Oct 22, 2012

Corn mazes, pumpkin patches and U-pick fruit are part of a growing agritourism trend

You know it’s fall when your Facebook feed is full of photos of your friends and their children exploring corn mazes, picking out pumpkins and going on hay rides.

For many, such activities are tradition.

And for family farms in the Yakima Valley, those traditions mean solid and reliable revenue.

“Once the trees go dormant, we will not see a dollar until June (or) July of next year, said John Thompson, owner of Thompson’s Farm in Naches.

Corn mazes and the like aren’t new — many farms, such as Thompson’s Farm and Schell’s Produce in Union Gap and Toppenish — have offered them for a decade or more. But those offerings have gained renewed interest as family farms search for more income amid the consolidation of commercial agriculture and to meet consumer demand for information about where their food comes from. The Yakima Herald

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