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Natural Rise to Prominence
By MAREGO ATHANS, Baltimore Sun
LATROBE, PA. -- John and Sukey Jamison never dreamed their names would grace the Rolodexes of the nation's superstar chefs. All they wanted was an old farmhouse to fix up.
But the house came with 65 acres. Soon enough, a half-dozen sheep seemed like a good idea. That was back in 1976.
Today, Jamison lamb, raised in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains, turns up on the menus of the country's most chichi restaurants, among them Charlie Trotter's and Everest in Chicago; Daniel, Felidia and Le Bernardin in New York; Renoir at the Mirage in Las Vegas; La Toque in Napa Valley, Calif.; and Seeger's in Atlanta.
In an industry dominated by huge industrial feedlots, these nonfarmers -- he a former coal salesman, she a caterer -- stumbled into a niche market for grass-fed, organically raised lamb with a price tag to match.
"It just got out of hand," said John Jamison, an understated 55-year-old wearing denim overalls and wire-rimmed glasses who barked commands at his border collie, Call, as the dog herded sheep.
It seems an unlikely incubator for a high-end food trend, this farm amid rolling hills covered with bluegrass where coal was once king. Then again, the picturesque spot an hour's drive from Pittsburgh has produced an unlikely collection of claims to fame: It's the site of the Rolling Rock brewery, is Arnold Palmer's birthplace, and is the home of the first banana split.
As it turns out, the Jamisons took up lamb farming at an opportune time, as Americans were awakening to quality cuisine -- the Food Network was just over the horizon -- and European chefs in American restaurants were demanding better products.
"For me, it's the best lamb in the United States," said Jean Joho, owner and chef of Everest in Chicago, Brasserie Jo in Chicago and Boston, and Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas.
"We pay to ship it all the way to California because it's really good lamb, plain and simple ... great silky texture and what I find to be the ideal lamb flavor," said Ken Frank, owner and chef of La Toque in Napa Valley, who chooses Jamison lamb over those from nearer farms in Sonoma and Colorado.
From the beginning, the high school sweethearts, who both attended Washington and Jefferson College in Pennsylvania, tossed aside agribusiness manuals and followed their instincts -- a love of good food, ecological sensibility and adventure.
"We were kind of caught up with the '60s back-to-the-land thing," John Jamison said. "We were trying to go back to the land and also have a business."
In 1976, when John was selling coal to utilities and Sukey was a housewife with a catering business, the couple bought an old farmhouse in Pleasant Unity, near Latrobe, which happened to come with 65 acres that produced good hay.
Soon they decided to buy six sheep -- smaller animals that don't knock down fences like cows do -- figuring they would sell the meat to well-heeled residents in the area.
They taught themselves to farm with the help of Pennsylvania State University's county extension service, but the school kept giving them charts and data geared toward grain-feeding, cost containment and selling the meat at auction -- all of which made no sense since they were sitting on dozens of acres of bluegrass.
"We said, 'What are you talking about? Put the sheep out there, let them eat grass and see what happens,'" Sukey Jamison said. "That's one of the beauties of not knowing what you're doing. You can learn as you go along."
They opted for a method called intensive rotational grazing, developed in France, which divides pastures into sections and lets sheep eat the bluegrass in that section for two to four days, all the way down to the white clover -- a legume that provides rich protein for the sheep and nitrogen for the soil. The sheep are then moved to the next section for 20 to 40 days, letting the first section grow back. No planting or plowing needed.
Jamison sheep and lambs eat grass and clover for nine months, and hay and corn only in the dead of winter. They do not get food additives, antibiotics or hormones. And instead of being densely confined in feedlots, they roam around outside and get lots of exercise, which makes them leaner than supermarket lamb.
The business was part time until 1985, when the Jamisons, their three children and 200 sheep moved to their current 210-acre farm, between Latrobe and Crabtree, into an 1870s farmhouse with a large kitchen anchored by a huge South Bend stove.
Sheep wander past the open window overlooking the pasture, and every so often a hearty baaa punctuates the familiar cooking sounds as daughter Eliza prepares a lunch of grilled lamb and fresh vegetables on this warm afternoon. Sheep are pictured on artwork, knickknacks, coffee cups; scattered about are menus and memorabilia from the country's finest restaurants.
Business was slow in the early days. "No chefs around here would buy it," Jamison said. "It was too expensive."
The turning point came in the late 1980s with a call from Jean-Louis Palladin, then chef of Jean-Louis at the Watergate in Washington. He needed three baby lambs in a few days. Jamison listened to the deep French accent and at first thought someone was playing a prank.
The Jamisons slaughtered the 2-month-old lambs the next day, fretting over how to present them. (Would Palladin want the heads on, like the Italians do?)
"I didn't know anything about fancy food," John Jamison said, explaining how they wrapped the lambs in butcher paper and drove them to Washington in their Chevy station wagon, stopping at McDonald's for french fries. Dressed in coveralls, carrying 20-pound lambs over their shoulders, the couple walked into the Watergate Hotel on that Friday night, headed for the hottest restaurant in town.
"I was waiting to see Gordon Liddy," Jamison said with a chortle.
There, in a noisy, small French kitchen, amid frantic cooks, stood Palladin -- a towering man with wild hair, wearing blue jeans and a white chef's coat. He opened the lamb, began speaking French and appeared to be on the verge of tears, John Jamison recalled.
"He knew exactly how old it was, exactly what it had been fed. He brought over the other chefs and cooks, explaining that he had not seen this kind of lamb in America, raised on grass. This was kind of our awakening.
"The problem is that most sheep farmers here don't eat lamb," Jamison said. "They don't know what it tastes like. They raise these things that are too fat and too old. The oil from corn goes to fat and makes the lamb greasy."
Palladin spread the word among his chef friends.
Today, the Jamisons slaughter 5,000 to 6,000 lambs a year, usually at 3 to 6 months old and 30 to 45 pounds. They own a slaughterhouse and control every step of the business. By mail order, two legs sell for $78, 18 rib chops for $118, and two racks for $98. They also sell prepared lamb products, such as Sukey's lamb stew, lamb pie, lamb sausage and barley lamb soup.
"It's all I've used for the past eight years; I think it's the best in the country by far," said Alessandro Stratta, chef at Renoir at the Mirage in Las Vegas, who says people expect lamb to be red, heavy and strong in flavor. "It's very much like the lamb I worked with in France ... very mild, very buttery meat. It's so fresh, very unique, a very clean flavor. It's almost pink to white meat. When people eat it, they're very surprised."
The popularity of Jamison lamb parallels a small but growing agricultural movement in the nation and Europe in which producers are rejecting big feedlots -- where animals are fed corn, antibiotics and hormones -- in favor of the more traditional grass-grazing methods.
The demand has been particularly strong in England since the emergence of mad cow disease, which is believed to be the result of cows eating feed mixed with parts of infected animals.
Those are commendable reasons, Frank says, but that's not why he buys Jamison lamb.
"They've spent a lot of time explaining to me how they raise it," said the owner and chef of La Toque, whose specialties include lamb that is boned, trimmed, grilled, sliced and served with seasonal vegetables and a sauce of cumin-scented carrot puree.
"I listen to all this and I'm very impressed, and the bottom line is they have a really consistently perfect product that makes my customers happy."
Fortunato Nicotra, executive chef at Felidia in New York, says he particularly likes to buy Jamison shoulders, which he roasts slowly with rosemary, garlic, salt and a little olive oil. "It tastes like the lamb we used to buy in Italy."
Chefs aren't the only ones buying Jamison lamb; retail customers make up half the business, including gourmands like Howard Brand, 43, an endocrinologist in Stonybrook, N.Y. He often gets the urge on Friday afternoons in the summer, just after seeing his final patient, to grill a butterfly leg of lamb for a weekend dinner party. He'll call the Jamisons, ask what they have in the cooler, and have it shipped overnight.
"It just melts in the mouth," Brand said. "It's a totally different animal than what I see elsewhere and have tasted.
