NH News - "What Happens When Sheep are Milked?"

JULY/AUGUST 2005

What Happens When Sheep are Milked?

Article and photos by Rick Mooney

It was the late' 80s. Dave Falk and his wife Mary weren't really thinking about starting a sheep dairy and cheese making business on their 200-acre LoveTree Farmstead near Grantsburg, Wisconsin. Dave was working in the silo construction business. Mary was a radio broadcaster. But when asthma forced Mary to give up her radio career, Dave bought her a couple of sheep. "He thought it would be a good way of keeping me busy and out of trouble," Mary said.

Over the next few years, they developed a small market for lamb meat in nearby Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. "We were doing OK," said Dave, "but we really wanted to farm full time. But we knew we didn't have the acres to support a big enough flock to make a living from lamb sales alone."

They talked to another northern Wisconsin sheep producer about prospects for setting up a partnership in the lamb business. "We drove over to see what he had going with the sheep dairy, and we knew this is what we wanted to do," Dave said. "He told us we could probably get set up to milk sheep for $2,000 to $3,000. When we got back in the car, we started crunching the numbers. By the time we pulled into the driveway at home, we had roughed out a five-year business plan."

Mary and Dave Falk holding some of their artisan cheese.

Production and marketing plans evolved over the next several years. Sustainability was a big part of the production plan. The couple determined their acreage would support a milking flock of around 130 to 150 ewes. "We also decided we needed to milk seasonally, from April through September most years, so we wouldn't need to purchase a lot of grain for the winter months," Dave said.

He made use of skills he had picked up during 30 years in the construction business to build a small milking parlor on one side of an existing barn. The major feature of the barn is a home-built metal milking platform that stands about waist high. Early in the grazing season, the platform holds 24 sheep. As the ewes bulk up during the season that number drops to 20 animals.

Ewes are milked twice a day, four at a time, into a modified Surge bucket with four claws. "When I'm really cooking in here I can milk 130 ewes in two hours," Dave said. The biggest difference between milking sheep and milking cows is that sheep give a lot less milk, about two pounds per day on average. But average butterfat content of the milk is 7.25 percent. "It's great for making cheese," Dave said.

While he focused on the milk production aspects of the business, Mary began fine-tuning her cheese-making skills. The first step was to complete an apprenticeship program that enabled her to qualify for a license as a Wisconsin cheese maker.

With the state license in hand, Mary set up shop in a cheese-making room next to the milk barn. She currently devotes two days a week to making three kinds of cheese under the couple's LoveTree Farmstead Cheese label. Two of the cheeses are made exclusively with sheep milk, while a third is made from a blend of sheep's milk and Jersey cow milk purchased from a nearby dairy. In 1996, her first full year of full-time cheese making, Mary made 40 wheels of 10 pounds each. In 2004 she made nearly 400 wheels of cheese.

The Falks make what is known as artisan cheese. "The goal in artisan cheese making is to capture the flavor of the environment where the product is produced," said Mary. "Sometimes the milk used is produced on the dairy artisan's own farmstead. If not, the artisan can tell the customer where the milk came from and how animals were cared for."

At LoveTree Farmstead, cheese is aged anywhere from two months to two years in a complex of fresh-air underground caves located near a small pond. The caves funnel in the pollens and molds that give the cheese a unique "flavor nuance." One promotional marketing piece describes the Falks' end product as "aromatic, with a fruity-nutty flavor" having a "light, woodsy undertone" and an "elegant, silky texture that's most celebrated for its tremendous depth of flavor."

Natural caves on the Falks' farm have room to age up to 50,000 pounds of cheese at a time.

Mary explained that traditional commodity cheese is usually wrapped in plastic and stored at a temperature of 38 degrees for aging. In the Falks' caves, cheese is stored on cedar planking, without the plastic wrapping, at a temperature of 55 degrees. The absence of plastic allows more water to escape from the cheese during the aging process. It also plays a role in creating the flavor.

In their initial marketing plan, the Falks targeted restaurants in major cities on the east and west coasts. "We were selling in places such as New York, Washington, and San Francisco, and things were going well," said Dave.

Accolades from consumer groups helped the couple's business blossom. In 1997 and 2004 the Trade Lake Cedar variety of their cheese was named one of the three best cheeses in the U.S. at the prestigious Aspen Food and Wine Show in Colorado. In 1998 it was awarded "Best of Show" at the American Cheese Society nationals, and that same year Dave and Mary were named "Food Artisans of the Year" by the Bon Appetite Food Network.

Then the American tragedy of September 11, 2001, forced the couple to rethink their marketing strategy. "People everywhere just quit going out to eat, and the markets dried up," said Dave. So they began looking for markets closer to home and eventually decided their best option would be to sell their cheese directly to consumers at a year-round farmers market in nearby St. Paul.

A big part of the farmers' market experience has involved educating people about what sheep's milk really is. "A lot of people aren't aware that you can drink sheep's milk or that you can make cheese from it," said Dave "We spend a lot of time explaining to people that sheep's milk is more like human milk. It takes over four hours for the human stomach to completely digest cheese made from cow's milk. For goat cheese, it's two hours. With sheep's milk it's about 45 minutes."

The sheep's milk cheese is more expensive on a per pound basis, Mary explained. "But there are a lot more solids in our artisan sheep cheese. That means when you buy sheep cheese you're essentially buying pure flavor: you're not buying water."

With an eye on the future, one of the Falks' major goals is to develop their own breed of sheep. They want an animal with parasite resistance and longevity. Their breeding program focuses on an animal that will survive the tough winters common to their part of the country and do it with a minimum of grain feeding. "We're hoping that in our lifetime we'll be able to create a registry for an animal known as the Trade Lake Sheep," Dave said.

Their marketing diversification also includes selling lamb meat, in the spring, directly to consumers. About 75 percent of the meat customers are people who buy our cheese at the farmers' market," Dave said. "We just put out a piece of paper and a pencil at our booth and people sign up. It's become a big part of our income."

Wool also generates income. While the traditional markets of the wool fabric industry no longer exist, they have found customers among spinners, private mills, and gardeners who use the wool for mulch.

The caves found on their farm also provide a potential for custom-aging cheese products for other cheese producers. The total capacity of their caves is about 50,000 pounds of cheese. "We feel like that is a part of the business with a fair amount of potential for growth," said Mary. "We could try to make more cheese ourselves, but around here labor is the most precious commodity. We figure it will be easier to find qualified people to work in the caves than in the cheese room."

They have also considered the idea of opening an on-farm retail store. "Up to this point customers have come to the farm by appointment only," Mary explained. "We're in an area that draws a lot of tourists. There would be advantages to having a retail store, but there would also be some headaches in having more people walking around the farm. We're not quite ready to take that step yet."

For more information, visit the Falks' website at www.lovetreefarm.com/home.htm

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