Open Farms coming together, extra help comes on

Jeff Green | Jul 28, 2021

Frontenac County’s popular Open Farms event will be returning this September 10-12 as a hybrid event, with both an in person and a virtual component.

The event took place as an in-person farm tour in 2018 and 2019, and as a series of Zoom events, for students and the public, in 2020.

In order to handle all of the tasks involved in organising, marketing, and coordinating Open Farms, the Frontenac County Economic Development department went looking for help, and found it from one of the partner organisations, that has helped market Open Farms in the past, the provincially funded and mandated Regional Tourist Organisation for South Eastern Ontario (RT0 9).

Steve Weir, the marketing and communications manager for RTO 9, will spend two days a week working on Open Farms for the next two months, under a contractual arrangement between RTO9 and Frontenac County.

In proposing that Frontenac County Council approve the arrangement, Frontenac County's community development officer, Alison Vandervelde (who has been at the centre of Open Farms since it started up 4 years ago), said: “This is a pretty complex year for open farms. It is not only a hybrid event but an in- person event as well. There is also a new level of complexity because we are now collaborating with both the City of Kingston and South Frontenac to put it on, which is a great thing but it needs to be managed. With Steve's experience, we can ensure that Open Farms comes off without a hitch. He has huge experience in event planning. He ran the Brockville Tall Ships Festival. His help will be really, really valuable. It will be valuable for me in particular,” Vendervelde told Council.

Mr. Weir will provide support across all aspects of event execution” said a report to Council regarding the arrangement with RTO9, “specifically in the following areas: marketing efforts – coordinating activities across all partner agencies: stakeholder relations - ensuring timely communications with event participants and partners: administrative tasks – maintaining organisation of information related to executing the event in compliance with public health regulations: reporting out – tracking and compiling data to inform event evaluation.”

Details about the financial arrangement were not included in the report to Council, but the money is available within the 2021 budget for Open Farms, which includes an $8,000 upset limit for contracting out temporary support for execution of the event.

The Frontenac County Economic Development Department has 2 members, and one of them, Manager for Economic Development, is off on paternity leave for part of the summer. The County also has a Communications Officer on staff.

It is possible that Open Farms will include an online reservation system, with time schedules, in order to manage attendance at the farms who are participating, within the confines of both the capacity of the farmers to deal with crowds, and any potential COVID protocols that will be in place in September.

Details about Open Farms should be available in early August, and will be posted in the Frontenac News when they are available.

In the past, farms in South Frontenac and Rural Kingston have participated.