Hidden Springs Creamery

photo of Hidden Springs Creamery Driftless Cheese

At the end of a winding road, Hidden Springs Farm perches atop a beautiful green ridge in the heart of the Coulee, on the patchwork terrain of Wisconsin's "Driftless Area" (the area that the glacier skipped).

If you've ever been to Wisconsin, just imagine the most beautiful parts of the countryside that you've ever seen -- that's just what Hidden Springs looks like. It is the perfect environment to raise dairy sheep for the purest, most delicious milk and cheeses.

Brenda and Dean Jensen of Hidden Springs Farm milk 116 Lacaune and East Friesian dairy sheep. Their sheep are better breeds than the small dairy herd that started them: Frisians are good producers and very calm; Lacaunes bring higher fat and protein.

Their vision for Hidden Springs Farm and Creamery is to be sustainable environmentally as well as financially. They are in the middle of Amish farm country, and the Jensens appreciate Amish values and work practices. They employ Amish friends and neighbors for milking and construction. Percheron draft horses -- not tractors -- plow their fields, donkeys keep coyotes and other predators away from their lambs, and their sheep feast seasonally on the green grasses on their 30 acres of fenced pasture.

Brenda has been working with experts to develop several cheeses with some of her Grade A sheep milk. Her first cheese is a fresh one, made from pasteurized sheep milk. She adds rennet to make a soft curd, and then hand ladles the cheese into mesh bags to drain. The cheese is scooped into tubs. It is soft, creamy, rich and really delicious cheese, with a bright clean taste of the green grasses of the Hidden Springs Farm terroir.