Farming Practices
Brenda and Dean have 76 acres in all, 25 to 30 of them in fenced pastures. The fresh, sweet rich grass is almost all the milking sheep eat. They graze peacefully, and are eager to go to a new pasture when Brenda opens the gate.
The sheep troop into the barn for milking twice a day, where Brenda and her Amish neighbors have just added an auger feed system. Sheep charge into the milking parlor looking for the treats, but now the food drops to milking stations so that the sheep are encouraged to "move on down" to make room for the sheep behind them. It's an ingenious system involving a lot of lines, but one person can make it work!
Brenda and Dean care deeply about the sustainability of Hidden Springs Farm. Their farm is clean and beautiful, their practices are in harmony with those of the Amish farmers who surround them.
Donkeys make sure that coyotes and other predators don't get near the lambs. Percheron draft horses plow their fields.
The sheep feed almost exclusively on the grasses of their pastures, and their creamery is a Grade A sheep dairy. No antibiotics or genetically modified organisms are used at Hidden Springs Farm.
Visit our online story: We update our story every time we make cheese or any other time something interesting happens and we have a chance to update. You can see what was going on the day we made your cheese, and learn more about what it's really like to live on a sheep dairy farm.
