You can stay anywhere. I mean you can
stay in a hotel, you could stay in an
Airbnb in somebody's basement, but we try to
offer something for families that's a
little bit different. We have such a
strong passion for agriculture and we
like to share it with others, but they
need to be educated on how important
agriculture is in their lives. There's
only 1% of us out there to feed the
whole country. They feel really connected
when they're having like an
Agritourism experience.
My husband Donnie and I own Brookdale
Farms and that is a
diversified dairy operation. You know dairy life
is a roller coaster ride
so in order to save the farm, we
diversified the farm.
In the greenhouses we do educational 
classes as far as how to
grow vegetables, we do pavilion parties
all spring and summer long, and
throughout the entire year we do an
event building.
Family Roots Farm, it's
definitely a family operation. We have a
produce side of things and we also have a maple syrup. And we ventured into
Agritourism here in the last couple years
and if it wasn't for our family, we
wouldn't be able to pull off Agritourism events or even the general
labor of the farm. It's all family
operation. We enjoy having people visit
our farm so we can educate them on how
we either make maple syrup or how
we maybe grow strawberries.
My husband John and I operate a
bed and breakfast here and then we also
have a pick-your-own strawberry farm.
I feel like the Agritourism is just, first
of all we're here, we're serving local
fresh food with our breakfasts and also
giving people an opportunity to visit
our farm in the month of May to pick
strawberries. And we do have people that
come and stay with us to pick the
strawberries, too.
WVU Extension Service has
been a prime resource for us to grow our
business and especially expand our local
Extension officer is kind of who got us
connected when we got started five or
six years ago and then we just gained
more resources through Extension and
more experts and it's how our business
has grown.
We don't have a lot of staff
at Brookdale so we kind of count on
people coming in and helping us so
there's been a lot of people through the
Extension that's helped us get to where
we are today.
Sometimes we take for granted that we
have all of this beautiful, abundant
wildlife around us. You know, this is a
great culture that we're handed and I
think within West Virginia we have so
many opportunities in agriculture to
expand and diversify agriculture and
supply a lot more food in the state of
West Virginia for our residents.
