- [Bridget] Come on.
(sheep bleating)
Time to go girls.
- White Oak Pastures is my family farm
for almost six generations.
The three ruminant animals
that we produce here are cows, sheep, and goats.
We are in the business of raising sheep,
turning it into lamb, and selling it to consumers.
We started the first experiment of grazing under solar.
It so happens that the sheep were very, very well
on the panels.
We're grazing 2000 acres.
It's bringing life back to the soil.
(soothing music)
- We're in Arlington, Georgia, at this 480-acre solar site.
We're about to move a group of sheep.
Depending on how much they've eaten,
we'll move 'em every other day or every third day.
Oli, (whistles) come here.
This is Cannoli and this is actually his son, Scooter.
They naturally understand the concept of herding.
You really can't ask for like a better coworker.
Come on.
They're basically just bunching up the sheep
and starting to push them towards me.
Oli, come by.
Hey, no, come by.
Good boy, come by.
- There has been a real stigma involved
in taking the land out of agricultural production
and putting it in solar power production.
The use of livestock to control vegetation removes a lot
of that trepidation.
- They're really the only livestock
that can actually graze under the panels.
Cows are obviously too big and goats would climb all
over everything and chew on the wires.
The sheep are very docile.
They're the right size to fit underneath the panels.
This flock is about 400 ewes.
There's 30 breed rams in there,
and they're almost all Katahdins, which is a hair sheep,
so we don't have to shear them.
They just naturally shed their wool,
which is ideal because it gets very hot
and very humid here in south Georgia.
(upbeat smoothing music)
The solar panels keep going up
so if that's gonna be the case,
let's get agriculture involved as much as possible.
(sheep bleating)
- We actually offer vegetation management services
to Silicon Ranch, which is a large solar voltaic company.
We're currently grazing three different facilities,
probably over a thousand acres now.
I farmed industrially for 20 years.
For the last 25 years I've been growing grass
to graze cattle only.
It's a completely different concept.
It involves constant animal movement.
- The rotational grazing concept,
primarily managing your pasture health,
you know, your animals are only gonna be as healthy
as your soil and your pastures are.
So with the mowers alone,
you're not really gonna see the kind
of erosion-control impact that the sheep have.
So by moving them frequently,
you are not overgrazing any particular species.
You know, they're out here trampling seed into the ground,
they're defecating all over the place,
you're reducing your parasite loads on the sheep as well.
Oli, away, away, away.
Cannoli, lie down, stay there, stay.
All right, now we just let 'em find their new paddock.
(tense music)
- All the cycles of nature are supposed
to operate seamlessly and perpetually in a circular motion.
- So they have a nice diversity
of different forages in here to eat,
and they actually will like learn from their moms
what they can eat or should not eat.
Basically anything that's a year
or less would be considered lamb.
After that, it would go into the mutton category.
It's a little less lean and the flavor profile is stronger.
And so all of the females, we keep to grow the flock.
All of the boys will get moved across the road
where we have all of our rams, and that's where they kind
of grow out and finish before they become lamb chops.
- That's the cows that they've killed for today.
And then that's the lamb
we're actually gonna be doing today.
- Lamb consumption in this country is only
about a pound of lamb per person per year.
Beef is almost 40 pounds per person per year.
(upbeat music)
- We will count up five ribs.
So right in here between the fifth and sixth is
where I'm gonna run the lamb right
through the saw blade to take the whole front off.
So then I flip it over and I'll take the back legs off.
Then that'll leave you the three sections
and then you start breaking 'em down a little bit more
into what you can cut for retail.
- I'm very interested, myself, in the history
of lamb production and how it went
from a really prevalent protein source
in this country to a very minor protein source.
- So you'll have your two lamb loins
which they'll either sell 'em whole like this,
or they'll cut actual lamb loin chops out of 'em.
You'll sell 'em as the rib rack
or you'll cut 'em into the rib chops.
And then this piece right here is
what they sell as the Denver rib.
Most popular lamb cut is either probably gonna be your chops
or sometimes your loins.
So now the next step is the legs.
Then we'll go to the last part that I break down.
I'm gonna cut the neck off
and then I'm going to split it right down the middle.
So you have your shoulder, your leg, and your brisket.
You'll have three pieces coming out of it.
That's the breakdown, it's ready for retail.
- The loin chop's one of our more popular lamb cuts.
Once we've cut through the bone here,
I can drive a knife all the way through
to yield about six really nice loin chops.
This is obviously a lamb loin chop,
and this would be the equivalent of a T-bone steak
or a porterhouse steak with beef.
So this right here would be the equivalent
of beef filet mignon.
This would be the equivalent of a beef New York strip.
It's a lot smaller, a lot smaller.
This is a rib.
So what we're gonna do first is I'm gonna chine the bone
and remove this piece here to open it up
and then I'm gonna remove these feather bones
on the back as well.
But this is your basic rack of lamb.
(tense dramatic music)
We use regenerative agriculture farming techniques
that are over 150 years old.
This is the way we used to do things.
We're bringing that back.
Without animal impact,
our lands are gonna continue to turn to desert.
- So we endeavor to be zero waste.
We try very, very hard to think of ways to
utilize the whole carcass, consistent with what nature does.
- Get all these bagged up individually, get 'em sealed,
so they're ready to actually be delivered.
- Today, per capita consumption of lamb
in this country is very, very low compared to other proteins
and I don't know why that is, I think it's a shame.
I think that food production needs to be local.
When it's not local,
it's served by big multinational corporations
that probably don't have our best interests in mind.
- Alright, well now that we've got everything sealed up,
everything is ready to go to Chef Terry.
So we're going to get all his stuff loaded into this cooler.
So now we will just go on out the door
and send his order on.
(upbeat cheerful music)
- All right, let's see what we got
from Will and Jenni from White Oak Pastures.
Leg of lamb, looking beautiful.
Oh, then our favorite pieces here, our weird meat.
Looks like we got some kidneys and some hearts.
Beautiful, that's exciting.
All right, so we got our beautiful lamb hearts here.
Let's take this and grill it up, see how it tastes.
We like to play with our food a lot.
Our motto is kind of, "Eat weird meat."
We definitely like to showcase those fun off-cuts
that most people don't know about or don't do,
and it just kind of keeps us excited.
Alright, so we have some olive oil here.
I have a very good feeling about this.
You know what, let's make it a little bit more interesting.
Got some za'atar here.
All those nice flavors,
that high heat really close to the protein.
Who doesn't like to play with fire, right?
This will be a first, eating lamb heart.
We have some chanterelle mushrooms.
Our lamb jus right here, frills, some beet, little begonia.
It's super clean.
I mean, there's no gaminess whatsoever.
It's a lot cleaner than any of the other hearts, you know,
that I've had for sure.
It's delicious.
When you go out to eat, you want to eat something
that you typically don't cook at home.
So this is the lamb leg here,
and look at the beautiful fat on here.
(upbeat cheerful music)
So these are some nice aji dulce peppers
that we got from Decimal Place Farm.
So then we have this garlic puree
that we're gonna kind of put in here.
So we're gonna take our paste, our garlic paste,
with our chiles, and slather it up really good.
So we're gonna take this
and we're gonna hang it over our hearth over here.
That's beautiful, look at that.
What we want to achieve is a really crispy outside,
roasty and smoky, but yet a really soft and tender,
juicy inside. Nice and dry, that's what we're looking for.
We want to kind of get that smoke on there,
which you can definitely smell.
So we don't want it sitting directly on there,
we want airflow around it.
So here's our lamb.
We got a nice roast, look at this.
I mean, this is kind of how you'd typically see it
like cooked around Easter time.
So juicy, look at it, and then you give it this liquid gold.
And then of course, we're just gonna douse it.
That's the piece right there, look at that.
Okay, still getting the smoke on it, you know,
it's not too fatty, which is great, excellent.
Next we got the lamb neck here which is really exciting.
We're gonna season it
with some of our house-made steak seasoning.
It's just a little garlic, pepper, little celery salt,
Korean chile flake.
We're gonna throw it on our Egg here
'cause we want to start high,
and then we're gonna let this slow-cook for about two hours.
So our last thing is the lamb kidneys here.
So what you wanna do is you want
to cut these things in half, salt and pepper,
fresh thyme, shallots, incredible, look at that.
Oh, we just wanna baste it, nice and brown, caramelized.
We don't wanna burn those shallots,
so we're gonna add a little white wine, some fresh herbs,
and we're gonna turn off the heat.
We're gonna add our butter.
I'm gonna kind of emulsify that butter in.
- [Chef] All good.
- All right, how's the neck looking?
So the neck, you know, we're not at that point
to where it falls apart, you know
but we're all a little hungry, so we're just gonna,
let's get some of the starting procedures of it,
the bark, as we say.
I think these crispy little bark pieces would be great
on top of those kidneys.
Alright, so we have some grilled bread here.
All right, let's give this a shot, huh?
The best thing I've eaten so far.
So you get the smoke from the neck
and the crispiness of it, and like the creamy, soft texture.
Delicious.
(dramatic music)
What the Harris family does on their farm is incredible.
So the amount of passion and love that they do
and what they do,
and then how do I utilize every single piece,
make it taste delicious and essentially excite people,
you know, and I think the role
of a chef is educating your consumer.
You know, when you go out to eat, it's an experience,
you want to experience something new.
So if you have an opportunity to see and eat
and try something that you've never tried in your life,
I highly recommend it.
- We are so much better off
by having these ruminants out grazing
and helping that biological process.
Regenerative farming is conducive to the cycles of nature.
Industrial farming breaks the cycles of nature.
Everything benefits, everything grows,
everything gets better.
It's a business for me,
but it's a business that benefits almost everyone.