Primarily a vegetable farm, Pheasant Fields Farm practices agritourism and hopes to spread the importance of farm produce to the general public. The owner of the farm, Nikki Johanson, believes that people should see the importance of farms. Unfortunately, because of the pandemic, the farm had to deal with problems that so many others had to deal with too. It also brought light to the importance of agriculture for the community.

There were no massive repercussions during the lockdown except for when Johanson had back surgery and fractured a bone which caused her to end up closing operations of the farm until operations would resume for the fall season in October. Opening up for the fall season came with many frustrations.

“Last year restrictions were removed from COVID and we had it was the first opportunity that people could get out, ” said Johanson, “so we had a boom in business. So food concession did extremely well. And business, in general, was good.”

The pandemic allowed people to appreciate and be aware of farm produce and what they’re eating. People became more knowledgeable of what they were consuming, and this has caused business to be good for the farm, but people coming back outside from the difficulties of the pandemic caused some hardships for Johanson.

“People are very belligerent, ” says  Johanson, “but we don’t have enough men prior power here to police it and some people can be very belligerent.”

Pheasant Fields requires everyone to wear masks. Johanson is even willing to escort people out of the farm if they do not cooperate, but luckily she has found that most people tend to be cooperative. Her main problem is that she doesn’t have the people to enforce their restrictions.

“We are usually open from the first of April until the 31st of October,” said Johanson, “But given my circumstances, I couldn’t farm and you can’t find anybody with experience in farming anymore. And it’s really hard to find anybody at all that wants to work.”

She believes that the pandemic has made a lot of people lazy, and that the work ethic is lacking. Despite that, she looked forward to the end of October.

“I expect that business will will be really good. This last week, were expected to get torrential rains,” Johanson says, “But that doesn’t dampen the spirits of people.”