Bringing visitors to Irish farms
THE GIGGINS FAMILY ARE SHOWING OVERSEAS VISITORS A TASTE OF REAL IRELAND WITH FARM TOURS IRELAND
Some tourists come to Ireland for the scenery, others for the ancient monuments and castles, and some for the Guinness, but a local company is catering for those who want to visit Irish farms.
Farm Tours Ireland, run by the Giggins family from Braganstown, Stabannon.
So far, the company has hosted visitors from 18 countries, including South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Uruguay, Canada, North America, China, Sweden, Denmark, Turkey and the Ukraine.
‘We’ve been running the company for six years,’ says Siobhan Giggins who joined her dad Gerry and brother Aonghus last year, having worked in accounting in Dublin.
‘Both Dad and Aonghus have a background in agriculture and would have travelled a lot, meeting farmers from other countries who would have said they’d love to come to Ireland to see how farming operates here,’ she explains. ‘Often they would be asked if they could recommend farms to visit or hotels to stay in.’
This proved the inspiration for their venture which started off bringing two or three groups to Ireland and last year welcomed over 30 different groups.
The visits are tailored to meet the requirements of the particular group, explains Siobhan. ‘ They come to us with a wish list and we provide them with an itinerary, depending on their background. For some it will be a busman’s holidays and they will just want to visit farms while others will want to do some sight-seeing.’
Already this year they have hosted a group from Switzerland who were interested in seeing how the farm advisory service Teagasc works with a view to setting up a similar agency back home, so their visit consisted entirely of visits to Teagasc offices and centres around the country.
‘We can look after technical groups like that as well as those who want to see how farming is done in Ireland as well as doing some sight seeing,’ she says.
The company has a database of farmers, hotels and accommodation providers across the country, so if a group expresses a particular interest in visiting the Ring of Kerry or the Cliffs of Moher, they can organise a tour to encompass that.
‘If they come to us with a blank slate we will try to keep them within Louth and the north east region,’ says Siobhan. ‘We are very keen to promote local agriculture and tourist attractions.’
‘We have a list of top diary, beef and tillage farms in the north east that we can bring visitors to see.’
‘Food promotion is also a big part of what we do as we have excellent produce in the area and we like to highlight the link from farm to fork,’ she continued. ‘We will try to bring them to dine in restaurants which use local produce.’
The make-up of the visiting groups varies and sometimes includes spouses and partners, and they will be welcoming their first group with children when a party from Hungary comes for the National Ploughing Championships in September.
‘Last year we had a mother and son from the United States who wanted to spend a day on a farm as the son was considering going to college to study to be a vet. We brought them up the Cooley mountains to meet a local farmer who gave them a sheep dog demonstration overlooking Carlingford Lough,’ says Siobhan. ‘We bring our groups to visit real farms and to meet actual farmers so that they get a view of Ireland which they won’t see on a tour bus,’
‘Ireland’s Ancient East is about telling the story of Ireland and that’s what we are all about. We give them that little bit extra on top of organising the farm tours so for example we’ll plan to arrive early at a destination so that we can also show them the ancient fort or castle nearby, something which they wouldn’t see on other tours.’
‘While social media plays a part, a lot of our business comes through word of mouth and this year we welcomed our third group from the same region of South Africa.’
And it’s not just farmers booking tours with the company as last year they provided an itinerary for a couple from Chicago with no background in farming who simply wanted to experience ‘real Ireland’. Farm Tours Ireland can organise complete holidays to one day tours and is proving a valuable addition to Ireland’s agri-tourism sector.