Back to the Lamb

Changes are coming to Magruder Ranch.  For the next several years, we will be feeding our community with lamb instead of beef.

When we wrote to you a year ago to let you know that we would be shifting our meat program from year-round sales to seasonal, many of you shifted your purchase habits and came along for the ride.  For that we are grateful.  At the time, we wrote about the drought and the bomb cyclones - “Accepting that these severe weather patterns are here to stay means building in as much flexibility as possible to our business to ensure the health and resiliency of our land and animals.”

While cattle grazing will continue to play a key role in our overall land and fire management, our direct-to-consumer program will focus on our lamb.  This change will allow us to better vary our stocking rate year-to-year, and will leave us lighter on the land through these wet and muddy winters.  It also limbers us up to respond to the coming changes to Potter Valley’s irrigation water availability.

When I think seriously about how to produce from this land, I find myself agreeing with my great-grandparents’ decisions from a hundred years ago.  They chose to raise sheep on these oak-dappled hills.  Today our flock of Katahdin hair sheep follow their literal footsteps under the watchful eye of their guardian donkey Josephine.

While we will not be finishing any beef for sale in 2024, we will have our grass-finished lamb available in the Spring.  I hope those of you who haven’t tried it yet will consider it!