uc anr-drec farm smart

Tours are only available January & February. Visit the website for info. GPS took us right to the location. We arrived at 9 am to find coffee/tea, hot chocolate, popcorn, cooking demonstration. Every person was given a large orange tarp bag, water & ticket number. Program began at 9:30 am. We were divided into 2 groups, ours went first on the wagon field tour & to pick our vegetables & the other group went into a classroom setting to learn about the Yuma/Imperial Valley agriculture. We met back for lunch & then changed. Lunch was a chicken salad with all the fixings. Very tasty!! Also included soda or water. It was also nice to have entertainment after lunch. At 3 pm we met back for ice cream bar & prizes from the tickets we were given when we arrived.If I was to do this again I would do it earlier. We waited until the end of February and there was no broccoli, cauliflower left. I was also was surprised that onions, carrots, potatoes were not available. That being said it still was a great day of education & fun.

This is a delightful mixture of an educational presentation and the chance to get out amongst the myriad crops grown here. You get a couple of chances to pick whatever is in season and eat on the spot or take home. In between is a cooking demonstration and delicious lunch. Seems to be popular with RV snowbirds. Ours was the only car out of 25 or so with CA plates.

I went with 2 other couples and we found it to be very informative. The salad for lunch, ice cream and prizes were just icing on the cake. The program really helps you realize how endangered the farms and food growers are. We loved picking the fresh vegetables too.

We had a very educational, gourmet, musically fun, and enjoyable visit!!! I was emotionally touched by the music as it was the "anniworsary" of my parents car crash on their way toan old time dance!!!

Thank you for the review! We will advise staff to suggest that a small, sturdy, holstered knife would be appropriate for guests. We don't want people bringing large knives or machetes for liability reasons. All tractor drivers and tour guides also carry large harvesting knives and are happy to assist. Thank you so much for referring your friends to us; that is the highest compliment we could receive.

This was an excellent program. We learned a lot about farming in the Imperial Valley of California and also a little bit about the Yuma, Arizona agricultural scene. It was more than just a farm tour. It was a combination of some classroom education, all very interesting. A very nice lunch of chef salad with fresh ingredients was provided followed by a tour of the fields where we were given large sacks and the freedom to pick as much produce as we wanted. Ended the day with ice cream and a handout folder including some recipe books. All in all a great bargain for only $20 per person. Highly recommend.

What a beautiful day to spend at the farm! The leaders and volunteers were the best - the gal who did the PowerPoint was as good or better than my college professors!! I googled U of California and Farm Smart and registered online. It cost $20.00 but was worth every penny. We had coffee and popcorn when we arrived, and a delicious salad luncheon at noon, and ice cream at 2:00 with door prizes before we left! After lunch we boarded the wagon for a tour of the research fields and to fill our big, orange sacks with all the wonderful, fresh vegetables we could pick! We drove there from Palm Springs via I-10 and 86, which is a nice 4 lane, and stopped to see the Sultan Sea on the way home.

You know you had a great experience when you still talk about it three weeks later. To get away from the January cold of Chicago my wife and I took a two week trip to the southwest. We spent 5 days in Yuma, AZ during the first part of our getaway. We happened to see a flier about Farm Smart at the Yuma visitors center and thought it would be interesting to check out. Our expectations were that we would walk around a vegetable farm and see how they were harvested.To say they over delivered would be an understatement. Our expectations were way exceeded! Most notable was the passion displayed in our classroom session by Nancy. Very professional and delivered in a way that allows a person to retain the information being shared. We are so much more aware of what is happening to our finite resource of "tillable" land. We have a much greater understanding of how irrigation works and the role migrant workers have in the process.In addition to the class room time we also took a hay wagon ride out to the fields where we saw cows, owls, and dug up our own vegetables. I'm not just talking a few vegetables. We were provided a large burlap sack that we filled with broccoli, cauliflower, radishes, lettuce, and other veggies. This was a lot of fun. My wife and I felt like little kids out there on an easter egg hunt. We kept looking at each other and smiling while we added more veggies to our bags. Fun, fun, fun!!!Then we had this awesome lunch with live music. It was none other than Nancy on the fiddle and her husband on the guitar. They had a raffle during the lunch where I suspect just about everyone won something. To repeat, the experience was so much more than anything we could have expected for $20 bucks a person. It was only an hours drive from Yuma. We are seasoned travelers. I'm also in the tourism industry. I can't think of any experience that puts on a better venue from beginning to end than the Farm Smart organizers.Definitely worth returning and doing again.

This is a great day out in the fresh air and sunshine. We went with a group of 112 people and I did not hear one bad comment from anyone. The hay ride out to the fields to pick your own veggies was a hoot and everyone enjoyed getting their hands into those nice green leafs. It certainly opens your eyes up to see how labor intensive it is to get those veggies from the planting to your table. Nancy, Al and all the volunteers were just great. Thanks to all of you for making it a day to be remembered.

This is a great program. There was an interesting class room program explaining commercial farming in the Imperial Valley, followed by a salad lunch and then a tour of the fields to hand pick a selection of ready to eat vegetables. It was very informative and we will have fresh vegetables for a week. Cost is very reasonable at $20