Black Sheep Creamery

When Brad and Meg Gregory realized that their middle son incurred some serious allergic reactions at the slightest hint of cow’s milk in his belly, they had to get creative. The prospect of denying their son the pleasure of cheese seemed too harsh a response, so Brad and Meg decided to start raising sheep. After all, they had already spent years growing row crops and wheat, and had enough acreage to start pasturing about five dozen of the fleecy animals. What started as a solution to a family problem soon blossomed into a successful business endeavor, and now the Gregorys are committed commercial cheesemakers. And year after year, the cheese just keeps getting better.

What do you sell at the Moreland Farmers Market?

We sell fresh and aged sheep’s milk cheese, all of which is seasonal. People sometimes forget that cheese is seasonal, but it’s definitely true! The taste and flavor depends on the breeding and milk production of the animals, what the animal is eating, and the amount of time the cheese needs to be aged.

We carry our fresh cheeses through the end of August, and once we hit November we have to switch our sheep from pasture to hay to get through until March. Our aged cheeses are available longer, since they don’t rely as much on our ability to pasture our animals. As far as varieties go, we sell plain, rosemary and garlic, dill and garlic, tomato-basil and garlic, cumin and orange, and chipotle and tomato fresh cheeses, as well as various hard cheeses. Our most popular aged cheeses are our Mopsy’s Best and our feta.

Once you decided to start making cheese for your son, how did you learn the process?

In the early 2000s, Brad and I took a cheese-making class with Peter Dickson in Vermont and immersed ourselves in the whole process. We made cheese at home for two years before we started selling commercially, so we allowed ourselves to have a bit of a learning curve. In 2005, Peter actually came to our property in Adna (outside Shehalis) to teach a cheesemaking course. Brad really picked up a lot of information and techniques from those experiences, and he’s definitely been the one to adopt the cheesemaker persona.

 

What does a typical day on the farm look like for you and Brad?

Ha! No such thing as a typical work day, but there are some responsibilities we have to make sure we accomplish. We have several employees who start off milking the sheep around 6:30 in the morning, and then we let them head out to the pasture (the sheep, not the employees!). We usually bring the sheep back in around 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon for a second milking, and then they get to go back out to the pasture before they settle down for the evening. If we’re making fresh cheese, the process takes about three days in total and includes hanging and flavoring the cheese on the second and third days. We have an employee, Danielle, who goes into our cheese cave and brushes our hard cheeses to make sure they age properly.

What are some of the challenges of your business?

Weather, of course. And the fact that our product is seasonal, since we only milk our sheep for about six months out of the year. But other than that, our animals tend to stay healthy, our lambing season often goes well, we have good employees, and we get great feedback about our cheeses!

 

 

What is the best part about being at the Moreland Farmers Market?

I love getting to know our customers! Working at smaller neighborhood markets is wonderful because I can actually develop familiar relationships with the folks who come by week after week. And you can instantly tell what someone does or doesn’t like based off of their facial expressions after a bite of our cheese. You can’t beat that kind of feedback. Portland in particular is a wonderful place to sell our products, because there’s such an active foodie culture here that people seem to understand the importance of eating high quality, local foods.

Do you have any ideas or opinions regarding how the local food movement can be more effective?

Given the recession, I think the local food movement is definitely encountering some challenges. Local foods often cost more, and even though they are fresher and better for you, it’s hard to incent someone to purchase them when they’re under a tight budget. Clearly the food system is tied in to issues like unemployment, so I think for the local food movement to really gain momentum, people involved in making changes should look beyond the scope of food itself and start looking at jobs, location, etc. It’s also important that we define what we mean by “local.” For me, my cheeses are “local” to the people who live in a two-hour driving radius from my farm.

Black Sheep Creamery’s cheeses can be found at the Moreland Farmers Market on Wednesdays from 3:00 PM until 7:00 PM, as well as at New Seasons, Steve’s Cheese Bar, the St. Johns Farmers Market, and at various Portland Restaurants. Their Tin Willow Tomme was recently featured in SAVEUR Magazine’s list of notable West Coast Cheeses.

Adrien Schless-Meier has her own food blog, Her Hungry Heart, is an avid supporter of local food systems and a senior sociology major at Reed College.