Have ewe heard the news? Lamb is making a comeback

“I just love sheep as an animal group,” she laughs. “They’re so beautiful and funny, curious and exuberant. Sometimes one will just jump up in the air for no reason, and then they’ll all do it!”

From big city to small town

Samutin was born in Kentucky but moved away as a young child, revisiting to spend time with her grandmother. Life on the farm didn’t begin until 2011 when she and her family relocated from Chicago to develop a piece of property in rural Shelby County northeast of Louisville. Her husband’s job was to build the house. Hers was to figure out what to do with the land. Neither had any agricultural experience.

“Being city folk, we had romanticized farming,” she recalls. “When we got there, we just dove right in. We enjoyed gardening, making bread and growing our own food, and we loved the idea of bringing people together around the table over a good meal. Quality of food has always been really important to us.”

Samutin turned her attention to growing the Freedom Run operation by producing vegetables and raising poultry, sheep and cows. The busy farm earned organic and Animal Welfare Approved certifications, but about four years into production, it all started to feel overwhelming. Samutin realized that a change was needed.

“You read all the books on regenerative farming that address the land and animals, but there has to be a sustainability factor for the farmer as well,” she explains. “There was a time when I totally reevaluated everything we were doing. We needed to focus on one thing and do it well.”

That one thing turned out to be lamb.

Kentucky’s lamb history and heritage

Capitalizing on a farming history that dates back to the 1800s, Samutin set out to breathe new life into the lamb industry in Kentucky. At Freedom Run, she decided to work primarily with Katahdin sheep, an Appalachian Heritage breed from Maine recognized for its meat, and its fertility.

Kentucky’s earlier sheep were raised primarily for wool, but their high lanolin content didn’t do the breeds any favors when it came to protein quality and flavor. Slow barbecuing the mutton was a popular way to mask its gamey flavor and tenderize the tough meat. As the demand for wool declined with the rise of mass industrialization after World War II, so did Kentucky’s sheep and lamb populations.

Times, however, are changing. Raised without hormones or antibiotics, the hardy Katahdin sheep now thrive on Freedom Run Farm Consortium’s rolling topography as a low-maintenance hair breed that simply shed their coats seasonally without the need for labor-intensive shearing.

“The Appalachian Heritage breed was mainly developed for meat,” Samutin points out. “It has excellent marbling, a tender texture and a very mild, almost sweet flavor.”

It doesn’t hurt that Freedom Run’s finishing program includes recycled stillage materials from nearby distilleries, and the animals drink from the same calcium-rich, limestone-filtered Kentucky water sources believed to produce strong bones in racehorses.

Building community

While transitioning Freedom Run into a lamb-only operation in 2013 and 2014, Samutin tapped fellow Kentucky breeders, farmers, shepherds and farm-to-table chefs to assemble a consortium with the intention of bringing lamb to the forefront in Kentucky once again. This time, for its gastronomic applications.

“Farming can be one of the most alienating vocations,” she says. “By bringing this community together, I wanted to let these people know that the work they’re doing matters. For me, it’s about connecting people to pasture and place.”

Samutin and her peers embarked upon an intensive 18-month development period before officially launching the consortium in 2016, sharing best practices and camaraderie, and establishing a foothold for Kentucky lamb in statewide farming and culinary circles. The mission of the group is twofold — to support the reestablishment of Kentucky’s lamb heritage, and to encourage others to join the sustainable farming effort.

Through extensive marketing campaigns, Freedom Run Farm Consortium’s premium lamb products have found their way into a loyal network of industry partners and distributors throughout Kentucky and across half a dozen other states, reaching as far as dinner tables in some high-end Manhattan restaurants.

Rolling with the punches

As it has with so many industries, the COVID-19 pandemic presented challenges for Kentucky’s lamb farmers during the past two years. At one point, Samutin found herself wondering what to do with more than 500 lambs idling in her pastures. A fortuitous introduction by former Churchill Downs executive chef, David Danielson, led to a distribution order from Kroger that came through at just the right time. Freedom Run Farm also recently purchased its own processing facility to further integrate the business and alleviate supply chain issues.

“It’s been a learning curve, but we’ve persevered,” Samutin says. “Our story’s not done yet!”