A Day In the Country

We recently spent the afternoon on the grounds of this beautiful Yolo County farm house as guests of the Yolo County Land Trust: http://www.yololandtrust.org . Each year the Trust hosts A Day In the Country at a different Yolo County farm. Restaurants from Sacramento, San Francisco, and local towns are given produce from Yolo County farms and ranches to prepare and share. Each year we donate a lamb for the event. It is always exciting to discover which restaurant prepared our lamb and what they have done with it.

This year Waterboy Restaurant http://www.waterboyrestaurant.com made sausage out of our lamb. We spoke to the chef and he informed us that the sausage was a combination of 20% Bledsoe Natural Pork of Woodland, CA and our lamb. He said the meat looked great but was leaner than he liked. Despite it's leanness it made an excellent sausage. Both John and I have to agree: it was delicious. The chef took one of our brochures and said he may contact us in the future.

We are finding events like this are great marketing opportunities. This year we were greeted with enthusiasm by two chefs who have not yet worked with out lamb. One chef greeted us by name and is planning to visit the ranch so he can describe where the lamb he plans to serve comes from. Another restaurateur introduced us to the lead chef of a culinary institute in San Francisco. He is planning to use our lamb in his 2009 season and asked permission to bring a class of 25-30 students to the ranch so they can make a better connection between the source and preparation of food.

We are excited about these future marketing opportunities.