Volusia County's longest-running agricultural showcase turns 45 this year, with organizers inviting residents to spend the Friday before Thanksgiving week weaving through local farms, horse ranches and a family apiary at no cost. The 45th annual Volusia County Farm Tour takes place Nov. 20, offering a self-guided look at an industry that quietly anchors a large piece of the county's economy.
The tour is free to attend, with advance registration requested, according to WFTV. It's presented by UF/IFAS Extension Volusia County and the Volusia County Farm Bureau, which this year partnered with seven local producers for the event, according to the UF/IFAS Extension Volusia County Farm Tour page. Participants can choose between two tracks, each built around three morning stops before converging for a shared finale.
Two Routes, Seven Working Farms
The first track runs through west Volusia, stopping at The Magnolia Company Farm and The Magnolia Company Nursery in Pierson, along with Vo-LaSalle Farms in DeLeon Springs, per WFTV's reporting. The second track heads east, visiting Bar J Performance Horses in Daytona Beach, Innovation Arabians in Port Orange and S&S Apiaries in New Smyrna Beach. Because the event is a self-guided driving tour, individual operations are open only during specified windows, so visitors plan their own route among the stops they want to see, according to a Volusia County tour information sheet.
Both tracks converge at Feral Ranch in Lake Helen, where the tour's final stop runs from 1 to 2:30 p.m. Guests there can meet Scottish Highland and miniature cattle, goats, miniature donkeys, emus, pigs and poultry. The finale also includes a UF/IFAS Extension open house, food trucks and cake marking the tour's 45th anniversary, with both routes converging for the celebration, per the same UF/IFAS Extension page.
A Tradition Dating to 1981
The Volusia County Farm Tour has been a fall tradition since 1981, making this year's event a milestone for a program that's run for nearly half a century. Last year's tour drew more than 250 Volusia County residents across six farms or agribusinesses, the extension office notes. The 2023 edition, billed as the 42nd annual tour, ran Nov. 17 from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. and partnered with eight local producers, including stops at Innovation Arabians, Benedict Farms, Yaupon Brothers American Tea Company and Longleaf Pine Preserve, according to a 2023 Farm Tour brochure distributed by UF/IFAS.
Why the Industry Still Matters Locally
The tour's return comes as Volusia County's agricultural sector keeps growing on paper. The county had 1,374 farms covering nearly 96,000 acres as of the 2022 USDA Census of Agriculture, and those farms sold $251 million in agricultural products that year — a 28% increase since 2017, per Volusia County figures cited by WFTV. Nursery, greenhouse, floriculture and sod products made up $240 million of that total, ranking Volusia fourth among Florida counties in that category.
Not every figure tells the same story, though. A 2017 USDA Census snapshot cited in UF/IFAS's 2023 brochure put the county at 1,575 farms on more than 114,284 acres, selling $196,391,000 in agricultural products that year — different totals than the 2022 figures, reflecting separate census years rather than a single trend line. Separately, UF/IFAS Extension's farm tour page states that agriculture contributes more than $780 million to the local economy annually, a figure in the same range as a 2008 impact study referenced in Volusia County's tour information sheet, which found the industry generated a $781 million annual economic impact and supported more than 8,300 jobs.
For residents, the numbers are mostly backdrop to a simpler pitch: a free day of exploring nearby farms, horse ranches and a family apiary that rarely open their gates to the public. With cake and food trucks waiting at the Lake Helen finish line, organizers are framing this year's tour as both a birthday party and a reminder of how much farmland still operates in Volusia County's backyard.
