Baking business goes to the dogs

Cheryl and Ed Woodcock believe there is strength

Capital Electric Cooperative members Cheryl, Woody and Logan Woodcock make ‘Farmer Tillie’s homemade dog treats’ out of their home north of Baldwin.

in numbers.

After all, they have five sons, one daughter, one grandson … And nine cats, nine sheep, six dogs, five horses, four house birds, a handful of chickens and guinea fowl, a calf … and last but not least, one cautious lama.

Then there’s the multitude of jobs Cheryl juggles. She makes customer service follow-up calls for a company based out of Minneapolis, Minn. She works at the Baldwin Post Office when needed and serves on the school board. She provides day care for one child after school, and takes and sells pictures of wild flowers found on her family’s 80 acres north of Baldwin. And she obviously spends time caring for their menagerie of pets.

And all that juggling doesn’t include her time-consuming dog treat business.

“I’m a jack of all trades, and master of none,” says Cheryl with a laugh.

She started the dog treat business three years ago after her husband, better known as “Woody,” gave her two Scottie dogs for her birthday. She researched the dogs on the Internet and read that she should feed them using stainless steel bowls instead of plastic, to avoid break-outs caused by the plastic.

Then she researched dog food and treats, and read about the “junky” ingredients.

“That’s when I started experimenting,” she says. “I surfed the Internet, read different recipes and did a lot of experimenting.”

While she used the online recipes for inspiration, she developed her own recipes through trial and error.

“Every dog in Baldwin has tried my treats,” she says.

Making those treats is a process. First she uses a gigantic dough mixer to blend the ingredients. Then she puts the dough through a sheeter, which flattens the dough to her specified thickness. The dough is then laid on a press which flattens the dough. Once the dough is flat, she lays the cookie cutters down (on the day of the interview, they happened to be kitty cookie cutters—go figure) and presses the cookies out. Then she lays them on pans and sticks them in a massive convection oven in her garage. The oven heats and dries as it bakes, so the treats become hard and crunchy. This drying, or dehydrating, prevents them from spoiling.

Cheryl creates the dog treats from start to finish and even grinds her own rice flour, which often leaves her kitchen messy. “You can’t trust a neat cook,” she says. Her husband, Woody, drives a truck by night. By day, Cheryl affectionately says she uses his “unpaid slave labor” to put cookies on the sheets. Their son, Logan, also helps out after school.

Once the treats are baked, she sticks them in one of her two freezers. The work doesn’t end there, though. Cheryl joined Pride of Dakota, a program that encourages residents to come together and sell unique North Dakota products. In order to promote her dog treats at trade shows, she needs to package the treats—which she does herself, with the help of Woody and their son, Logan, who still lives at home. The packaging includes making and printing labels, and bagging the treats.

Sold under the name of “Farmer Tillie’s,” the treats come in different types and flavors. Some are made with wheat or flax, and others are made with rice for dogs that suffer from allergies. Cheryl calls the pig-shaped treats “peanut butter and banana”; the bone-shaped treats “cheesy garlic”; and the cat-shaped treats “milk and honey.”

And what do all three different flavors taste like? Stale crackers, Cheryl says as she samples one in her kitchen.

“They’ve all been tasted by people,” she says. “But they aren’t flavored like human cookies, because they don’t have sugar or butter. Dogs still love them though.”

Cheryl is registered and licensed, so her labels list a thorough breakdown of ingredients that proves her products have been tested.

The whole process, from start to finish, takes “hours, and hours, and hours.” Along with investing hours each day, Cheryl has invested financially. She’s burned out and replaced three mixers, bought other time-saving equipment and continues to spend money replenishing ingredients.

While she hopes to see strength in numbers, including more customers and higher profits, Cheryl says she feels a richness that comes from working at home with her family and pets.

“I do it mostly for fun,” she says.

For more information on Farmer Tillie’s dog treats, visit www.farmertillies.com or e-mail countryziggy@yahoo.com.