When Judy Bell had the idea of selling cheese made from ewes’ milk nearly 30 years ago, the reception was far from encouraging.

Judy, wife of farmer Nigel in Newsham, near Thirsk, got the idea while she was working part-time as a receptionist at an osteopath’s clinic in Northallerton.

“While I was there I became aware there were quite a few people with bovine milk intolerance coming through the door,” she said.

“I spoke to my husband about milking sheep and I began researching it and it seemed like a good idea.”

However, not everybody was so convinced.

“People thought it was going to taste strongly of the animal and it was a matter of having to educate people and talk the talk,” said Judy.

“I used to go out to Women’s Institutes and farmers’ groups. Lots of the farmers thought Nigel had lost his marbles letting his wife do something so off the wall.

“I had farmers come around and I needed to force them to try the milk. They couldn’t believe how creamy it was when they tried it, but it was just a matter of breaking those barriers.”

Judy set about perfecting the method for milking sheep, as well as freezing the milk and spending a winter experimenting with different cheese recipes.

“The following year I began to make more cheese and I began to drop samples off with lots of different outlets in the Dales and village shops,” she said.

Over the next 30 years Shepherd’s Purse Cheeses grew from a one-woman operation to employ 28 people and supply distributors and major supermarkets across the UK.

The true potential for the business became apparent when Judy took her range of cheeses to sell at the Yorkshire Show and competed in the Nantwich International Cheese Show.

As well as selling out at the show, her cheese won first prize in the competition - the premier event for cheesemakers in the UK: “It gave me a lot of confidence to carry on and from then it was a matter of just keeping going and doing more of what I was good at.”

In 1994 Judy’s winning ways caught the eye of Tesco.

The supermarket first bought a range of cheeses for Christmas and then made an order to list them in 17 of its stores - a request Judy happily agreed to but with one condition.

“I said if you want to take our product then I want to train your staff,” she said.

Given the relative costs of producing a litre of ewe’s milk compared to cow’s milk, the cheese was considerably more expensive.

As well as the higher price there was also a natural inclination for people to be put off by the idea of ovine milk, Judy said.

To make sure the staff at Tesco could explain the particulars of the product to customers properly, Judy invited them to the farm for the weekend to tour the facilities and learn how it was made. “When it did go on sale it was so successful because they had a story to tell,” she said.

The business continued to grow as Asda began selling the cheese.

However, tough times were ahead as the foot and mouth epidemic of 2001 swept the country, wiping out the business’s two flocks of sheep and having a major effect on production. “We couldn’t build up those flocks again in five minutes, it takes a long time to get a decent flock of milking sheep together,” said Judy. “It was pretty tough and we had five or six years of finding it really difficult, but we still carried on producing and expanding the range.”

Today around half of the company’s trade is made up of major supermarket chains including Waitrose, Booths, Tesco, Marks & Spencer and Aldi. The other half is made up of supplying independents, specialist cheese shops, and the wholesale market.

The business also continued as a true family affair, with Judy and Nigel’s eldest daughter Kate joining the company in 1997. The couple’s youngest daughter Caroline joined in 2011 after pursuing a successful career with Apple. Although their son Justin has now moved on to start his own company, he also worked for Shepherd’s Purse developing its brand-leading cheese Yorkshire Blue.

The company has also preserved its key values of focusing on producing quality, traditional and handmade cheeses.

“Quality and cleanliness is the most important thing and passion for the product, that runs through the business from the top to the bottom,” said Judy.

“It’s all about innovating but keeping things true to what you are. We are artisan cheese makers and we like to do things in the way that they have always been done.”

The story of the feta fight

Shepherd’s Purse became the centre of a minor media storm in 1996 when the European Court in Brussels ruled it could no longer use the name “feta” for its feta cheese.

During a protracted process taking over a decade the court considered various appeals from governments including Denmark and Germany, before deciding once and for all in 2002 that feta cheese could only be made in certain areas of Greece.

Greece’s most famous cheese now benefits from the European Union’s Protected Designation of Origin status alongside other products such as Yorkshire pudding, Parma ham and Newcastle Brown Ale.

“It was the Greek government fighting on behalf of their producers,” said Judy.

“I was absolutely astounded, but it got us quite a lot of media coverage.”

In 2007 Shepherd’s Purse rebranded its feta Yorkshire Fettle - the name it still bears today.