Living an Iowa Farm Experience (LIFE)
Farm Tourism Program
If you are a tour operator, this area is for you! To find out more about the programs described here, contact Silos & Smokestacks office at 319-234-4567.
Click here to view video testimonial
Silos & Smokestacks National Heritage Area can build you an itinerary that will bring the story of American agriculture to life through visits to working farms and farm businesses. We can select from over 100 farms and businesses (in addition to the 106 partnering museums and attractions listed on this under Sites & Attractions to create a unique heartland experience that your travelers will never forget. Here are just a few of the experiences you can offer your travelers in Silos & Smokestacks country:
- Get close to a family still farming with horses…
- Watch them harnessing their horses…
- Visit the family’s century-old farmhouse and feel the heat from the wood cook stove…
- Hold the reins on a pair of 1800-pound work horses…
- Tour a modern dairy barn where 1000 cows are milked three times a day…
- Put on plastic booties, go into the milking parlor and observe the milking…
- Bottle-feed a calf by hand…
- Talk to the farmer about his operation…
- Go inside a Mississippi River cave where 8 million bushels of corn are stored…
- See the mountains of corn…
- Watch barges being loaded on the river…
- Eat a cowboy breakfast from an open fire in Iowa cattle country…
- Lift one of your fellow travelers with an old-fashioned block and tackle…
- Learn how Iowa farmers conserve precious resources of land and water…
- Climb up into a modern $150,000 grain harvester…
- Tour a modern tractor factory by tram…
- Handle merchandise in a general store where the first tractor was invented…
The Memory Business
Silos & Smokestacks National Heritage Area can offer you memories of times gone by and hints of what is yet to come. America’s agricultural heritage is at the heart of our story, but we’re also devoted to the latest technology in producing and processing food. We can get you up close and personal with Iowa’s farmers and agricultural businesses. Yes, we have wonderful museums that tell the story of our heritage. But we also make it possible for you to meet and ask questions of the people living out the story of agriculture day by day as they labor to put food on the world’s table.
Northeast Iowa was designated by Congress as a National Heritage Area because of our diversity of farms and businesses. This is the living landscape we call Silos & Smokestacks National Heritage Area.
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