FARM TOURS · AROUND THE WORLD
Spend a day where the food is grown.
Olive groves above the Amalfi Coast, pepper farms in Kampot, reindeer herders in Lapland, pineapple fields on Maui. Reviews of the working farms, orchards and vineyards worth the trip, and how to book a day on them.
Worth the trip for the farm alone
Three places the farm is the reason to go.
Plenty of destinations have a farm you can visit on the side. In Rovaniemi, Chiang Mai and Sorrento the farm is the day: the reindeer sled, the pick-and-cook morning, the long lunch in the olive grove. The visits travellers come home talking about.
Lapland, Finland
Rovaniemi
On the edge of the Arctic Circle, the farms raise reindeer and husky teams and run on snow for half the year. You harness a sled, ride out across the frozen forest, feed the herd by hand and sit by the fire for salmon soup while a herding family explains a way of life most travellers never see up close. No farm visit anywhere feels quite like it.
- 1 Rovaniemi: Husky Farm and Reindeer Experience
- 2 Rovaniemi: Authentic Reindeer Farm Visit & Short Sleigh Ride
- 3 Rovaniemi: Santa’s Village & Snowmobiling to Reindeer Farm
Thailand
Chiang Mai
In the hills around the city, organic farms turn the morning into a lesson you can taste. You walk the beds picking lemongrass, galangal and chillies, learn how a Thai kitchen reads its garden, then cook three or four dishes from what you gathered. Few places connect the field to the plate as directly, or send you home able to do it again.
- 1 Half-Day Thai Cooking Class at Organic Farm in Chiang Mai
- 2 Chiang Mai: Authentic Cooking Class with Market & Farm Visit
- 3 Chiang Mai: Cooking Class with Organic Farm at Mama Noi
Italy
Sorrento
The Sorrentine hills are terraced with lemon groves and olive trees, and the family farms still press their own oil and stretch their own mozzarella. A visit walks you through the grove and the press, the cheese room and the limoncello cellar, then sits you down to a long farm lunch of everything you just watched being made. The coast in a single, slow afternoon.
- 1 Sorrento Farm and Food Experience including Olive Oil, Limoncello, Wine tasting
- 2 Sorrento: Pizza Lesson, Wine, and Limoncello at a Local Farm
- 3 Pizza School with Wine and Limoncello Tasting in a Local Farm
If you only book one
The farm visit more travellers rave about than any other.
Out of every farm on the site, this is the one that sends people home telling everyone they know to go.
The crowd-pleasers
The Most Popular Farm Tours Right Now
Lapland reindeer farms, Chiang Mai cooking gardens, Tuscan olive estates, Kampot pepper plantations. The visits travellers are happiest they booked.
Start with a region
The best farm tours, region by region.
Sorrento for the olive and lemon groves, Kampot for the pepper plantations, Rovaniemi for the reindeer farms. Pick where you are headed and we will show you the farms worth the trip there.
What kind of farm
Three very different days in the field.
A farm tour is a grove lunch in one country and a husky harness in another. Each of these is a region the site covers deeply, and a completely different kind of farm day waiting at the end of it.
Maui
The whole island grows something.
Maui farms what the volcanic soil and the trade winds will give: pineapple in Haliimaile, cacao and coffee on the slopes, lavender at altitude, goat cheese and tropical fruit you have never heard of. A farm tour walks you through the rows, hands you the fruit straight off the plant, and ends with a tasting of what the place is known for.
See the best Maui farm tours →Crete
Olive country, the old way.
Inland from Heraklion the hills are silver with olive trees, and the family mills still press the first cold oil of the season the way they have for generations. A farm day takes you up to the groves and the stone mill, out to the village gardens and the dragon-fruit and herb plots, and sits you down to a long Cretan lunch with the oil you just tasted being pressed.
See the best Crete farm tours →Zanzibar
The island that smells of cloves.
Zanzibar earned the name Spice Island the hard way, and the farms inland from Stone Town still grow the clove, vanilla, nutmeg, cinnamon and cardamom that built it. A spice-farm tour walks you through the trees and vines, crushing leaves and bark to guess each one by smell, before a cook turns the harvest into lunch and you climb a palm for a fresh coconut.
See the best Zanzibar spice farm tours →Kampot, Cambodia
The pepper that chefs cross the world for.
Kampot pepper has its own protected name and a flavour the best kitchens pay a premium for, and the plantations sit in the green countryside between the river and the sea. A tour walks you down the vine rows to taste fresh green peppercorns straight off the stem, then loops in the salt fields, a cave temple and the crab market at Kep on the way back.
- 1 Kampot: Pepper Farm Tour, Salt Field, Cave & Secret Lake
- 2 Kampot: Full-day Countryside Tour with Pepper Farm and Kep
- 3 Kampot: Tuk Tuk Trip to Pepper Farm, Kep, Crab Market & More
By pace
How hands-on do you want the day to be?
A gentle grove lunch in Sorrento. A pick-it-then-cook-it morning in Chiang Mai. A full working day on a reindeer farm in Lapland. Pick the one that sounds like your kind of day in the field.
Just visit and taste
Sorrento, the easy afternoon.Walk a lemon grove and an olive press, watch mozzarella stretched by hand, and sit down to what the farm makes with a glass of its own wine. All of the harvest, none of the early start.
Get your hands in it
Chiang Mai, pick it then cook it.Pull herbs and vegetables from the beds with a local family, learn what each one does, then cook the curry you just gathered over a wok in the open kitchen. You leave knowing how the dish is built from the soil up.
A full day on the farm
Rovaniemi, into the working farm.Out to a reindeer and husky farm on the Arctic Circle: harness a team, take the sled out across the snow, feed the herd and learn how a herding family lives through the polar winter. A whole day inside a real working operation.
Chiang Mai
Pick it in the morning, eat it by noon.
In the hills around Chiang Mai, organic farms run the kind of cooking class that starts in the soil. You walk the beds pulling lemongrass, galangal, chillies and Thai basil, learn what each one does and why it goes where it goes, then cook three or four dishes from what you gathered in an open-air kitchen. You leave full, and able to make it all again at home.
See all 23 Chiang Mai farm tours →By region
Pick a region and find its farms.
Rovaniemi for the reindeer farms. Chiang Mai for the cooking gardens. Maui for the pineapple fields. Sorrento for the lemon groves. Florence for the Tuscan estates. Heraklion for the Cretan olive mills.
More places
More regions worth a farm day.
Big Island for the coffee and cacao, Oahu for the pineapple and shrimp farms, Reykjavik for the geothermal greenhouses, the Mekong for the fruit orchards. The rest of the map, ready when you are.
Three farm days
Pick a region, plan the day around the farm.
A geothermal greenhouse lunch in Iceland, a rice-field cooking morning in Bali, a high-country sheep station in New Zealand. Three regions, three completely different ways to spend a day on a farm.
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