Call them haycations: The chance to spend a night or two on a working farm or ranch and enjoy the comforts of a country inn - or a complete guest home on the property — while you learn about your hosts' approach to agriculture.
In a world where small farmers need to diversify to keep their fields afloat and city dwellers are more desperate than ever to learn where their food comes from, a "haycation" for about the price of a nice hotel room in Manhattan didn’t seem like such a far-fetched idea.
You've heard of staycations; what do you think of haycations? These are interactive farm stays where city-dwellers gather their own eggs, make cheese and even learn to butcher an animal.
It couldn't have been more different than modern-day city life - and that's the point of Feather Down Farm Days, a European-based company whose "haycations" are taking root in the United States.
For a growing number of farms and ranches in Nevada and nationwide, visits by rural vacationers — folks taking haycations, in other words — are important part of their annual revenues.
The haycations here offer mostly unstructured time for guests to escape and relax, although they help with some farm chores -- like pumping water, feeding the goats and collecting chicken eggs -- after a hearty, home-grown breakfast with Weatherbury chicken eggs, and grains and vegetables from the fields.
