Voices of the
BIG BEND
Jim Glendinning The Galloping Scot, Author, World Traveler and sometime tour operator.
Story and photographs by Jim Glendinning
ALLAN MCCLANE
AND
MALINDA BEEMAN
Two persons, from opposite sides of
the USA, meet in Marfa, Texas,
decide to live together and to make
goat cheese. One is a long-time artist
and art teacher; the other was previ-
ously a builder and a teacher, and is
now also a fire marshal and owner of
50 motor bikes.
Malinda Beeman was born in 1949
in Pomona, CA, the second of three
children. Her father owned a manu-
facturing company and her mother
was a registered nurse and airline stew-
ardess. At age eight, she decided to be
an artist. The family moved to
Newport Beach and, following gradua-
tion in 1967 from Newport Beach
High School, she attended San Diego
State University (MA in Art, 1971) and
San Francisco School of Art (MA in
Art, 1973). Her interest lay in print
making, a process that combines a sci-
entific element with an experimental,
creative ingredient.
Beeman has been a professional
artist (painter, ceramicist and print
maker), an art teacher and an arts
administrator for 35 years. For 17
years she lived in Houston, creating as
well as exhibiting art. She taught art at
the University of Houston where she
also acted as arts administrator, then
moved to the Anderson Ranch Arts
Center in Snowmass, CO where she
ran the Workshop Center’s print divi-
sion (1991-1999). In Houston she met
Tim and Lynne Crowley, who later
invited her to Marfa, where she estab-
lished and ran the Marfa Studio of the
Arts (1999-2009), providing visual art
classes and activities for children and
12
Cenizo
ALLAN MCCLANE AND
MALINDA BEEMAN
Marfa Maid Dairy
teens. Today, she still makes time to
produce as an artist, and has a show
coming up at Greasewood Gallery,
Marfa this summer.
Allan McClane was born in Chicago
in 1950, the eldest of four children. His
father was an Air Force fighter pilot
and the family was constantly on the
move as his father was reassigned to
posts from Newfoundland to Vietnam.
By 1969, his dad had retired from the
Air Force and the family moved to
Cape Cod, closer to the family farm
where granddad lived.
McClane quit high school in
Barnstable and moved to Stowe
School in Vermont (1969), a better
choice. After a brief stay in a commune
in Taos, he returned to the Cape
where he worked for his uncles, who
Second Quarter 2014
SALLY ROBERTS
Marathon
were major builders. He then moved
to Vermont and graduated in educa-
tion from the University of Vermont
(1976). Then followed 12 years of var-
ied teaching in New England, while at
the same time maintaining his own
construction company. It was his
building expertise, experimenting in
straw bale construction, which caught
the eye of an architect who persuaded
him to move to Texas in 1995 and
build a 5,000 square foot, three-storey
experimental residence in Wimberley,
TX.
McClane and Beeman met at a
New Year’s Eve party in 2000 hosted
by the Crowleys. They bought a house
and joined life in Marfa. By 2009,
looking for a change, they bought 15
acres of land two miles east of town
and got into goat cheese production.
With the land and some goats bought,
they next put into effect the require-
ments of Texas Department of Health
Services, which inspects the premises
monthly. The first batch of cheese was
produced in 2011.
Interestingly, they each bring a dif-
ferent but complementary set of skills
to the activity. For Melinda, who han-
dles the actual cheese-making, the
process is similar to painting – a
creative project in motion until such
time as it is judged finished. She had
taken goat cheese-making classes in
2008-2009. Allan handles the care and
milking of the goats. “I know what’s
going with my goats,” he says of his
Alpine and Nubian goats. Each of the
26 goats in the herd has a name.
Goat cheese making is hard work,
even with the recent purchase of an
industrial pasteurizer and milking
machine. Before, milking by hand took
six hours daily; now it takes one to two
hours. Then there is the time-consum-
ing cheese production, which comes to
3,000 pounds annually. Marfa Maid
Dairy produces three types of goat
cheese: Greek semi-hard feta, Marfa
Moon soft goat cheese, and chèvre
with herbs (six flavors). They plan to
add goat yogurt.
There is little time off for during the
10 months of cheese-making activity.
All the cheese they make, they have to
sell. Fortunately the marketing and
selling, which is Beeman’s responsibili-
ty, has been going well: through stores,
at farmer’s markets and to restaurants.
A business partnership in the right
place at the right time is working well,
and its artisanal goat cheese adds
something to the region’s appeal.