Phoenix Desert Farm Tour

The Phoenix Desert Farm Tour takes participants into the Salt River Valley's working agricultural lands — the canal-irrigated farming corridor that supplies a significant share of Phoenix's celebrated restaurant scene with citrus, vegetables, heritage grains, and artisan dairy. Operated through FnB Culinary Tours in partnership with Arizona Farm Bureau connections, the four-hour excursion departs central Phoenix and travels to two to three working farms that supply ingredients to James Beard-nominated restaurants across the metropolitan area, with a working chef or culinary guide leading tastings and demonstrations at each stop. A typical route visits an Arizona citrus orchard during the January-to-May harvest season, where participants walk rows of navel oranges, blood oranges, tangerines, and lemons alongside an explanation of how desert canal irrigation — a system descending from Hohokam engineering — makes large-scale fruit cultivation possible in the Sonoran Desert. A goat cheese dairy offers behind-the-scenes milking and cheesemaking observation, followed by tastings of fresh chèvre, aged rounds, and flavored varieties incorporating Arizona-grown herbs and chiles. A heritage grain farm rounds out the experience with a look at how ancient wheat and corn varieties — some cultivated by Native American communities for centuries — are being reintroduced into Arizona's artisan baking scene. Each farm visit includes guided tastings of farm-fresh products and a brief cooking demonstration integrating seasonal ingredients. Participants receive take-home products from at least one farm. Group sizes cap at twelve to sixteen and the tour operates in English. At $85 per person, the ticket includes all farm visits, guided tastings, a cooking demonstration, and take-home products. Transportation between farm sites in the Salt River Valley is provided.