“Sheep are always on the move, so they don’t run a place down,” Connie says. “They aerate the soil with their pointy hooves and they eat the weeds that cows don’t like.” The feed, as Connie calls the local vegetation preferred by sheep, is sage, pea vines, and sweet anise, which lends a delicate licorice flavor to the meat. We see one of Nick’s Peruvian herders astride a sturdy horse, and Nick stops the truck. “You’ll see them sheep now,” he says, and points down a steep aspen-covered slope. All I can see are white trunks diminishing into a green haze, but I can hear the herd. It’s as if the trees are bleating.
On the day of the barbecue itself, everyone in the ranch house is up at dawn. The tidy kitchen smells like coffee and cinnamon rolls and furniture polish. Outside, it’s pure West. Outbuildings seem to have sprung up willy-nilly in the immensity of the landscape. Eleni disappears into the house to bake trays of spinach pie, stuff hundreds of grapes leaves, slip creamy pesto tortas from their molds, and toss pounds of Greek salad spiked with vinegar and sprinkled with dried oregano. On a blackboard behind her someone has written “Welcome!”
Nick Mahleres is in charge of the lambs today. Under his direction, the carcasses are skewered and secured on long stakes attached to a rotisserie motor. Hot coals in a large shallow pit are raked into glowing banks along the perimeter so the lambs, which are only a couple of inches from the ground, don’t burn. “We move the coals, or the fat from the lamb will cause flare-ups,” Nick explains. It will take four to five hours for the meat to cook, so he opens a bottle of ouzo.
The kokorétsi is thrown onto a large grill near the lamb, and when it is done, four hours later, the ancient matriarchs sit a little higher in their chairs and look expectantly in the direction of the barbecue pit. They are served first, and by the time a piece of kokorétsi is handed to me (a mere forty-something), the slices have become very thin indeed. But the sausage is rich and aromatic, luscious and salty, and full of surprises: a nugget of tender sweetbread, a mite of sweet, crunchy fat, a sliver of soft lung.
When the lamb is an hour away from being done, the men dump a case of potatoes wrapped in tinfoil and a few bushels of Olathe Sweet corn into the ashy pit. Melancholy recordings of Greek folk music play while the band rests between sets. Just about everybody in the local sheep industry is here: herders, packers, even bankers. “Especially the banker,” whispers Eleni. “My dad, Gus, said to always invite the banker.” Most conversations seem to be about the pitiful state of the industry.
American lamb production is on the decline due to a combination of factors, but ranchers may be most affected by the flood of cheap imports from New Zealand and Australia. Even without factoring in foreign competition and domestic production problems (like the consolidation of processing facilities), prime cuts of domestic lamb are expensive because the retailer has to raise the price to cover the losses from unsold secondary cuts. But the most profound obstacle families like the Theoses face is that their land is worth more as development property than can ever be made raising sheep. Indeed, Rose Casey, a local real-estate broker, says the Theos landholdings are worth around $60 million.
Connie Theos has been working with the Colorado Sheep and Wool Authority, a lobbying group, to improve sheep ranchers’ prospects. Among other efforts, they are pushing the government to require country-of-origin labels on lamb. They also want to encourage people to simply eat more of the homegrown variety. If they could get a hunk of this perfect barbecued lamb in the hands of every American meat eater, their job would be all but done.
The sun takes a long time to set, and every time you look around, there are a few more trucks bumping down the road toward home. It becomes exquisitely quiet. The sky is so thick with fat stars it seems like you can reach up and grab one, like an apple. Even the dogs are asleep, stuffed with stolen bones. I know there are predators circling the ranch all the time—and not just coyote and bear, which will take 10 percent of the herd—but in the dark this way of life seems eternal, and it is easy to imagine that the flock sleeping in the high country tonight will still be around tomorrow.
To order a whole or half fresh lamb from the Theos family, call Connie Theos at 970-878-4485. For smaller cuts, ask your butcher for Colorado grass-fed lamb.
Pinterest
