Pastured Halal Lamb

The Farm of Peace pastures is home to a small flock of purebred Tunis sheep, and we have a limited number of high quality halal lambs each fall. Our lambing season begins in March or April. Once the lambs are born the flock is sent out to pasture. Ewe lambs are kept with their mothers while male lambs are weaned by the age of four months.

Lambs are slaughtered in the fall in the halal manner, right here on the farm, at six to eight months of age and weight 50 to 100 pounds live weight. We sell whole lambs, cut and wrapped for the freezer, for on-farm pick-up only. Our lamb is not available at farmers markets or in stores. With a reservation, you will be contacted to schedule a pick-up date to receive your lamb.

If you are interested in our halal lamb, please email us to check availability: contact@farmofpeace.org.

I just served some of your pastured lamb at our recent holiday dinner. I expected it to be tasty, but we were all bowled over by how tender and succulent it was as well. My guests are still talking about it, even the one who rarely likes lamb. I don’t have much experience cooking meat, so this is no tribute to my culinary skills. I also appreciate the expert butchering, wrapping and labeling the Farm provides. Clearly, this was a well-cared-for animal, and a well-cared-for operation.

I know I sound like a commercial – can’t help it!

LBW

What is Halal and Tayyib?

Whether you are familiar with the terms or not, we invite you to reflect upon the manner in which an animal is raised and its sacrifice so that we may be nourished. True halal meat takes into account the care of the animal as it is raised, the way the animal is fed, and the final process of slaughter.

As the animal is raised, having access to clean pasture, water, and pure food, not adulterated by chemical pesticides is essential, as is nursing from it’s mother at birth. Grain and minerals are sourced so that no GMO’s or other harmful ingredients are given to the animals. All animals should be treated with care and gentleness.

Oh you who securely believe, eat from the wholly good which We have provided you, and give thanks to Allah (God) if it is He Whom you worship.

Q2:172

Oh you who securely believe, eat from the wholly good which We have provided you, and give thanks to Allah (God) if it is He Whom you worship.

Q2:172

To slaughter an animal in the “halal” manner, requires that the name of God (Allah) be in the heart and upon the lips of the qualified person taking responsibility for the slaughter of the animal, and that they are in a prayerful state, present in body, mind, heart, and spirit. The slaughter must be conducted humanely. This includes assuring that the knife is sharp, the animals do not witness the knife or one another, and are handled in the gentlest way possible as they are brought to slaughter. Again, prayer and gratitude for the sacrifice the lamb is making is present within the one carrying out the slaughter.

The principles of halal and tayyib take the whole life of an animal into account, and support a way of farming that is sustainable, enriching, and healing to our earth, our bodies, and our spirits.

Then an old man, a keeper of an inn, said,
Speak to us of Eating and Drinking. And he said:

Would that you could live on the fragrance of the earth,
and like an air plant be sustained by the light.

But since you must kill to eat and rob the newly born
of its mother’s milk to quench your thirst,
let it then be an act of worship.

And let your board stand an altar on which
the pure and the innocent of forest and plain
are sacrificed for that which is purer
and still more innocent in man.

When you kill a beast say to him in your heart,
“By the same power that slays you, I too am slain;
and I too shall be consumed.
For the law that delivered you into my hand
shall deliver me into a mightier hand.
Your blood and my blood is naught
but the sap that feeds the tree of heaven.”

~ Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Then an old man, a keeper of an inn, said,
Speak to us of Eating and Drinking. And he said:

Would that you could live on the fragrance of the earth,
and like an air plant be sustained by the light.

But since you must kill to eat and rob the newly born
of its mother’s milk to quench your thirst,
let it then be an act of worship.

And let your board stand an altar on which
the pure and the innocent of forest and plain
are sacrificed for that which is purer
and still more innocent in man.

~ Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

It was just so delicious. The lamb meat is exquisite…. Maybe I’ll buy another lamb. (He did!)