Lakeview Hill Farm & Market Announces New Agritourism Offerings, Teases Food Service Expansion

A pair of Leelanau County farmers are betting big on agritourism.

Bailey Samp and John Dindia, the owners, farmers, and proprietors behind Leelanau’s Lakeview Hill Farm & Market, announced this week that the business will be adding a slew of new agritourism offerings this summer, including guided tours, walkable flower fields, and new prepared food options. The move comes two years after Samp and Dindia bought and converted the old Pleasant Valley Schoolhouse at 8236 E. Lakeview Hills Road into a their first-ever full-fledged farm market.

According to Dindia, the market has proven to be a gamechanger for Lakeview Hill Farm. Opened on July 6, 2023, that new segment of the business had its first full year of operation in 2024. Looking at the before and after numbers for the business, Dindia says, has clearly shown the value of having more ways to reach customers. Before the market opened, Lakeview Hill did the lion’s share of its business via wholesale accounts, like restaurants and grocery stores. While sales to individual consumers weren’t nonexistent – Lakeview Hill Farm had a self-serve farm store, and participated in the MI Farm Co-op CSA – they were a small piece of the puzzle.

“The market has proved to be a great go-along business for us; it complements the farm very well – and has helped, in many ways, to subsidize the farm,” Dindia says. “Although margins at a grocery store are, historically, not great, they are certainly better than wholesale produce. And we’re also just selling more product now than we did before. If you look at July 2023 versus July 2024, we went up about 30 percent in gross sales. We definitely view having the market as a win.”

Those numbers, coupled with feedback from customers, ultimately inspired Dindia and Samp to journey deeper into the world of agritourism.

“Up until now, we’ve kind of shied away from agritourism, because we have felt that most agritourism sites don't show real farms and what it really is like on a farm,” Dindia tells the Leelanau Ticker. “Bailey and I are born and bred farmers; that's what we do. And so, because it's clear that our customers want to have a deeper connection with the farm and get a better understanding of how the farm operates and looks, we decided to open up our farm a bit for our customers to see and experience what a working farm is really like.”

Starting this season, Dindia and Samp will lead guests on behind-the-scenes tours of Lakeview Hill Farm and its 58 acres of certified organic farmland. Customers will see the farm’s greenhouse and hoophouse production areas, its vegetable beds, and its cut flower fields, all in “full summer” working farm mode. According to a press release, the tours will also serve to “highlight the farm’s sustainability practices, including pollinator habitats, organic pest management, and innovative technologies designed to maximize efficiency and minimize environmental impact.” Each tour will end at the farm market.

To start, Dindia says the tours are being offered by reservation only, though he notes that he and Samp will likely roll out a schedule of open-to-the-public tours sometime this summer.

The behind-the-scenes tours are the latest step Dindia and Samp have taken to make their farm and market into more of a tourist attraction or hangout spot. The farm also hosts an annual organic plant sale, running this year from May 9-31, and is starting to venture into educational offerings. “We plan on doing lessons with our cut flower program, so that people can learn how to harvest and make their own bouquets,” Dindia says.

Lakeview Hill is also taking steps to evolve more into a food service establishment, which Dindia says is the next big thing to watch at the farm.

“Last summer, we got our packing facility licensed as a commercial kitchen, and we brought on a professional chef to start expanding into value-added products and prepared food items,” Dindia says. “Our chef, Miriam, has been making lots of salads, sandwiches, dips and spreads, salad dressings, pre-chopped vegetables, and other grab-and-go food items. And we have intentions of continuing to expand that. Right now, we don’t have a hood or a stove or any of that kind of stuff in our kitchen, so we’re not cooking, per se; more preparing. But we’re hoping to be able to expand into that someday soon.”

On that front, Dindia teases that Lakeview Hill Farm is “supposedly winning a big grant” that would allow for significant expansions of its food prep and food service capabilities. “That’s obviously depending on what the township allows us to do, and the grant was also federally frozen, so we’re kind of in limbo for now,” Dindia says. “We think the grant is going to go through soon, but we don’t know for sure.”

The expansion at Lakeview Hill Farm is just one part of what could prove to be a groundbreaking agritourism season for Leelanau County. Last fall, Leelanau Township approved a new ordinance opening the door for farms to create farm stay campgrounds on their premises. While the ordinance doesn’t automatically grant farms that right, a process is now in place for Leelanau Township farmers to apply for special use permits that would enable the farm stay option.