Pecora Dairy, Robertson, NSW: raw milk sheep cheese

This couple went from no farming background to winning one of the most prestigious product awards in Australia for their raw milk sheep cheese.

Cressida Cains and some of their sheep. Picture: Wesley Lonergan

Michael and Cressida Cains were in the unique position of being able to carefully choose what farming enterprise they wanted to start.

And after a lot of research and thought they started their sheep dairy, Pecora Dairy.

The artisan sheep milk dairy and cheesery was founded in 2011 on 81ha at Robertson in the Southern Highlands, 140km south of Sydney.

The couple’s overarching philosophy is a gentleness on the land, towards their ewes, and in the production of their cheese.

It is a philosophy they truly live by and has contributed to their brand success.

Both Michael and Cressida were working in the wine industry in Sydney in the early 2000s, so they understood the fine food and wine world.

Once they had their first child they started to look for a different lifestyle and what else they could do with their love of the wine industry, fermentation, food and wine science.

Neither were from a farming background, but they found their property at Robertson in the middle of the global financial crisis in 2009 and then started to research what farming enterprise would be best.

“Sheep dairying was what we kept coming back to. We always wanted to farm full circle and create a high value product,” Cressida said.

While Cressida said it was a steep learning curve, they set up the farm, dairy and learnt cheese-making from scratch.

“We had young children, Mike was consulting in Sydney still, so I was running the farm with small kids.”

Farmers and Cheesemakers Cressida and Michael from Pecora Dairy. Picture: Wesley Lonergan

Although sheep dairys aren’t particularly common in Australia, Cressida said there is a lot of sheep milk cheese in Europe to take inspiration from.

One of the reasons they chose sheep dairying was because sheep milk is very high in solids and is incredibly nutrient dense.

“It is very high in solids, so it takes about five litres of sheep milk to make one kilogram of cheese, whereas cows milk takes 10 litres of milk to get one kilogram of cheese.”

She said they were also very attracted to the Southern Highlands which was originally a vibrant dairy district and it has great proximity to markets.

“It can be challenging to move product around Australia so being close to both Sydney and Canberra was important.”

Other reasons for the sheep dairy was they wanted to produce a sustainable product with a low environmental footprint.

“We didn’t want to produce a commodity product, we wanted to work up the value chain and value add, as we feel that that is a good path to a sustainable and long term business.”

“Sheep are light on the land, they drink and eat less than cows, they are delightful to work with. So all of those factors fed into the decision.”

Some of the ewes at Pecora Dairy. Picture: Wesley Lonergan

Mike and Cressida commercialised Pecora Dairy in 2011.

They run East Friesian sheep, one of two dairy sheep breeds available in Australia.

The East Friesian breed originally came from The Netherlands and Cressida said was more suited to their region.

They milk 150 ewes and produce about 10 tonnes of cheese a year.

They were seasonal producers and milked the sheep for 10 months of the year. The ewes had a break from milking when pregnant and a bit of time to allow them to rebuild after lambing.

All lambs are raised on their mothers, with the lambs with the mothers full time to have access to colostrum for the first week, the lambs are then put into a “nursery” at night and the ewes were bought in to be milked in the morning before they are back with their lambs for the day.

Cressida said that process as ongoing until the lambs were weaned.

The farm is a ryegrass and clover based system with some native pastures sown throughout to bring up moisture and diversity.

“The ewes also browse on the native bush. Animals are good at selecting the nutrients they need.”

The sheep are milked via a simple herringbone system. If they are making raw milk cheese it is taken from the dairy and turned straight into cheese, but if it was other cheeses, milk is collected into a vat, where it can be stored for two days before being made into cheese.

Cressida and Michael Cains getting their sheep ready for milking. Picture: Wesley Lonergan

Cressida said they were very targeted in the style of cheese they wanted to produce and again taught themselves by researching and doing all of the available cheese-making courses in Australia.

“Cheese-making is very much a confluence of art and science,” she said.

Since the early days they have won a scholarship to study in Lyon in France and they also have a French cheese-making consultant visit the farm every couple of years.

At Pecora Dairy they now produce raw milk sheep cheese, including their best-known Yarrawa, a semi-hard raw milk cheese, blue cheese, fresh curd and feta.

In 2016 Food Standards Australia New Zealand changed the regulations to allow raw milk cheese production and Pecora Dairy became the first cheesemakers licensed to make raw milk cheese.

Raw milk does not go through a heat treatment process such as pasteurisation to kill pathogenic bacteria.

It means Cressida and Mike must meet additional requirements that agricultural authorities impose on them to prove the safety of raw milk cheese when compared to more conventional products.

Cressida said they wanted to produce raw milk cheese because “it is a unique expression of the land”.

“With all the indigenous bacteria in the milk it is a taste of the landscape of our farm, which is truly special.”

“Raw milk cheese reflects the macro factors like the weather and pastures as well as the micro factors of milk composition from the ecosystem. This is integral to the health of our pastures and sheep,” she said.

“It is like Terroir in wine, a sense of time and place. We produce cheese from milk produced just on this land.”

“We are so passionate about the attention to detail and continue to be hands on with all of the cheese-making.”

Cressida said the raw milk from sheep was sweeter than a cow’s milk, there was no pungency, it was nutritionally dense and when made into cheese that translated into rich, creamy cheese.

Sustainability and gentleness are key pillars to the Pecora Dairy.

A couple of years ago the Cainses installed solar panels and batteries to supply power to the farm and they sell power in a peer-to-peer trading scheme to other farms in the area.

“We are well on our way to becoming carbon neutral and that is important to what we do,” Cressida said.

Effluent from the dairy is collected and spread back onto pasture, while they have also preserved 40 per cent of their land as riparian corridors to provide habitat for wildlife.

Some of the Pecora Dairy cheese. Picture: Wesley Lonergan

Both Mike and Cressida continue to give back to the industry and continue to seek out education.

Cressida was named the 2020 NSW-ACT AgriFutures Rural Women’s Award winner for Dairy Cocoon, an online platform and support hub of business tools, education and mentoring to help interested small dairy farmers create their own branded products.

Meanwhile, Mike was awarded a Nuffield Scholarship in 2021 to investigate the benefits of raw milk cheese production for the dairy industry, best-practice approaches to production and its position within the mature cheese market.

To ensure they were continuing to offer consumers a way to try their cheese, three years ago they opened Pecora Cheese and Wine, a European-style cheese and wine bar in Robertson.

“It is a way to contribute to and be a part of our community.”

Cheese is sold through a distributor to cheese shops and restaurants in Sydney and Melbourne.

The cheese is so popular they can’t keep up with demand and it is usually sold out.

Earlier this year Pecora Dairy also won the coveted Royal Agricultural Society of NSW President’s Medal at the Sydney Royal Show for its semi-hard raw milk Yarrawa cheese.

While taste of the product is part of the President’s Medal it also assesses the triple bottom line, analysing its environmental, commercial and social impact.

To qualify for the President’s Medal, producers must have been champions in the previous year’s Sydney Royal Wine, Dairy or Fine Food shows, where there are more than 4000 products.

“It’s a highly rigorous process and was such a great honour.”