If grape prices are going down, are there other ways to make money from a farm? That was the task facing growers in Lodi, where more than 10,000 acres of vines were pulled out over the last year.
At the Unified Grape & Wine Symposium, a well-attended session presented a compelling array of alternatives with creative responses to the challenge of making income from catering to other income streams. Lodi Winegrape Commission’s Stephanie Bolton, Ph.D., the group’s director of grower research and education, presented the session title, “Getting Off the Hamster Wheel: Whole Farm Profitability,” which featured two success stories followed by 15 individual, interactive table discussions, including Agritourism: Farmstays and Visits, ChatGPT for a Business Plan, Cash Crop Hedgerows, Animal Agrotourism and more.
Marketing Farm Experiences and Promoting Community Connections
The inspiration for the Whole Farm session started in 2023, when Bolton was awarded a Nuffield International farming scholarship, which funded a visit to Japan to learn new ideas to bring back home.
“In Japan, I learned what can happen when the family farm dies off, and what we can do in America to help prevent that from happening,” she said.
Growers in Japan selling to the large grocery store chains faced declining profits and began to lose interest in farming. “A large percentage of farmland in Japan was, and still is, abandoned,” she said.
But then things changed; a direct-to-consumer movement reinvigorated people and profits.
Said Bolton, “Once the remaining farmers broke away from selling to the large grocery stores and started selling directly to consumers, they told us they felt more connected and inspired to raise the quality of their produce, and they wanted to make people smile from enjoying their products. The energy came back, and so did the profits and the younger people.”
Bolton said there is vast potential for income-generating activities that growers can add to their farms, including fulfilling a need many people have to be more engaged with the land, and the session illustrated that with local case studies from Lodi growers.
One Option: Farmstays
Together, Bolton and Rachael Callahan, the statewide agritourism coordinator for UC ANR, went to the World Agritourism Congress in Italy last year. “I learned out of the 2 million farms in the U.S., there are only about 154,000 of them with direct sales and or agritourism,” Bolton said.
The state’s website helps would-be farmstay providers connect to resources.
“We are missing an opportunity to connect with people and earn extra income,” Bolton said. “Wine tastings are fun, but let’s also give people educational farm experiences. Our vineyards are so gorgeous.
“You live in beautiful places, and a sunset walk through a vineyard or a picnic next to a river may not seem like a big deal to you, but to people that don’t have regular access to that, it’s amazing. The opportunities to create educational agritourism experiences are boundless, and unlike with grapes, the demand for these agritourism experiences is higher than the supply.”
As evidence, Bolton pointed to the popularity of a YouTube channel called Country Life Vlog, the story of a farm in Azerbaijan, which has more than 7 million followers and 2.2 billion page views.
The program then showcased three speakers who have found their way to income producing projects.
From Novice Winegrower to Successful Influencer – Tara’s Story
Tara Beaver grew up in the Sacramento River delta. Her dad grew alfalfa and corn, but she never thought she herself would become a grower. “While I was in college, I quickly realized I had no idea what I wanted to do, and I ended up dropping out,” she said.
Beaver returned to her family’s farm and ended up at the California Farm Academy at the Center for Land-Based Learning. “The seven-month course is hands-on in the field, learning about all different areas of agriculture,” she said.
It was there that she discovered what she really wanted to do: Plant a vineyard.
“The most important thing for me was we ended the program with a business plan where they had landowners and bankers come in, and we presented our business plan to them,” Beaver said. “That was vital for me, and my business plan was called Beaver Vineyards. So, that is how I ended my first year of farming in 2015 once I decided I wanted to plant a vineyard.”
She wound up taking viticulture and enology classes at Napa Valley Community College and planted her 50 acres of Sauvignon Blanc vines on leased ground in 2018.
When friends and family wanted to keep up with her activities, Beaver started posting on social media, and kapow. “I had no idea that there was already a huge agricultural community on social media. I was just totally oblivious to it, and once I started sharing [on Instagram], the followers just started coming.”
She now has 34,000+ followers on Instagram.
More followers came once Beaver started a YouTube channel, which now has 22,000+ subscribers and 3 million views. Over time, she’s come to represent top brands like Carhartt, Ford and New Holland, and even launched her own line of merchandise.
Beaver and her dad both wear Carhartt, so she started tagging photos #Carhartt. “They reached out to me and said, ‘Hey, can we send you some clothes?’” So she said, ‘Send it on over.’
“Then they ended up asking me to be a Friend of Carhartt. So I signed on with a long-term partnership with them. I have yearlong brand deals, and it brings in income which was especially good in 2023 when things were starting to look a little rough on grape sales. I was able to really focus on my income coming from social media. Any income I was getting off the farm was going right back into the farm.
“And since I’m the first generation with the vineyard, I cry sometimes when I look at my ag loan. So, any money I can put back into the farm, that’s what I want. I was able to sort of live off my social media income.
“Working with brands that you truly love already is the easiest. I went through a period of trying to force myself to work with brands that would reach out to me, but there wasn’t quite that organic connection. I feel like Carhartt really changed that for me, because it was like, ‘Oh, it’s not so much work when I truly, truly love this brand.’”
Social media then led her in a direction she never thought it would: Wine from her own vineyard, thanks to a casual relationship she developed over time with Boeger Winery.
“They reached out to me when I first started my social media,” Beaver said. “I hadn’t even had my first harvest yet, and they were like, ‘Why don’t you come up and you can experience harvest…’ It was just them being super nice and great people. And in 2018, I got to harvest with them.
“Then in 2023, I filled my existing contract and no one else was interested in my grapes… so they came down to my vineyard, they picked a few tons, and they made a bottle containing 90% of my grapes.”
She has also had the opportunity to work with Ford. “I test drive vehicles for them. I get paid for it. And I’ve gotten to do some trips with them (available on YouTube),” she said.
Beaver also works with YouTube on agriculture content to put in front of people. “That’s so important,” she said.
She also got to be on the cover of New Holland’s magazine Acres. “I drive New Holland tractors. That’s another really organic partnership. I just tagged them whenever I posted a picture with the New Holland tractor in the background, and then they eventually reached out to me.”
Beaver shared a quote in her presentation slides: “Dreaming big can lead to the unexpected opportunities that transform your life completely.”
“That’s what I feel like social media did for me,” Beaver said. “I wanted to be a farmer, and I told people. I don’t make wine because I want to be in the dirt. I want to be in the field every day. I did not imagine that I was going to be doing trips with brands because of social media. So, it really has transformed my life. And the income has been huge. Because there’s years where I’m like, ‘I don’t really want to pay myself this year because I just need to put it back in the farm; this year is rough, you know?…’ That’s why we have to diversify, because it does get rough, and this has helped me so much.”
U-Pick Cherries: The Stokes’ Pick N Cherish
When both grape and cherry prices weren’t doing well, fourth-generation growers Bill and Jacylyn Stokes of Stokes Vineyards decided to dive in and start a U-Pick cherry operation they named ‘Pick N Cherish.’
They bought a popup tent and a picnic table and started posting on social media. “We put it all together in a month,” Bill said. “I didn’t know how it was going to happen. We just did it anyway, and it worked out well.
“People were out there picking… they’d see a bug and they’d say, ‘You must be organic because I saw a bug in your field.’ I said, ‘No, that could be a good bug or bad bug, depending what kind of bug it was.’
“So many people came out there and picked cherries. And they said, ‘I’ve never touched a cherry tree in my life, but I’ve eaten cherries for years.’
“The cherry orchard is surrounded by grapes,” Bill continued. “And a couple times, a lady would come up and say, ‘I lost my husband. I know where he’s at, he would be out walking in the vineyard.’ And then later, ‘Can we come pick the grapes?’ I said, ‘Well, you can, but they’re wine grapes, not table grapes.’ ‘Well, who do you sell them to?’ The visitors wanted to come back and help at harvest time.”
It also led to more interest in the wine from those vines. “The visitors would say, ‘We’re going to start buying that wine now because now we know how it’s raised,” Bill said.
Bill also appreciated the simplicity of a direct relationship with the consumer.
“I got an education, and you know what? It was pure profit. I didn’t have a labor contractor bill. I didn’t have packing charges. I didn’t have to buy a container. I didn’t have to wait and see what was going to happen, what market it went to, if it went to Japan, China. It stayed local.
“This year, we’re going to put the honey in with the cherries,” Bill said, coordinating with his beekeeper. “Now, they’re going to be able to get the honey from the cherries. It actually came from that particular orchard, and that, I think, is going to be a big hit. It’s just a lot of fun.”
Marketing was lowkey but effective. “The outreach was really important,” said Jaclyn. “We kept it simple; we did a Facebook page as opposed to a website.”
In 2025, they are launching a website. The Stokes posted flyers at their local UPS, U.S. Postal Service stores, coffee shops and kids’ schools, “because obviously we wanted this to be a family thing. And we also got a big sign and put it near the freeway. We have a ranch right off the freeway.”
The Stokes found synergies with a nearby blueberry U-Pick. “We took our flyer over there, and we brought people to that,” Jaclyn said. “And it was a whole U-Pick day for people, and they were absolutely obsessed with it.
“People want to be outside,” she continued. “They want to be in nature. They crave it. It’s something that takes a couple hours, and kids really enjoy it, and parents too. One guy came every single day at the very end, we stayed open for him as he spent about an hour and a half picking his own cherries.
“We did it just one weekend to start, and we had enough people show up that we were like, ‘Oh, we should have done this Thursday or Sunday or more. And so we did two or three more weekends, and you’re seeing everyone come as families, something that was the most rewarding.”
In terms of profitability, the Stokes said volume might be lower, but they had much more control of the margins.
“All the local visitors support local,” Jaclyn said. “That’s a thing that we’re seeing move up.”
The Stokes were also social media-savvy in the U-Pick experience offered, Jaclyn said. “Our first year, we did a photo booth so people could take photos… People want to take a photo. We’re all about bragging about our lives here.”
The family sees a lot of potential for growth. “You might be surprised we are helping neighborhood farmers get set up with it. We have a peach farmer that’s asked us to help, and there’s that blueberry farm nearby. So, there are other ways to get that stream of income and get direct-to-consumer that can benefit you as a farmer.
“The whole thing is about whole farm profitability, and like my dad said, we just wanted to give it a shot to see what happened. And it was sufficient enough that we’re going to keep going,” Jaclyn said.
“There’s a lot of ways we can take this. We can do field trips. We can do private tours at our local schools or any type of daycare. There’s a lot of room for growth. And we really got momentum with this. You know, the idea of telling the story of pollination with the honey is something that was really easy for us to incorporate… we’re going to do [it] this year.”
