Dirt Lover
Dirt Lover is a 100% Sheep Milk Bloomy Rind Cheese With a Light Coating of Vegetable Ash and an American Cheese Society 1st Place “Original Recipe” winner for 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025!
Experience the rich, unique flavor of Dirt Lover, a 100% sheep milk bloomy rind cheese with a light coating of vegetable ash inspired by traditional cheeses like Selles Sur Cher and Caña de Oveja.
The ash-coated rind not only enhances the cheese’s flavor by neutralizing the pH but also adds a striking visual contrast, making it a beautiful addition to any cheese board.
Dirt Lover is hand-ladled and carefully aged, creating soft-ripened sheep’s milk cheese that is one of the few of its kind in the U.S.
Dirt Lover has a buttery, lemony, and mushroom-like flavor that becomes more earthy and beefy as it ages. It’s distinctive aroma of wet earth is reminiscent of working in the garden.
Dirt Lover pairs wonderfully with dried apricots. For a fresh take, try it in a salad with citrus segments, walnuts, fennel, and a simple vinaigrette.
While working as a doctor at the University of Washington, Green Dirt Farm founder Sarah Hoffmann dreamed of running her own farm business. As a child, she loved growing up on a farm, and she took inspiration for making fine cheese and running a business from her Aunt Jean, who owned a gourmet cheese shop in an era when women business owners were rare. In 2002 Sarah acted on her dreams and inspiration to start her dairy and begin the work of crafting fine sheep’s milk cheeses at Green Dirt Farm in Northwest Missouri.
Now, more than twenty-two years later, Sarah and her daughter, Eliza, along with a hardworking, dedicated team, run the farm business. The business has grown to include a retail store and café, a restaurant, and agritourism, all featuring cheeses made in the cheese kitchen on our Animal Welfare Approved dairy farm. We’re fulfilling our dreams and doing the groundwork (literally!) to craft fantastic cheese humanely and sustainably.
But you don’t have to take our word that the cheeses are fantastic. Since we started commercial cheesemaking in 2008, our cheeses have earned over 90 awards from the artisan cheese community, including five at the 2024 American Cheese Society competition.
In 2023 our hard sheep’s milk cheese, Prairie Tomme won 3rd place in Best in Show at the ACS competition out of over 1400 American artisanal cheeses! And we’ve been incredibly honored to receive Good Food Awards for our cheeses, in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2024.
In 2021 Food & Wine honored us with the distinction of being among the 50 best cheese makers in the US.
