Ed Crowley, Emily Lane, Bret Schnitker
April 21, 2026
Ed Crowley 00:02
In a second, they'll actually finish doing the shearing process, which is actually very comfortable for them. They, you know, we have a skilled professional Shearer. It's really amazing to watch this fleece come off in one piece, and the sheep's half happy and very comfortable. And then we put them in the spa chair.
Emily Lane 00:28
Welcome to Clothing Coulture, a fashion industry podcast at the intersection of technology and innovation. I'm Emily Lane
Bret Schnitker 00:35
and I'm Bret Schnitker. We speak with experts and disruptors who are moving the industry forward and discuss solutions to real industry challenges.
Emily Lane 00:43
Clothing Coulture is produced by Stars Design Group, a global design and production house with more than 30 years of experience.
Emily Lane 00:50
Welcome back to another episode of Clothing Coulture Today, you might notice a very different backdrop. That is because this isn't AI That's right. We are with Ed Crowley, founder of Mesta Meadows farm, and we are here during his sheep fiber farm festival. And one of the attractions beyond all of the wonderful animals, including Highland cow, dogs, roosters are the incredible sheep known for merino wool. Yes, welcome to our conversation.
Bret Schnitker 01:32
Mesta Meadows farm and spa, because it is kind of a spa back here, really looking like they're enjoying they
Ed Crowley 01:38
are, well, in a second they'll actually finish doing the shearing process, which is actually very comfortable for them. They, you know, we have a skilled professional Shearer
Bret Schnitker 01:49
that do they get to choose their style or it all comes off?
Ed Crowley 01:53
No, pretty much. It's a standard crew, marine crew cut for everybody. Yeah, that's kind of high and tight, that's how we like it. But they, after they they when they're sharing them, they're very comfortable, and they really make these minute adjustments when they're sharing that. It makes it look effortless. It's not. It's a lot of work, and it's a lot of skill. But they they just very gently move them and small increments and share it the whole time. And it's just, it's really amazing to watch this fleece come off in one piece, and the sheep's half happy and very comfortable. And then we put them in the spa chair.
Bret Schnitker 02:29
We actually do call it the spot. Okay, there you go.
Ed Crowley 02:33
So yeah, and Emily, if you want to try
Bret Schnitker 02:35
to get a lighter, yeah, little hoof care, yeah,
Ed Crowley 02:39
there you go. So, yeah, you know it's, it's really pretty neat to watch
Bret Schnitker 02:43
so, and you're saying that you like you with your experience, it'll take you 40 minutes to shear a sheath. Yes, I have one of these experience handles. Is how long
Ed Crowley 02:53
he's taking it slow now, so people can watch it. Yeah. So it takes about five minutes. The fastest sure we had here that we clocked did two minutes and 30 seconds.
Bret Schnitker 03:04
Can you imagine if they could train stylists on people here?
Ed Crowley 03:09
They wouldn't. Yeah, but it's amazing. It takes a lot of time to get this level of skill. They they actually say that they're not proficient until they've done at least 10,000 Oh, my God, sheep and a professional, sure, a big on a big crew, they'll do 10,000 a year.
Emily Lane 03:25
Oh my gosh, that's amazing. So these teams kind of travel around, and this is their specialty.
Ed Crowley 03:30
They travel the country. So will Kleiner is who's doing ours. And they were out of just south of Chicago, Illinois. And they travel the whole country during this are some crews that travel the US during the shearing season and then go to Australia and New Zealand and then come back. How often are these sheep sheared? Once a year. So once a year though, they'll grow about three and a half inches of wool a year.
Emily Lane 03:57
So we were noticing when we were touching some of the wool that had been sheared. How moist it is, like, I kind of wanted to rub it all over my skin.
Bret Schnitker 04:06
Yeah, to do that, actually, that's lanolin.
Ed Crowley 04:08
It is lanolin in Bret. You know, lanolin is really good for your skin. Most dermatology medicines, most skin lotions, have lanolin in them, and it's a anti microbial. It has healing properties. And so you'll actually if one of these sheep gets Nick during the shearing process, which happens they move around or something, they'll get a little nick. We'll put some blue coat, some some spray antibiotic on it to make the crowd feel better. It doesn't help. The sheep don't need it. In 24 hours, you won't be able to see it. Able to see it. So it's, it's just a healing properties. It's actually,
Bret Schnitker 04:46
there is this interrelated family and numerous breeds of Merino. I guess, specifically around one of the properties we just call out is this unique high concentrate of lane that has. Naturally antibacterial, static qualities when you actually use Merino in apparel. The great thing about, and we'll talk about all these other benefits, is that because of this degree of lane that exists even in the post process and the fabric is that you can wear Merino shirts running day after day after day, and you don't feel or smell the odor because of this naturally antibacterial, static property that exists. Yes, there are a million other benefits, but let's go all the way back, and let's talk about this family and clarify kind of the history you've got an interesting Yes, is it an urban legend? Maybe it sounds fascinating. You know,
Ed Crowley 05:41
there's some facts and there's some urban legend. I'm not sure what percentage it is, so we'll just go with we'll ask for sure. They'll either know or they're loose, one or the other way. But, but so here, here's the story. So, and this part is factual. This is actually where the the name of mess demettos comes from in Spain through the 16 and 1700s the main source of wealth was merino sheep. They had a monopoly. They were the only country that had merino sheep. The Moors had brought them in when they invaded and left them and that they had a monopoly. The big mills were in France. That's important in the story and a bit. So you have these merino sheep there isn't there is a complete monopoly. It was illegal to export them, punishable by death. So they were pretty serious. Yeah, about it. And there's a group of shepherds and landowners that control the wool industry called the society de mesta, and we name mesta meadows in honor of those founders of our industry. So that's kind of where the name comes from. It's kind of cool, yeah. And so anyway, so you know that most of the wool went to France, where the big mills were the converters to be converted, to be converted it from wool into yarn and roving
Emily Lane 07:05
sheared off now, yes, then gets transported,
Ed Crowley 07:09
sent up by the coast, probably
Bret Schnitker 07:11
to the source was heavily protected.
Ed Crowley 07:13
Yes, yeah. And so the King of France said, I really want some merino sheep. And so he said he probably asked the king of Spain for him. He said no, so he was pretty smart. Said, we're going to have in Menagerie. We're going to bring all the royalties, unique animals in from all over Europe to ramble a France. All the royalties sent their their animals, and King of Spain spent, sent 250 merino sheep. As soon as the Merino sheep arrived, the King of France disbanded the whole thing, sent everything home, else home, kept the sheep, the Merino sheep in ramblay, France, and that was the start of the ramblay breed of Merino sheep. Interesting, and so that's actually the breed that we have is a Rambla, or sometimes called a French merino sheep. So it's a breed of Merino sheep.
Emily Lane 08:08
So in in the various breeds of sheep that produce merino wool, is there kind of like a hierarchy of quality.
Ed Crowley 08:19
There are differences in quality and differences in the breed. So, for example, the classic Australian Merino that we
Bret Schnitker 08:27
read about 80% 85% of the wool. Merino wool comes from Australia. It is very moved from France to us. How did the Australians on a lonely island in the middle of nowhere all of a sudden get I mean, you know, my king of France pulled off a pretty big coup, but I doubt the Australian said, Hey, I'm gonna have a zoo go.
Ed Crowley 08:46
No, I don't think. I think probably what happened, you know, Australia, when it was starting out, was kind of a, what's the word I'm looking for here?
Bret Schnitker 08:58
Kind of a rogue colony. Rogue? Well, Rogue is a good way. Prison Island. Prison Island,
Ed Crowley 09:02
very, you know, very industrious, very entrepreneurial. I'm sure someone just brought some merino sheep in. And part of the thing with merino sheep in general, they do really well in hot, dry climates. So you think about a lot of Spain, a lot of Australia, a lot of the the breeds, a lot of the ranches here are in Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas, places where they get 17 inches of rain year. You know, it's very dry, very arid a lot of the year, very hot. Merino sheep thrive in that environment and produce great
Bret Schnitker 09:41
wool in that environment, and that translates into fabric we can drop in, and it's really the crimping nature of the of the fiber itself. It's thermal regulation at its best.
Ed Crowley 09:53
It is and that's one of the interesting things while we share now, a lot of people say, Why don't you share when it's hottest in the summer? Get all that wool off of more we don't want them to have all the wool off of it. We like them to have about a half inch of wool, because if they have that, it provides that thermal insulation and and also, you know, wool is really unique in its hydrostatic properties. It's wicking property. So if wool is dry, it will absorb moisture. Yeah, if it's wet, it will expel moisture. So that's why, if you're like, in a cold climate, wet climate, it's great, because temperature controlling, no matter what it's going to be temperature controlling, it's going to keep if you it's really popular with sports people, if you're running or stuff, it will wick the sweat away from you and
Bret Schnitker 10:40
keep you cooler. And out of all the families of wool, Marino has the highest level of that property. It can absorb up to 30% of its weight in water before it starts to see a breakdown in this characteristic of insulation.
Ed Crowley 10:56
Exactly. So very good properties in that respect. So that's really, I mean, that's a that's a really, really unique part of Merino wool, and that's part of why I think they, they showed up in Australia because it was a hot, dry climate. God, I can't do a lot of other things. I will do sheep. And they, they develop their breed. They actually bred them and developed the the breed that had a lot of folds in their skin. If you ever see them when they're sheared, yes, they have lots and lots of folds. Well, they did that because that way you got more hair follicles, more wool follicles, so you got more wool growing because of the folds of the skin. Interesting. Now really hard to shears, and they've actually moved now to smoother skinned profile, like we have the Ramblas are a little different, because now they still like those same characteristics, the dryness, all those things, but they also they have a very high level of crimp that's kind of the waviness of the wool. And that crimp helps with what's called loft in the spinning process. So it makes it kind of lighter, bouncier, fuller, but also it helps a lot with that heat absorption, dissipation. So it's really good thermal regulation. So it's really good for for keeping you cool, keeping you warm. It's really the other unique property. Well, a lot of people don't realize it's actually not flame proof, but flame retardant. So actually a lot of firefighters wear wool undergarments, because if they have polyester and they're in a hot fire, it melts, but
Bret Schnitker 12:32
wool doesn't. That's interesting.
Emily Lane 12:35
So so how much yarn will one average size, shape, produce?
Ed Crowley 12:40
Okay. So let's take one of our Rambla ewes. She'll produce about our average is about 7.2 pounds, okay, per you of wool. Now, once you wash it, scour it. There's a process you go through with wool. First thing is you scour it, which is basically a washing under real intense heat but very low agitation, because if you agitate it, you get felt.
Bret Schnitker 13:04
So unless you're making felt, you don't want Rainer does have a higher pilling Yes, likelihood, yes, yes, definitely.
Ed Crowley 13:11
So you use a really hot bath, some some chemicals to get the oil out. That's what you're trying to do, is get that lane out. You get the lanolin out, and then when you take it in the next step, you'll cart it and then spin it and etc. But you lose about 50% of the weight, okay, in that process. So you'll have about three and a half 3.6 pounds of fine yarn, which turns into, if you think of the skein, which is basically four ounces, yep. So that's basically four skeins to the pound. So the conversion, you're still getting 12 points, you know, 12 and a half skeins per you. So a really nice cardigan sweater, sweater is going to take you three, maybe four skeins. So you get about two or three sweaters per sheet. That's kind of the math, very rough math. Don't hold me to it, but you know, their donation of
Emily Lane 14:14
their one round of fur equals two to three sweaters for a person, yes, on the
Ed Crowley 14:19
air, about 18 pairs of socks.
Emily Lane 14:24
Okay
Bret Schnitker 14:27
So a lot of people, you know, when we talk about wool in general, and they're not really versed on different qualities of wool, they throw it into one camp, right? They're like, wool is itchy, it's heavy, it's hot, Merino is not. It is not,
Ed Crowley 14:43
and that's a real important factor. So if you put wool under a microscope, the reason you're able to spin wool is actually as barbs on it. It looks like little barbs coming off the wool fibers. And so when you spin it, those barbs catch so that's why you're able to. In yarn and have a really nice, tight weave on it. Now, the when you when you think about size and and we're shooting for on our ranch about right now, we're at 19.2 micron. We'd like to be at 18, but 19.2 is really good. Anything under 24 is fine. We're in the ultra fine category, so, but what that means is, is that fiber gets smaller, the barbs get smaller, and so it's less itchy. And in fact, Merino is not itchy. It's called a next to the skin wool. There are some other wools, like if you think of a herringbone tweed,
Ed Crowley 15:44
tweed, Paris
Ed Crowley 15:46
tweed, which is a very coarse kind of very course, have
Bret Schnitker 15:50
you ever worn one of those jackets?
Ed Crowley 15:51
Holy shit, yeah. I know, yeah. It's like armor. Might have been armor at one time,
Bret Schnitker 15:56
Highland armor, Highland armor.
Ed Crowley 15:58
But anyway, that is usually made out of Scottish blackface wool. Well, Scottish blackface has this really long,
Bret Schnitker 16:05
thick wool, 30 micron,
Ed Crowley 16:09
34 okay, very coarse. So, you know, there are all kinds of wool and all kind of but Merino is still, I would say that the King, the Queen of the wool, softness and quality for really fine material. That's what you're gonna go for.
Emily Lane 16:26
So you're talking about we're shooting for this finer Gage. So finer micron is that a is it a diet like, what are the contributions that help
Bret Schnitker 16:38
sheet which makes skinny micron
Ed Crowley 16:41
No, no, no, no, no. That actually works the opposite. So there are a lot of factors, but basically the big ones are genetics. So who's mom, who's dad, who's grandpa, who's grandma, Jeanette, the hair, the micron diameter, is one of the very heritable traits of sheep, but also diet, climate. We can tell a difference in wool from year to year based on how wet it is or how dry it is, or when it's wet or when it's dry. So so those things all impact it. Excuse me, you can also have course nutrition, how well you feed them if they've been under stress? Oh, sure. So. There are a lot of factors that can impact it, but we really focus a lot on genetics. Every one of our sheep. We have electronic ID tags. We scan them. We have all their breeding histories, all their health histories. We do in the fall, before, after their Bret, before they lamb. We do ultrasounds on every use so we know how many babies are gonna have when they're gonna have them. So we adjust their nutrition accordingly. So it's, it's a lot, and
Bret Schnitker 17:56
they're saying, because of the management of the science for well, well over 200 years. Yes, that the micron has actually improved. They never had this fine of a micron. They're saying that they some of the ultra, ultra fine microns. Can get as low as 15 microns. It's very, very rare, but it's an amazing kind of shift because of the entire community of ranchers that are managing this family of sheep are really very cautiously watching their trajectory and breeding in this more, finer,
Ed Crowley 18:31
absolutely, very, huge thing. And we've got, we've actually got some great, great flocks breeding ranches in the US. La Ranch, you know, is, I think, one of the top wool ranches in the country, arc Ranch, where our sheep came from on out of South Dakota, is really, really strong quality ranch. La ranch actually has their own clothing line, Duckworth wool, right? So, so there's in they, you know, they raise, I think, 20,000 head of sheep. So they, they have a massive breeding program, and they're, they're where we want to be someday, because they actually, when they shear, they actually have spectrometers, and they're measuring the micron off each sheep as it comes off the sheep. We have to send it off to a lab and do stuff. They're doing all that real time, and which is just amazing to me, the amount of effort and quality that goes into that. And so yes, the micron is getting better with time. And in fact, we have three, I believe, three, last test used that did 16.4 micron and had 100% comfort factor, which is almost unheard of. That comfort factor is one of the other things you measure is how uniform is it? So is all the wool the same diameter or not? So anything above 95% is considered really good. We have three with 100% Wow.
Emily Lane 19:59
So. So you know, when you talk about all of this documentation to do and all of the research to make sure everybody's healthy, happy, all of those things, it makes me think of sustainable farming. And yes, we talk to so many brands from a manufacturing standpoint that, you know, there's this growing rise of awareness of wanting to do better by the Earth, wanting to embrace sustainable practices, wanting even documentation from farm, fiber, supply chain, transparency, absolutely. And it really seems like, like at the very foundational level, that's where you're at here. You are we,
Ed Crowley 20:35
we are, I think the thing we're a little behind in the US versus Australia, because I think Australia has done a phenomenal job on this. Their traceability programs are really good. They have very standardized programs across the country.
Bret Schnitker 20:50
They're protecting a pedigree. They're protecting
Ed Crowley 20:53
pedigree, and they've just done a really good job of that. I think we're behind. We have a lot of producers that are very focused on it, and we're working on the quality and the traceability and all those things. We haven't made it a standard across the industry. Yet, as
Bret Schnitker 21:09
much as we need to, is the industry growing in the US? Would you say,
Ed Crowley 21:12
Well, it's interesting, because there were actually a couple of different industries for wool. Okay? So traditionally, the majority of the wool in the US is grown and goes to military uniforms. Sure, that's been the that's the biggest volume historically, of
Bret Schnitker 21:31
the industry, largest percentage of our US apparel business, large,
Ed Crowley 21:35
largest percentage. And that's good. We need that. But we we have another industry that I'm going to call the craft industry. And these are everything from the California fiber shed. There's a New England fiber shed. There's one that's kind of starting in in western Missouri and Kansas. But these are more artisan crafts people that are doing small batch, small Mills, you know, 30,000 50,000 pound capacity. And they're doing, you know, not big brands of stuff and that that's growing, and that's really cool from a sustainability perspective, because it is very traceable. I mean, we make socks here in hats, trace them all the way back to our farm. So we have this, this, that we have this, I'll call it the commercial industry, which, by the way, is dominated by the big flocks out in the western ranges that are, you know, been in the family for seven generations, producing 10s of 1000s of pounds of wool a year. I mean, it's very different business model, very focused on, rightly so, protecting the family legacy, protecting the family ranch. You know, it's a little more risk averse. Now, I say that heli is one of those, and they're not risk averse. Sure. You know, there's some that are doing some really cool stuff, yeah. But for the majority, most of the, I'll call it kind of, the craft market is on the west coast, in the North East, in eastern half of the US, and is really thriving. And there's a lot of growth in that sector. The military sector is kind of plateaued
Bret Schnitker 23:13
at the best. We were just visiting a group out in Carolina. They're struggling. They haven't had orders in nine months. Yeah, yeah. So it's,
Ed Crowley 23:21
you know, that I think the market's changing, and I think there's an opportunity. Though, the more we're seeing of the the hell a type of, I'm going to call it farm to skin brands.
Bret Schnitker 23:33
It's locks. I mean, you know, when we look at America, and we look at the things that we can and we can't do, and what we can protect and what we shouldn't protect what needs to go offshore, because we don't have the staff for it. We know we grow a lot of really nice cotton. Yeah, you know everything from good, everyday use, usable cotton to subpoena. Yep, I believe that Marino has the same similar ability to market to the world, and we can it can be a sustainable business, because it's a luxury yarn, right? I agree. Bret, there's no cheap, right? Yeah. Marino is a marina.
Ed Crowley 24:08
It's Yes, and I absolutely believe that's our opportunity, is the luxury market, yeah? Because, I mean, you think about, okay, part of the reason I was interested in raising wool sheep,
Bret Schnitker 24:21
30 you got cold years ago. And said, Man, it was
Ed Crowley 24:25
like 30 years ago. I was in Australia on a work trip. It's middle of winter there, summer here. I didn't take a heavy coat. I'm freezing to death. The guys I was working with her, he's like, Look, I'll take care of you. Takes me this clothing store. I went in and I bought this wool, 100% wool overcoat. Paid way more than I ever thought. I'm like, my wife's gonna kill me when I get home, you know? And I but it's a long flight. It's a long flight I can, you know, talk to her about it. Yeah, I've had that for 30 some years. It's still where it looks great, wears great. It's the best clothing investment I ever made. My my cost per wear on that thing. Is the lowest of anything I've got, and that's one of the things about wool. It's durable. It's extreme people, a lot of people don't realize when you do bend test, which is basically bend a fabric, see how long before it breaks. I'm trying to remember the exact statistic, but wool is like, three times or four times stronger and more durable than any of the poly, carbon based materials.
Bret Schnitker 25:23
And as our industry starts moving from this kind of disposable clothing market to investments in apparel, I think merino wool is positioned to be one of those leading kind of I think it is composition. So I think it is
Emily Lane 25:36
how much of it stays in the United States,
Ed Crowley 25:39
not as much as we'd like. Actually, most of our wool is exported. That's a great question, Emily, because one of the we've got, we've really got one big challenge in the US, and that's processing.
Bret Schnitker 25:51
Yes, capability, dying,
Ed Crowley 25:53
dying, spinning,
Bret Schnitker 25:55
scouring, knitting, assembly. Yeah, we've got
Ed Crowley 25:59
two or three big Mills, chargers, Pendleton, you know, we've got a few big mills. We got a lot of small Mills, but not of the, what we call mid range mills. We've got about three or four left. That's it. Wow. And all of that is being exported over to China or India, and it's being processed there.
Bret Schnitker 26:21
But there's no benefit for Asian countries to use us wool when it comes to an import duty rate back in no and that is something that really should be happening if we are driving the US industry that can be built here. There should be this incentive to break out the composition and say, look, it's American base, American origin. So there should be a benefit for that. I think that will actually accelerate the use overseas, because it's even the current administration says, Look, we're not really interested in growing the the American Apparel industry, because who's going to sit in a sewing line at that price, right? But if we take components of the industry, our cotton, the Merino, that's existing, yes, and we give benefits for utilization and re import, yes, that I think we can actually accelerate the industry.
Ed Crowley 27:15
I agree. I absolutely agree. And I think that's a huge opportunity for us. There's just a the that we have an amazing amount of land that is
Bret Schnitker 27:28
ideal, 100% for
Ed Crowley 27:30
growing high quality, great. We can grow as good a wool as anybody in the world. We absolutely can. So, you know, we've got that capacity and in there's no reason, you know, why don't we support that make it easier to create more demand, 100% for our wool to be used in overseas processing, coming back as clothing.
Bret Schnitker 27:53
Well, I benefit extends, you know, far past wool. We know that. You know, at some point there's an end of life. Yes, we provide the food chain. We provide the value chain. Talk about sustainability. There's a lot of benefits to that. There is one
Ed Crowley 28:07
wool, again, it's an all natural fiber. Yeah, you know, that's one of the things you don't realize. I mean, for example, we have waste wool here. You know about 20% of our wool is not good enough quality to be processed, so we actually de compost it, and it releases nitrogen very slowly. It won't burn
Bret Schnitker 28:25
plants three or four years. Fully biodegradable
Ed Crowley 28:27
for your fully biodegradable probably had some good nutrients and great nutrients, very strong
Bret Schnitker 28:33
the plants that grow really soft because of the lane, yeah.
Ed Crowley 28:36
So it's great stuff. I mean, it's a wonder material and and I think we've got, again, we've had that industry in the past, so we know how to do it, but we we've got some barriers right now that are really holding it back. Oh, we should
Bret Schnitker 28:52
break them down somehow. There's a voice out there.
Ed Crowley 28:54
There's got to be, there's got to be, I will put a plug in for the wool Council, the American Sheep Industry Association, which I'm on the wool Council, that's actually we have a budget for pretty significant budget for trying to drive those kinds of initiatives and and really trying to help bring some of that change about we need some mempa from the textile industry. We need people that know
Bret Schnitker 29:19
that industry what I'm missing, what you find, and every administration is different, is that try to pick off the incremental benefits. If we can simply say, hey, look, let's adjust import duties, and now we have a tariff hit, if the tariff if there would be a reduction on tariff on us, origin fibers and a reduction in duty, that's not a big ask, no. And what that would do is drive significantly more business, even outside of the wool itself, yes, to the entire meat industry and everything else. It's Yes. I think it's a huge benefit. Absolutely.
Emily Lane 29:54
So. Ed, I know that you're a bit of a serial entrepreneur, okay,
Bret Schnitker 29:59
yes, um. Guilty serial killer. Me neither. I'm like, Excuse me.
Emily Lane 30:08
So you know, I am curious one, how you ended up saying, I this is going to be my thing, merino wool. And then what's the what's next on the horizon?
Ed Crowley 30:21
Okay, so, well, let me do a little backstory, because it's kind of funny. Okay, I'm gonna tell a story of myself. I grew up on,
Bret Schnitker 30:27
you snuck sheep out of Spain, yeah, that's
Ed Crowley 30:29
a long time ago. Yeah, no, but I actually grew up in southwest Missouri, on large beef and dairy farm, right? Couple 1000 acres, you know? I left to go to college. I'm like, to my dad, I'm never living in the country again. I'm never milking anything again. I'm gonna see the world. And I had a great career, and I did, and then 1520, years ago, kids gone growing up, and Terry Morris like, let's look at some goats. Like, crazy about goats with sheep. Sound kind of interesting. So went to school for a year to learn about sheep and goats. I knew about cattle. Didn't know anything about sheep and goats, and started reading about the Merino sheep and Rambla. And I'm like, Man, I like this. I got to think about that coat I'd had for so long. I'm like, Okay, we're gonna do sheep. So we that's how we got started. And we were in Kentucky at the time. That was before I closed down one of my previous companies and went I wanted to teach, because I've always taught part time, and I really enjoy that. So I just wanted to actually, you know, get to do that full time. So second career came down, started teaching, and we bought this place and started doing it now, along the way, we had some people knew we were in sheep, and they gave us some dairy sheep. You know, we know these guys. They have sheep, sheep to sheep, take your sheep.
Emily Lane 31:55
I'm like, okay, would that also be a French sheep?
Ed Crowley 31:58
Actually, that we have a lucane East Friesian cross East Friesians are from Holland, Germany. Lucanes are from France, okay? And we also
Bret Schnitker 32:08
have cheese, trust me, if you normally, she's always thinking about cheese well,
Ed Crowley 32:12
and she's not cheese traditionally, parmesan, mozzarella, Rockford feta, or all sheep cheeses? Yes, screw year. Yes, yeah, absolutely. So, so, yeah, if you love you know, sheep cheese is really good. So we get these dairy sheep and we started milk and learned about their dairy sheep milk is an amazing milk. It's it has very small fat particles that are actually easier to absorb. It's the easiest milk for the human body to consume.
Bret Schnitker 32:45
Still have lactose or not.
Ed Crowley 32:46
It has lactose, but smaller amounts different lactose. Interesting. It's all a two. You've heard of a two. Okay, it's all a two. It's very sweet. It's not like goat milk. Don't, please don't call it goat milk. It's, it's, it's not tangy, or it's very sweet. It's actually a lot of people compare it to half and half. So it's very creamy and it's naturally homogenized. So it's that cream stays in there. It doesn't get a big cream line, it just stays in the milk. So anyway, so we started doing sheet milk, and we actually had a gentleman that worked for us. His name was Joe. Joe was a huge guy, 6263, not, not fat. I mean, like, 0% body fat. He's just a bear. He's just a big guy. He came to me one day and he said, Ed, I haven't had milk for years. I love milk. I can't tolerate milk. You know, Can I try this sheep milk? Yeah, try it. So he tries it. He comes back about two weeks later. First of all, he loved it. It's great. You didn't have a problem with it. Comes back about two years later, or two months later, or two weeks, I don't remember, but he came back later and he said, Look, can you make ice cream? And I swear he almost got tears in his eyes. He's like, I haven't able to eat ice cream for four years. I love ice cream. I really want some ice cream. You want to make, put on a
Bret Schnitker 34:04
little of that body fat back on right?
Ed Crowley 34:07
He's melting away. And so, so we tried it, and we tried to make it, and we did some experiments. We did recipes, and we finally came up with this French custard base, sheep milk, ice cream. And he could, he can't. He was so happy. He loved it. He would just, he was my best testing subject. He would just, anytime I made
Bret Schnitker 34:27
it, he was ready. I'm willing to be your second.
Ed Crowley 34:29
Are you okay? All right, you had some, right?
Bret Schnitker 34:31
It was good stuff. Yeah, really good.
Ed Crowley 34:34
So, so we, we started, we started just experimenting with it. Started making some small batch, very small batch, ice cream. And we found that we just couldn't make enough. People tried it and they loved it, and we'd be closed and they'd be knocking on our door saying, Hey, do you have any ice cream? And you know, so we said, Okay, we will. We'll take the leap. And we got some investment. We put a lot of our own investment into it. Built a creamery. We upgraded our barn to grade a barn, went through all the inspections and everything else, and we've just opened it. So we now have Adley Yes, which we had a great agency. We worked with the Elks come up with that, and they the and it's basically a combination of Attia and lay, you know, are kind of a the French words for craft or custom in cream. It's perfect. It's and it describes it, I think, very perfectly. So we have this very nice, rich, creamy, French custard based ice cream that is really unique because we don't use any preservatives, nothing you can't pronounce. We use real stuff, like our apple cinnamon is made out of a real apple cinnamon syrup, just apples and cinnamon and syrup. Ingredients, good ingredients, blackberries, real blackberries. I know somebody like the Blackberry, so I think, you know is really, I don't know Emily. I just think it's really, it's become a passion for me just making this now, my wife says you got to cool it on the flavors a little bit and taste testing, we're going to get super fat, but
Bret Schnitker 36:09
call us down,
Ed Crowley 36:10
yeah, but it's so much fun. And it's just, it's, it's so cool to be able to do it and to watch people just enjoy it and just get excited about it, or
Bret Schnitker 36:20
can people get it?
Ed Crowley 36:23
Yeah, here we also do right now. We're doing farmers markets in Cape Girardeau. We also have tower grove on Tuesday nights we do their farmers market. We also have stores in both St Louis. Local harvest is going to be carrying it. We have some restaurants, some stores and cape, they're getting ready
Bret Schnitker 36:51
to carry it.
Ed Crowley 36:52
Yeah, so it's really, I mean, what we're what we're aiming for, is a premium, handcrafted ice cream.
Bret Schnitker 37:01
Well, it tastes like nothing ever Yeah, it is just insane.
Ed Crowley 37:05
Well, thank you, thank you. It's really, it's got beautiful packaging. I'm ready to
Bret Schnitker 37:09
be ice cream killer, right? Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna murder some ice cream.
Ed Crowley 37:15
It is really, it is really good, though, and it's fun to make it. And it's really, what's, I think really cool. Talked about sustainability, yeah, earlier and traceability, yeah, you know, there's some other really good ice cream brands around and premium brands that are buying their milk from different farms and stuff and are making it from a, you know, powdered milk or whatever. Yeah, we grow our milk here. You hear our milk producers in the background, you know, we actually, we milk the sheep. We know the sheep. We know them from lambs. You know, we know you we're raising them, we're milking them, taking care of them, so we can control quality
Bret Schnitker 37:53
every step of the way. Free range eggs.
Ed Crowley 37:55
Free range eggs off our farm, wow, we don't grow all the berries. We grow a lot of the blackberries, but, but we work with local orchards, and so it really is a
Emily Lane 38:04
holistic system. Yes, here within the Ozarks, beautiful rolling hills
Ed Crowley 38:11
of the Ozarks, yes, it is. So it's really cool, and we invite people come in see it, experience it.
Bret Schnitker 38:16
Just don't eat all the ice cream. Save some for some of us,
Ed Crowley 38:21
we'll make more. We'll make
Emily Lane 38:23
more well. Thank you for this invite. Join you in this festival today and get to learn I've learned so much about thank you guys, amazing sheep and and what goes into the process of making gorgeous sweaters. So much. It's just been so much fun. Always joy, real pleasure. Thank you for joining us today. Do not forget to subscribe to stay apprised of upcoming conversations.
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