County Harvest Hosts offer rural experience

Last week, Canadians Curtis and Ellen Abbott stopped at an unusual camping spot in Rock County, choosing a view they don’t normally see from their New Brunswick home.
“Everywhere I look, it is just fields,” Ellen said.
“Nothing but food,” Curtis observed.
The couple, along with their Australian shepherd, Misty, stayed at one of four “Harvest Hosts” camping sites in Rock County.
The Abbotts chose the site named “Family Farm on the Prairie.”
The Feikema family establish the prairie camping site three years ago, on an acreage site in Denver Township along 100th Avenue, away from their cattle feedlot.
“Since then, we’ve had hundreds of campers,” said Becky Feikema. “Several stay each week during the season from the end of April through October.”
Campers like the Abbotts are Harvest Hosts members.
The online site harvesthosts.com touts itself as “a recreational vehicle membership program that allows self-contained travelers to overnight at unique locations throughout the U.S. including farms, wineries, breweries, golf courses, museums and attractions for amazing experiences.”
The Abbotts agree their stays at several Harvest Hosts haven’t been boring, as they have learned interesting facts from the breweries and wineries they have stayed at so far.
It’s much more interesting than staying at Walmart parking lots as they did when passing through Maine.
At their stay on the prairie, they learned about corn varieties for cattle and humans.
“I didn’t realize the corn (at the Feikema site) is just for cattle,” Ellen said. “We get corn out of a can – we get four ears to a can.”
They said they’ll stay at other Harvest Hosts as they make their way to Utah, where they will view the annular solar eclipse on Oct. 14.
“We want to get a feel of different areas (across the U.S.),” Ellen said.
Harvest Hosts include 5,000 sites across the U.S.
Rock County’s three other sites are titled “Tap Room with a View” at Take 16 Brewing, “Pottery Studio and Art Gallery” at the Deuschle acreage north of Luverne, and “Farm Camping with a 130-year-old Farmstead” in rural Rock County.
Stays at Harvest Hosts sites are free, but visitors drive or pull in self -contained campers. No water or sewer hookups are available.
“We kindly ask our members to support their hosts by purchasing one of the local products with each stay,” the website advocated.
For the Feikema family, maintaining a Harvest Hosts site for free is part of their agriculture advocacy.
“We wanted to open the experience of living on a farm,” Feikema said.