Leaping Lamb Farm with Kids: An Oregon Farm Stay Your Family Will Love
Why should you book a vacation at Leaping Lamb Farm with kids? I could tell you it’s the sheep and their wooly babes. Or I could say it’s silly Gillie the dog who comes calling at your cottage door when he hears the clang of dishes being washed. I might say it’s the fainting goats, the donkey named Paco, the trio of horses, or the fairy-filled forest trails. All of that is true. But also, families come again and again to Leaping Lamb Farm because of its welcoming and kindhearted owner, Scottie Jones. Read this review to learn what to expect during a family vacation at Leaping Lamb Farm in Oregon.
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Greener pastures at Leaping Lamb Farm
Scottie has lived on these 70 acres with her husband, Greg, since 2003. The couple decided to write a new chapter of their life story when entering their 50s. So they left their business careers in the Phoenix Area to pursue greener, wetter pastures in Alsea, Oregon. Their friends laid bets that the couple wouldn’t last more than three years on the farm. That only encouraged them even more to make their farm a success.
At Leaping Lamb Farm, Scottie and Greg cut and bail their own hay, sometimes with help from neighbors. They chase down runaway sheep when their livestock outsmart the fences to leap into the surrounding mountains. When the Joneses realized their farm was eating up their retirement savings, the couple built a two-bedroom cottage on property and began renting it out to suburbanites and city-dwellers for nature-filled vacations.
Connect with nature
Natural beauty shines in this bucolic spot of Oregon, about an hour and a half from Portland. You’ll wake to the sound of a rooster (or two) crowing on your first morning. But you’ll soon adapt to the mellow sounds of farm life, cock-a-doodle-doos included. Two hand-fed rams baa for their daily servings of dried corn. The hens cluck. The duck quacks as it waddles into a plastic wading pool. It’s all framed by green grapes growing on vines that twist around the deck of the cottage and giant evergreen trees in the distance.
Love is in the details
It’s the little touches that keep families coming back to Leaping Lamb Farm. Thought has been put into the details to make simple things even more memorable during a farm stay here.
The Joneses outfitted the hay barn with a basketball hoop and basketball. With parental supervision, kids are welcome to climb the hay stacks to shoot and play. Light streams in through the barn’s slats, painting sunbeams across their smiling faces.
Scottie gives hand-drawn maps to fairy houses that a talented farmhand built on their property. Ahem…I mean the houses were built by fairies who find Leaping Lamb Farm as magical and welcoming as human guests do. Leave a note in the wee mailbox at one such tiny home and expect a letter mailed to your house after your vacation.
The flavors of Leaping Lamb Farm
Continental breakfast is provided for guests. You’ll find a fridge and pantry stocked with juice, milk, breads, fruits, coffee/tea, cereal, waffle/pancake mix, or other items depending on the season. Cooking basics are also provided including sugar, salt, pepper, seasonings, honey, flour, and oils.
Guests are invited to wander through the vegetable garden, flower patch, and green house. You can supplement your meals by purchasing fresh tomatoes, cucumber, herbs and more. Freshly laid eggs are also available for purchase. Plan to bring your own groceries for lunches, dinners and snacks or you can purchase some goodies from the nearby John Boy’s Alsea Mercantile and local fresh produce stands.
Leaping Lamb Farm pushed my kids, especially my youngest, out of their comfort zones. My son has a fear of vegetables and especially fruits. Never before had he ever tasted a berry. At Leaping Lamb Farm, though, he didn’t hesitate to pluck a mulberry from the tree and pop it into his mouth.
Leaping Lamb Farm lessons
Scottie doesn’t merely give guests a tour of the property. She connects. She asks questions about your family, and cares about the answers. Scottie explains the why and how of farm work to children and their parents: how to find the barn swallow nests, how composting works, why it’s important to pick a horse’s hoof before riding it.
Finding balance at Leaping Lamb Farm
The Joneses have fashioned a slackline on which children can play while parents watch from the cottage deck, glass of lemonade or wine in hand. The rope is a couple of feet above ground, strung between two trees. When my 8-year-old son started bouncing on it, Scottie said in her soft way, “I might ask you not to jump there. The rope is meant for balancing. It’s not a trampoline. Can you show me how far you can balance on it walking from one end to the other?”
Childhood, how it should be
Usually my kids avoid and whine about chores of any sort. Not so on the farm. I gave them free-reign to explore here…the only rule being not to go into the forest or hay barn without an adult. This newfound freedom turned my lazybones children into productive farmers that gleefully collected eggs, fed the horses, and even mucked out stalls.
There’s a trust during a stay at Leaping Lamb Farm with kids. Scottie trusts that children will follow the farm rules and act responsibly. She allows kids to take the mama goat for a walk on a rope lead with her two babies following behind. That trust includes that children will, “steer the goats away from my flowers and berries, but encourage them to eat the weeds instead.”
When I was a child, I played for hours outdoors without adult supervision. Today, my kids don’t have that same freedom to explore, scrape their knees, and come home when the street lamps light up. It was such a joy to call out my children’s names at dinnertime from the cottage door and watch them scramble in from the world of play. How wonderful it was to let them live a few days of innocence, free from my helicopter parenting and unburdened by their own obsession with technology.
A farmer is born
We all felt a little melancholy on the day of our departure from Leaping Lamb Farm. My 11-year-old daughter, Karissa, made her rounds to ensure she snapped a photo of all of the animals, and get an extra snuggle with Paco the donkey. Then Karissa declared she wants to be a farmer when she grows up. I’m not sure if she’ll follow through on that dream. But I do know who she can call for patient and gentle advice if she ever does.
Accommodations
Leaping Lamb Farm offers two accommodation options. We stayed in their two-bedroom farm cottage. It includes a small kitchen with a dining area, a family room, one bathroom, and a porch. This was the perfect set-up for our family of four. Fans and windows keep the cottage cool in summer, while wall heaters and a propane stove provide warmth in winter.
For larger groups, Leaping Lamb Farm has renovated an 1895 farm on the property. It boasts 4,000 square feet of space with five bedrooms, three baths, a large eat-in kitchen, a dining room, and a living room. Expect central air conditioning and heating in this home.
Experience Leaping Lamb Farm
Book a stay at Leaping Lamb Farm directly. For more information, read additional reviews about Leaping Lamb Farm on Trip Advisor.
Prepare for your stay, or even if you can’t visit the farm, you can share a little slice of this sweet farm with your children with Scottie’s book, Paco the Dusty Donkey.
Explore More
Read more about why your family will love a farm stay at one of the many farms in the U.S. that offer this unique type of vacation!
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Discover the simple beauty of fall at Wolfe’s Neck Farm in Freeport, Maine.
Enjoy outdoor adventures like horseback riding, hiking, and fly fishing in summer in Montana.
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Would you like to stay at Leaping Lamb Farm with kids? Let us know in the comments below!
A Note from The Travel Mama: I paid a media rate to stay at Leaping Lamb Farm with my family. All opinions are mine, as always.
I would love to spend the day here with the kids. I grew up around farms and always loved all the animals.
Hopefully you could stay for more than just a day. It takes a while to really unplug and enjoy!
That looks so pretty and like a lot of fun. Interacting with all the animals would be so great. And it is so naturally beautiful. I could understand why you had a great time there.
I’m always happiest when surrounded by nature!
It looks like you guys had so much fun! I would love to bring my family here sometime!
I hope you get a chance to take your family on a farm stay someday, Brandy!
I can definitely see why this is such a great destination for families. I love that your kids can get such novel experiences there!
Liz – Leaping Lamb Farm does such a fabulous job of making the simple things extra special!
What an amazingly unique vacation idea. Between the adorable animals, stunning scenery and important lessons to be learned, I am already sold.
Great! A farm stay is so good for the soul!
Dear Colleen, I can’t thank you enough for such a wonderful article about our farm. All your kind words rather choked me up on reading them. I’m so glad you could bring your kids for a visit, and that the stay was not only informative for all but nostalgic for your own childhood and the freedom we were allowed as kids. While we would love all your followers to visit us, Oregon is a bit far for some. I just want families to know there are farm stays in every state and you can easily find them by checking out Farm Stay U.S. (www.farmstayus.com). Farm stays are as different as their landscapes, but I can promise the food will be good, the scenery pastoral, and the farmers welcoming. It really is foreign travel in your own country, making a leap from urban to rural often in as little as 2 hours. BTW, Colleen, your photos are gorgeous. My personal favorite: Pearl the goat with the chicken looking on LOL! Thank you, thank you!!
Oh, I’m so glad to hear you like the story, Scottie! Thank YOU for such hospitality and wonderful memories. I hope we will return to beautiful Leaping Lamb Farm someday…soon!
This place looks absolutely amazing! Definitely a place I would visit with my family!
What an absolutely gorgeous place to visit. I think my kids would love to check this out.
I can almost guarantee your kids would LOVE it!
Leaping Lamb Farm looks like the most beautiful serene place to visit with the family. I can only imagine the photos and memories we’d have. I love the flower garden and all the animals.
This is awesome. We live in the City so something like this would be so much fun for our whole family. I know my kids would enjoy it just as much as I would, and think it would be a lot of fun and a great learning experience!
This is such a beautiful farm. I loved the tree!
This sounds like a great vacation for city-dwellers. There’s nothing like spending time on a farm to change your perspective.
This looks like a wonderful family activity. This would be a fun experience for my family we were all born and raised in the city.
This would be a dream vacation for me and my family. I have lived in the city all my life, and raised my kids in the same fast paced environment I grew up in. I would love to stay for a week (or two) at Leaping Lamb. It would be truly relaxing to be this close to nature and enjoy a more laid back lifestyle, even only temporarily.
A farm stay really was incredible for my family. I wish had stayed longer than just a couple of nights. I hope to go back to Leaping Lamb Farm someday and/or stay at another farm. I hope you get the opportunity to try this kind of vacation, too!
Oh wow. I would love to take the family to stay at Leaping Lamb. We live in the south, so we love animals and working with them. I think this would be so much fun!
Your family of animal lovers will definitely feel right at home at Leaping Lamb!
It takes a special kind of person to welcome guests to stay at their farm. The knowledge gained from a visit like this is impossible to measure.
The experience really was so incredible for us. I want to go back!