Royal Oaks Cheese Maker Milks Niche Market

Polly Goodman, potter and organic soap maker, used to drive by Rebecca King’s niche farm every day on her way to work. Seeing sheep speckle the green hillside and lambs scampering around them brightened her day.

“I could tell when it was milking time, because the sheep would all be bunched around the fence, begging to be first in line to be milked—they get special treats during milking,” says Goodman.

Garden Variety Cheese is a small farmstand just across the Pajaro River in Royal Oaks where 100 milking ewes produce the milk used for four varieties of raw sheep's milk cheese.

People like the cheeses for both their flavor and the production methods and practices that go into making the feta and other varieties.

“I like to eat locally produced food, and developed an addiction to sheep milk cheeses while in Spain. The fact that there is a local sheep milk cheese producer makes me feel very lucky indeed.”

King's cheese and milk are certified organic, meaning everything the sheep consume is organic.

At each step of production, King is cautious to preserve resources, reuse and operate a business with the least environmental impact she can achieve. She collects unwanted produce at the end of the farmers’ market to feed to her animals, uses waste whey and rinds from cheese making to fatten her piglets, feeds her lambs leftover brewer’s organic barley, a beer making byproduct from Santa Cruz Mountain Brewing weekly, and passes sheep milk that is not up to her cheese making standards along to Goodman, who makes soap from it.

Goodman is as impressed by the “ethical core” of King’s business as she is with her cheese. She is committed “to integrated organic production and on processes that ensure that her animals have good lives,” Goodman said. “And I love that her operation is large enough to be efficient, yet small enough that she has been able to diversify and to encourage and collaborate with other businesses."

King has helped a second local cheese maker get started: Schoch Family Farmstand of Salinas

When Beau Schoch, a USDA engineer and dairy farmer, learned of King’s sheep cheese operation while he was seeking a loan with the bank to do some cheese making himself, he wasted no time. Schoch went over to King’s farm and introduced himself.

“Now, we rent Rebecca’s facility to make our cheese since she is certified," Schoch said. "Occasionally, we use some of her milk to make a blend. We have fun with it and try different things."

The partnership also helps both cheese makers succeed, saving one money while providing additional income to the other.

"It’s a symbiotic relationship, because Rebecca works seasonally," Schoch said. "During the months when her sheep are pregnant and not milking, we are providing her some income. It helps us because we are able to hone our cheese-making skills and can hold off on making the investment in equipment."

Schoch and King represent a new trend in farmsteads: Both have college degrees. King followed up her environmental studies degree with culinary school in San Francisco and then worked as a chef at Gabriella Café in Santa Cruz while she prepared for her next venture—as a farmstead cheese maker.

King worked on several farms during college, including a goat cheese farm. There her desire to have her own farm and raise animals grew, but her vision for Garden Variety Cheese came later.

Before King got started, she took a cheese-making class at Cal Poly and visited cheese makers in Spain and France.

She purchased her first flock of 50 sheep four years ago, then started her commercial operation in 2009.

Goodman says that King’s cheese “seems to get better the longer she makes it.”

Farmstead cheese is very small scale, so it can be difficult to find equipment. Most commercially available equipment is for larger operations. Luckily, King’s dad helped to engineer a heat exchanger for her facilities. “You can’t find a system that is premade for an operation of our size,” King said.

Her cheeses are all aged for three to 10 months. King primarily sells her cheese at farmers markets—she's been at the Cabrillo College market on Saturdays—but also sells at some stores and restaurants in the Bay Area. She plans to limit her operation to no more than 100 milking sheep.

“This is the scale I want to be at,” King said.

Lambing season was a bit hectic this year. Most of her lambs were born closer together than usual—100 lambs were born from 41 ewes in just one week, and more followed. In prior years, they were born over a couple of months.

The lambs are bottle fed for their first 30 to 45 days. The babies need to be hand-fed starting on their fourth day until they can learn to self-feed, which can take from two days to one week. King was grateful for the help of friends and family who helped hand feed her newborns this year.

King’s babies are so adorable, she could easily charge a feeding fee and invite all of Watsonville along for the extravaganza next year.

Life on a sheep cheese farm can look pretty romantic, especially on a sunny day when the lambs are frolicking in green pastures. But it’s a big commitment.

“It’s a lot of work,” said King. “It’s pretty overwhelming. I’m still in my early stages. This year will be the first year that’s really full-scale production. Hopefully, by the end of this year we will be making a profit. I’m not concerned about making a lot of money. I just want it to be sustainable.

"For me, this is the lifestyle I want to have. I want to live here and do this, so if I can meet my needs and provide for a family some day, that’s what I want to achieve.”