Mine's a sheeps' milk 99, please

These days, there's an unfamiliar sight on the quaint, hilly streets of Hay-on-Wye - happy trippers and bookworms licking ice-creams of the richest, most gorgeous hues: the darkest, fruitiest blackcurrant, the pinkest, lushest tayberry.

These days, there's an unfamiliar sight on the quaint, hilly streets of Hay-on-Wye - happy trippers and bookworms licking ice-creams of the richest, most gorgeous hues: the darkest, fruitiest blackcurrant, the pinkest, lushest tayberry.

Their source is Shepherds Ice Cream Parlour and coffee bar, opened last April Fool's Day by Juliet Noble and Martin Orbach, who have been making ice-cream on their 60-acre farm in the Black Mountains for the past 13 years.

Their ice-cream has a translucent creaminess that puts you in mind of traditional Italian ices, and intense flavours. Noble and Orbach use local fruit which they prepare themselves - damsons from a neighbour, raspberries from Ledbury, elderflowers from the hedgerows on the farm. Noble constantly dabbles in new flavours - cardamom last year, tiramisu this - while continuing to produce stalwarts like choc chip and toffee.

What Shepherds doesn't immediately tell you, and what makes the ice-cream unusual is sheeps' milk. Hardly a crowd-puller, as Orbach and Noble - the first to try making it in Britain - found to their cost: "When we started, people would walk past the van and say 'Made from sheeps' milk - yuck!' It was so depressing," recalls Noble. "So after about five years, we took 'sheeps' milk' off the signs and put up a discreet notice instead. People are always surprised it doesn't taste any different."

Why use sheeps' milk at all? "Because it's extremely rich, there's no need to add extra fat to make ice-cream, as you do with cows' milk - and that's why the result is so light," says Orbach, who is also director of the Abergavenny Food Festival. Ice-cream was a natural if daring departure for a farm which originally sold ewes' milk to cheese producers, but couldn't find enough buyers.

For years they sold to local shops and happily hawked the ice-cream round festivals, from Glastonbury to the Three Counties. The new parlour is a dream come true - an Edwardian grocer's, with original shelving, mirrors to reflect the knickerbocker-glory glasses and a coffee machine that delivers the best espresso in Hay (thanks to a blend from two Welsh-Italian brothers in Bridgend). Sundaes are made to order, with fresh fruit and chocolate sauce.

When the taste for ice-cream cools down in winter, there are plans to extend the menu to ice- cream cakes for special occasions - including Christmas. But the ice-cream makers are not intent on expansion. Distribution has always been deliberately local, to a few shops and restaurants.

Noble - who comes from a family of farmers - explains: "I hate the wholesalers and shops getting all the profit! So it makes sense to do it ourselves." Even if that does mean milking their own sheep, which the couple did until a few years ago (these days they buy from the next door farm), stoning the damsons and sprigging the blackcurrants. It's worth it because, as Noble says, "Everyone's always in a really good mood when they're buying ice- cream. That is a huge bonus."

Shepherds, 9 High Town, Hay-on-Wye, Hereford (01497 821898); for other Shepherds outlets, contact Cwm Farm, Peterchurch, Hereford HRZ OTA (0198 1550716)