A 7-year-old boy near Bluffton, Ohio is spending his summer running a roadside farm stand, and this time the profits aren't going toward toys. Ezra Lehman is selling lemonade, tomatoes and zucchini with one goal in mind: buying his very own flock of Icelandic sheep.
Ezra attends Pandora-Gilboa Local Schools and lives with his parents, Jason and Ella Lehman, at what the family calls The Hickory Farm, a nearly four-acre hobby farm just across the Putnam County line near Bluffton, according to The Advertiser-Tribune. As myfox28columbus.com reports, Ezra now wants to become a shepherd and hopes to buy two or three Icelandic sheep, which run roughly $250 to $400 apiece.
This isn't Ezra's first go at roadside entrepreneurship. He launched his stand in 2025 selling flower vases, earning about $200 that he used to buy a Nintendo Switch, according to the same outlet. This year, per that report, he expanded the offerings to fresh produce and lemonade, and shifted his savings goal from video games to livestock.
A Family Farm Built for Learning Responsibility
The Lehman family plans to buy one ram and two ewes so Ezra can eventually establish a small breeding flock, according to The Advertiser-Tribune's reporting. The goal is for him to exhibit the sheep through 4-H at the Putnam County Fair, where his older siblings already show livestock, the outlet notes.
Before taking on sheep, Ezra has been proving he can handle the responsibility that comes with animal care. He helps put his sister's Pygora goats away and take them out, gives them water every day, and hauls water from a well using a two-gallon green bucket, per myfox28columbus.com. Ella Lehman told the station that Ezra launched his first farm stand back in 2025, and Ezra himself put it simply: he's trying to buy sheep and make money.
The Hickory Farm itself carries some local history. It was named by its former owners, the Carr family, for its original stands of large hickory trees, and the property is now home to chickens, ducks, donkeys, three Pygora goats and a Flemish giant rabbit, the Advertiser-Tribune reports.
Why Icelandic Sheep
The breed Ezra has his eye on has a history stretching back more than a thousand years. Icelandic sheep are an ancient North European short-tailed breed brought to Iceland by Viking settlers in the 9th and 10th centuries, and strict import laws have kept the breed genetically unchanged ever since, according to the Icelandic Sheep Breeders of North America. The animals didn't arrive in North America until 1985 and 1990, when Canadian breeder Stefania Sveinbjarnardottir-Dignum imported them, followed by the first U.S. flock brought to Massachusetts in 1992, per the same organization.
The breed's fleece is part of the appeal for small-scale shepherds. Icelandic sheep grow a dual coat made up of long, coarse outer guard hairs called tog and a soft inner fleece called thel, making them useful for fiber, meat and milk alike, according to Kind Horn Farm.
How Roadside Stands Like Ezra's Stay Legal
Ezra's stand can operate without a commercial permit thanks to Ohio law. Under Section 3717.22 of the Ohio Revised Code, roadside farm stands selling fresh, unprocessed fruits and vegetables or non-potentially hazardous cottage food items are exempt from retail food establishment licensing requirements, according to the Ohio Revised Code.
Small operations like the Lehmans' fit into a much larger pattern across the region. Allen County, where Bluffton is located, had 897 farms generating more than $240 million in agricultural market sales as of the 2022 Census of Agriculture, with 436 of those farms sitting under 50 acres, per the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service.
What Comes Next for Ezra
Before Ezra can bring sheep into the show ring, he'll have some formal training ahead of him. Ohio 4-H youth livestock programs require participants to complete quality assurance training and skillathons covering animal care, feeding and evaluation before they can exhibit livestock at county fair shows, according to Ohio State University Extension. For now, Ezra is focused on the basics: selling lemonade and vegetables, tending the goats, and hauling water one bucket at a time toward the flock he hopes to call his own.
