For the past several years we’ve had two types of tours. One is a free Saturday tour traditionally given by my son, and a paid tour during the weekday that is traditionally given by me. All of these tours are booked directly via our online booking calendar.
Starting today, we are going back to the old days of when you had to email me to book a tour. This is for several reasons.
- The calendar app that we use on our website for booking tours has some issues. I’ve posted about this in the past. However I keep having people book when I’m supposed to be busy somewhere else. This leads to me sending an apologetic and embarrassing email, so rather than continuing to chase the problem, I’m just going back to manual booking.
- The reason we do tours is changing. When we started giving tours, I had a 12 year old kid who was nervous talking in front of people. Now I have a nearly 16 year old young man who is a veteran of speech and debate club, and public speaking with the Civil Air Patrol, on top of the many, many tours he has given. He doesn’t need practice speaking in public anymore.
- When Spork turns 16 shortly, he is going to get a job off farm. That is the planned end of his giving tours, always has been. So instead of trying to pump tours through here to keep a kid working, now I need him working his new job and excelling there. Tours are no longer a learning opportunity, they are a distraction for him.
So we are now going to charge for any and all tours, including Saturday tours. Because like my schedule, Sporks is busy and if we are giving a tour, we are not doing something else that needs to get done. And we are going to manually book the tours, which means a little more scheduling work for me and a slower response for you.
It may sound like I’m describing this as a negative, but the purpose of what we do here, as I’ve said on pretty much every tour I’ve ever given, is to grow our children into responsible, and productive adults. That process is working and working well, and things are adjusting based on the people employed here.