The American Sheep Association has designated February as Lamb Month and will feature new recipes on its website throughout the month. They are available at Americanlamb.com but closer to home, Manitoba producers hope the interest takes hold here as well.
Joy Cameron and her husband, Dave Steele, raise sheep on their half section near Hamiota and she says the marketing of their product has faced some challenges.
“We still battle the image of mutton from after the war,” says Cameron. “People don‘t know that today’s lamb is a totally different product and we have to get people to try it.”
She currently has a flock that has thirty-three Rambouillet ewes and will yield a lamb crop of about forty-five animals for a market. The Rambouillet is a French breed that was descended of the Spanish Merino.
“We try to do everything as natural as possible,” she says, “so we lamb in May and they go right onto the grass… they are not grain fed at all.”
They also market the wool from the flock. To date they have marketed their wool through the growers co-operative but she hopes that it can be changed.
“We are looking at adding some value to the wool by spinning or perhaps weaving it into some clothing,” she says.
The late lambing has eliminated her from the Easter lamb market but she hopes to catch on to some of the ethnic market.
“We will most likely have to look at Brandon for that market,” she says. Most of her direct marketing comes about at farmers markets where she sells her vegetable production in the summer.
“We have been taking orders for the lamb, and we are going to pursue the ethnic market more seriously,” she says. “We also have goats that should help us in that market.” She admits that she has not yet tried chevron herself but it is the most consumed meat in the world.
Cameron and Steele moved to Manitoba from the west coast two and half years ago with the intent to raise their own food.
“We could not afford a farm on the West coast and so we chose Manitoba because of the soil and climate,” she says. “We came to raise our own food and will gradually continue to expand our production and marketing.”
She would like nothing better than to have Manitobans try some of the recipes available from the American website on her locally produced lamb.
