
January 13, 2025
SHEBOYGAN – A Sheboygan-based bed and breakfast – or as some might call it, a baa-d and breakfast – is offering city folk in Northeast Wisconsin a chance to live the farm life, at least for a night or two.
Joshua Dolan – who co-owns Velvet Sheep Farms Bed & Breakfast (W1681 Garton Road) with his wife, Kelli – said they bought the farm more than half a decade ago.
“We moved on to the property and got our animals about six-and-a-half years ago, and then we opened up as a bed and breakfast about three-and-a-half years ago,” he said. “We’ve been doing both in conjunction with each other, but the farm came first.”
Joshua said he and Kelli met in Cincinnati – “that’s where she’s from” – briefly living in Texas afterward before moving to Wisconsin.
“From Texas, we first moved to Milwaukee, and we kind of put our feet down there and started looking for a farm,” he said. “So we lived in Milwaukee for about a year, then moved to Sheboygan about a year later, and we’ve been here in the same spot ever since.”
Getting shear-ious
When they first started dating, Joshua said he and Kelli decided together they wanted to put roots down and build something meaningful for their future family.
“I had the (idea) that I wanted to start a farm and get back into a more traditional farming lifestyle and raise our kids in that,” he said. “So that was kind of the seed idea, and then from there, we tried to figure out what kind of farm we wanted to have and what we’d be best suited to.”
Joshua said sheep became the main focus “very early on” as Kelli was studying fashion design at the time.
“If we could get sheep, we could harvest the wool and turn that into clothing products and things like that,” he said. “So that was kind of how I convinced her early on to come on board the farm idea, and it grew from there.”
As they began formulating their plan for a sheep farm, Joshua said everyone to whom they explained their idea expressed interest in coming onto the farm and visiting.

“We started thinking, ‘Everybody wants to come visit farms – everybody wants to have a little slice of that,’” he said, “‘we should consider some kind of ecotourism aspect so we can incorporate that into what we’re doing and expand our scope quickly’ – so the idea of turning it into a bed and breakfast took shape.”
Luckily, Joshua said the future home of Velvet Sheep Farms Bed & Breakfast was already equipped for the challenge.
“It was just pure luck that we found the property we found, and it had already been a bed and breakfast prior to us buying it,” he said. “So the bones were set, and we got here and hit the ground running.”
The property and the house on it, Joshua said, was initially built in the early 1900s as a professional fruit and berry farm.
“So there was infrastructure here – we have a beautiful old barn, things like that, but the infrastructure wasn’t there for animals,” he said. “So when we first moved in, we had to put all the pasture fence in, build structures for the animals… I’ve become quite familiar with digging post holes and putting fencing in.”
When they first moved to Wisconsin, Joshua said he attended the Sheep and Wool Festival where he met another sheep farm owner from New Glarus who helped him get started.
“She was nice enough to take me under her wing,” he said. “She let me come out to the farm, gave me the insider’s perspective – she had been a sheep farmer at that point for, I think, more than 30 years. She showed me the ropes, then told me what I needed to get set up and then we ended up getting our flock from her. So I had a good initial education there.”
The rest of his education, Joshua said, was left to “YouTube videos and then, quite frankly, on-the-job training.”
“No matter how many books you read or videos you watch, the sheep are always going to do something new and unexpected,” he said. “So you have to learn your own flock – each personality for the sheep – and then apply the generalized information to your on-the-job experience. It’s been an adventure, to say the least.”
Heart ‘felt’ products
Though they haven’t yet bolstered the clothing and fashion side of the business, Joshua said he and Kelli do harvest and sell other wool products.
“We’ve produced some minor clothing, but at this point, the primary product that we’ve been selling has been either felted goods, yarns and the wool itself,” he said.
A mill on the west side of the state, Joshua said, will spin their yarn for them, but everything else in the process of making the various woolen products they sell is done on site.

“(A) surprising item that we came up with a couple of years ago that’s been very popular – we actually sell little felted cat toys,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of people who buy them and give the caveat that their pets don’t really play with toys anymore. Then they come back the next time we’re at the market, and they buy five more because they said their cats have hidden them all over the place, and they’ve been playing with them the entire time.”
Joshua said other examples of products that he and Kelli make are dryer balls and felted wool fertilizer pellets.
“You can process the wool that you can’t really use for yarns and felted goods and basically turn that into a product in itself, which you can spread in (a) garden,” he said. “The more we get into it, the more we’ve realized that you can kind of use wool for everything.”
Though on the back burner for now, Joshua said he and Kelli are still working toward making their own clothing out of the wool they harvest from their sheep.
“I think it’s definitely our next big goal to get into a place where we can produce enough clothing to really make an impact,” he said. “Instead of selling the raw goods to crafters, we want to be able to sell finished sweaters and hats and things like that ourselves.”
Velvet Sheep Farms does not have its own storefront where people can buy their products, Joshua said, but interested customers can catch them at the Sheboygan Farmers’ Market among other local markets and events.
“We actually have an open farm event here at Velvet Sheep Farms that we do in conjunction with two other farms, both of which are located near Manitowoc,” he said. “We do that at the beginning of every May, so people can come visit the farm, see the animals and then we have our product out for people to purchase as well. Then we sell to our bed and breakfast guests.”
Joshua said those who are interested in checking out the farm and its products can also call and schedule an appointment to visit and shop “at their own leisure.”
A soft place to ‘lamb’
The second part of Velvet Sheep Farm’s business is the traditional-style bed and breakfast, Joshua said.
“Our guests come, we greet them, we show them their quarters, show them around on the farm and then let them get settled in,” he said. “They can treat it as a hotel. They can come and go as they please. They have their own private quarters, as well as a shared guest area. So a lot of times our guests end up meeting and chit-chatting, and oftentimes, they’re actually in town for the same events. So it works out really well in that respect.”

Joshua said he and Kelli do “everything themselves” for their guests, which includes making them a full country breakfast every morning.
“We’re always on site if our guests have questions – we like to think of ourselves as both hosts and tour guides,” he said. “We want to make sure that everybody knows where they’re going (and) what there is to do. So we like to provide a resource on things to do in the area, and then just facilitate the guest stay as best we can to make sure they have a great and comfortable stay here.”
Currently, Velvet Sheep Farms Bed & Breakfast offers three guest rooms, but following some winter construction, Joshua said they anticipate having an additional room available for guests to book a stay in.
“We’re going to be adding on a small addition to our house,” he said. “So hopefully by spring next year, we’ll have another guest room available.”
In the summer – Velvet Sheep Farms’ busy season – Joshua said they are booked full nearly every day.
“We have some really big crowd-drawing (events) in the summer,” he said. “We’re basically booked every day in full. It kind of slows down a little bit in the winter, but we’ve noticed over the years, we’ve started getting busier and busier, even during the cold winter months… but still, it’s hard to compete with the summer.”
For those interested in simply visiting the farm, Joshua said he and Kelli will give tours by appointment.
“We offer little farm tours so people can bring parties out,” he said. “Set up an appointment, bring out a group, and we’re always happy to take people around and introduce them to our animals, let them feed them some snacks and then give some anecdotes and education about sheep farming and our animals in particular.”
The animals, Joshua said, “all have slight idiosyncrasies” – giving them each their own unique personality.
“When we shear them, a lot of our sheep will look identical without their wool,” he said. “Most of the time, we can kind of tell who’s who based on how they’re acting.”
To learn more, book a stay or schedule a visit, head to velvetsheepfarms.com.