Scottie Jones talks Farm Stays

Farm Stays: Space to Grow

Could you share your farmland with paying guests and create an additional income stream? We talk to Scottie Jones, founder and executive director of Farm Stay USA.

farmstayus.com

What’s your background and what led you to create Farm Stays US?

I have been on my farm for the past 18 years, arriving here directly from a one-acre suburban “lot” in Tempe AZ with 2 horses and little real farm experience other than a huge hydroponic greenhouse my husband had for tomatoes and chilies. Honestly, we were romantically deluded white-collar professionals looking for a change and thinking we would try our hand at farming. I mean, how hard can farming be?! Thankfully, Greg was good at growing things and I knew enough to take classes through our university Extension on things like lambing and living on the land.

As for introducing our farm stay, we were on a steep learning curve that, by year 2, had proven to me we weren’t going to be able to cover our farm costs by just selling lamb and hay. I had lived in Europe for a time, and specifically England, so was familiar with the farm stay idea. What better way to diversify and increase our income than to invite guests to our farm? I wasn’t going anywhere anyway, and I didn’t suppose anyone could ask a denser question than I had when we first arrived. I would be the perfect host (I also had a fair amount of customer service and marketing training from my previous stints as the Arizona franchisee for The Body Shot and the Director of Host and Guests Services at The Phoenix Zoo). It started from there in 2007.

Curtis Anderson

Which states are most likely to allow glamping farm stays?

The more unregulated states regarding land use will be those with lots of open space, large acreage holdings, and the philosophy that a person can do what they want with their land. Alternatively, states along both seaboards and with large urban areas close by will likely be highly regulated. Within those states, many have found the closer their county is to an urban area, the more closely regulated. The variation of applied regulations county by county can be maddening. Before buying land, you should always ask your realtor about what you are and are not allowed to do regarding glamping/camping/lodging if that is your intention. You can even go as far as to ask the local planning office (anonymously if need be).

I may not be totally correct on these and may also have missed a few, but the most obvious will be: Texas, Florida, Nebraska, Iowa, Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, North and South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico. I am not as sure when you get to the south, but possibly Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina? Interestingly, while western Oregon is highly regulated, eastern Oregon is not because it is mostly ranchland and open with no urban areas close by.

What should operators consider before they try to set up?

Check out the zoning in your area and find out what is allowed and not allowed regarding glamping.

• What is the planning department going to require (permits etc.)?

• How much will they cost?

• What is the building department going to require (some won’t allow certain types of structures if they aren’t permanent or can’t withstand wind, snow, earthquakes, like that)?

• Who are your neighbors and does this look like they might have a problem with what you are doing?

• What infrastructure is available and if not, how will you handle: water, septic, electricity, roadway, emergency logistics

• Who is going to be responsible for: marketing, reservations, hospitality, housekeeping, yardwork/first impressions?

How tough is it to combine farming and hospitality and which is more demanding?

It depends on what you are offering for your farm stays as to which is more demanding, hospitality or farming. Timewise, farming takes more if you are looking at hours and days. Hospitality can be as simple as greeting guests, grabbing them for chores twice a day, and saying goodbye. Some farms, however, will offer breakfast, classes or experiences. As long as you are charging enough for these things, then the worth does not make the offer demanding.

I look at the combination of farming and hospitality like this. I am not going anywhere anyway since my job is on the farm, so why not invite guests to hang out too? It depends on what we are doing in our farming as to whether we actually invite guests to help us because they are paying to stay, not paying to work. However, most like to help with chores if they can (feed the chickens, collect eggs, bottle feed baby animals, feed out hay or grain). It’s not as likely they will help weed the garden or scoop the poop but that’s fine. Sometimes I can get shepherding help, but first I need to teach guests not to move too fast!

Dennis Rivera

How important is it to try to get the rest of your community to support you in setting up a farm stay?

If your neighbors aren’t on board with your farm stay idea, they can tank your application at the planning office for a permit faster than anything else. Make sure to have a chat with them about what will be happening on your property and ask for feedback from them and suggestions for solutions if they are looking unhappy. Maybe there are sound restrictions you impose after 10 PM or no parties allowed or no barking dogs. One of our restrictions imposed by our county was limited traffic on our road. The funny thing is that our neighbors drive our road far more and far faster than any of our guests (who barely leave the property while they are here!)

What do you wish you had known when you first started that you could pass on to our readers?

Hosting a farm stay is more than just a vacation rental where you never meet your guests. These people often become friends over time as they repeat their visits. What I have found is that I am a teacher - something I hadn’t thought about when we started. Most guests are urbanites and honestly have no clue about where their food comes from, what farmers do, how livestock live, even how eggs hatch (or don’t when you collect them every day). I love this part.

But the part that makes me the most emotional is when I get a thank you note about the impact the stay had on someone, because what we offer is often a time for family to connect with each other, not just the natural world. It’s time to be quiet, to drop their gadgets and phones, to place their hands on a lamb (or a manure fork!), to play in a creek or walk in the woods. It’s a fulfilling ‘job’ to share our farm with others and it’s rather like being on stage when you are with guests, so down time at the end of the season is definitely a plus. Oh, and the other thing, I get to see my farm through the eyes of guests. So, instead of all the broken fencing and jobs not complete, I see the beauty of our location and all that we have and that we have created. It’s my gift from strangers.

Leaping Lamb Farm

How do you think demand for this kind of holiday is increasing in the US and has the pandemic likely increased the demand?

Demand has grown exponentially for farm stays and country vacations, especially brought to the fore by the pandemic. Most of us are fairly isolated, so visits feel safer because there is plenty of room to roam and there may or may not be other guests. Vacation rentals have also picked up so the difference here is there is an experience added that makes it fun, unexpected and new. I believe many Americans have never, until recently, considered staying on a farm. Won’t it be dirty, boring, and hard work? That’s where it is then easy to exceed expectations because it isn’t any of that. Oh, and that increase is also due to guests sharing photos on Instagram. It’s pretty easy to take good photos of lambs, your kids feeding lambs, fresh veggies on the table, roosters crowing...

What qualities should a host possess in order to be successful?

Most importantly, you need to be friendly and enjoy meeting strangers who are interested in sharing your lifestyle. You need to be able to solve issues that come up quickly, and with decorum. You need to go above and beyond for some situations. If you host families, you need to like kids but also know how to set safe boundaries with them around livestock and dangerous areas of the farm (especially rules about the farm dog and chasing animals). You may need to be patient. But back to the first one, you need to be friendly.

Jenny Lisk

What would you warn against to prospective hosts?

While it’s not bad to do all the jobs to begin with, so you know when you hire how to set expectations for your employees, if you continue to do all the jobs, especially housekeeping, you will burn out quickly. DO NOT DO EVERYTHING. You can make more money and host more guests if you free yourself up to do the marketing job at $25/hour rather than the cleaning job at $13/hour. Look at your time as worth something and then pay others to do the lower wage activities.

Take a break. It’s your schedule so you can block out days or weeks or months on your calendar. No one needs to know you are closed or on vacation if that is what you are doing. If your business gets busy enough and you don’t want to be closed, hire/ train an innkeeper to take your place.

After you are open for a while, check in with family members and those living on the farm to make sure they are still happy having strangers around. Is this still a good idea? Is it too busy or too slow to make it worth it (too busy - can’t get farming done; too slow - not worth the time). Don’t assume this is a forever idea the way it started. All good ideas morph into other things. Be open and honest.

What have you learned since getting involved in this sector?

• 9 out of 10 Americans have never heard of a farm stay or even considered it. Creating the travel niche is ongoing and we have not yet reached a place where it is a recognizable travel niche. I hope we will get there soon!

• Once they have been to a farm, kids will choose to come back over a trip to Disneyland (I have proof from more than one kid saying or writing this to me!)

• This is a great diversification strategy to farming because even if the price of lamb goes down or feed goes up, it doesn’t affect my lodging and I can still pay my bills. Farming is such a risky business and hard to make a profit. I would have said that lodging was almost risk free until this past year. But the funny thing is that as our lodging took a hit, our farming sales increased as people looked more locally to buy. I think this is a great match for a more stable and viable farm.

• I love all the other farm stay hosts I meet. They are interesting. They seem to love what they do. They all do it differently. We can learn from each other. They appear to enjoy their role in being the face of farming for the many urbanites who cross our thresholds.

• There is now a growing support from local tourism agencies to promote our type of lodging and our stories. Hugely helpful in the marketing arena!

• I enjoy what I do and feel it has real worth.

About Scottie Jones

Scottie Jones has lived and farmed at Leaping Lamb Farm in Alsea, Oregon with her husband, Greg, since 2003. The farming operations are focused on lamb production and a large quarter acre market garden. The farm stay part of the business was added in 2007 and took off fairly quickly. In 2010, Scottie launched an association for U.S. working farms and ranches offering lodging, marketing them through the Farm Stay USA website to Americans who were unfamiliar with this new U.S. travel niche. Scottie’s background before farming has been varied, but ultimately useful where she finds herself now: field archaeologist (wheelbarrowing), Arizona The Body Shop franchisee (marketing/customer service), director at the Phoenix Zoo (business development, although she should have visited the farm more for future instruction).

Scottie Jones