Morning chores and goat cuddles on an Oregon sheep farm
Leaping Lamb Farm is in the Coast Range of western Oregon, an hour from the Pacific Ocean to the west and 40 minutes from the Willamette Valley to the east.
Up a slot valley of Honey Grove Creek, our sheep farm boasts 20 acres of pasture and 50 acres of timber. There is a large market garden, a hundred-year-old orchard, a historic barn, a large farmhouse and a cottage where guests can stay. We are your farmer hosts, Greg and Scottie Jones, and live in a house on the farm a pasture away.
Other livestock on our farm include goats, chickens, horses, a donkey, a peacock, a turkey and ducks.
On the morning of your arrival, we’ll text you for an estimated arrival time. We’ll mention that directions to the farm should be in your email and remind you that you’re welcome to join us for chores at 5 PM and 9 AM daily. Participation is certainly optional.
If you arrive before chores, we’ll greet you, help you settle in and give you a tour around the farm. If you’re going to arrive late, we’ll leave the doors unlocked and the lights on, with a note that we’ll catch you in the morning for 9 AM chores and/or a tour.
Morning chores start in the chicken yard. Birds are let out of the coop, feed is scattered and the nesting boxes are checked for eggs, although the girls often like to eat breakfast before laying.
You’re encouraged to check the nests throughout the day. Any eggs you collect are yours to use. As long as the eggs are not washed, they do not need to be refrigerated.
The rest of the chores are at the barn, where the horses, donkey, goats and sheep are kept overnight. Horses are fed. Goats are fed. Sheep are fed.
All are let out during the day, although the sheep are managed in a rotational grazing pattern that often requires a bit of herding to get them to the correct field. “Big arms” and slow walking work best. We’ll guide you as we guide the sheep. No herding dog required.
If you stay with us during lambing and kidding, there is more activity in the barn. Newborns are kept inside for up to a week to make sure all are in good health and nursing well. You may sit in the large stalls with them throughout the day and evening. If we have bummers (lambs rejected or without a mom), this is your opportunity to play nursemaid with a bottle.
The next “chore” is a choice: cuddling goats or scooping poop. We have very friendly Nigerian Dwarf goats that act as our welcoming committee when they aren’t keeping down the brush along the creek. The kids are playful and socialized from birth, running to jump in laps and nibble on clothing and hair.
Families with children often give the poop scooping a try, but the task can go either way, with cuddling winning out for most. For us, it’s no bother one way or the other.
The last chores are to make sure the barn cats are fed, there is water in all the troughs, and all the closed gates are securely fastened, as we have a horse who is an escape artist.
After chore time, the day is yours. Some of the activities depend on the time of year for your visit.
You can always hike the trails into our woods, where you might come upon some fairy houses and the huge, 200-year-old bigleaf maple called the Merlin Tree.
For most of the year, you can play in or near the creek, which has baby trout and salmon, lamprey eels and crawdads. You can sit with the goats in the pasture or bring a brush out to one of the horses.
There is a hammock in the apple orchard. The decks have chairs and tables for outdoor meals and a barbecue for cooking. There are also lounging chairs for reading, visiting or taking a nap.
There is plenty of room to run and play.
At 5 PM, chores start at the barn, and we reverse everything we did in the morning.
With your newfound skills, you can help us bring the sheep in from the fields. The horses and goats wear watches in their brains and are usually in their stalls, counting the minutes until they are fed.
Hay is handed out. Grain is put in their buckets. If their watches are broken, we ring a bell and the animals come running.
Guests stay anywhere from two days to two weeks. Final departures are in the late morning, often after one more round of morning chores.
Goodbyes are offered, often with a hug. Children cry because they don’t want to leave. Adults mention the unexpected delight they found in staying with us, along with the memorable events that happened along the way, livestock antics being one of them!
We will send out a thank-you note later and invite you back for another stay in the countryside.
Surprisingly, or perhaps not, many of our guests return again and again. We watch their children grow up. We become friends.
Morning chores begin at 9 AM, and evening chores begin at 5 PM. You are always welcome to join us, but participation is entirely optional.
Activities and routines may change with the seasons. Lambing and kidding happen in late winter/early spring, but the babies are small into summer. Vegetables are summer products, as are most berries and grapes. Apples and pears are ripe in the early fall.
Whether you want to help herd sheep, collect eggs, scoop poop, cuddle goats or simply relax and enjoy the farm, you can make the experience your own.
The farm works well for families but we certainly entertain adults looking for a bit of quiet and a retreat from stressful lives. We’re on fiber, so connections to the outside world are available.
Don’t worry about bringing farm boots. We have lots, although not necessarily for walking through the creek since they may have been abandoned for cracks in the rubber. Good for walking around the barn though.
Both the Cottage and the Farm House have kitchens. It’s what we call “self preparation”. Cooking is on you.
In season, we offer “grazing” in the greenhouse for veggies like salad fixings, squash, tomatoes and whatever else was planted to add to your meals.
We have a farm store where we sell our honey, jams, felted sheep, t-shirts, hats, signed copies of our books, Country Grit, A Farmoir of Finding Purpose and Love and Paco, the Dusty Donkey, and more.
All ages are welcome on the farm. Dogs are not (our barn cats and peacock are free range and even good dogs lose their minds when the sheep run).
In terms of mobility, the farm house has a downstairs bedroom and bathroom with no steps into the house. The Cottage has three steps up and into a single level house with two bedrooms. There are no steps into the barn and there is parking in front, but the property at large has uneven terrain.
If you stay with us, you will find that we educate when we can about why we do certain things on the farm. We answer questions and often reiterate that there are no dumb ones to ask. We likely asked them all when we first moved here over 20 years ago!
We want you to feel the softness of the wool on our sheep and the nose of a horse; to listen to the sounds of the animals eating, the barn swallows scolding the barn cats and the turkey gobbling; to smell the rich, loamy earth in the forests and the fresh scent of hay in the barn loft; and to watch the moon rise and the swifts fly at dusk, catching bugs out of the air.
Farms are about the senses and about connection to each other and to nature.
That is our offer. That is our promise.
Welcome to our farm.
Scottie and Greg Jones
We recently told our personal Farmstay story at the GAN conference in Scotland and along the way we experienced Scottish farms big and small telling theirs. It was abrilliant experience.
After spending years welcoming guests to our own farm and now working with hundreds of farms across the Farmstay community, I've learned something simple:
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