There is a particular kind of traveler who still stops at visitor centers. They pull off the highway, walk inside, and spend a few minutes actually looking at what is on the racks — the maps, the brochures, the little folded cards that tell you what is worth seeing in a region you might not know well. If you are that kind of traveler, or if you know someone who is, there is a good chance you are about to see Linam Farm staring back at you from a rack somewhere in western Arkansas.
This season, our farm rack cards went live at Arkansas visitor centers for the first time. As far as we know, we are the first farm in the state to have a presence in the visitor center network, and we are genuinely excited about what that means — not just for us, but for the idea that a family farm in Alma, Arkansas deserves a seat at the same table as the state parks and tourist attractions that travelers are already planning their routes around.
How This Came Together
Visitor centers were not something we had thought much about until we started thinking seriously about who our customer really is and where they come from. The honest answer is that a meaningful number of people who visit Linam Farm are not locals. They are travelers passing through on Highway 71, families making a summer road trip through Arkansas, people who grew up in this part of the state and still have family here, and visitors from neighboring states who are looking for the kind of authentic, off-the-beaten-path experience that a family farm can offer in ways a theme park cannot.
Those travelers are exactly the people who stop at visitor centers. They are in an exploratory mindset. They are open to discovering something. They have a cooler in the back of the car and they are actively looking for reasons to pull off the highway.
Getting our rack cards into those centers meant producing something worth picking up. We worked on a card that tells the Linam Farm story clearly and quickly — what we grow, what the experience is like, where we are, and why it is worth an exit off the highway. The cards went to visitor centers on the western side of the state, which is the side that matters most for our geographic draw. Confirmed locations include Van Buren, Siloam Springs, Bella Vista, and Texarkana, with additional placements we are still tracking down.
Arkansas has 11 entry-point visitor centers positioned at the major travel corridors into the state. We reached the ones where our farm is geographically relevant — the travelers coming through those doors are already in our part of Arkansas or heading toward it.
Why Being First Matters
We are going to say something that might sound a little boastful, and we want to acknowledge upfront that it is not meant to be. Being the first farm in the Arkansas visitor center network is not something we planned for or campaigned to achieve. It is something that happened because we were paying attention to where our customers come from and what it would take to reach them earlier in their trip planning process.
But being first does matter, for a reason that goes beyond Linam Farm specifically.
Family farms are an enormous part of what makes Arkansas worth visiting, and they are dramatically underrepresented in the travel and tourism infrastructure that promotes the state. When someone drives through Arkansas on their way somewhere else and sees a billboard for a chain restaurant, they keep driving. When they see a rack card for a family berry farm with u-pick and a farm store and real animals in the pasture, some percentage of them slow down, take the exit, and discover something that changes the way they think about what this state has to offer.
We hope being in those visitor centers opens a door for other farms to think about this channel. The rack card network exists, it reaches the right people, and there is no good reason why agricultural tourism should be absent from it.
What the Rack Card Tells People
Our rack card covers the basics in a way that is meant to be honest and inviting rather than overselling. Here is what someone picks up and reads when they pull our card off the rack:
We are a family-owned u-pick farm in Alma, Arkansas, growing blackberries, blueberries, and raspberries. We have a farm store on site with jams, jellies, honey, farm-fresh eggs, and baked goods available throughout the season. We are on Highway 71, which means we are easy to find and easy to get back to the main road from. We are the kind of farm where you pay for what you pick and nothing else.
That is genuinely what we are. No version of that is marketing spin. The card does not promise an experience we cannot deliver, which is a principle we feel strongly about. If someone drives to Alma because of our rack card, we want them to feel like the reality exceeded the description, not the other way around.
The Bigger Opportunity: Agricultural Tourism in Arkansas
Rack cards are a small piece of something larger that we find genuinely interesting to think about. Agricultural tourism — the category that includes u-pick farms, farm stays, farm-to-table dining experiences, creameries, cideries, and operations like ours — is one of the fastest-growing segments of rural tourism nationally. People who live in cities are increasingly interested in connecting with the source of their food in a direct, experiential way, and a well-run farm that offers a genuine experience can draw visitors from hundreds of miles away when they understand what it is.
Arkansas has tremendous assets in this category. The terrain is beautiful. The growing conditions support enormous variety. The farming families here have stories worth telling and products worth tasting. What has historically been missing is the infrastructure to connect those farms with the travelers who would love to find them.
The Arkansas Farm Trail Passport Program, which Linam Farm participates in, is one piece of that infrastructure. The visitor center rack card network is another. Social media is a third. The Northwest Arkansas Local Food Guide, which features a profile of our farm this year, is a fourth. Each of these channels reaches a slightly different audience and serves a slightly different purpose, but together they start to build the kind of visibility that puts a family farm on the radar of people who would become loyal customers if they only knew we existed.
A Profile in the Northwest Arkansas Local Food Guide
Speaking of which — Linam Farm is also featured this year in the Northwest Arkansas Local Food Guide, a regional publication that helps people in northwest Arkansas find locally grown and produced food in their area. Our listing includes a profile, a photograph, and contact information, and it is already generating calls from people we had not previously reached.
We heard from a woman in West Fork who found our listing and called specifically about purchasing lamb. She told us she was working her way through the guide and trying to buy as much of her food as possible from local producers rather than grocery stores. That single phone call was everything we hoped the guide listing would produce: a new customer who found us through a channel we had invested in, who cares about the same things we care about, who is going to tell other people in her community about us.
The guide placement cost us a few hundred dollars and has already returned that investment many times over in terms of reach and new customer relationships. For farms that are wondering whether these kinds of placements are worth it, our experience so far says yes.
If You Spot Our Rack Card, We Want to Hear About It
Here is something fun we are trying this season. If you are traveling through Arkansas and you spot a Linam Farm rack card at a visitor center, we would love to know about it. Take a quick photo and tag us on Facebook or Instagram with the location. We will reshare it, and you will have our genuine gratitude for helping us track where the cards are showing up and how far they are traveling.
We know the confirmed locations — Van Buren, Siloam Springs, Bella Vista, Texarkana — but we are still chasing down the full picture, and there is something satisfying about knowing a card made it to a specific rack in a specific building and ended up in the hands of someone who then made the drive to the farm.
Road trips are better when you discover something real along the way. We hope our rack card is the thing that turns an exit into a memory for someone this summer.
Come Find Us
Linam Farm is at 7111 N Hwy 71 in Alma, Arkansas, right on the highway and easy to find. The farm store is open seasonally with blackberry jams, jellies, barbecue sauce, honey, farm-fresh eggs, and baked goods. U-pick is available for blackberries, blueberries, and raspberries in season, weather permitting.
If you picked up our rack card at a visitor center and drove down to see us — welcome. We are glad the card did its job, and we are glad you made the turn. Tell us where you found it when you come in.
Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for updates on hours, picking conditions, and what is currently available in the store.
