Located on 65 undulating acres in Gardiner, NY by the Catskill Mountains, Willow Pond Sheep Farm makes a verdant setting for a flock of highly contented dairy sheep and a couple of equally happy humans. Carrie and Brent Wasser recently treated the team at Down to Earth Markets to a tour of their property to learn more about the farm’s day-to-day operations and meet some of its wooly residents. Here is a recap of our fascinating conversation with Carrie.
How did Willow Pond Sheep Farm get started?
Brent and I were both working in jobs related to agriculture and farming when we met in Vermont in 2015. I was the editor of a quarterly local foods magazine, and Brent was a teacher at the Culinary Institute with a background in cheese and ice cream making. We knew we wanted to start a livestock farm, but it wasn’t certain what we would do until Brent said to me that he thought I would really like dairy sheep.
I grew up in an urban setting in Greenwich Village but have always been interested in animals. My parents had the foresight to buy this land in the 1980s as they wanted a second home in the country. I spent much of my childhood up here, but my mom was still shocked when I told her all those years later that I wanted to start farming on this land.
We started sheep farming in 2018 and were initially selling lamb for meat. At the height of the pandemic in 2020, we introduced our dairy flock and started milking for the first time. We continue to sell the meat that is a by-product of our dairy operation, however our bottled sheep’s milk and the yogurt we make onsite in our farmstead creamery are now our flagship products.
How are sheep’s milk and cow’s milk different?
For starters, sheep’s milk is incredibly difficult to find because sheep dairy is challenging economically. You’re doing the same amount of labor as on a cow dairy, but sheep produce much less milk.
There are many humane issues with cow dairy which is typically produced in massive volumes at industrial scale. There has been a lot of breeding of Holstein cows to select for unnaturally large udders to promote milk production. The udders have become so big that the animals are weighed down and aren’t able to engage in natural behaviors such as grazing and prancing. Plus, sheep are better for the environment in hillier areas. The impact of cows on hills creates a lot of soil erosion, whereas sheep are lighter on the land and don’t do as much damage.
Sheep dairy is more digestible than cow dairy. While there is lactose in sheep’s milk, the way the fat is structured makes the lactose more digestible. Many of our customers who can’t tolerate cow dairy can consume and enjoy Willow Pond’s sheep milk and yogurt without issues.
How does sheep’s milk taste?
Dairy sheep produce nutritionally dense, protein-packed milk that is delicious to drink and makes super creamy yogurt. An easy testament to this is that kids are some of our biggest fans! It’s rare that we encounter a child who doesn’t like our yogurt because it tastes so mild and creamy. Some people mistakenly conflate sheep’s milk with goat’s milk, but they are two very different tasting things. So, there is often an education curve that we just need to overcome.
What is a day in the life of a Willow Pond dairy sheep like?
Our sheep have a very nice life. In fact, it’s much easier than my life! From April through Thanksgiving, they spend their days and nights outside grazing and sleeping on pasture. They have a livestock guardian dog called Yarrow that lives with them and protects them from coyotes and other predators.
We practice rotational grazing so that the ewes have fresh grass to graze upon all the time. We keep the paddocks small so that they eat as much grass as possible. From spring to fall, the bulk of our labor involves collecting the fence and moving it down and repeating that process to keep the grass supply coming. The sheep don’t return to the same pasture for forty days as that’s how long it takes for the parasites to die off in the sun.
During the summer the ewes are brought inside to be milked twice a day at 5:30am and 3:30pm. The sheep know when it’s time for milking and want to get inside as they know they will be treated with organic grain while they’re being milked. It’s sort of like potato chips for them. They’re ready for it and it’s a very loud affair. It’s no problem getting them up the ramp into the milking parlor as sheep are accomplished mountain climbers and they’re definitely motivated to get up there!
We have a 12-stanchion milking parlor so milk our current flock of 36 ewes in three groups. Sheep have two teats versus cows which have four teats. We use a vacuum system to empty the milk that mimics the sucking reflex and rate of a nursing lamb. It lasts for around 1.5-2 minutes so it’s very quick to milk each sheep. After they’ve been milked the sheep go back outside to the pasture.
Our sheep come indoors after Thanksgiving once there is no more grass. They spend the winter in an open-air barn that keeps them comfortable and protected from the elements. We feed them high quality second-cut hay from New York State. The ewes have their lambs inside the barn during lambing season in March and April. When they’re let back out to pasture in the spring, they’re super joyful and prance around the field.
Overall, we have a nice healthy flock who are all very tame. I know all their names and the best time of the day for me is walking in and out of the barn with forty sheep following closely behind.
What factors impact milk production?
Since 2020, our milk production has gone up from ¼ gallon per day. The amount of milk produced per ewe depends on the time of year. At the height of the season, we now get about ¾ gallon per sheep per day. Around September, the production naturally slows as the weather gets cooler and it lessens to around ½ gallon per sheep per day. It’s not very much considering how much feed and labor you’re putting into the sheep.
We follow the genetic sheep lines very carefully and pay close attention to the production per ewe and the health of the ewe. It takes time to achieve this through your ram. The rams go into the pasture to breed in a couple of weeks’ time. We have one ram per twenty ewes, and they breed for around six weeks. Choosing a good ram, tracking who your best producing ewes are and saving those ewe lambs are key to increasing milk production.
The other factor that affects milk production is feed. If the ewes have been on a good pasture, we can see the results in the morning milking. Plus, the grain we give them during milking, their mineral licks and the hay they consume during winter all affect milk quality and production. We work with a nutritionist who is very precise and performs blood tests to make sure our ewes aren’t deficient in any minerals.
I’m on the board of the Dairy Sheep Association of North America. One of our goals is to get U.S. producers to have good enough genetics so that we can increase the amount of production per ewe. The answer isn’t to buy more sheep, it’s to make the sheep you have more productive per unit. You can then sell that extra milk for more than it costs to provide them with extra feed.
Tell us about what your farm produces.
Brent takes care of all the details on the dairy end and does the work in the creamery making our yogurt. Time and temperature are the most important elements in yogurt making. We’ve found a specific yeast from Wisconsin that works best with our milk and produces our delicious tasting yogurt. I never thought that it would be this good! It’s all that early research that resulted in this high-quality product. Plus, it’s a testament to how well our sheep are raised and Brent being a dedicated dairy guy who just loves dairy processing.
I stay on the animal husbandry side of things. Our philosophy on our farm is to use the entire sheep so nothing goes to waste. That’s how we respect the animal and honor the animal.
We shear the ewes once a year for wool and make gorgeous blankets and scarves that you can buy in the farmers market. When the lambs are sent to the butcher, we ask that they save the skins and have them tanned in Vermont at one of only two organic tanneries in the country. They use a solution made with tree bark to soften the leather. The bones of our animal are also saved and sold for stock and the fat is now being saved so that we can start making candles with it.
We also do lamb tours during our spring lambing season. You can book a tour to meet and hold the lambs before they get too big. But the tours are very popular and sell out quickly!
Thank you, Carrie and Brent, for taking the time to show us around your beautiful farm and introducing us to your very happy, well-cared for flock. You can find Willow Pond Sheep Farm and their range of premium sheep products on select Saturdays at our year-round Larchmont Farmers Market.
