Leah Hetrick shares all about Ohio Farm Bureau's Agritourism Guide and some of the things that she says farmers may overlook when thinking about new business ventures on the farm.

So I would always recommend beginning by making a plan.

What do you wanna do? Write that down.

Write down what it might take to get there, and then kind of work your way backwards.

So say part of your plan is maybe offering an attraction like a ride.

Um, who do you need to contact for that? Is there some licensing or registration that you need to do for that? Um, other safety equipment that might go along with it.

Um, just working your way backwards on all those things and making sure that you are compliant all the way so you don't have everything set up and look back and go, "Oh no, I, I needed registration for this, um, and now I have to work my way backwards," which can cost more money.

Uh, what are some of the things farmers should be thinking about as they open their doors to the public?

Yeah.

Agritourism, it, it's really great and I think that's something that the legislature really understands, and that's why they provided this sort of protection.

And, and part of that protection was, you know, we want people to invite themselves up to the farm.

We know there's some aspects of farming people n- might not be used to in their day-to-day life, but we want people to be able to continue to farm while inviting them out.

So, um, there is that, that liability protection, that civil immunity for agritourism providers as long as they, uh, hang up that sign.

So one of the first things you wanna think about when looking to agritourism, um, is making sure that you have the proper sign, the agritourism liability sign.

But where would you recommend that a farmer thinking about agritourism begin, even if that's off the farm?

So could you just talk about what are some of the biggest things farmers and farm families need to think about before getting started when it comes to agritourism?

Yeah.

So when it comes to starting doing any sort of agritourism, it's a lot like other businesses.

You can't just open the doors.

It's a good idea to sit down and look at any of the applicable laws or regulations.

Some of the more frequent questions I get deal with zoning or the fire code or the building code.

Anytime you change how your property is being used, it's always good to just double check that you're going to fall within any of those regulations or whether there's an exemption to a regulation.

So what should farmers understand about this when they start opening their property to the public?