- Our topic today is on Agritourism Operation Checklists
and Self-Assessment.
My name is Lisa Chase.
I'm with the University of Vermont Extension
and the Vermont Tourism Research Center.
And I am really happy that today with me
we've got a whole crew from Rutgers.
I'll turn it over to them in just a moment
to introduce themselves but I wanna mention
by way of introduction that I've been using their checklist
for years and sharing their checklist with farmers.
I wanna say it's been about 15 years now
that I first came across these Rutgers checklists
and started sharing them with Vermont farmers.
And at one point I thought,
"Oh, we should really have our own checklist in Vermont."
And I started to redo them and we said,
"Hold it, these Rutgers checklists are really universal."
They're not specific to New Jersey
and we don't need to reinvent the wheel here in Vermont.
So even though it might've been a little embarrassing
at times to be working for UVM
and handing out these checklists
with the big Rutgers logo on top, I had no problem doing it.
And I have to say many farms that I've worked
with in Vermont have used these checklists
and have been very grateful for the ability to do this type
of self-assessment.
Type into chat and let us know who you are
and where you're from, you're with a farm or Extension
or some other type of organization.
And in particular, if there's any questions you have
at any point, you can feel free to ask a question.
And now I'm gonna stop my share
and I'm gonna turn it over to Brian and Michelle
to take it away with their Rutgers colleagues.
- Lisa, thank you very much.
And just for the record, we have no such embarrassment
about using Vermont resources here in New Jersey.
So I think actually you just gave a perfect segue
for just a few introductory remarks
that I'd love to share with the group.
So, first of all, it's really a pleasure
to be with everybody.
I'm Brian Schilling, I'm Director
of Rutgers Cooperative Extension down here in New Jersey.
I'm also the Chair of the Regional
Northeast Extension Directors, what we call a NEED.
And we represent 12 states and the District of Columbia
and the 16 land-grants within the region.
And one of the goals that we have long held is
to increase programmatic collaboration across the region,
leverage the strengths
of our respective land-grant institutions.
So Lisa, I really commend you
for coordinating tonight's effort and the efforts to come
in coming weeks and all the Extension colleagues
on the line that are here to participate.
The one beauty about, well there's many beauties
about our land-grant system but one of them is the fact
that I never feel encumbered by not knowing an answer
because I more often than not
nobody knows somebody who has the answer.
So again, us coming together as a region
I think is a real value and the topic is wonderful.
So agritourism in our region is clearly critical
as an economic development strategy for many of our growers.
And I was just commenting in a national meeting
about the Northeast
and the fact that from West Virginia to Maine
which constitutes the NEED,
Northeast Extension Directors region,
we have over 65 million people, it's remarkable.
Here in New Jersey if you put a dot in our geographic center
and go out a hundred miles, call it a generous,
getting the car day trip type of commuting distance
we have one 10th of the US population with 1 trillion,
folks that's where the TR trillion dollars in their pockets.
So it's such an incredible opportunity for us.
So the reason that what we're talking about here
this evening is so important is that COVID presented
some threats that clearly were potentially devastating
to this industry.
So before I go on and give a brief context,
before I pass this over to Michelle.
I'd like to introduce who's
on the line with you tonight from Rutgers.
First is Michelle Casella, who is a colleague I've known
for many years, who chairs our agritourism working groups.
So she's the one that keeps us all in line
and makes sure that we show up
and we're prepared to do what we're gonna do
as we are tonight.
So Michelle's going to walk through
a number of our resources.
We also have a team of very experienced ag agents
with expertise in agritourism, direct marketing.
I think that Rich VanVraken who you'll have
the opportunity to see later
as we open it up for discussion has been
with Extension for four decades.
If he hasn't seen it, it's because it hasn't happened.
And he's somebody who has worked
with direct marketing for much of his career.
We have Bill Bamka and Steve Komar
who have worked in areas of food safety,
pardon me, farm safety.
One of the things that you'll hear us speak about
is in our general program and tourism is one of the dangers
of farms is that farmers know the farm.
They can walk across the farm in the dead of night
and not trip over anything.
You gotta look at a farm
through the eyes of a six year old boy
who's just looking for mischief, right?
So we have some very experienced people that can help guide
and provide guidance to growers in the area of farm safety.
And then Meredith Melendez is also
with us tonight and is one of our core members
of our on-farm food safety team.
So we came together, Michelle
if you'd be kind enough to advance the slide.
We came together prior to COVID and developed
a number of resources,
which I believe were linked in the next slide
if I'm not mistaken
that help people look at agritourism
as an economic development opportunity,
everything from how you market to how you consider pricing
to the very important matters of farm safety
and critically, critically important
is liability management.
And the analogy that I often was fond of making is
if any of you watched the Christmas story,
the movie with Ralphie and his little brother.
I always had a picture of Ralphie's little brother.
Don't remember the poor little guy's name but anyway
his mom dressed them up in layers and layers and layers
and layers of clothing to fight the cold.
In many ways, thank you to my colleague, Steve Komar,
his name was Randy for anyone interested.
And the point there was,
you really need to insulate yourself against liability.
You'll never protect or eliminate risk
but all you can really do is try to,
is to the extent possible layer yourself with protections
against liability that could harm your farm
or even your personal wellbeing.
So when COVID came around, we had a few sensitivities here.
We'd had extensive amount of programming in normal years
if you will.
But now we had a threat that really jeopardized
potentially our agritourism season.
Secretary of Agriculture in New Jersey, Doug Fisher,
myself and others in Extension talked to early
in the pandemic about the essential need
for providing food through our direct farm markets early on.
And we came up with a number of practices that really guided
the State of New Jersey
in terms of how our operators manage their farm markets.
But then we started getting into agritourism
where people are coming onto the farms,
yes, potentially for access to food
but also other activities that may not necessarily
be directly related to purchasing of food.
It is such an important economic activity,
we can point the countless growers who make upwards
of half their income in 18 days of the year
between mid-September through Halloween.
So as the depth of that pandemic became more evident
and it was clear that this was ongoing.
We really saw that we had an obligation
to try to provide some guidance to our growers
and guidance that would give the State of New Jersey
the comfort that the industry and all of its partners
were standing up and prepared to help the industry
try to remain as profitable as possible during this pandemic
at the same time keeping the public safe.
So we were working with producers to help them
manage safety considerations,
central to this was complying with state directives.
Our governor, Governor Murphy was passing executive orders
that limited outdoor gathering capacities as an example.
You have to be compliant with executive orders
or you'll get shut down potentially.
Also I think the moral and practical obligations
of trying to keep yourself, your staff
and visitors safe by adhering to guidance from the CDC
and other state and local public health authorities.
The guidance has changed for a while,
masks were not required, then they were required,
this was required, that was required.
Is it the science kept emerging and changing.
So we help try to navigate growers to make sure
that they were compliant with the best possible advice.
Now, here's the really challenging issue.
We were very sensitive about not saying
that these are the things you must do.
We were even sensitive about saying
that these are the best practices
for engaging in agritourism as safely as possible
and here's why, every operation is different.
We were really taking it as sort of
a performance-based approach, right?
What Lisa's farm may best be able to do
in terms of distancing may be very different
from what Michelle can do.
So we were trying to avoid being overly prescriptive.
We were trying to say, this is the best way of doing things.
So rather what Michelle will outline in the time to follow
is what we called considerations.
We're not telling you necessarily how to do certain things.
We can offer you resources about cleaning and disinfecting.
We can give you practical guidance about laying out
a pattern of pedestrian flow to reduce choke points
or try to keep densities lower.
We can talk about things like how you might wanna
reduce the number of people coming to your farm
through advanced ticketing or time ticketing
but we're not gonna be prescriptive.
We're offering you considerations in a number
of different areas that you should consider
and evaluate through your own eyes
and perhaps other professionals unique to your operation.
So the key thing we were trying to avoid is
any pretense that there's one way to do something
because perhaps Lisa could do it and Michelle could not
but maybe Michelle had a different way of accommodating
a crowd or handling safety in a different way
that worked well for her farm.
So Michelle, with that, Michelle Casella
will take over and walk you through
some of the considerations that we were sharing
with growers as we move through the summer months
into our fall agritourism season.
And yes, I believe Carrie also linked this
in the chat window a moment ago but here's a repository
of resources that are generally a value
for helping to assess one's farm.
And what we use here are starting points
for when we approached COVID.
So Michelle, if you'd be good enough to take over,
I think you'll speak for a little while
and then we'll open it up for discussion and questions.
- Thank you, Brian and Brian was right,
not everyone has the same management style
or the same layout in their farm.
So everything we tried to do was really guidance
and not prescriptive.
The one thing I did wanna say is the checklist
that we developed that you could find on the website
are a little bit formatted a little bit differently
than this, because there's areas where you can check off
and make comments for your own business.
But the thing is, it's really a self-assessment tool.
Now you can certainly work with your Extension professionals
or ag service providers to get some tips
and find some more resources, but basically
the checklists were meant for you
to do your own on-farm assessment and just use it as a tool.
So nothing really formal, nothing that's prescriptive
but again something to help you
with your own management style.
So I'm gonna go over some of the sections
of the checklist that we did for COVID-19 last summer.
Things have changed a little bit.
I did post the current most recent executive order
for New Jersey because things are changing rapidly
as they are in your own states about numbers,
mask regulations, things like that
that are related to COVID.
So everyday things change and we all have to have our pulse
on those changes as business owners,
as an Extension people to help our farmers
to learn more and more about what's going on.
So again, we went through current regulations
at the time when we did this last summer
but we've also been updating current regulations
as well as Brian mentioned Meredith Melendez
who is on our team with farm food safety.
Meredith's done a great job of updating
and putting more information as time goes on
related to farm regulation and food safety.
Not only food safety but also some farm safety
information that you could find on our website.
The next thing we did is we really wanted
to encourage growers to evaluate their signs,
help their staff as well as themselves learn
about the signs and symptoms of COVID-19
so that if someone came on to the property or if an employee
or family member of the farm started feeling ill,
we wanted to talk to them about what do we do?
How do we handle this?
And again, things have changed since we've had vaccinations.
It has been different times with quarantine, or if you do
or don't have the quarantine and again
an ever evolving situation as we know more and more
about this disease.
So again, we just, this was for training purposes
and self-evaluation.
One thing that's been a big angst
not only with farms having visitors
but even other public and entertainment venues
having visitors is the use of cloth face coverings.
There's different camps out there.
Do they work?
Do they not work?
Do we need them after vaccinations?
Do we not need them?
But again, this is something that's in executive orders
in your state, even though the CDC may say that
you don't need to wear masks outdoors.
A lot of states continue to say
you need to wear a mask outdoors.
Actually, we were just, Bill Bamka and I today
on our team was looking at the latest Executive Order 238
by Governor Murphy in New Jersey.
And it still requires even outdoor facilities
or outdoor events that masks are to be worn.
So even though some people aren't happy about that,
we do have to follow the regulations.
And also it's the image that we're showing
at our businesses for those who are still
very concerned or for those who aren't vaccinated yet
just how we're handling this.
So again, self-assessment on the farm and also knowing
what the proper regulations are at the time.
Cleaning and disinfection, Meredith was really great
about helping our team with this because she has a lot
of information and experience in this with farm food safety.
Now you have that guy on the farm
if you look in the right hand side there
that guy just wants to touch the sheep.
So Brian, that's you by the way.
(laughs)
And you wanna to make sure you have hand sanitizer.
Even without COVID-19 we had hand sanitizer
if someone had a petting zoo
or just to have some cleanliness
and sanitation on the farm.
But then when COVID-19 hit
it was even more important to have the cleaning
and disinfection done on the farms.
And again, there's some regulations
that went along with that.
And then signage, just as a really important
and something that really hit home.
Again before COVID very important,
after COVID hit even more important help people know
where they needed to walk,
what regulations they needed to follow
or even what roles on your own farm you implemented
that were above and beyond just for your own safety
or for the safety of your visitors ultimately.
We also talked about in our checklist
how to modify the layout or physical barriers
of the farm, again for safety, with COVID.
Again, this was something even pre-COVID that was important
but even more so now, especially with distancing,
making sure people aren't going in the same ingress
and egress when they're walking by each other.
When they're coming from the parking lot
if they've forgotten the mask
or just the flow of traffic, foot traffic in and out
of the parking lot was important.
And again, training your employees was very important
which we'll, we have a section on that later.
Not gonna talk too much about response and liability
because next week you're gonna hear a lot about this
in the next webinar but just to glaze over it a little bit,
with COVID it changed some things
about what we needed to do but farm safety
when having visitors on the farm is of upmost importance.
Like Brian mentioned, that six year old little boy
just looking for fun on the farm.
Communications and marketing something again,
you would always do for your direct marketing business
however communications and marketing during COVID
was very important.
And just having that perception of your farm
that you're following all of the requirements
and all the safety that you could possibly do.
Again, no matter how people feel for or against masks
or how they feel about the pandemic
portraying that really good image on Facebook
that was a big issue in the beginning,
making sure that your social media, your web pages also
that you were doing the best thing you could
with the pandemic.
Can we talk about parking and traffic a little bit
but that was also something that needed to be rethought
about during the pandemic, other than times
when we didn't have the pandemic to deal with.
Employees, a huge one especially
when it came to COVID-19 and training employees.
And then also we really wanted to discuss
with growers who was gonna be the person
who was going to be the incident reporting person
or the incident confrontation person.
If someone on the farm was really having an issue
with some of the rules, it really shouldn't be
that new employee that just started last week.
That may be 16 years old that doesn't have all the answers
or necessarily have the authority.
So again, we wanted to make sure that was thought
about ahead of time, there was a plan in place and make sure
that the employees had regular meetings and regular updates
and constant supervision to help get ready
for what was coming in the season, a very unique season.
Many of our on farm direct marketing
and agritourism operations have petting zoos
or other kinds of animal events or displays.
There definitely was some concern
about COVID being transferred through animals.
Some animals did test positive.
We wanted to make sure that there was safety
between the visitors and also safety for the animals.
We haven't heard of anything that's happened
on farms that COVID transmission with livestock
or petting zoo animals, but that's a good thing.
So hopefully everything's being handled responsibly
and everyone's evaluating their own situations.
And there happened to be quite a bit
on animal safety to think about.
And again, there's also a CDC guidelines for regular times
without a pandemic to have hygiene
when you're near animal areas.
I'm not gonna talk about food safety much.
Meredith can answer a lot of questions for us later
but also I believe we have something on the schedule
down the road with this webinar series to talk
about food safety and COVID-19.
And again just some regular things to think about
but even more so with COVID-19.
I wanted to go over those pretty quickly
because we have a lot of our team members on tonight
actually all of our team members that contributed
to the checklist for COVID-19, as well as those
who helped contribute to our regular checklists.
And we wanted to bring up some discussion.
I know Lisa, you have some questions
that were preempted when people registered
but we'd like to have some open discussion tonight
if that's possible.
So thank you and Brian.
- Michelle, so one thing that I didn't say
in my earlier comments that,
so this applies even to right now within Extension.
Here in New Jersey we are starting to take steps to get back
to in person programming and Michelle and colleagues
on the line will tell you one of the things
that I've really asked is to be conspicuous
with your efforts, to be safe and compliant.
Be conspicuous with your efforts to be safe
because I'll tell you that social media
is a cruel double-edged sword.
I saw rate reviews about some operations
that did an exceptional job and I'll give a few examples
of dealing with a tremendous amount of fear
and uncertainty in the early stages of the pandemic
before we really were acclimated to safety practices.
And before we had a better understanding
of how this thing is transmitted more readily.
And on the other side of the coin
we had some operations that I'm quite familiar with
that were really crucified in social media.
People weren't wearing masks during the summer
and honestly they lost business and they had
to reverse course almost immediately.
Be conspicuously compliant, it's important in terms
of giving the assurance of local and state regulators.
It's also important because of
visitor perception and comfort.
As I said, in terms of some of the exceptional efforts
I think of one operation that my colleagues
would be quite familiar with
in Central Jersey, Northern Central Jersey.
They had everything from personal shoppers,
They disinfected every pen
between transactions at the credit card with their,
they had a very, very rigorous disinfecting protocols,
their business skyrocketed, absolutely skyrocketed.
We know a number of growers that actually did things
very well during the pandemic when people were fearful
for going into the supermarket
and they had historical highs, weekend highs, weekday highs.
It was really pretty remarkable.
So I think the industry really stepped up a lot
but we're not out of this mess yet because we're going to be
in this very funny period of transition
where people are vaccinated and some are getting,
we're getting some mixed messages now
between state direction about masks,
if you're vaccinated and outdoors and so forth.
So there are gonna be an Michelle passed over
a point very quickly that's really important.
We can really envision discomfort conflict at public venues,
farms included as we go through this period
of more people getting vaccinated, having a certain level
of comfort, not wearing a mask, being in private settings
and others that are gonna look at that person
and not know.
So again, my personal guidance to growers
that I'm quite friendly with
is be conspicuous with your efforts to still be safe.
I think one, the evidence over the last 14 months
is that customers have reacted favorably to that.
And quite frankly, we're still, here in New Jersey
I can tell you our transmission rate is now starting
to go up again as we're opening.
So we're gonna go through some rocky periods.
Michelle back to you.
- All right, I'd just like to open it up to discussion.
Lisa, you have some questions or if anyone can be unmuted
now to answer questions.
- I'll invite everyone to type questions into the chat
at any time, raise your hand either virtually
or really raise your hand and then you can unmute.
In the meantime though, I'm looking
at the registration report where we did have
some really good questions coming in
from people when they registered.
And I'm gonna ask you a question.
I know I should start off with something easy, a softball.
I'm not gonna do that because there was one question I read
and I thought I don't know what the answer is
and I don't know if anyone here will know the answer
but I'm gonna ask it and we'll see what folks say.
The question is, I'm interested in learning
if food sampling should be allowed.
And if so, what enhanced guidance if any should be followed.
This is something, I mean food sampling was something
that was very popular on farms before COVID
and then it absolutely completely stopped.
And I don't have an answer for this person
but I'm putting it out there to see
if anybody else has an answer.
And I'll say, I'm throwing this to, you know
you and your team at Rutgers, but I know we've got
some other folks here who are either running farms
or for example, a UNH food safety specialist.
So other folks can feel free to chime in as well.
But let's start with Michelle and the Rutgers team.
- I'm gonna fall over to Meredith,
she's our food safety expert.
(laughs)
Thanks Meredith.
- Yeah, so this was a question that came up early on too
in the pandemic especially from our FCHS Department
here at Rutgers because food sampling was so much
of the work that they did.
And so that was, I think, one of the first things
that affected it in terms of Extension educators
and being able to get their clients, clientele,
people that are educating to sample.
But I mean, in New Jersey, they're allowing buffets again
but companies like Wegmans are saying,
"We're no longer gonna have our buffet."
And so it's different than sampling
but it's open air food.
And I don't think the state, Brian, have you seen anything?
I don't think the state has addressed that
in any of the executive orders.
- Not that I'm aware of because to your point
we're getting these same questions now
as we're starting to move back to in person programming
and I don't see any guidance
from the state on that route in this regard.
- Yeah, it might be a farmer's market
by farmer's market type decision that might lead the way
in terms of discussion with that.
But that's a great question.
And yeah, it'll be interesting.
I wonder if people's attitude
towards sampling is gonna change.
I guess Costco would be the leader in that, right?
We need to do some polling on Costco customers
and whether they they're feeling the samples or not.
- So Meredith is it fair to say that there's,
oh, I'm sorry, Rick could chime in or did you wanna?
- [Rick] Go ahead, I was gonna just mention one thing
but go ahead.
- No, go ahead, Rick, I'll hold the thought.
- My thought was sampling is
and I don't know if it's also a state directive here
in New Jersey or if it is a individual business decision
but most retailers that had self-packaging,
self-selection of both produce and baked goods,
you can't get the, you can't go in and grab a donut anymore
without it being pre-packaged.
And in most cases it's not pre-packaged individually,
it's wrapped up with three or four others.
So on one hand, you're selling three, instead of one,
on the other hand, you've got to do that packaging,
so is in the same vein as sampling.
You're not having the public reaching in
and grabbing things.
- Yeah, Pete made a comment too, right?
If somebody's sampling food in your market
or on your farm they're taking their mask down.
And so that's a good point too.
It's gonna really depend on the operations comfort level
with people in masking.
- One of the challenges is that we try to provide advice
that's based on science.
And meanwhile, this is such an emotional issue.
It's a human reaction to fear.
So we also have the consumer perception to deal with.
So right now I see Ashley makes an interesting comment
that she doesn't miss it in her operation
but they're doing more effort to add signs
in terms of product descriptions
and stationing people to help staff help answer questions.
So one of the bits of advice that we have is interesting.
Meredith and some of her colleagues very early on
in far markets and then of course here with agritourism
were really up to the minute with CDC guidance
on cleaning, disinfecting, sanitizing.
At that early stage, we didn't know how transmissible
the virus was through contact with surfaces.
But even now even if the science is starting
to suggest Meredith and please correct me if you disagree
but the science is starting to point to
that there's less risk of transmission
through certain surfaces
but there's still a perception issue.
And I saw folks, that was very interesting,
I was in a retail environment recently
where people were offering chocolate candies as samplers.
And I was just sort of sitting there watching,
the majority of people declined.
So I think it's one of these things
where I don't wanna comment on the risk
because Meredith is the expert
and again, this is still evolving science as far
as I'm concerned, but again, having people come
into contact with one another to offer a sample
to somebody, you're approaching them as an example.
If you are doing it, I still would maintain that perception,
customer comfort, staff comfort would probably
suggest eliminating or minimizing to every feasible extent
any touching of common surfaces, right?
Because we're having this same discussion Meredith again
with some of our FCHS,
our family and community health science educators
that are starting to get back into demonstrations
and our guidance with an Extension to our colleagues,
minimize common contact, try to have a self-contained,
food options is possible pre-packaged
or something where people aren't reaching in and grabbing,
if you will from a common source.
I don't think there's any ready answer.
And I don't think Meredith you're gonna see anything
in state direction here in New Jersey.
I don't know about elsewhere.
- Well, I think this two lens
to the uniqueness of agritourism
and agritourism operators communicate so much
with your customers, right?
They're gonna tell you what they're comfortable with
or you could ask them, right?
I know Ashley you're always talking to your customers
and you know what their comfort level is with things.
And I think that's an advantage
to agritourism is 'cause you're their farm, right?
You're their farmer.
And so get as much information as you can
from a pool of your customers to know
what direction they want you to go in.
- Brian, Bill Bamka here.
The one thing I was gonna remember where
every time we talked with agritourism,
we always tell everybody to also remember
run things past your insurance agent
because they cover the wealth of things also,
even though something may be okay with regulations
sometimes they don't have a comfort level
of certain practices.
- And Bill, raises a great question, Lisa
because that was a question I saw in the Excel sheet
a question about liability and insurance
and I think the general advice, Lisa
and one of your colleagues
when I was visiting with you for a program you organized up
in Rutland, I remember pretty distinctly a sidebar
conversation with an insurance agent,
quite familiar with agriculture.
This is one of those things where it's a risk profile
that they're evaluating.
And one of the concerns that we've shared with growers
I've had a few people tell me,
"Well, you know I might have 10,000 people visit the farm,
"but I only tell my insurance guy 1,000
"or I'm not gonna declare everything
"that I'm doing because my premiums will go up."
That might be true, but here's also a truism.
If something happens that you don't have declared
to your insurance provider, you will not be covered.
So I think having a very open and honest discussion
with your insurance provider is important.
It's sort of in my view, if I may
a penny wise pound foolish decision,
you might save a little on your premium by if you will,
not revealing everything.
But boy if something adverse happens
you'll also find yourself conceivably without coverage.
So I think Bill Bamka's advice is very, very important.
Seek guidance from your professionals
in this case, insurance.
- That's a great point, Brian and I saw Ashley's hand up.
Ashley, did you wanna chime in?
- Oh, I was just gonna share about sampling.
I feel like it's a mixed bag with our customers.
I feel like everyone at this point has the culture
of not sampling and not coming in contact or touching.
So I feel like the people who are inclined
to sample are okay with not doing it.
I think ultimately what they are really looking for
is there's this taste, can you explain and say
how do you use it?
And really providing your employees as you know,
a segue into that is a really great idea.
And again, if you were to offer it and have it out,
you're gonna have so many people that are going to judge
and are going to post negative comments
on social media, Google reviews, things like that.
So I just think when you have the option to do one
of the two, you really should err on the side of caution
for that perception.
- That's a great point, Ashley.
And would you, for those of us who don't know you
will you just quickly introduce yourself,
let us know where you are and what your farm does.
- Sure, my name is Ashley, I'm a farmer and manager
at Eastmont Orchards in Colts Neck, New Jersey.
We are exclusively pick your own for apples and peaches.
We've run from mid July to the end of October.
We've just started to attempt hay rides, things like that.
But for the most part it's explicitly pick your own.
- That's great.
Well, yeah, thank you for sharing because
we've got sort of the kind of the educational,
Extension view but it's also really good to hear
from a farmer who's in the field and working
with the customers and knowing what customers
are thinking and asking.
We've got a similar question from Rebecca Lindenmeyr.
She wrote in chat,
"I had a similar question to the food sampling.
We are a steed to soap farm and make lotions.
And we discontinued all sampling
and are wondering if we could and should re-introduce it.
So probably a lot of the same comments are true here
but it is a little different when it's a
kind of a hand lotion as opposed
to something that you actually have to take your mask off
and ingest so thoughts there?
- Hi Lisa, it's Michelle again.
One thing I've seen is just because we've had to move
towards single serve meals for different events.
I've also seen single serve samples like that.
So maybe taking a small cup with the lid,
putting a sample on it so that different people
aren't touching the same dispenser.
That's another way to get around sampling for even food.
It's something they can take along with them
it's a little more expense,
a little more time to put together
but just like Meredith and Ashley have said
I think it goes a long way with public perception
and you still wanna provide some of those samples.
It helps sell your product definitely
but just getting around a safer way.
And even if it's not scientifically proven to be safe
or just a perception way of being safer
to package the samples.
- Yeah and I had taken a look at the CDC language around
cleaning and disinfection of those high touch surfaces.
And it was interesting, I don't have a copy of what
it used to be but it's saying to regularly clean
and disinfect high touch surfaces at least once a day.
And to my memory, that's very different
than what we were talking about a year ago.
So but like people's perception and comfort level is
probably not quite there yet.
- And Brian and I were talking actually this morning
that we've learned so much more
about the disease over the last year.
However, it's still out there.
Our positivity rates are pretty high, still in New Jersey.
And I gave Brian an example.
I looked in our county, our health department recorded
67 positive cases last Friday, back in August and September
we might have eight to 12 positive cases a day,
however we're reopening everything.
So why is that?
'Cause we have people that are vaccinated.
We have better ways of treating the disease.
I think people are more in tune with what needs to be done
but we have to realize this virus isn't going away.
There's mutations of it, they call them different strains.
So we have to really learn to live with this
but learning in a different way
and we've called it the term the new normal.
So when we have people on the farm,
it's up to us to make sure we provide that safe environment.
And many of you've probably seen the high powered actors
and music hosts that have had a commercial
that they're helping to promote,
I forget the exact term, maybe somebody can help remember
but there's a certification for businesses
that are doing everything they can to protect people
from COVID, I forget the name.
It's a symbol that they put on the door.
So when people are walking in, I don't think any of us
are gonna pay that expense for a farm
especially being an outdoor venue to have that.
But again, the perception is everything, Brian.
- Yeah, we haven't given Rebecca a very satisfying answer
I know because I don't think there is one
but I was having a conversation with a grower very recently
and actually Carol in the chat window basically summarized
that discussion in many ways.
Carol notes that her operation typically
doesn't allow customers to touch the sample.
They serve them in individual servings.
Rebecca, the inquiry that I got from somebody I'm friends
with the conversation really culminated
with this person decided
that they would be giving out samples.
And in this instance, they were concerned about their staff.
So they were very purposefully selecting somebody
who had a comfort level in approaching customers
that happened to be vaccinated
so maybe that contributed to the comfort level
but they would be distributing samples.
I believe one of them was something topical.
So rather than again, somebody having a common surface
that multiple people are touching,
only the staff member would distribute in that case
I think it was a lotion or a fragrance or some such thing.
So I think there are two just trying to minimize the amount
of common contacts, even with what Meredith said,
the CDC guidance has gotten a lot more liberal
with respect to cleaning between uses is
I didn't realize Meredith
that the advice now is cleaning daily.
So again, I think there is no right answer
but I think it's an optics issue.
And I think it's something where you would need to consider
and evaluate the comfort level of your staff
who would be involved with engaging customers as well.
- Great point.
- I was gonna say those surface guidelines,
again, individual stores, even in the same chain store
you can go into one store and there'll be wiping
down the surface between every customer.
You go to the next store, down the road
and it may be every third customer
and another one you don't see them wiping out at all.
So it's a mixed bag out there.
- I know Stuart Farnham, who is an insurance agent
wanted to chime in,
Stuart do you wanna umnmute and join the conversation
- [Stuart] Oh, sorry, I don't have my video working
but I just wanted to comment on something Brian said
about being honest with your insurance agent.
It's hard enough to get the policy right
when you know all the facts.
So when people are withholding and, or not telling you
the full truth, it's impossible.
(chuckles)
So I thank Brian for bringing that whole point up.
I tried a friend, all of the farms that
I have insured so that I can see what's going on.
And if they're doing something new,
I can poke them from the other side and say,
should we look at something different for you?
So it isn't the first thing most people think of
is call their insurance agent for something different.
The other thing was on the sampling.
If there is a mask requirement,
you have to take your mask off to eat it.
So you're encouraging people to take their mask off
to eat the sample to begin with.
So you're contradicting
your own safety precautions by doing so.
So the individual servings
and they can take it on their way is a good idea, I think.
- Thanks, Stuart.
And I'll mention that coming up, not next Tuesday
but the following Tuesday
we are having a session specifically on liability, insurance
and coverage and Stuart will be available.
So save up your liability insurance questions
and you can throw them off Stuart's way for that session.
He warned me he may not always have the answers
but he'll give it a try.
- Janet's comment in the chat box is a great suggestion
on how they deal with that sampling issue
at their farmer's market in Montpelier.
- Do you wanna just in case not everyone's reading the chat
do you want to read it off?
- It says," At Montpelier Farmer's Market
"you can now offer sample
"but it must be taken to a designated picnic table to eat.
"No food may be eaten while walking through the market.
"This allows it all to be away
"from those eating and removing masks
"if they choose not to be at the picnic table."
- Thanks for reading that Rick.
One question I had from a local farm market
here in New Jersey last week even though they realized
the CDC is now saying if you can stay six feet apart
outdoors masks don't need to be worn.
However, our state regulations still says masks
needed to be worn outdoors
but one of the questions that was posed to me
and I checked with our local health department.
What constitutes outdoors?
If you have a farm market building that has roll-up
garage doors and an open door in the back
is that considered an indoor area?
And the answer I had from our health department
is if there's at least one wall
on a quote, building that gets considered indoors.
So even if you had a tent, but still had a back wall
on the tent, they were considering that indoors.
So I don't know how every health department
or every authority is going to interpret what is indoors
and what is outdoors.
But here in our local health department
in the county, anything that had at least
one wall was considered an indoor area.
So it's always good to check with your local authorities.
And then again perception is everything with your customers.
- Those health authorities must have a fit when they go
into the cities and see the new outdoor dining facilities
built in front of every restaurant that have walls
on three out of four sides.
- Again, Rick it's interpretation and perception.
- Yep, so I'm surprised it hasn't come up here
this evening yet because I would say I probably had no less
than 10 conversations already this week
about this here in New Jersey.
Right now, New Jersey is in the process of lifting
pretty substantially a lot of the executive order limits.
So for example folks who were in New Jersey two months ago
we had an outdoor gathering limit of about 25.
It quickly went up to 50, it was at 200 for a little while.
Just this past Friday, I believe it was,
I believe it went to 500.
And if my memory serves,
I think it's the 17th or the 19th of May,
the Governor anticipates
lifting the outdoor gathering limit.
So last fall, that was a really challenging situation
for some of our bigger destination operations
which had a sensibly a limit of 500 people.
Well, what does that mean?
If you have a 500 acre farm versus a five acre farm,
500 people look decidedly different,
it's a decidedly different density.
So that was a challenge last year.
Now Michelle said, or Rick or both
said something very important.
So even if the outdoor gathering limits are suspended,
masking at the time being here in New Jersey
and six foot distancing
for the time being here in New Jersey are still in effect.
So one of the challenges that I think some of our growers
are starting to concern themselves with
is how do you balance the expectation of the consumer,
the visitor that basically,
"Hey, no outdoor gathering limits."
Well, but there is a distancing requirement.
So a number of growers, a few of the growers I spoke
to this week are still wondering
should they do advanced ticketing
so that they can actually control populations?
Because I think what they're really concerned
about on one hand, it's wonderful for business
when you have a surge of people at the gate
but again they need to be mindful
of their ability to maintain proper distancing
and so forth on the farm.
So I don't know how folks are thinking about this right now
but it's a real consideration,
Ashley and some of the others that I recognize
from down here in New Jersey
I think that's gonna be a challenge for us.
So again, you may very well still consider things
like time ticketing, advanced ticketing
but I would say that the challenge that you will face
and we face it in Extension because we're here to serve you.
And we don't have all the answers like Stuart
claimed earlier is that it's important to set expectations.
And that's something Michelle said in her introductory
remarks where having very good communication
on your websites, social media, about expectations
whether it be masking or maintaining distance.
And again, it might be also an opportunity to message
if you are trying to reduce crowds on your farm
that you're still accepting or will be accepting
time ticketing or other preregistration for events,
activities and so forth.
So I'd be curious to know
if anybody has thoughts or concerns about that
in their operations and what you're thinking if you do.
That's a great question, Brian
and I'll invite anyone who has thoughts,
type it into the chat or raise your hand
and we'll unmute you and you can share.
In the meantime though while you're thinking of an answer
for that, we've got another question that I sure don't know
how to answer.
Which is a question from Richard,
"What is our responsibility to our employees
"if they do not want to get vaccinated and then get sick
"with the virus?"
Anyone wanna take a shot at that one?
- Michelle bounced it to me and I think Meredith
is also part of the team that's working here
on trying to assist our farmers in any way
that we can to help get their labor force vaccinated.
But it's still a personal choice on there
and you can't force them.
Although, I did hear from one legal advisor that says,
yes, you can make that a condition of employment.
I see a Ben Casella from New Jersey Farm Bureau
also showed his face which means he might wanna respond
to this as well.
But certainly I don't know that there's
any legal responsibility but that would be something
that a good lawyer is going to have to advise you on.
And, or we need to dig it out of the Department of Labor.
Ben, you wanna respond?
- Sure, Rick.
My name is Ben Casella, I work for New Jersey Farm Bureau.
And I handle a lot of the labor issues
for the Farm Bureau in New Jersey.
And what Rick said is on point as far as you know,
there's been a lot of discussion.
Can you mandate vaccinations?
There's been some written determinations based on guidelines
from the EOC that you can, I know our advice
is you definitely want to consult with your attorney
before you put those practices in.
I know there has been some farms in other states
have done that but in answer to the question
I mean in New Jersey, we have a paid sick leave law.
So if a worker does get sick
they're obligated to collect 40 hours of sick time.
So there is an obligation as far as missing work and pay.
Then we also have guidelines for farm workers in New Jersey
from our Department of Health and Department of Labor.
And within that you're obligated to provide some services
as far as quarantine area and so forth to meet that.
So there is still a responsibility
from the employer to workers that are sick
and it is an issue as far as if they deny to get vaccinated
that's a decision of the employee
and then a decision of the employer
how they want to handle that.
But like I said, it's something that would be needed
to be handled carefully.
And with consultation with your attorney
is the best advice I could give.
- Thanks, Ben.
We're getting close to the top of the hour
and I wanna be respectful of everyone's time.
So I've got a few minutes of closing remarks
just basically telling you what's coming up next.
But before I show a final slide and talk about
what's coming up next in terms of these online sessions,
I just wanna turn to Michelle, Brian
and the rest of the Rutgers crew, closing remarks,
last questions you wanna make sure we touch on today.
- I'll start and let Brian finish.
But I just wanna say thank you, Lisa, for inviting us.
And if anyone needs getting contact with us,
our information's on our website, the checklists are there,
there's other resources too, we have training videos
for on farm safety, for agritourism,
as well as some slide sets for ag service providers
or Extension people like can be used generically
if you're doing any trainings.
And I wanna thank Brian because he really got the ball
rolling in New Jersey with that grant.
And it's been I guess, gosh, 11 and 12 years ago,
we completed that project.
But thank you again.
And we look forward to participating more in the future.
- And I'll just add Lisa, thank you again
as I said, my opening comments
we're all trying to figure this out folks.
And in some cases the grower community is ahead of us.
In other cases, we're trying to get information
more proactively so I think the good news
is that since signals are positive,
we're going in the right direction
but I would just really urge careful consideration.
And as I said, my new kind of catchphrase these days
is just be conspicuous with your efforts to do things right,
right in terms of obviously compliance
but also right in terms of what the consumer
or the customer expects because ultimately
there's going to be a lot of perception issues
and comfort levels that you're gonna have to contend
with outside of what states executive orders
or federal guidance dictates.
So we're here to serve you, we might not have the answers.
I was laughing when Stuart Farnham made his comment,
we don't have all the answers either
but we're certainly here to work with you.
- Brian and Michelle and Rick
and the rest of the folks from Rutgers.
Thank you so much for joining us today
and thanks to everyone else who joined us today.
Those of you who registered and sent questions in advance
as well as folks are typing into chat
and unmuting and sharing your stories and experiences.
We're planning to do a series of these
for the next few Tuesdays.
So next Tuesday, same time again with Gad,
a colleague from Rutgers talking about crisis management
and communications for farms open to visitors.
So dealing with the question of
what if something goes wrong?
How do you deal with it?
And also how do you communicate?
How do you tell your story
about what happened on the farm rather than just being
at the mercy of media?
How do you manage the PR as well
as how do you deal with the actual situation?
And then the next Tuesday, May 25th,
we've got a noontime session with Stuart Farnum
talking about liability insurance.
And then planning head to June 1st,
we're looking at farm and food safety in particular.
And we're working with some colleagues
at University of New Hampshire Extension, Mary Choate
and Jada Lindblom and they are working
with a couple of farms in New Hampshire
and are doing videos, guided tours of best practices
and considerations.
So that will be a fun one where we've got some videos.
All of this information is on our website
and Carrie we'll put the website link into the chat
so you can click right on it if you wanna register,
we'll also follow up with an email
and I'll mention that one other part of this program.
So we're able to do this thanks to support
from the Northeast Extension Risk Management
Education Center funded by a grant from the USDA,
National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
And part of the grant also allows for on-farm visits.
So we've got a team of folks led by Chadley Hollis
out of Vermont, but working with colleagues
throughout the Northeast, who is willing to visit farms.
So like Brian was saying right at the beginning,
a farmer can walk around with their eyes closed
and they know where all the obstacles are,
where are the barriers are.
And that they're not even thinking about it,
can be really helpful to get a fresh set of eyes.
Someone who's never been to your farm
and who's walking around like a visitor.
So if that's something you're interested in,
go to our website and there's a form there
that you can fill out and then we'll coordinate
with colleagues in the respective states,
wherever you happen to be in the Northeast
and plan a farm visit and work with you
on a farm safety plan.
And that's about it for tonight.
So in closing, I just wanna once again
thank all of you and hopefully
we'll see you again next Tuesday or perhaps another Tuesday
and maybe even on your farm.
Thanks so much, everyone.