 per student for comparable tours.

Hula-Fredericks said, “I know free tours are not the norm. I would just rather get people here on the farm to experience what we do every day. If I can have one person walk away with a positive attitude from a dairy farm, I feel like I’ve done my job for the day.”