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Shepherd's Lamb: New Mexico's First Organic Lamb
By Judith Fein, Photos by Johnny Pack and by Robin Collier
La Cocinita Magazine, January 2002

Everybody loves sheep. We count them to go to sleep, we make them into fuzzy toys, we use their plush skins in our cars and trucks, and of course we devour them as chops. Rarely, if ever, do we think about where sheep come from, who raises them, and what the wooly ones are like on the hoof. I mean, even if you are dying to know about sheep, whom would you ask?

Enter Antonio Manzanares of Shepherd's Lamb. He¹s the first organic sheep rancher in New Mexico, and a modern shepherd. He loves educating people about sheep, and what the range life is like.

"It's a tough existence," he says. "We're always on the move. We have a spring range where we do all our lambing (that¹s where lambs are born), and it's near Tres Piedras. We stay there for a couple of months, and then we travel the sheep. It takes five to seven days on foot through the forest to get to the summer range, which is near Canjilon."

These days, Manzanares and his wife Molly no longer do the herding, shearing and lambing by themselves. They are busy running the business, rearing a family and selling their organic lamb to such favorite haunts as the Prairie Star, La Montañita Food Co-op in Albuquerque, the farmers' markets in Los Alamos, Santa Fe and Los Ranchos, the Marketplace, Oasis Restaurant, Café San Estevan and Mu Du Noodles in Santa Fe. They have hired a full-time shepherd to attend to the baaah guys. For the back-breaking work of shearing, they hire a crew.

So if doing wooly work is so hard, why did Manzanares add the extra challenge of raising organic lambs? "You have to understand the sheep industry in the USA," he says. "It¹s been on a downhill slide for half a century. Every year there are fewer sheep in this country." It's attributable to the cost of labor, changing land patterns and ownership, predators, and other economic factors.

"We're losing farm and ranch land every day," Manzanares says wistfully. "We've gone from an agricultural society to communications. Everything is going to corporate entities and this is squeezing out the small rancher." Add to this the growing sheep business in other parts of the world, like Australia and New Zealand. They don't have to cope with the obstacles a rancher faces in America.

"They can sell cheaper than we can," Manzanares concedes matter-of-factly.

So he had to do something to appeal to the local market, and this is where organically-raised sheep come in.

"We were very close to organic to begin with," Manzanares explains, though he and Molly had to make small adjustments in order to get certification. When he started marketing directly to consumers and told them what they were getting, they loved it. They said it was the best lamb they had ever chomped on. "It was both an educational and economic decision," Manzanares says. "It gave us a different market niche. People here like to have a connection with the farmer and the rancher. So much has come out about food safety issues. People like knowing where their food comes from and that it's raised organically."

Despite all the difficulties, Manzanares's business is growing because we New Mexicans know a good thing when we taste it. The sheep rancher now is encouraging other local producers, and they already have one taker. Shepherd's Lamb has also joined the New Mexico Organic Livestock Co-op, whose members produce turkey from Embudo, chicken from Socorro and beef from Roy.

As Manzanares speaks, you suddenly get a new appreciation for organic, local lamb that is raised with care under the impossibly beautiful and clear New Mexico sky. And after reading this, the next time you buy lamb, you'll know a lot more about what you are eating. Surely you'll taste the dedication of our homegrown sheep rancher in every tender bite.