Freckle Farms returns to the Great Northern Fair

After years away, in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Randy's Freckle Farms Zoo made its return to the Great Northern Fair this year, opening Wednesday to children and adults.

The operation includes 5-minute pony rides for young children and a petting zoo where seven breeds of goats and six breeds of sheep can be fed and petted.

The zoo's namesake, Randy Jones, said they also have a miniature zebu, a cattle breed originating in Africa, named Zena which tends to get a lot of interest from local ranchers who recognize it as a cow, but know it's not from anywhere nearby.

"It'll be a lot of fun, it will be great," Jones said.

He also said they brought an alpaca named Mackenzie which also tends to get a lot of interest, especially from younger children.

"Everybody likes Mackenzie," he said. "She's very sweet."

Jones said cups of food can be purchased for $3 and brushing the animals, which children really seem to like, is free.

Among those who enjoyed the setup was Brittany Sterner and her sons Elijah and Ethan, the latter of whom spent much of his time beset by hungry, but very friendly, goats and sheep.

"I like to pet the small ones," Ethan Sterner said.

Elijah Sterner said he was also a little scared of the animals, but enjoyed the experience even so.

As for Brittany Sterner, she said, she's been to the Great Northern Fair many times, but this was the first time she'd seen Freckle Farms.

She said she definitely noticed Zena, and that she was definitely a different breed of cow than what she was used to around the Havre area.

"I'm like, 'That's definitely not from around here,'" she said.

Jones, who's been running petting zoos like this for more than 50 years, said they've been at the Great Northern Fair many times in the past, but haven't been back since Tim Solomon was the fairgrounds manager years ago.

He said the couldn't come in 2020 because the fair was canceled due to the pandemic, and they couldn't come last year because he himself got COVID-19, but this year they're happy to be back.

He said the pandemic actually brought about an unexpected change in the pony rides recently.

Jones said late last year he saw young children getting unusually uncomfortable on the pony rides and for a while he just couldn't figure out why, which was very distressing to him.

That was until a mother of one of the children mentioned that her child was born during the pandemic, and suddenly it clicked, he said.

The children were getting stressed because they'd spent so much of the last two years seeing only their mother and father and hadn't encountered many other people yet, so they'd get scared more easily, he said.

"I didn't realize," Jones said. "I was saying to myself, 'Boy, have I gotten more ugly?' ... I just couldn't pin it down until that mom told me that."

Since then, he said, they encourage parents to walk alongside their children as they ride if they feel that will help, something they generally didn't do much in the past.

Jones' outfit, which works mostly with the Rocky Mountain Association of Fairs, travels the western United States throughout most of the year.

He said he's from western Arizona and they do their fairs starting in March, just because of how hot it gets during the summer, but they certainly can't run something like that in Havre in March, so he ends up staying busy somewhere or another through most of the year.

"Folks here are dying at 91 (degrees) and we're like, 'Wow it's nice out,'" he said.

He said the farthest east they get is Williston, North Dakota, but Montana alone has 125 fairs, so he has plenty to go to.

Jones said he's been doing this show for a very long time, and he's starting to feel it might be time to call it quits.

He said he's still got a few more years in him, but the time to pass the reins to the young people is coming soon.