The Good Shepards

When Alessandro Voglino was studying business at NYU, he wrote an unorthodox business plan. “I was taking a class in small business management, and for the final project I decided to write a plan for a sheep farm,” he says. It was 1990 and Voglino, a native of Rome, had just met his future partner in both business and life, Brent Zimmerman. They’d already begun dreaming about starting a farm together.

The grad school sheep farming plan was actually entered into a school contest, where it received second prize. “They told me it would have won first place,” says Voglino, “but it seemed too unrealistic.” Thirty years later—sitting under mature catalpa trees heavy with late summer foliage, surrounded by over 400 acres of grazing land and woods, with the scent of hay in the air and the sounds of a thriving herd of 316 Dorper sheep in the distance—Voglino and Zimmerman seem to have gotten, if not the last laugh, then at least the final roast.