Breweries, Breweries, Breweries: In Which We Finally Try Harvest Hosts

We’ve just gotten back from our fabulous Newfoundland trip, and I’m going to kick off writing not about Newfoundland, but about our first foray into the world of staying at Harvest Hosts (that’s my referral link and will get you a 15% off discount):

For those not familiar with it, Harvest Hosts is a membership-based program that connects RVers with businesses where they can park overnight at small businesses (generally places like farms, wineries, breweries, and museums) with no camping fees in exchange for making some kind of purchase from the host (currently they recommend a $30 minimum, but it’s a suggestion rather than a requirement). A membership will run you $99/year (discounts are generally available) and give you access to 4700 sites. You can also add on a Boondockers Welcome membership (for listings of homes where people welcome RVers to stay) or a membership that includes golf course for an additional fee.

We are longtime Harvest Host members (maybe 3 years now?) who had never actually used Harvest Hosts. We always meant to, but there was always some reason things didn’t go as planned. So we were determined to use the membership on this trip, and we DID! Four times! So I’m finally ready to report about our experiences and offer some thoughts on what kind of RVer a Harvest Host makes sense for.

First off, here’s a quick rundown of our four stops this summer, all of which were breweries (we like breweries):

Cavendish Brewing Company

We stopped at Cavendish Brewing in Gastonia, NC the very first night of the trip, and it was a great intro to Harvest Hosting. There was a big, easy to park in lot just across the street from the Brewery (where it was us and one other RV), with easy access from the interstate:

We were right next to a pretty busy road and there were a lot of sirens, but we’re fairly heavy sleepers, so it was fine. The brewery itself had excellent beer and pizza in a nice setting, with lots of options for both inside and outside seating and plenty to keep the kids entertained (pool, video games, board games, etc). It’s also easy walking distance to downtown Gastonia, so we had a nice walk there with the dogs after we ate.

Appalachian Brewing Company

Appalachian Brewing Company has a few different locations, but the one in Mechanicsburg, PA is also a Harvest Host. This seems to be a very popular location, and we shared the large back parking lot with several other RVers:

The brewery has a full restaurant, so we had dinner here and then were able to send the kids back to the trailer while the grownups ordered a second beer and hung out for awhile. There’s also an Aldi right next to the lot, so we picked up a few groceries.

Big Axe

Here is a story about the world’s largest axe in Nackawic, New Brunswick: a few years ago, we took a big summer trip to Atlantic Canada, and the Nackawic area was our last stop before crossing the border in Maine. We stayed at a campground that had pretty good reviews, although some did mention that the owner could be a bit…rigid about rules. We’d picked the campground just because it was a good stopping point to break up a long drive, but once we were settled in we realized that we were staying right down the road from the world’s largest axe. Dave, especially, was very excited about this and immediately suggested we make a quick trip over to see this wondrous object. It was perhaps eight in the evening. We set out but quickly realized that we would be unable to see the axe because the campground owner had closed the gate and then put chains across it. There had been no indication when we checked in that this would be happening. Dave tried calling the office, but there was no answer. Had we needed to go to, say, the emergency room instead of to the world’s largest axe, I guess we would have just been out of luck. This campground is still open (or open again), but is under new ownership, so no one should worry about being locked in at the campground near the big axe.

Fast forward to summer, 2023 and another trip to Canada and another need for a last stop before the border. We were looking at Harvest Hosts and realized we could stay at Big Axe Brewery, a mere mile and a half from the big axe itself! Of course we booked it. But on the day we actually arrived, it was pretty hot, and it had been a long day of driving, and it was pretty late…and we just didn’t have it in us to walk to the axe (and we didn’t want to unhitch and drive). So. We had a lovely stay at Big Axe Brewery, but we still haven’t seen that axe. Next time?

This was a lovely location–maybe my favorite stop of our four?–right on the river, plenty of room to park, great food and beer right across the street at the brewery, friendly people…everything you need!

Funky Bow Brewery

To be honest, I was a little…concerned? reluctant? to book this stay when I read in their profile about the “strict no-leash policy.” But Funky Bow was in the right area of Maine for us, we like beer and dogs, and, of course, we were free to leave our own dogs in the trailer and not have them participate in the free-for-all (they’re not the right sort of the dogs for that. At least not the two we had with us. Fiesta the beagle would have been fine, but she stayed home with Ari this summer). We chatted with a local while we were eating, surrounded by unleashed pups, and she said, “I tell people, ‘you have to understand that it’s a dog park that sells beer and pizza.'” This seems about right.

While the description says that they find that off leash dogs “are able to move around freely and interact appropriately,” we encountered dogs leaping onto tables and stealing food and dogs playing enthusiastically directly under our picnic table (a couple of tables away from their own humans). This is all perfectly appropriate for dogs, but it might not be the experience you want while you’re eating, so…just keep it in mind. We love dogs, so we were fine with it, although we might not want to go here every night. Our kids thought it was pretty great. It was definitely an experience! And we managed to keep our own (delicious) pizza safe:

Besides rambunctious dogs, you’ll find clearly marked parking for Harvest Host guests, and a big outdoor area to buy beer and pizza and eat (covered by a canopy, but it rained while we were there, and the canopy was not the best at keeping water out). There’s an indoor area, too, but it was pretty stuffy while we were there, so we didn’t hang out in there. Everything’s cash only, but they do have an ATM on site. There was live music while we were there and, I understand, most nights (they charge a small cover fee for adults when there’s music):

General Thoughts about Harvest Hosts

*Ease of Booking: These days most hosts participate in the online booking system (I believe it used to be that you needed to call). While I’ve heard of people having trouble with hosts not responding to requests, all of our stays were approved very quickly. We had one brewery in Maine that we didn’t get (we knew it was very popular), but everywhere else had plenty of availability (we did book at least a week or two in advance everywhere).

*Weather: I’ve always been a bit concerned about booking stays because we mostly travel in summer, and summer is hot. Many/most hosts do allow generator usage (we don’t have a generator), but in a lot of situations we were right next to other RVs and would have felt pretty rude running a generator all night or for long periods of time (our neighbors at the last stop had a loud generator that they were running a good bit in the evening; fortunately they did not leave it on overnight, but it would have sucked if they had). We did get lucky with temperatures and the trailer always cooled down enough at night that we could sleep comfortably. But some of the times when it would be most helpful to use Harvest Hosts–toward the beginning and end of our long trips when we tend to do long drives with quick overnight stops–will always be iffy because they’re always in the southeast in summer. We had an unusually cool spring here, so our first stop in Gastonia yielded lovely weather in early June, but that won’t always be the case. So…people who are able to travel extensively year round have the advantage here.

*Power: Most hosts don’t offer any hookups (there are exceptions, though there’s usually a fee when power is offered), so you have to make sure you’ll be okay without being able to plug in. I was very worried about this before our trip, largely because our fridge only runs off shore power or battery (not propane). We have only a standard (i.e. crappy) RV battery and a tiny (100 watt I think) solar panel. But we did totally fine at our two stops on the way up–battery was at something like 70% when we pulled out in the mornings–so we got a bit cocky and booked two nights in a row on the way back.

Oops. We were worried the night before on our last night, so we turned the fridge off, but…too late. We woke up at 5:30 to our carbon monoxide monitor beeping at us every few seconds to let us know it wasn’t getting enough battery to work. Just as we were about to open it up and cut wires (it had been giving us trouble all summer anyway!), the sun gave us enough of a charge to stop the beeping. But my big fear about dry camping came to pass: we didn’t have enough power to bring the slide in (we can’t access our bedroom with the slide in, so just leaving it in for the night isn’t an option). Dave had to run out to buy a new battery before we could leave (I suppose we could have left the trailer plugged in to the van with the van running for some unknown amount of time as an alternative…but we’d already tried that for a few minutes with no luck, and we needed to get going. We also could have done the slide manually, but we’d never done that before and weren’t sure how much of a PITA it would be).

So we need to address this problem at some point if we want to keep dry camping. I’m not sure of the best/cheapest way to do this: adding a second battery? (we almost did this before our trip, but there’s no easy place to put one, so we gave up) better (lithium?) battery? more solar? a just in case small generator? a hardcore generator that could also run the air if needed? Yeah. Not sure. We’re unlikely to use Harvest Hosts or otherwise dry camp more than a handful of nights in a year, so it doesn’t make sense to spend a ton of money.

*Cost: I think Harvest Hosts has a bit of an identity crisis about whether it’s a great way to save money on campground fees or it’s a great way to experience unusual overnight stays. Membership will run you around $85/year with a typical discount code and then they recommend you spend at least $30 at the host’s business. So, as you can see, if you’re only using it a few nights a year, your unlikely to spend less money than if you stayed at a decent, no-frills type campground for those nights. But it gets more complicated than that, because you’re getting something tangible for your money when you spend at the host’s business. We thought of it as a good excuse to eat out (at the host’s restaurant), since we weren’t paying for a campground that night.

But Harvest Hosts advertises itself as a way to save money to potential members (telling you a membership will pay for itself in 2 nights on average) and as a way to make money to potential hosts. The math doesn’t exactly add up. The spending recommendation has recently gone up from $20 to $30, which, of course, has set off a fresh round of “is it worth it anymore?!” online. People correctly point out that you’re not far off from campground pricing in a lot of places at that $30 mark. People counter that it’s all about the experience and you shouldn’t be looking at it as a way to save money. Fine, but, again, Harvest Hosts advertises it as such. In the end, I think it can be a little bit of both. If you use it enough and spend closer to that minimum amount (we certainly went well over the minimum buying dinner for 5 every place we stayed) you could save some money…but not enough, I don’t think, to make it worthwhile if you’re not mostly in it for the experience of camping at some fun businesses you wouldn’t have encountered otherwise.

*Churches: Harvest Hosts recently started including listings for churches on its site. I think this is a great idea; churches often have big parking lots that aren’t used much during most of the week, so it makes sense. But I do have a couple of caveats: there’s usually nothing to buy at churches. Instead, you’re asked to make a donation. As discussed above, it’s one thing to spend $30 and get something in return; it’s another thing to donate the equivalent of a cheaper campground’s fees for a space in a parking lot with no hook-ups. And, frankly, there are some churches that I’d be happy to donate to and others that I…wouldn’t. I imagine that’s true for most people; some churches align with your values (or at least don’t spend money on things that directly contradict your values) and some don’t. I’m not particularly interested in spending time researching a particular church’s mission before I decide on an overnight stay nor am I interested in finding out after the fact that I gave money in support of things I disagree with.

My issue is not that Harvest Hosts is including churches, but that they have them lumped in to the “attractions” category. Churches are not attractions (well, sometimes they are, if they’re also historic buildings. But usually not). I’ve found that, particularly in the southeast, if I do a search for a Harvest Host location the majority of the “attractions” are actually churches. Churches should be their own category so that people who aren’t interested in making donations instead of purchases in exchange for their stay don’t need to sort through them. IMHO.

So there are my initial thoughts after a grand total of four Harvest Hosts stays. We all agree that overall we really enjoyed the experience and will likely renew the membership.

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