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Douglas Bern and his wife, Karen Maas, carted their young children from their Bergen County family home recently to Long Valley and a farm that stepped back in time. At the Valley Shepherd Creamery, artisans weaved cloth on hand looms, spinners made yarn out of wool, musicians played pieces writ ten decades ago, beekeepers kept their hives and a blacksmith hammered metal into shape.

"My kids have been to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and seen the suits of armor and swords," the father of three said. "When they saw the hot metal being beaten, it was a great insight for them." "They don't have that experience in their daily lives," Bern said. The annual Shearing Festival brought a record crowd of 1,500 visitors to the farm where 400 sheep were await ing to be shorn, said Eran Wajswol, owner and enthusiastic cheese maker.

It is the authenticity and attention to detail that draws thousands to the facility that Wajswol says is one of only three sheep dairy farms in the country (the second is in upstate New York and the third in Minnesota). "He could have had all kinds of vendors there," said Giulia Iannitelli, executive director of the North Jersey Skylands Board, who also attended the festival and noted that instead, the vendors "really were representative of traditional arts."

These types of small specialty farms are increasingly common in New Jersey and are drawing many visitors, tourism officials say. In ad dition to farms with hayrides and corn mazes, there are farms that produce goat meat, ostrich meat and Chinese vegetables.

In March, Gov. Jon Corzine put the Valley Shepherd Creamery on the list of the state's top 10 tourism spots for 2007, giving the creamery additional publicity and putting it in the company of the Battleship New Jersey in Camden, Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson and the Show Place Ice Cream Parlour in Beach Haven.

In addition to the artisans, the Valley Shepherd Creamery also showcases the working farm. Tours begin with educational videos. Then, Wajswol said, visitors watch ewes being milked by the first rotating milking parlor in New Jersey, if not the nation.

In the spring, visitors watch workers toss about hundreds of sheep as they take the animals from fully fleeced to completely shorn. And baby lambs are born constantly. This past weekend, at least 55 lambs were born. The Bern children were awed by the experience. "They saw the baby lambs snuggling together in their pens to get warm," said Bern. "The whole experience was very rewarding."

Wajswol is already making plans for his fall festival in October that will include artisans who make chocolate, wine and breads the old- fashioned way. And naturally, there will be cheese makers, a topic from which Wajswol rarely strays. "I prefer to be in the cheese room," says the former engineer who previously ran a 20-acre farm in Tewksbury.

He learned his cheese making from European fromagiers, and now sells all he can make of his 20 to 25 varieties, mostly at farmer's markets in New Jersey and New York. He employs five interns from Europe, who are learning the cheese-making business, and gets the work done with five agricultural workers from Ecuador, who have returned to the farm every year for the past six years or so. But while he's in the cheese room, he doesn't miss a beat -- or bleat -- from his 125-acre agricul tural haven.

"It's a reward working here," he says.

Copyright 2007 . Used with permission.

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