Winter Days Ahead and Current Thoughts

Only a few more days until the Winter Solstice. Can't wait for it so the days will begin to get longer. It is frosty and freezy today - 7 degrees last night. 

The Farmer has been getting the lambing barn ready. It won't be long until there will be new babies. This cold weather is great for lambing because the ground is frozen (he calls it poor man's cement) and the lambs do better when there isn't much moisture in the ground. Snow is much better than rain. I'll keep you all posted.

We've been selling lots of our pasture raised lamb. It's nice to think that local folks will be enjoying the products of our farm as the centerpiece of their holiday meal. If you are local-ish, I've got two different "meat-ups" scheduled -

In Greenfield on Wednesday evening from 5:30 to 6:00.

In Northampton on Thursday evening in the Webs Parking Lot from 5:30 to 7:00. 

You must call or email to place an order. Cash, check or credit card payments accepted. See this post for more information. I will be bringing recipes or you can look at them on my lamb recipe blog.

There have been many interesting comments over on the Webs FaceBook Page about the "meat-up." I thank Kathy and Steve for helping me out with this and supporting local agriculture. They didn't have to. Kathy's comment to me was this - "We are all in this together and if I can help out your farm and family, then I am happy to." 

We are sheep farmers here and no matter what many knitters may want to believe, the major product of the majority of sheep farms is lamb meat, not wool. I went into this sheep farming thing as a knitter and fiber lover 31 years ago. For me, sheep were those cute litttle fluffy animals that grazed green pastures. I knit with their wool and spun their fiber. I understand where some of these people are coming from. I had those same rose colored glasses.

My partner in this farming life - The Farmer - grew up on a working dairy farm. His eyes were open to what living on a farm was all about because he grew up with life and death all around him as a small child. He learned to slaughter a chicken as a small boy. On a dairy farm, cows come and go and it is just part of it all. When we bought our first four sheep, he talked to me about what would happen with the ram lambs. I chose not to listen.

Kristin + Mark - early 1980's

I was in for a rude awakening - not a bad one, just a different kind of one. I grew up not really thinking about where my food came from. My parents were passionate gardeners but we did not live where livestock was common, nor even allowed. My dad was first generation German and he always purchased the meat we ate from "The German Butcher." As a kid, liverwurst, beet salad, herring salad, sauerkraurt, rolaten, sauerbraten - all traditional German foods were part of our family heritage and I loved it all. Daddy used to talk about the farm his grandparents had in Rockaway, NJ, where the current Morris Hills High School is now. He spent summers on the farm and had memories of the pigs his grandparents raised and ate. He used to tell about the day the traveling butcher would come to the farm and the pig would be slaughtered. Then his grandparents would smoke and preserve the meat for the winter ahead. I was not oblivious to the whole process of farm to table. But I was uneducated, as most kids were in the 1960's. 

We have 3 rams who service our 250 breeding ewes. That's it - THREE. This January and February, we will probably have 400 plus lambs born. Most likely half of them will be boys. We don't need them because 

a. We only need our 3 big boys.

b. They are genetically related to the ewes and lambs that are on the farm. Inbreeding is not something you strive for on a farm. It happens sometimes but it isn't good most of the time. There's a reason you shouldn't marry your cousin.

The January boys will become our lamb crop of 2012 which we sell as meat to our meat-eating customers (many call themselves "recovering vegetarians"). And sometimes we also harvest the females, depending on their size.

Here's the thing now where I have a bone to pick with some of the "fiber farms" who are marketing and selling their wool to knitters who have dreams of Utopia. On those farms, babies are born and most likely, half of those babies are girls and half are boys. Unless these farmers want to castrate all of those boys and keep feeding them all their lives just to keep their wool, those boys will all go away and become part of the food chain. It is not financially feasible to keep every boy born on a sheep farm just for fun. I know Paul and Linda McCartney did but we aren't all rock stars. Most fiber farms do not talk about this, most likely so they will not offend their knitting and fiber customers. Talk about continuing the rose colored glasses phenomenom. I know many knitters do not want to think about this. They want to think of sheep as cute fluffy creatures living out their lives in some kind of Utopian Eden (just like I used to). But it just is not that way. Animals live and die - some of natural causes but most at slaughterhouses. 

I think it is time that knitters look at sheep for the animals they are - producers of meat and wool but also producers of bones, lanolin, sheepskins, leather, intestinal casings for violin strings, collagen (plastic surgery, anyone), gelatin, buttons from bones, pet food, and darn good manure machines for fertilizing fields and gardens. Sheep are amazingly useful and beautiful creatures who can turn an overgrown hillside into a lush green piece of pasture in a year's time with continual rotation. There is a reason that nomadic cultures still wander the world with their bands of sheep and that they still have a sacrificial lamb for celebrations. Did you know that lamb is the second most popular meat in the world, behind goat meat? 

As sheep farmers, we treat our animals as good as possible while they live on our farm. When they are grown and ready to go, we take them to a slaughterhouse where they are treated humanely until the end. I know this because I help load the truck and go with The Farmer when I have time. I have been on the killing floor and I know what happens. I know how the animal lives and how it dies. I needed to know this so that I can honestly sell our lamb to our customers.

I think there is such a disconnect with most people about the source of the meat they buy at the grocery store on a piece of styrofoam wrapped in plastic. Most Americans want to eat meat. In fact, I bet many American families have meat almost every evening at dinner and many probably eat meat for lunch too. I have no problem with people who chose to not eat meat. It is everyone's choice. I too was a vegetarian for a few years. That is perfectly fine. But please meat-eating people and knitters..... think about how the animal you are eating was raised and how it died so that you could consume their flesh before you say ewwww to the farm family who is doing things right. 

Things are getting better - books like Omnivore's Dilemma, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Righteous Porkchop, Compassionate Carnivore, Food Matters, Folks, This Ain't Normal, The Grass Fed Gourmet, The River Cottage Meat Book, are being published by major publishing houses. There is a major trend going on with people making their own charcuterie and cooking offal. The interesting thing is that the people who are cooking odd bits and into butchering and charcuterie are very similar people to those who are passionate knitters. They have chosen a different passion though - cooking meat and knowing all about it. I am sure there is a bit of cross-over (see friend Janice's blog, a former yarn shop owner). Food for thought for this day before the big holiday.