TLR Newsletter

 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 ...