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Oklahoma made cheese takes the gold prizeCOMANCHE, Okla. (AP)--People used to give the McGarr family a strange look when they explained that they ran a sheep dairy. "If we had a dollar for every person who said 'You can milk sheep?' we'd never have to work again,'' Lee McGarr said. They still get strange looks from people, but have a gold medal and a second place award in international cheese competitions to back up their different kind of dairy. McGarr is a pilot by trade. He has a small orchard south of Comanche--K,S&A Orchards--and his own personal landing strip. The trouble is that it took a long time to mow the landing strip. "Between myself, Kim and the girls, we'd each do a couple passes with the mower,'' McGarr said. "By the time we'd finish, it would be dark and time to start all over again.'' McGarr decided to get a few sheep to help keep the strip mowed down. Kim McGarr, McGarr's wife, had stumbled upon a recipe for soap made out of milk, and decided to try the recipe with the sheep's milk. One night, they were making a batch of the soap and accidentally forgot about the milk heating and it over pasteurized and started making cheese. McGarr added some blue cheese culture to it and finished out the process. He tried the recipe out on his neighbors, which he calls his guinea pigs. "They're brutally honest,'' McGarr said, "and they liked it.'' He decided to turn his accidental success into a professional venture and pursued the idea of a USDA approved sheep dairy. McGarr contacted a USDA health inspector and told them what their intentions were. "The guy must have been thinking 'these guys are crazy,''' McGarr said. The McGarr family now has gone from three sheep to close to 300 sheep and own and operate one of only three USDA-approved sheep dairies in the nation, and the only one in Oklahoma. They have only been making cheese for three years but have been steadily growing ever since. When asked how much they usually make a year, the McGarr's couldn't give an accurate number. "The first year, we did probably 150 wheels of cheese,'' Lee said. The next year, they made considerably more, but due to a cooler malfunction, had to discard almost 550 wheels. "That was a bad day,'' Kim McGarr said. As well as milking them and making cheese, the McGarrs use the rest of the sheep for various meat products after they can no longer make milk and sell the wool when they are sheared. The McGarrs use their sheep much like a herd of cattle--they still develop a bond and friendship between themselves and members of the flock. "We give them names if they do something or stand out in any way,'' Kim McGarr said. "Not always good things mind you, but that's how some of them get their names.'' A sheep named "Ford'' got its name from being born in a Ford pickup during the winter. They also have a sheep named Goofy, that would follow the dogs around on the farm and act as if it was one of them. "I went out and saw this white blob between the dogs and thought 'Oh no, Goofy's dead,''' Kim McGarr said, "but he just hopped right up with the dogs and was fine. "They all have their own personalities,'' McGarr said. The family loves their flock, and daughters Sarah and Ashley are avidly involved in the process of caring for them. Even the name of the business reflects how much of a family business it really is. "K,S&A stands for Kim, Sarah and Ashley,'' McGarr said. They have worked hard over a period of several years and all that hard work paid off this year when they entered their "tru-bleu'' cheese into the Los Angeles International Dairy competition and received a gold medal for their cheese. "They only award gold medals to people who score over a 98 on a scale of 100,'' Kim McGarr said. They also entered their cheese in a competition in Austin, Texas, this year. "It's an international competition,'' Kim McGarr said, "and there were over 1,300 entries from all over the world.'' The McGarr's "tru-bleu'' took second overall. "Unfortunately, we lost to the French,'' McGarr said, "but they've been doing cheese for however many hundreds of years.'' They were very happy with their placing, but almost didn't get judged at all. "We shipped two wheels to the competition and they should have arrived right on time,'' McGarr said. "We got a call from the committee saying that the internal temperature of our cheese was too high.'' Turns out that their delivery was on the hottest day Austin had seen all year. In the process of sorting through and distributing the entries, theirs just sat on the loading dock too long. "We were in Tulsa and couldn't send another sample, so they just put a red sticker on it,'' Kim McGarr said. "That meant that the judges could judge it if they wanted, but it wasn't a guarantee that they would.'' The next day they received a call from a friend saying that they had received second place in the competition. "We were the first Oklahoma dairy to ever place in the competition,'' McGarr said. "Our business has really picked up since we won that award. We're selling as fast as we can make it right now.''
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