Market Forces: Valley Shepherd Creamery

This week, Patch spoke with Lisa Bendixen, an intern at Valley Shepherd Creamery in Long Valley. She presides over wedges of wrapped and covered cheese made largely from the farm’s sheep’s milk, and talks with customers as she cuts off small slices to sample. Valley Creamery’s stand is located in the center of the market lot near the corner of Maple St and DeForest Ave.

What’s your background, and how did you get into this business?

I’m from the northern part of Germany – close to Denmark, two hours from Hamburg. I’m from countryland but not a farm. I was interested in knowing how food was made, and I found an advertisement for an internship on the farm on the Internet. I study economics at school, and I’m taking time off for this.

You get a lot of knowledge doing this – I like it very much. You meet different people, and you get to know things.  People are different at different markets. In Summit, there are a lot of people who are buying for their families for the whole week. I also do the market for City Hall in New York City, and there it’s only business people, and they are only buying small pieces because they can’t go home right away.  So when I get a new cheese, I’ve learned how to make the right advertising for it.

Would you describe Valley Shepherd Creamery?  

It started 12 years ago, when my boss (Ed: owner Eren Wajswol) started to make cheese in his house. He started making first just one cheese, a kind of a pecorino, which is 100 percent sheep’s milk. Then he made more and more different cheeses, so he figured out he needed more space than he had in his home. So five years ago, he opened Valley Shepherd Creamery. Now we are making cheese from a mix of cow and sheep’s milk, or goat milk. We have a lot of variety and it changes all the time.

It’s a typical farm. There are maybe 20 employees in total working on the farm – some with the sheep, some doing office stuff. We have 1,100 sheep. We are milking 600 of them, but we are able to milk 700 sheep. We have a shop where we have a lot of stuff – all the cheeses we make, yogurt, sheep’s wool. At the market we don’t have all the variety we have because there's too much. We sell soap made from sheep, we sell meat, and we do tours. We have cheese classes where you learn to make cheese. We have a cheese and wine-making event. We usually have a festival. It’s a very nice place to visit, especially for families. There’s silence, and quiet. It's nice.

What other markets do you go to?

I do a lot of markets in New York City - Union Square, City Hall, and Abingdon Square. I also go to upstate New York, a town called Nyack. I had a few markets before in New Jersey, but some of them stopped already for the season, like Somerville. I like all the markets, but I like Summit, because this is really my market. People know me. They hear that I have an accent, and they’re asking, where are you from, and I explain to them, and it’s nice.

What’s a typical day like for you?

It depends of course if I’m going to market or I’m making cheese. When I’m making cheese, I start at 8 a.m. In between making cheese, you’re washing stuff, and you’re not only making one thing at a time, you’re making ricotta, yogurt, maybe you’re packing for market. This day goes until 6 or 7 p.m. 

For market, I start my day at 5:30 a.m.  I usually pack at night, but the fresh stuff I have to pack in the morning, like the cheese; I get it out of the refrigerator. The drive to Summit takes 45 minutes, and then I’m unpacking stuff, and then there is the market, and then I come home and I’m cleaning stuff, and then I might need to do stuff on the farm, like something in the cheese case where we age the cheese. This is kind of my day.

How much did you know about cheese before working at the farm?

Just the stuff that everybody knows, but now I know a lot. My boss explains everything to you when you’re making the cheese, and also I’ve been reading. When you make stuff, you have to start reading about it. I want to tell my customers what’s in there, and give my knowledge to others. I don’t like to talk about stuff I don’t know.

What’s one thing you’ve learned about cheese-making that you didn’t know before?

Sheep are giving the most milk in the spring because they have lambs, but already with the end of summer, when it’s getting colder, they’re giving less and less milk. And right now, from end of October, early November, they don’t make any milk at all because they don’t have lambs. So it's interesting - I see we have less and less, but now that there’s less, it includes much more protein. Our yogurt right now includes more vitamins and proteins than it did in the springtime. I can see it when we’re pumping the milk into the cheese vat – it’s getting creamier, it has a richer taste, and we are making less stuff because there’s less milk.  

What’s your favorite cheese?

I like the manchego. It’s Spanish sheep’s milk cheese.

What’s your best-seller at the Summit market?

I think it might be our label cheese. We call it Oldwick Shepherd – its pecorino style.

What’s the hardest part of what you do?

It depends. Sometimes, it’s when it’s very rainy: a Sunday and you go to market, then pack out all the stuff, and you’re there in the rain. And funny enough it’s the drive sometimes, because you’re tired. This might be the hardest part.

What’s the best part of what you do?

I think the best part is when you have a nice day – a nice sunshine market day in Summit. People are buying a lot, and you feel good. When you have nice customers, you’re driving home, you sold a lot, then at the end of the day, it’s a nice feeling. You feel like ‘yes, I sold a lot’ - you feel really good. It’s not that the internship depends on that, but I always feel better when I’ve sold a lot. My boss isn’t doing it because of the money. He’s doing it because he likes it. He just loves to make cheese, and he enjoys it, and you really feel that on the farm.