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Rick Christman heards his sheep Monday at Stoney Acres Sheep Farm near Competition, Mo. Christman has been operating the farm for nine years. It takes just over an hour to milk his flock. During that brief stop, they saw an ad for a nearby farm for sale and called a real estate agent. That farm didn't pan out, but the agent told them of another property, not even formally listed yet, that happened to house a small dairy barn. It had formerly been used for cows, but it was small enough in scale that it could easily be modified for milking sheep.
The Christmans drove about 30 miles southeast of Lebanon to see the farm, and especially the barn, which they had figured they'd have to build from scratch. They made an offer on the spot.
That was the beginning of Stoney Acres, the first - and, nine years later, still the only - farmstead sheep dairy in Missouri. The whole process has been a learning experience not just for the Christmans, who had raised sheep for milk in Wisconsin but are self-taught in cheesemaking, but also for Missouri's agricultural regulators. "It was a whole new world for the milk inspector," Rick Christman says.
With the help of four Great Pyrenees dogs, the Christmans tend a flock of 85 adult females and 30 lambs and do the rest of the work on the farm.
Deb Christman, 50, also works a day job for the Transportation Security Administration, more than 50 miles away at the Springfield-Branson Regional Airport. In the afternoons, though, and beginning at 6:30 a.m. on her days off, she turns the milk from East Friesian, Dorsett and other breeds of ewes into small batches of plain, smoked, herbed and pepper versions of sheep's cheese, all made in a stirred-curd, Cheddar style.
Rick Christman, 52, rises at 5 a.m. each day. He catches the 5:30 a.m. weather report, especially important this time of the year because rain will affect whether he harvests from the 40 acres of hay that he grows on the 150-acre farm. He gathers the sheep just before 6 a.m., and by 6:15 is milking them, six at a time, in the dairy.
Each ewe produces an average of a quart per milking; Deb Christman estimates that she uses 10 gallons of milk for each batch. That results in about 15 pounds of cheese, more cheese per gallon than cow's or goat's milk, owing to the 18.3 percent of total solids in sheep's milk, as opposed to 12.1 percent for whole milk from cows and 11.2 percent in goat's milk.
The day's tasks vary, depending on the time of the year. Lambing, the birth of new sheep, starts around late December. The Christmans try to spread out the lambing season to extend the milking season, which generally starts one month after the birth of the lamb and lasts for five months.
"He'd like to milk year-round, but I'd rather have some time off in the winter," Deb Christman says. "There's also a lot involved to get sheep to lamb in the fall. And right now, Rick has more milk than what I'm keeping up with." Some of that milk ends up in a freezer, to be thawed for later use.
One of the more labor-intensive issues in lambing occurs when a ewe doesn't take to her offspring, forcing Rick Christman to bottle-feed it. But the extra doting frequently leads him to name the bottle-fed lambs - an honor not given the naturally nurtured lambs - and to take them along as a traffic-builder when he sells cheese at farmers markets.
"The lambs always make kids gather around, and the adults follow," Rick Christman says.
He sells directly at the farmers markets in Fair Grove, Mo.,about 10 miles north of Springfield, and in the Lake of the Ozarks town of Camdenton. For two months this fall, he'll commute about 100 miles each way to Silver Dollar City, where he'll sell the farm's wares and demonstrate milking the sheep.
Stoney Acres cheese and "smudge" - sheep's milk fudge - are sometimes available in the St. Louis area at The Wine and Cheese Place and its associated business, Provisions. The small production runs, however, mean that the Christmans deliver to St. Louis only intermittently. The cheese and fudge, as well as soap and skin lotion made with sheep's milk, also can be ordered from the farm's Web site, www.stoneyacressheepdairy.cjb.net.
Rick and Deb met in high school in Delavan, a town with a population of about 6,000 that's in the southeast corner of Wisconsin. Although Deb lived next to a dairy farm, her father worked in industrial jobs and Rick's father was an electrician.
The Christmans have held nonfarm jobs to supplement their income, but they were drawn to an agrarian lifestyle. On their first farm, they raised miniature horses, which Deb liked so much that she still has some at Stoney Acres. "But we wanted to raise something more productive," she says. "The horses are very limited in what you can do with them."
When the Christmans decided to raise and milk sheep, they first sold the milk to a co-op in Wisconsin, but they dreamed of making their own cheese. They had intended to spend another year in Wisconsin, until the younger of their two sons finished high school, but the opportunity in Missouri led them to move immediately. Today, one son lives nearby in Conway, Mo.; the other is a computer analyst who lives in Georgia.
Rick Christman says he can tell the difference in the sheep's milk and resulting cheese between Wisconsin and Missouri, an attribute sometimes called "terroir."
"Up there, a lot of the hay was alfalfa, with a totally different texture and makeup," he says. "Around here, there's lots of lespedeza and timothy. Sheep like to have real nice and young tender hay like that, where they'll get the most nutrients and handle it better. They're very picky in what they want to eat - when they don't like it, they'll pull it out and lay on it."
Rick bales his own hay, and he and Deb put it up in their hayloft, storing some 2,000 bales after last year's harvest.
One of the couple's immediate goals is finding a market for wool. The breeding for the sheep has concentrated on their dairy attributes, and their wool is of a grade that's too poor for most textile applications. As a result, Rick Christman ends up burning most of it, although he's been experimenting with such diverse uses as weed control and fillings for pet beds.
On a longer-term basis, he would like to expand the flock to 300 head and to clear the cedar that has overgrown much of what could be pasture. Like many farmers, however, he's had difficulty borrowing money. "You can't get a loan for agriculture for nothing," he says. "It's a shame that banks have moved away from that - it's what built our country."
Nonetheless, his optimism for small farming remains undiminished, and he and Deb are especially grateful for the assistance of the small-farm program at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, which provided them with technical and regulatory advice.
Says Rick Christman: "If more people would know what they could do with a small amount of acreage, they'd certainly not hesitate to get into small farming."
Stoney Acres Cheese Dairy welcomes visitors, including educational tours, but the Christmans request that you call 1-417-668-5560 in advance. The farm is about 190 miles from St. Louis; take Interstate 44 west to the Lebanon exit, then go south 13 miles on Missouri Highway 5 to Route O. Turn left on O and go 4 miles to Route TT; turn right on TT and go 5 miles to Route NN. Turn left on NN and go 1 mile until it ends at Claxton Road, a gravel road; turn left on Claxton and follow it about 2 miles to a sign for the entrance to Stoney Acres on the left.
Reporter Joe Bonwich
E-mail: jbonwich@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 314-340-8133