This is Mary, the hair sheep Beth bought two falls ago. She was supposed to be Easter Dinner, but we never seemed to get around to it. With Christmas Day being tomorrow, and learning by happy accident that Tyler’s boss was planning to butcher two of their own lambs today, we decided that a lamb roast would be quite nice for Christmas Dinner this year.
A note for the squeamish—photos of the butchering process are after the jump…
Our “processor” is named Feddy and is from Hungary originally and has family in Romania. He said butchering day is a special time, as several extended families will get together and make a party of it. Even before the first animal is done, lamb will be on the fire, to be shared by all doing the work.
This is the first time I’ve ever seen this done, and wasn’t sure how I’d handle it. I did get a little weepy for a moment after Feddy killed the sheep, but afterwards was more curious in the process than anything. Technically, Mary is not a lamb, and might be what’s called a ‘hogget,’ which is a sheep between one and two years old.
The whole process took maybe 90 minutes, and we ended up with a cooler full of meat. Beth weighed the ribs (rack of lamb), and we had close to 4lb. – she said that would have cost a pretty penny out of the store!
Chad, being our resident gourmet chef, was salivating the whole time. He didn’t waste much time getting the neck cleaned off and in the crock pot when we got home!