- [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.
