Jamison Farms Lamb

Jamison Farm, the nationally renowned Latrobe-based lamb provider for restaurants throughout the country, is shutting down its sheep-raising operations after more than 45 years of business.

Owners John and Sukey Jamison said they reached the decision to shutter their farm in part because of a drastic drop in demand from the hard-hit restaurant industry amid the pandemic.

“When the pandemic hit in March, our restaurant business virtually ended,” John Jamison said. “The last regular shipment order we had was March 14. … The restaurant business had become very important to us and without it, it just didn’t work.”

The couple started their lamb-raising operations back in 1976. At its peak, the Jamison’s said they could raise and sell 5,000 lambs in a year and would have about 200 to 400 lambs on the farm depending on the season.
Pay wall link: https://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/news/2021/01/18/famous-lamb-producer-jamison-farm-to-shut-down.html
They’re of retirement age but the drop in restaurant sales speeded up their winding down.

That’s incredibly unfortunate. Love lamb and have been looking for a quality provider for a while now. Shame I didn’t find this sooner.

It really goes to show the unfortunate continuing cascading effects of restaurant closures.

Going to a dinner there tonight

At the farm? Some kind of special event?

guarantee you will love this place, kaigourmet: NZ Lamb Rack (Frenched) - Gourmet Lamb Rack - Kai Gourmet

Yeah should be interesting.

So Jamison is not selling to restaurants anymore but is mostly focused on doing events now; they have an outdoor venue and grill lamb on the farm and serve it along with a number of other recipes featured in their book. I’ve had their lamb before at Daniel and some other restaurants but this dinner was a tour de force with their lamb prepared in a lot of different ways. It was really remarkable and fun to meet and chat with John and Sukey Jamison.

It was an event run by one of the Pittsburgh area wine education groups and the wine was fine although I would have preferred some aged Jamet, Chave, Levet or Allemand.

Btw walking the fields and having him explain the farming was fascinating.

Basically no fertilizer, no seed, the sheep eat grass and clover, the only thing not grown on the farm is hay for winter because he doesn’t want to remove nutrients from the farm. Pretty awesome.