Farm tour, courtesy Fairfield IA CVB
Fairfield, Iowa
Although Fairfield, Iowa, would be a good add-on during a trip to one of its larger neighbors, like Iowa City or Des Moines, visitors may not want to leave.
“On a cultural level, there’s so much variety it makes you feel like you’ve gone to a big city, but you don’t have the hassle,” said Terry Baker, assistant director of the Fairfield Iowa Convention and Visitors Bureau.
The city is home to entrepreneurs and startup companies — residents started more than 400 companies, according to one report — and is known as an arts colony, with the Fairfield Arts and Convention Center, the Stephen Sondheim Center for the Performing Arts, numerous art galleries and monthly First Friday Art Walks.
Baker likes to take groups “to places locals have never been.” That includes tours of companies such as Bovard Stained Glass Studio, where artisans restore, repair and re-create stained glass windows from all over the country.
Radiance Dairy owner Francis Thickey loves to give tours of his organic dairy farm, where he and his wife raise Jersey cows and produce milk, cheese and yogurt, which they sell only locally. Thickey loads groups onto a trailer and drives them out into the pasture, where they get to meet the cows and learn about the dairy operations.
The Maasdam Barns at the Evergreen Ridge Stock Farm opened for tours last year, Baker said. The original farm owner imported and bred Belgian, Percheron and other European draft horses there from 1910 through 1938.
