Craig Nargi was up on the Skyline Drive overlooking Augusta County taking photos of the Valley below with his kids. The pictures didn’t turn out. “They were all blurry. You couldn’t see anything,” said Nargi, the owner of Hermitage Hill Farm and Stables, a state-of-the-art horse-boarding and -training facility located west of Waynesboro.
But Nargi saw something from on high.
“I can see the farm, and I’m thinking, How many other people driving up here are looking down and deciding to come down into the Valley to see what we have to offer?” Nargi said.
The restless type, Nargi is taking his summer-day idea to local and state legislators at an event Thursday evening at his horse farm.
“We’re trying to work with the Board of Supervisors, we’re trying to work with any other organizations that might be interested in this. It’s above and beyond us. We went through the process to get to where we are today, and we know what the difficulties are. And I think we can share that experience to make it easier for the next person to do this,” said Nargi, who founded Hermitage Hill in 2005.
It wasn’t easy, the making of the farm, to hear Nargi tell it. At the outset Nargi would like to “get county government on board” with streamlining the process that people looking to start an agritourism business in Augusta have to go through.
“We’re looking to get a process in place in the county where the county would help establish maybe a guideline or a guidance system or an application process or a list of things to consider while doing this, and figuring out, Well, how does it apply to you, and then helping that individual get there,” Nargi said.
“Being alone in a system like this is a very lonely place to be as far as trying to keep your business going. So if we have other people interested in the idea, and they can say, Hey, here’s a model, this is what this fellow did, he can be a guide in this whole process,” Nargi said.
Agritourism-focused businesses like Nargi’s can tend to feel like the red-headed stepchildren of the agribusiness world. “If you don’t have a combine, you’re not a farmer,” Nargi explained the mindset that his sector is up against internal to the market.
The coalition he’s aiming to build, then, isn’t necessarily the traditional Farm Bureau/Chamber of Commerce-type coalition.
“We’re still evolving, but it’s not like we can just go in and become a part of the established organizations and try to get them to see what we’re trying to do. The traditionalists don’t want to listen to us. So we’re trying to build something new that’s specific to our situation,” Nargi said.
It’s an interesting idea, as is Nargi’s idea on how the county can eventually pitch in to get the nascent agritourism effort further off the ground.
“We have monies in the county that are currently being spent now on tourism, and there’s nothing to say that in the future, in the next budgetary process, that maybe we can get included in some of that, or maybe there’s some warrant to the money going out,” Nargi said.
Don’t get him wrong – this is pure economics, in Nargi’s view.
“A business like ours is going to do everything from an agricultural standpoint as we do already – feed, hay, anything related to our equipment. So we’re having to constantly interact with our businesses on the agricultural level. But when you introduce the tourism, we’re inviting a whole other level of business. It could be the hotels, it could be the gas, restaurants, they go shopping, they’re going to visit other agritourism sites, hopefully,” Nargi said.
– Story by Chris Graham
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