Valley View farm finds niche in sheep milk

“One of the things this milk can do is make people happy,” said Pablo Maldonado. Pablo and his wife Zaneta own and operate Sierra Sheep Farms with their family in Valley View, with a dairy herd of 150 ewes.

Sheep milk has been used for centuries throughout the world and is especially popular in Europe. Besides drinking it, the milk is used for making cheeses such as feta, roquefort and ricotta, as well as beauty products like soap and lotion. Sierra Farms’ herd is East Friesian, originating from Germany and the Netherlands, and Lacaune, originating in France).

Because each ewe can produce milk only for four to five months, lambing times are staggered to extend the milk production season.

That means that for much of the spring and summer, the Maldonados’ farm is home to dozens of woolly, playful lambs.

The farm also has laying hens, a few milk cows and a garden. But it is the ewe milk that really makes it special to Pablo and his family.

Ewe milk is creamier and higher in protein than cow milk, and more similar to human milk nutritionally, explained Pablo. One visitor described it as tasting like a melted vanilla shake. Some people with digestive problems, milk allergies or lactose intolerance find they can drink ewe milk, Pablo said. He delights in sharing ice cream with friends who have not been able to eat it in years.

“To see their face having that ice cream makes you feel like this can change lives,” he said.

Even more heartening for Pablo is the many babies he sees being helped with ewe milk. Babies that cannot nurse and whose systems are reacting badly to formula, or who cry a lot due to digestive pain, are doing better on ewe milk, helping them to sleep calmly, he said.

Not just babies benefit this way, apparently. Another visitor described how drinking ewe milk eases his severe neuropathy pain, helping him sleep.

“It helps the nerve endings in my feet and my skin,” he said.

Pablo noted a family with autistic children whose doctor was interested in studying the milk. They told him their children started being able to better socialize after changing only one thing — drinking sheep milk for three or four months.

The mineral combinations, including potassium and magnesium, may help with muscle, heart, and brain development, Pablo explained.

Pablo has a master’s degree in dairy from University of Wisconsin. His father is a veterinarian and farmer in Guatemala, growing many things from cattle to coffee. From age 3, Pablo went along to work with his father. He was given his first sheep when he was 8 and paid for his university studies selling lamb.

Sierra Farms sells to a creamery in Helena and is working to develop a licensed local creamery that could process and bottle the milk and make cheese. They also sell the lambs and shear and process the wool.

Daughter Sara, 16, makes soap from the milk.

Learning from local spinners, she now spins, felts and dyes, and makes a wool-wrapped soap bar that works as its own soft scrubby. Sara tends her own ewes, including getting up at 3 a.m. to check during lambing. Sara also helps with the business, including fielding calls and maintaining social media.

“She’s the one that runs the show,” Pablo said with a smile.

Sara said her sister Micaela, 7, is a big help, too.

“We’ve been putting in a lot of effort and all our savings to come to a point where we can have this for people,” Pablo said. “It’s not like any other business. If you are in it for a good hourly wage, it’s not going to give you that.”

But for Pablo and his family, the ewe dairy is more of a mission than a business.

“This is a blessing for us to have the opportunity to educate people,” he sid. “That’s what keeps us going, seeing the people that this milk is helping. It changes our lives, too.”