We had our lamb harvest day on Saturday this year, so we’re wrapping up another sold-out lambing season here at The Lowe Farm. 90% of our customers are repeat customers, or a referral from a regular customer, and this is our 4th sold out year.

Mr. Fix-It and I had a long talk the other day and we decided that being more transparent in our experiences might have a lot of value for our readers, and maybe some other small farmers out there. Based on some of the…um…unkind comments that we have heard over the years from other farmers and observers of our farm, there are a lot of misunderstanding out there. And over the last several years, we have learned a lot!

I’ve said numerous times before that most of our market is an ethnic market and we’ve served folks from all over the Middle East, Africa, Asia, South America, and a few European countries.

The first misunderstanding we had was that this is was a religious and/or Muslim issue, and all our customers were Muslim.

That’s not really true. Mostly it’s a geographic/cultural issue.

These are countries that eat lamb and goat as part of their regular diet and especially enjoy having it for special meals like birthdays, weddings, family coming in from out of town, etc. Just like we have a turkey every year for Thanksgiving. And when it comes to lamb (sheep under 12 moths old), mutton (sheep over 12 months old), and even full-cuts of beef, it’s hard to find in American supermarkets! It’s expensive, they can’t find it in quantity, and it’s not in the cut or form that they are use to. Usually in the grocery store, you can only find chops and the occasional leg roast. Our customers are used to eating the whole animal in one form or another.

Our customers are also very discerning about taste for things like male or female animals, castrated or un-castrated males, and grass-fed verses grain-fed. American meat production is mostly young and grain-fed, which makes for a much blander taste. Our customers are culturally familiar with the stronger flavors that come with grass-fed animals, older animals, and even un-castrated animals, and enjoy that significant difference as well.

The fact is, other than our Fall lamb, most of the time we have no idea what our customers’ religion is. It has nothing to do with it. They’re just buying food. 

On an interesting note, all of our direct-market customers right now are also self-processing customers. We sell the live animal to them and they butcher it themselves. (Sometimes here at the farm, and sometimes not–but that’s another post.) This means that beef cows in particular can be difficult for them. Even if several families share the meat, the processing is a big job. Our zebu cattle are smaller than a standard American beef or dairy cow, and are the perfect size at 12-24 months for our customers to handle themselves. So it’s not about religion, it’s about us having a practical product for them. We didn’t plan it that way when we purchased our cows, but business-wise, it’s become something we’re very aware of now.

But sometimes it is a religious issue. And that religion is Islam.

Our Fall lamb harvest is 99% Muslim customers (This year 100%) and is based almost exclusively around families looking for lamb for the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha.

We didn’t fully understand this the first year or two. (At the time everything I knew about Islam came from CBS News and a comparative religions class in 11th grade.) We just knew that suddenly our phone was ringing off the hook, just at the time we were getting ready to sell anyway, and our customers were from Iran, Iraq, and Egypt. We made some unfair assumptions that it was “a religious thing” that first year (see point one, above), and that Fall we just happened to be right. But we did some research after that and again, we learned a lot. “Eid,” as we often hear it called, is the celebration of sacrifice, when Abraham took Issac on the mountain to sacrifice him and God replaced Issac with a ram lamb.

And the next year when we had repeat customers, we had a better idea what they were looking for and knew better how to talk to them about it. And they felt more comfortable with us and opened up a little more and shared with us and we learned even more.

And in the middle of all this we started walking more faithfully with the Lord and attending church and we suddenly had to ask ourselves what we were “getting into” and if it was appropriate for us or not. Our “harvest day” was also growing and getting more attention from the neighbors, our family, etc. and we were hearing a lot of…well…downright ugly comments. I don’t want to be vague here and I don’t want to increase any tension or over-blow this issue. But often when we talked to people about selling our lambs we heard a lot about “them” and “they” and “sacrifices” and “terrorists” and “disrespectful to women” and a host of other reasons why “we would never do that.” (Meaning sell to Muslim or ethnic customers).

Truly.

And this fed our own ignorance and self-doubts a bit. We had to take a deep breath and do some serious thinking and praying and dig out the truth in the matter.

Here’s some of the truth we found about our customers…

{Please note, we are not “experts” at all and have not studied Islam very much–and don’t intend to!–this is just a conglomeration of our observances and experiences and a little bit of research at the local library.}

• They know we are Christians. 
  • They know we don’t do business on Sundays because of church.
  • They know (this year) that we teach at church on Wednesdays. (Again, so we don’t do business or take calls)
  • They know that our children attend (or did until this year) a Christian school.
  • While we’re not out there passing out tracts every time they come to visit, we are not hiding our light under a basket or anything either. As we told the children the last couple years, this is a case where we are building relationships and witnessing for Christ through our polite, compassionate, considerate behavior, as much as through any of our words.

But we still had a lot of questions.

We didn’t know a whole lot about Islam, and didn’t know if the self-processing on our farm was any form of “ritual sacrifice.”  We fixed that by doing some research, and then asking, because we weren’t ok with any kind of ritualistic spiritual behavior being conducted on our farm!

It is not, to our reasonable understanding, and based on our customers’ behavior.

• We discovered that there are different levels of devotion among our customers that affects how seriously they take the forms and traditions they follow.
• We discovered that they have “rules” for what animals are acceptable for this holiday.
• We discovered that they come straight from their temple service to the farm to do the processing–sometimes not even changing clothes until they get here.
• We discovered that other than their “rules” about which animal is acceptable there is no out-ward form of “religion” in their work. No praying, no motions, no kneeling, no ritualistic behavior. They are just butchering the animal to be eaten later.
• One exception to that is we have occasionally had a family pray for a moment out-loud at the actual moment of killing the animal, and we had a family stop when they were done and pray together before eating their picnic lunch. We asked about this and told them we were uncomfortable with religious practices at the farm, and they apologized and assured us that this was not any form of “ritual sacrifice” or anything, but more along the lines of saying grace at dinner and they won’t do it if we’re that uncomfortable with it, it’s not required.
• We have accepted them at their word, because we have no reason not to, and we’ve been clear that certain things are ok and certain things are not–and it’s our farm. We don’t have to sell anything to anyone or allow any behavior on the farm that we’re not ok with. Our customers have always been respectful of that without us saying a word about it.

And on a final note…our customers have never been rude or disrespectful–to me specifically, or to anyone else here at the farm, or even to the farm itself.

On the contrary, they were polite, respectful, extremely appreciative of the opportunity to buy from us and process here, and always complementary of the farm. Over the years, we’ve built a relationship with our customers and their families and friends. They have referred business to us (and possibly cut off customers they referred that we expressed concern with, but that’s just a feeling I have), answered our questions, asked after our children, and purchased eggs, beef and whole chicken from us while they were here for lamb. It’s gone from a few guys coming over after temple, to their whole families coming for the afternoon and picnicking. They bring their children (even down to the babies!) now and they run around playing soccer and swinging with the crew. They bring their grandfathers, who tell us about growing up on “the farm” in a different country. Since their wives started coming, I’ve talked with them about parenting, schooling, and being a soccer mom. We’ve talked about sewing your own clothes and having a brand new baby and family coming from out-of-town…

The key is simply knowing what you’re about on your farm–what’s ok, and what’s not–and to it. We’ve had customers ask for all sorts of things, from price reductions (no) to string (yes) to undocked lamb tails (no) to a water hose (yes)…we just field each request as it comes in and determine an answer and be firm. And this is true for any direct-marketing, not just Muslim customers!! We’ve had customers walk away because they wanted us to leave the tails long. Nope. It happens by accident sometimes, but we consider tail docking an important health issue and we’re not changing that. {shrug} Our Fall customers also like our rams un-castrated. We’re fine with that–it saves us work and they buy them before we have a lot of lovers quarrels in the pasture. {smile}

We have something here that is hard for them to find and they are very grateful for that–and we have been blessed with an amazing mission field right here at home!

Do you have any experiences or questions to share? I’ll have more practical posts about direct-marking coming up soon.

In the meantime, see where I’m sharing and find more good stuff to read…