Sustainable farming and ranching conjures up certain images in our minds eye. Some of these images are accurate, but many of them are created by marketing that we bump into in our daily lives. So we are gathered here today, in the great online meeting room, to fulfill our holy Sea Rocket mission and show you what sustainable grass-fed ranching looks like here in Southern California. (Why is grass-fed better?)

Megan McDowell, Andy Domenigoni, and Valentin Senos together ranch 4,000 sheep and 150 cattle 70 miles north of here near Temecula. The Domenigoni family has been farming and ranching the approximately 17,000 acres they've owned since 1871. The land is just south of Winchester and a bit north of Temecula. It's east of the 15 and goes to the Diamond Valley Reservoir. If you've headed north on the 79 or the 215, you've been through the land.

Years ago, Megan was training her dogs to herd and needed sheep for the job. She started with a small flock, then wanted to expand and met a Basque sheepherder named Valentin. With Andy's land, they were able to grow the flock to the 4,000 sheep they have today. Valentin hires skilled Basque and Peruvian shepherds who tend to the herds 24 hours a day.

They've been doing grass-fed lamb for years and have been selling it to Superior Farms. Superior is a larger company that markets lamb as naturally raised. So Megan's grass-fed lamb was getting mixed in with lamb that was not grass-fed. When grass-fed started to become more important to the general public, she started diverting some of the lamb to sell directly to people and restaurants instead of settling for the commodity price.

When the animals are ready for slaughter, she hauls them about an hour up the 15 to Buitenhuis Mobile Slaughter (on Eucalyptus Ave in Ontario off Limonite Ave. Limonite to second light. Turn right. Road goes left by itself. First dairy on right on Eucalyptus. Phone: 951-685-0855), the only USDA slaughter facility for small ranchers in Southern California. She then follows the truck from Buitenhuis to Santa Fe Food Services (625 S Santa Fe St, Santa Ana, CA 92705, Phone: 714-569-0486) where it is cut into pieces and vacuum packed. The packaged meat is then taken to the Pomona Food Lockers (240 Oak Ave, Pomona, CA‎, 91766, Phone: 909-629-9649‎) for storage at 30 degrees below zero (as required by law) until she picks it up for delivery to customers. Here's a map to help you sort all this out...

Two things will probably change soon. Megan and Andy will likely get their extremely expensive USDA approved mobile slaughter facility up and running and we'll start buying the sheep whole directly after slaughter. That will mean that the sheep will be killed on the farm and brought directly to us minimizing food miles.

Where can you get some of this amazing meat? Megan sells at the Temecula farmer's market. She can also sometimes meets people in our parking lot here in North Park when she's dropping off meat for us. But for your convenience, you can eat this amazing meat at Sea Rocket Bistro either as a lamburger ($10) or in our lamb chili ($14).