Lamb Weekend

We have a few acres of questionably fenced pasture, that our neighbor had used to run beef cattle on an irregular basis. Because the grass can get quite long if it is not grazed, we occasionally consider additional animals to help manage that pasture. Cows are a little large for us, goats are a challenge to fence, and pigs generally do not graze. That leaves sheep. Last year had a little bit of a sheep theme to it. We traveled to Lafarge to attend the Ewetopia woolen mill's open house, and attended on-farm tours at local farms specializing in sheep. Wool sheep require shearing, so hair breeds would seem be easier to maintain. Sheep would also have the additional benefit of providing meat. Unfortunately, I have not butchered anything larger than a trout or chicken. Last year, I came across a 2-day lamb butchering and processing class at Circle M Fam in Blanchardville. The owner partners with local butchers to teach how to harvest and process lamb. I did not have time to attend last year, but they offered the class again this November and it fit in my schedule.

If you want to learn where your meat comes from in a grocery store, and learn in a hands-on fashion, this is the class for you. It takes you from dispatching the lamb all the way to wrapping the cuts in butcher paper. The class I attended had six people, and as soon as we were all there, we immediately proceeded, with little preamble, to the pen where the lambs were kept. "Lamb' seems like a bit of a misnomer, as most people think of cuddly snow-white baby sheep when they hear that term. Agriculturally speaking, a lamb is a sheep that is less than a year old. These 'lambs' easily weighed 150 pounds and to the untrained eye looked like adult sheep.

The farmers would catch a lamb, place it on it's butt, and we would then stun it with a tool that resembled a light saber. The stunner sent a small metal rod into the lamb's head, incapacitating it. We each got to stun a lamb, drag it into the pasture, and then bleed it out. The heads were then removed and the lambs taken to the barn where they were hung by their hind quarters. We each claimed a hanging lamb, and during the remainder of the morning were instructed on how to remove the hide and innards. The carcasses were then cooled in a trough of ice water and placed into a walk-in cooler to chill overnight. The 4 hours of Day One passed quickly, and we ended with a lamb lunch, composed, of course, of gyros.

Heather, the butcher, teaches the artisanal butcher courses at Madison Area Technical College and Southwest Technical College. She suggested we watch a Bon Appetit YouTube video on lamb processing to get an idea of what cuts we would want to create. I ended up watching the video twice that night because it was so interesting how many different cuts of meat can be created

Day Two consisted of taking the carcass, breaking it into each primal part (neck, shoulder, loin, hind quarter), and then into various roasts and other cuts. Because lamb is so expensive we have rarely eaten it in the past, so I opted to create a number of boneless roasts and 'grind', to be used to make ground lamb. The result was 30 pounds of meat wrapped in white butcher paper and labeled, with several pounds of bones to make into stock. The class concluded with another lamb-based lunch, a curry made with lamb and winter squash.

After getting home and attending to some chores, I pulled the cooler out of the car and sorted through the bundles. I purchased a vacuum sealer last Christmas, on sale during Black Friday, that has this far gone unused. I re-packed several hastily-wrapped cuts in vacuum-sealed bags and it all went into the freezer. I set aside a bone for the dog, with the rest earmarked to make lamb stock. We'll have to dig out the pressure canner for a weekend of stock making. We have about 3 pounds of 'grind', but no grinder. Fortunately, Black Friday is just around the corner. I see another purchase in the near future, along with some gyros.