Making butter, cheese, yogurt, bread, sausage, meats, vegetables, fruit for farm-fresh retail sales seems to have greater demand than supply, which provides welcome cash income to farmers. Any strategy to bring tourism and farming together to help each other seems to be lacking totally. Rather, fighting what is inevitable in our future seems more typical. This enterprise provides a tidy side income for the farm. Outside of Heidelberg, Germany, my cousin built a walk-in animal garden populated with deer and wild boars in a forest.
Tourists love to stop to feed the pigs and piglets.
This also has generated a good little side income. One of the most popular things that our College of Agriculture has ever done is the annual open house for school children at the college farm for one month. Annually, more than 7,000 youngsters have visited, heard stories about and petted our cows, calves, sheep, goats, pigs, horses and donkeys. Our traveling farm animal program to schools in the area is equally successful. One reason is that it's a bit nostalgic, but in Europe it is also much cheaper than a formal hotel and restaurant.