Early in 2009, Alex Seidel, chef/owner of Fruition, 1313 East Sixth Avenue, bought a ten-acre parcel of earth that sits off a dirt road, just outside Larkspur, and named it Fruition Farms. From the beginning, Seidel, along with Verde Farms founder Josh Halder, cultivated herbs, greens and vegetables, the bounty of which is utilized in numerous dishes from restaurant kitchens throughout Denver.
And now several of those same kitchens are turning out plates graced with small-batch ricotta cheese, made from the milk produced by Seidel's herd of 41 Nebraska-bred sheep — a number that will soon swell to well over one hundred.
Val Landrum, an ex-chef from Fruition, is the farm's chief cheesemaker, while Jim Warren, Fruition's former sous chef, is the farm's head shepherd, a jack-of-all-trades job that he took on after he and Seidel attended a dairy sheep symposium late last year in Albany, New York. "At first it was just a trip," says Seidel, "but then we had a conversation about moving Jim out of the kitchen completely, and as of July, he became a partner in the dairy and the shepherd of the farm." Warren milks the sheep five days a week in the milking parlor, one of many areas within a newly constructed barn that also includes two aging rooms, a cheese-making facility and lab rooms to test the milk for bacteria and the cheese for acidity levels.
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