TLR Newsletter

 As you would expect, the tasks completed at TLR change depending on the season, giving the year a certain rhythmic workflow.  We have now begun our fall tasks, which in our fifth year of production, have taken on a grooved familiarity. Since the years flow in a cycle, it can be hard to define a "starting point" for the year's activities.  But in some sense, our production year begins in fall.  Summer tasks are winding down, and we begin preparing the farm for our earliest rains.  Hay is tucked away safely in the barn, to keep it from molding in the rain.  The barn is checked for leaks, and loose sheeting that may allow water infiltration, or may blow off in a storm are battened down.  (TLR is high up on the side of a hill in the Salinas Valley; the valley creates a "wind tunnel" effect, which concentrates wind energy in the valley, especially at our elevation, so winds can be extremely destructive during winter.) Fall is the main mating season for goa...

 Throughout the season, we make various bulk purchases of hay to get us through the dry summer months, and the slow-growing winter.  Historically we have experimented with wide array of options for feeding hay, including Bermuda hay, orchard grass, oat hay, teff grass, and alfalfa.  Based on this experimentation, we have found that alfalfa gives the best return on investment, with high protein content, high palatability, and high utilization by the animals.  Alfalfa is the gold standard for protein, and all other feeds use alfalfa by way of comparison for the amount and quality of protein they contain.  Alfalfa is also high in minerals (the "Ash" content in the image below), which ensures that the animals are not eating empty calories, and are instead eating a ration that truly produces healthy animals and healthy meat.  Alfalfa has a digestible energy content of 10.7 megajoules per kilogram of dry matter, and sorghum Sudan grass has a digestible energy con...

 Although lamb is one of the most widely eaten meats in the world, the US is not known as a lamb-centric community.  So naturally, to find the best recipes for lamb, it makes sense to look to the communities that have built a cuisine out of lamb, based on a long track record of high per capita lamb consumption.  One such country is Greece , which ranks 5th-highest per capita consumption of lamb in the world. One of the most common lamb dishes in this lamb-loving country is Lamb and Tomato Sauce .  This rather bland name masks an incredible dish, with many layers of flavor, all blended beautifully, and completely complementary of one-another.  It's one of the most common dishes in Greece, and has a 400 year legacy.  Instead of a regional favorite, it can be found throughout the country of Greece, and once you taste it, you'll see why.  Ingredients listed with a * are essential to the dish. Ingredients: 3 tablespoons of olive oil 3 pounds of lamb, bone-...

 Last month, we described several R&D projects we've taken on to help improve margins as part of continual-improvement on the ranch.  One of the more exciting projects is the seeding of the pastures with a warm-season grass, Piper Sudan Grass.  This is a sorghum/sudan grass hybrid, which is a cross between sorghum grass (often used as a grain for animal feed), and sudan grass.  The grass grows quickly, produces tons of biomass, and has a vigorous root system.  It establishes quickly, and is relatively drought tolerant.  The aggressive root system pushes carbon deep into the soil, and will improve soil conditions over time, allowing for better water infiltration when it rains, more soil biology for nutrient cycling, and more native bunch grass production in the winter and spring. Summers at TLR are the hardest time of year, as pastures dry up, and only the most well-adapted plants can survive the dry conditions.  The native grasses in our area are a...

 When we began marketing our pasture-raised animals to the public, we believed that our grass-fed lamb would be our flagship product.  The whole-animal lamb sales we had done in the past were met with rave reviews, and our own culinary experience with the lamb led us to believe that it truly is a remarkable offering.  We raise a breed of sheep (American Blackbelly) that is known to have one of the premier flavor profiles of all sheep breeds, especially when grass-fed and pasture-raised.  The first round of animals that we had processed for market were four lambs, and one goat, as we had assumed the demand for the two types of animals would be asymmetric toward lamb. As we soon found out, however, the market for goat meat is remarkably underdeveloped, with few producers, who struggle to meet the demand of a very large and underserved market.  Among these producers, many follow "conventional" practices, feeding concentrates to accelerate growth to a large size as ...

 After taking our recent load of animals into the processor, we were met with yet another unpleasant surprise, as the price to process animals has increased yet again, this time by a much lower $7 per animal (versus almost $80 with the previous round).  Although the $7 increase per animal is small by most standards, it represents yet another increase among many others in the supply chain, whether it be hay cost, fuel cost, processing cost, or seed.  Make no doubt about it, the huge array of different cost increases truly represents an existential threat to TLR, and our existing operating framework may need to change dramatically in the coming years.  We will continue to update our customers of any changes, and possible disruptions through our newsletter as usual.