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FeedClamoring for Colorado Lamb
Sometimes the path from farm to table is a Rocky one.
Rob Hammer
Is there a more innocent, idyllic creature than the spring lamb? It’s been a symbol of purity and, by extension,
rebirth for millennia — morphing from Aries, the first sign of the zodiac (today more commonly depicted in adult form as a ram), into a Judeo-Christian icon of sacrifice and resurrection that, in turn, manifests as an Easter supper centerpiece and Passover Seder ceremonial offering.
Now, in our postindustrial, secularized society, lamb’s prelapsarian mystique stems as much from progressive ethicurean values as ancient religious ones. That’s especially true for Colorado lamb, whose culinary renown is enhanced by the state’s own image as a wonderland of sparkling mountain peaks and stream-crossed valleys. What more pastoral backdrop, after all, for those frolicking woollies?
Perfectly suited to seasonal open-range grazing with its abundance of browse, tall grasses, and palatable weeds, this landscape is what brought the first wave of agrarian settlers to Colorado in the wake of the Pike’s Peak Gold Rush in the late 1800s. The area was popular for both cattlemen and sheepmen. With their Australian and New Zealand rivals cornering the market on wool, the latter bred for meat instead.
These pioneers set the foundation for an industry whose product is proudly touted by chefs worldwide for its tenderness, mellow flavor, and what Bonnie Brown of the Colorado Lamb Council calls “large plate coverage” — in other words, sheer meatiness. Determined to get to know the lamb behind the myth, we followed it on its journey from farm to table — joined by a few Colorado ranchers who offered insight into when and where it’s bred, how it’s raised, why it’s so special, and the truth about grass-finishing, slaughter, breed genetics, and the importance of terroir along the way.
Take third-generation rancher Richard Parry, the homestead of whose Irish-Scottish Grandpa Jones has expanded in two generations to become Fox Fire Farms, situated on 1,000-plus acres in Ignacio, southeast of Durango. From his arrival here in 1900 until his death in 1960, Jones followed “the traditional model of Western Colorado sheep ranching, [which] was migratory — you’d take the sheep up to the high country to graze on U.S. Forest Service lands in summer, and then in the winter, you’d take them almost to Utah into the desert valley,” says Parry. “But in the 1960s and 1970s, the predator problem on the government grazing allotments became so bad that we discovered ‘cell grazing,’ concentrated on our private lands.”
Also known as rotational grazing, this system involves regularly moving flocks from one electric-fenced paddock to another, keeping the bears and wolves at bay while allowing for pasture replenishment. Essentially a high-tech version of his forebears’ season-based methods, it has changed the way Parry thinks about his livelihood altogether. “What we’re doing is not so much sheep ranching — we like to call it grass farming,” he says, half-joking that “the animals are just tools to harvest the improved, highly productive cool-season grasses” he cultivates for their nutritiousness. Bromegrass, orchardgrass, and perennial rye flourish in Colorado’s mountain climate, and they sustain his lambs all their lives (less than a year by definition), supplemented only by alfalfa hay in wintertime.
Not surprisingly, Parry is vocal in the debate over the differences between grass-finishing and grain-finishing — currently a hot one in the United States (as it is with cattle, which he also raises).
Few deny the former is more environmentally sound; as Oogie McGuire, owner of Paonia farm Desert Weyr, says, “Range flocks take a resource we can’t eat — grasses and legumes — and turn it into nutritious meat we can.” By comparison, when they are taken off-pasture in favor of cereal crops that add pounds more economically in the short term, “the environmental cost in fuel to ship the livestock to and from the feedlot, harvest grain, feed it to the livestock concentrated in that one location, and haul the manure away” is enormous.
Furthermore, she and Parry agree, grass-feeding is healthier for both the animals and us, as studies show the meat contains less acid-resistant E. coli and more healthy fats such as omega 3s and CLAs (conjugated linoleic acids). But does the meat taste as good as that mellowed on a diet of corn, barley, or wheat? While advocates of grain supplements say no, Parry says it can and should. “Grain-finishing is a crutch because you can fatten the animal rapidly. It’s true grass can lignify; when it gets old, it turns into wood. A grass-fed lamb that doesn’t get finished properly doesn’t get the proper nutrients and gives the whole industry a bad name. But if you have the skill, you can get the same carbohydrates with grass as with grain” and thus impart the buttery texture and mild flavor Americans tend to prefer to gaminess.
Parry has certainly convinced two of the Front Range’s staunchest advocates of sustainability, Hugo Matheson of The Kitchen in Boulder and Teri Rippeto of Potager in Denver. At The Kitchen, Matheson uses Fox Fire’s shanks, shoulders, and above all, ground lamb, which he gets weekly for meatballs, ragù, and burgers. “Our customers get upset if we’re out of the burgers,” he says, alluding to one of the dilemmas of working with small-scale local producers (see “Colorado Lamb Buying Guide”): They simply can’t accommodate custom orders of, say, dozens of racks a week. That’s why Rippeto orders whatever Fox Fire has and then figures out what to put on her menu accordingly, be it shoulder, leg, or stew meat. As she says, “There are only two tenderloins per animal. You have to kill a lot of animals to get [an order of] loins. I don’t think people think about that.”
Leroux Creek Foods owner Edward Tuft hadn’t thought much about lamb at all until just over a year ago while complaining to rancher Carroll Lynch about the need to tractor-mow the alfalfa he uses as a natural fertilizer for his organic apple orchards in Hotchkiss: “She said, ‘Why don’t you just graze it off with sheep?” I said, ‘Hahaha, who’s gonna do that?’ And she said, ‘I will.’”
In no time, they’d purchased 50 mixed-breed ewes and 50 lambs, who “lived the whole summer in Edward’s orchards” with an Akbash guardian dog, Blanca, by their side, says Lynch. “It’s dreamland. The alfalfa is knee-high; they’ve got it made in the shade.”
To rotate them between paddocks, she’d saddle up and do “a little sheep drive with my two border collies. It’s a nice peaceful walk, and people driving down the road got a kick out of it.” Since winter, they’ve stayed on Rogers Mesa, feeding on the dry grasses (“like hay, only standing”) as well as a salt lick. Daily, Lynch either breaks the ice on the creek or literally hauls water out to her flock. And when the time is right, she and the collies will load them on a trailer to Homestead Meats, a USDA processing cooperative in Delta. “That’s the one day that’s a bit stressful for them because they don’t know what’s happening. So I take them the evening before to give them time to calm down. They don’t need stress. They just need to eat and have a peaceful life.”
Lynch’s TLC has clearly paid off for Leroux Creek, now a purveyor to Vail Valley dining destination Dish and artisan butcher shop Cut, both co-owned by Pollyanna Forster. Acknowledging that Forster took a chance on purchasing from a producer as yet untested in the marketplace, Cut manager John Hebert says they couldn’t be happier with the primal cuts, including the sirloin chef-partner Jenna Johansen sometimes serves at Dish. “It’s all about meeting people and shaking their hands,” Hebert says. “Within a hundred miles is how we like to do our business, and within a hundred miles is the healthiest way to eat.”
True to her nose-to-tail sensibilities, meanwhile, Elise Wiggins, chef of Denver’s Panzano, orders whole Triple M Bar Ranch lamb to use in all manner of nightly specials — from grilled T-bones with eggplant cannelloni, mint mascarpone, and fig-olive compote to fried heart in thyme-mushroom Marsala over Parmesan risotto. Given the thought ranch owner Mary Miller, with her husband David and stepson Zachary, put into breed genetics upon starting their 300-acre outfit in the early 1990s in Manzanola, 50 miles east of Pueblo, it’s no wonder Wiggins should go all out for the hormone- and antibiotic-free results. Miller’s whiteface Warhills have been crossbred from Rambouillet, Panama, Columbian, and Targhee sheep to make for a flock with “excellent mothering instincts, good milk production, and multiple births,” she says.
Indeed, during the heavy lambing season (late March to mid-May), as many as 15 lambs can be born in a day, so the Millers prevent chaos by keeping the babies with their ewes in small pens until they bond, learning one another’s scent and “chuckle,” or call — at which point they go out to fenced, rotational paddocks, Pyrenees guardian dogs at their heels, to graze on blue grama, Western wheat grass, and side oats grama. Unlike grass-finishers Parry and Lynch, however, the Millers move their flocks come August to harvested fields they rent from nearby farmers where the lambs graze on crop stubble — watermelon, cantaloupe, chiles, and more. Does that enhance the flavor of the meat? Miller’s not sure, but Oogie McGuire is. “Terroir is not just a word that describes cheese or fine wine,” she says. If she’s right, then all those mountain springs and lush valleys in the marketing materials of Colorado lamb promoters aren’t just for show — they’re what’s for dinner.
