When you’re in Meaford, make sure you stop by The Market and pick up some WoolDrift Farm sheep cheese. The artisanal pecorino, feta, and olive meadow is made with milk from Meaford’s local sheep dairy, Wooldrift Farm.

While the idea of milking sheep might raise eyebrows here, worldwide dairy sheep outnumber cows at least three to one.

In Europe, the Middle East and parts of Asia, sheep dairying is a huge industry, with centuries of tradition behind it. Sardinia, an Italian island in the Mediterranean about the size of Vermont, produces most of the world’s Pecorino Romano cheese. (Pecora means sheep in Italian.)

Feta cheese is made primarily from sheep’s milk. (In fact, under European Union legislation, to bear the name “feta”, the cheese must be produced using traditional techniques in some areas of Greece, and be made from sheep’s milk or from a mixture of sheep and [up to 30 percent] goat’s milk.)

Roquefort is a sheep’s milk cheese, as is Ricotta. Asiago was traditionally made from sheep’s milk, and can still be found in that form today. And today, many other artisanal cheeses are being made using sheep’s milk, including Brie. And then there’s Greek yogurt, traditionally made from sheep’s milk.

Now, a few North American producers are producing homegrown sheep dairy products, in no small part thanks to Axel Meister and Chris Buschbeck of WoolDrift Farm.

Axel and Chris met at university in Germany, where he studied human nutrition and economics and she studied agriculture. They moved to Canada after graduating and decided they’d like to farm sheep. “Because cows are way too big and kick harder,” says Axel with a laugh. “And we both liked sheep.”

While they initially raised their sheep for meat, the lack of sheep dairy products in North America caught their attention. “We thought we might as well start,” says Axel. Eventually, after a long, difficult process, they became the first to import purebred East Friesian sheep from Europe. East Friesian are recognized as the best dairy sheep worldwide.

How did they do it? They imported frozen embryos and implanted these in Canadian Rideau Arcott ewes to deliver them to term. These were Canada’s first “true” milk sheep, and the purebred East Friesians have since spawned generations of North American milking sheep.

In the nearly 20 years since their first batch of milk, WoolDrift has built a large clientele of processors who buy their milk, and has become a prime source of breeding stock. And then there’s WoolDrift’s own brand of cheeses, cream cheese, yogurt, labneh, “sheep milk bath”, a personal care product, as well as meat, including prepared meat pies and sausages.

WoolDrift welcomes visitors by chance, at their farm near Walter’s Falls.