A registered nurse who became a tax lawyer and, in her fifties, a California cheesemaker and shepherd, Cindy Callahan died in early June after a brief illness. She was 88. Callahan was an American sheep cheese pioneer who, with her son, Liam, and his wife, Diana, built one of the most successful U.S. creameries devoted largely to sheep’s milk products. Bellwether Farms, in Sonoma County, is now the nation’s leading producer of sheep’s milk yogurt and an acclaimed producer of sheep cheese. In her multi-faceted career, “shepherd” was the job Callahan loved most. She didn’t exactly choose the role but she embraced it.

As a longtime Bellwether fan, I knew some of Cindy’s story but Liam added more colorful details about his mother in a conversation last week. She was born and raised in rural Chattanooga, Tennessee—“and we’re talking log-cabin rural,” said Liam. “Her mother was married but they were abandoned. Cindy never met her father.”

Improbably, Cindy eventually made her way to Sarah Lawrence College and then to Cornell for a nursing degree. She became a head nurse at Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan and met her future husband, Ed Callahan, there during his medical residency. Together they moved to San Francisco where Ed pursued a medical career and she enrolled at Hastings College of the Law.

His mother practiced law for only a few years, recalled Liam. “She said it was more fun to study it than to practice it.”

In the mid 1980s, Cindy and Ed sold their San Francisco home and bought a place in the country, just 45 minutes north of the Golden Gate Bridge. The 34-acre property came with a surprise. “If you don’t have grazing animals, you quickly need to do something about all that grass,” said Liam.

Considering the options, Cindy chose sheep. “They were less expensive than cows,” said Liam, “and less likely to trample you.” At the local auction yard, she picked out her first flock, and on Christmas Eve of 1986 the ewes began lambing.

The Callahans initially sold their extra lamb to local chefs. (I recall buying some for a Greek Easter picnic.) In 1989, when Cindy was managing about 100 sheep, a Middle Eastern friend came to visit. “Have you ever thought about milking them?” he asked. “In the Middle East, people make dairy products with sheep milk.”

The Callahans were astonished. “Some of our favorite cheeses, like Roquefort, were from sheep’s milk and we didn’t know it,” recalled Liam.

After a lot of reading and a trip to Tuscany to visit pecorino producers, Cindy and Liam—just out of college—had a cheese business. In the early 1990s, you could probably count America’s sheep cheese producers on one hand. Of those pioneers, I believe only Bellwether Farms, Old Chatham Creamery and Vermont Shepherd survive. Bellwether added cow’s milk products to its line years ago, but its sheep yogurt and fresh sheep cheese help populate the exceedingly small (and dwindling) universe of American sheep’s milk products. The collapse of restaurant sales during the pandemic caused Bellwether to pause production of its aged sheep cheeses, San Andreas and Pepato, and the sheep ricotta that is a byproduct. I am praying for their return.

About five years ago, when Cindy could no longer physically manage the flock herself, Bellwether began searching for a qualified shepherd to assist her. The pool of candidates for such a job is minuscule, and the search proved futile.

“Maybe from her years of being a nurse, Cindy fell in love with sheep from the beginning,” recalled Liam. “She physically couldn’t do it anymore, but if sheep were on the property, she couldn’t help herself.” With little prospect of replacing her, Bellwether sold its flock and now buys the milk it needs.

“Cindy had an East Tennessee mountaineer spirit of self reliance, determination and hard work,” says Sue Conley, the co-founder of Cowgirl Creamery and Tomales Bay Foods, who helped introduce Bellwether Farms products. “Her favorite quote was ‘Follow your bliss.’ She heard it in her English lit class with Joseph Campbell.”