A website for a farm: direct sales, visits and seasons

A farm site works when it separates three paths, buying produce, visiting the farm, booking a school activity, and says straight away what is in season this week. If the three paths share one page, none of them works.

People looking for a farm have three different intentions: they want to buy oil or flour, they want to show the children the animals, they want to know whether they can shop at zero kilometres. The menu has to answer all three without asking anyone to read the family history first.

The pages a farm actually uses

Direct sales: what the law allows

Legislative Decree 228/2001, Article 4, grants the agricultural entrepreneur the right to sell their own produce directly, including in organised forms and away from the farm, within the limits set by regional rules. On a site that means a page saying where and when to buy, not a cart promising impossible deliveries. The law allows adding produce from other farms within regional limits: if you do, say so on the label and on the site.

Agriturismo is a different business: Law 20 February 2006 no. 96 defines it as hospitality run by the agricultural entrepreneur, with a predominance of farming over hospitality that the regions check. If you let rooms or serve meals, the site needs what a guest looks for: check-in, tourist tax, menu allergens, pets allowed.

Season: the content that changes by itself

A farm site goes stale with every harvest. The «in season» section is the only one that justifies frequent updates: four lines, one photo, the date. You can keep it in a JSON file and render it with a component, without opening the CMS every Monday. A site still showing August tomatoes in December tells the visitor nobody looks after it.

Seasonality also drives sales: someone who comes in March for oranges finds the right product and returns in June for cherries. Product pages must say when things are available and when they end, not only the price.

Photos, map and hours: the three things people look for

Photos must show the field, not only the product: a crate of tomatoes on a table does not say where they grow. The map should be embedded with a link to Maps, and the address written as text, because whoever drives there copies the address into a navigator. Hours must be text, not only an image: hours inside a JPEG cannot be read aloud and do not get indexed.

Farm hours change with the season: write «April to October» next to the time instead of editing the page twice a year. If the entrance is on a gravel road, say so: that is the detail that saves a phone call.

Certifications: only the ones you hold

If you farm organically the reference is Regulation EU 2018/848, and the logo is used under the rules of your control body; if you sell DOP or IGP products the reference is Regulation EU 1151/2012, and the specification also limits how you describe the product. A site writing «organic» without an operator number and a control body is a risk, not a boast.

Structured data: LocalBusiness, Product and hours

The JSON-LD uses LocalBusiness for the site, with address, geo, telephone and openingHoursSpecification for seasonal hours; Product for the produce sold, with offer and availability; FAQPage for questions about visits and purchases. schema.org has no «Farm» type: additionalType declares the activity. The details are in how to add schema markup.

curl "https://ui.eneawork.it/api/blocks/category/stats?limit=200" | jq '.category.count, (.blocks | length)'

Blocks from the catalogue

Three records. Contact Sections 02 from Creative Tim is the form to split by reason for contact: shopping, visit, school. Stats 02 from shadcn-ui-blocks carries the farm numbers, meaning hectares, crops and years in business. Gallery Grid with Lightbox from uitripled is the grid for field and produce photos, with a lightbox for anyone who wants a closer look.

The limitation to state up front

The blocks are React and Tailwind: there is no stock system, no integration with farmers' markets, no booking system for visits. The catalogue covers the interface; the farming part stays outside. And no component solves the hours problem: the harvest decides those. Previews are free, the full code sits in the Pro part.

Cost and timing

A six-page site with ten products sits in the low thousands of euro; the recurring cost is the seasonal update, worth half a day every two months. Ask for produce and hours you can edit yourself, without a quote. The full picture is in what a website costs.

For the basic structure read what a company website must have, for a nearby case a website for a craftsman, for DIY building a website yourself, for visibility get the site indexed by Google.