LINDSEY MCCLAVE: In this episode, we learned about Homegrown by Heroes, a program that supports veteran farmers, and that took us to an alpaca farm as well as a sorghum farm.

We wanted to do an episode on Homegrown by Heroes because there's some wonderful farmers out there.

It's an incredible program for veteran farmers.

And Kentucky launched this program, and now it's nationwide.

Alvina is an Air Force veteran and also an alpaca farmer, and she is very passionate about her alpaca and her farm, and inviting people to experience the joys of alpaca.

They were so fun to watch.

They are such interesting animals and I also really enjoyed learning about the use of alpacas for both fiber and for meat.

So she's got a very diverse operation going on.

I'm Maggie Keith, and I'm the farmer.

And I'm Lindsey McClave, and I am the foodie.

LINDSEY: So how many are over here, Alvina, of your flerd?

[chuckling] So we have about 20 females right now, and hopefully, 10 of which are pregnant.

So are the females and the males separated then?

- They are.

- Okay.

- Alpacas can breed year-round.

- Got you.

And so, we make sure that they are separated by two fence lines.

- They don't see each other.

- [chuckling] Make sure that we have a little bit more planned approach to our breeding operation.

And what I observe over here is just how tall the grasses are.

Everything is obviously in its wild natural state, which is so gorgeous, and the alpacas are just walking right on through and helping you, I guess, do some of the upkeep.

- Lawnmowers.

- Lawnmowers?

So, we feed hay generally October to March, unless we have a great grass year, in which case we'll extend it as much as possible.

But usually, March is the earliest that the grass will start coming back up.

Fescue, which is what most Kentucky pastures are made up of, can be stockpiled really well, and so, if we allow the grass a chance to rest and really boom in the late, late summer, early fall, then we'll have plenty of grass to graze once the temperatures drop.

LINDSEY: And are they entirely fed with grass and hay?

- Is that a 100% of their diet?

- 100%.

ALVINA MAYNARD: We don't have all of the minerals that they need for their system in our soils.

Selenium is a big one, and so, they do have free choice minerals that they will go to in order to get that selenium.

Oh, and vitamin E as well.

And then, because they're a wool animals, sometimes it's hard for them to get their vitamin D from the sunshine, and so, you'll see them laying down with their bellies facing the sun because that's the thinnest part of the wool on their bodies.

And sometimes it gives me a little bit of a heart attack because it looks like they're dead.

So, just to make sure and make myself feel better, I'll walk up on them and be like "Hey, are you okay?"

And they'll roll over and look at me like, "You woke me up from my nap."

- "I was sunbathing."

- Right?

- Yeah.

- How rude.

Now, they just graze freely, does the grass that you have and what they eat, does that impact the flavor of the meat when you do use them for meat consumption?

I think so.

When you introduce a grain to a ruminant's diet, it does increase the fat content, usually, but it does affect the flavor as well.

A lot of people think that it might have a game flavor to it, which is not the case.

They're grazers, so grass is their predominant diet.

They might supplement with some flowers every once in a while, but, no, they do not have a game flavor.

So, not so much a game flavor, but it is considered a red meat, is that right?

- It is a red meat.

- Okay.

And just based on the look of them and from how you're describing lean, I would think, is the name of the game?

Yes.

They are a lean animal.

The fat is on the outside of the muscle.

It's not marbled through.

And so, when you do cook with it, you want to make sure it's hot and fast.

It can even be made into a tartare sushi meat because you don't have that fat through it and actually, we tell people to cook it like you would tuna-- hot and fast.

You don't want to overdo it.

So, medium rare for serving temperature if you were serving a loin or something?

- We actually serve ours rare.

- Okay.

But yeah, medium rare is the most that you want to push it.

- Okay.

Oh, that's a great tip.

- Yeah.

And what about the health benefits of this meat?

So alpaca is high in protein, high in iron, lean, and low in cholesterol.

So, of all the red meats, I think emu is the only one that beats it nutritionally.

Sounds pretty perfect.

So you can get that iron that most women need.

- Right?

- Yeah, exactly.

A really lean version.

Yeah, and a low-fat to consume a nice high protein.

So I'm really excited.

I've never cooked with alpaca before, and I'm very excited for this opportunity.

And so, I understand you have some for purchase, you sell it ground and you are known for your chorizo.

We do.

We have some award-winning chorizo sausage.

Tell me a little bit about that.

So, Marksbury Farm is our processor, and it's their chorizo recipe.

But if you were to have it side by side with their pork chorizo, it is different.

It has a different texture, has a different flavor, even if the seasonings are the same.

So the meat definitely brings something different.

Did you have alpaca meat before you became an alpaca farmer?

ALVINA: I had, yeah.

I've been to Peru twice and had alpaca when I was there.

And I mean, it's their red meat source.

Most of the beef that you would find in Peru is imported from Argentina, or Brazil for that matter, and so, the red meat production there for thousands of years has been alpaca and llama.

We opened Christmas of 2012, and I wanted a farm, but I didn't want to mow grass for a living.

So I started looking for lawnmowers and alpacas were about the weirdest lawnmowers - I could find.

- [laughs] But the more that I researched it, I have young kids, so I wanted something that I wouldn't have to be worried about the kids out on the farm getting hurt with big animals.

Alpacas are only 120 to 220 pounds.

They have padded feet instead of hooves, so if they kick, it could bruise, but it's not really going to do major damage.

And they're fairly standoffish, like they're curious, they'll approach, but they're not going to be all up in your face.

I must say, growing clothes is new to me.

Like we were talking earlier, people talk about where does their food come from, but can you talk to me more about how does alpaca turn into clothes?

So, they grow a half an inch of wool a month.

So, average staple is about 6 inches a year and we give them their haircut every April and we go through and sort it.

So alpacas have at least six different grades of wool so everything from really luxurious rugs to the most amazing scarf that you've ever worn in your life.

So we separate out all the grades and colors and we determine what their best application is so that quality control, making sure the right wool goes into the right kind of product.

And then it gets shipped off to manufacturers.

We do keep some of it here that we hand process ourselves, but it would take me a lifetime to do one year's harvest by myself, so we let the manufacturers do that.

And then we get products back.

On average, you can produce around three sweaters worth of wool a year.

Okay.

But if you think of an alpaca has the long neck, it has long legs, and so, all of those different body parts can produce a different quality.

And so we have to go through and sort out and make sure that it goes into its best application.

So what are the products that you sell from this farm?

The most amazing socks you'll ever put on your feet.

- I can't wait.

- [laughing] I'm very much looking forward to that.

- Yes.

Yeah.

- I'm a big sock fan.

Right now, I have my cheeseburger socks on.

- Nice.

Nice.

- [chuckling] So, the socks are amazing.

Gloves, hats, scarves.

Probably my favorite are the sweaters.

We work with a manufacturer in Gallatin, Tennessee that has 3D CAD knitting machines and so these sweaters are knit 3-dimensionally, - so there's no seams.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

It's pretty cool.

Oh, I love that.

And they're amazingly soft.

Okay.

Well, Lindsey and I are going to check that out for sure.

We'll put aprons on if we ever actually cook with them on.

[both chuckle] So, this is a big job, but you also have another role as well.

Can you tell me about your work in the Air Force?

So the Air Force is what got me to this place, which is kind of an odd road, but yeah.

So, I spent 6 years on active duty, and I had my adventures all over the world.

And I actually came to know about alpacas while I was in the Air Force on a mission, and so, when I found out that they were livestock in the US, I got intrigued.

I had my first child and I knew that I didn't want to continue to move every 2 to 4 years.

I wanted stability for my family.

And so, I had already started thinking about, "Well, what do you want to be when you grow up then?"

And the answer was, "I don't want to grow up!"

[laughs] As a criminal encounter intelligence investigator, which is what my Air Force job is, I learned how to build information networks, how to ask questions to really get to the heart of what the real answers are.

So that enabled me to figure out this whole farming gig a lot quicker than I probably would have otherwise, because I didn't come to it with any ag schooling background and I didn't come from being raised on a working farm, so I needed to learn as much as I could as quick as I could and my Air Force background helped me do that.

After Alvina, we visited Danny Townsend, a veteran farmer from the US Army, and he raises sorghum.

LINDSEY: I was very unfamiliar with all that goes into creating sorghum.

I was really excited to learn more and actually help take part in making this sweet treat.

MAGGIE: Yeah, I had only grown sorghum-sudangrass.

I'd never grown the sorghum cane variety, and so, I was really interested to see what it was like to grow the cane variety and how do you possibly extract the sorghum from it.

So Danny, thank you for having us out to your farm.

It's great to see sorghum growing and be out in a new place.

Tell us about where we are.

This is in Montgomery County, little place called Jeffersonville.

My family, my dad, he made sorghum, my grandpa, my great grandpa, they actually say I'm the fifth generation of my family that's grown sorghum, so I grew my first crop when I was a freshman in high school for an FFA project.

I grew a half acre of tobacco and a half acre of sorghum.

Been growing it ever since.

Yeah.

Just being surrounded by the sorghum, it seems like a very viable crop.

So what is the process of growing?

When do you plant it?

When do you harvest?

You don't want to plant it too early because it has a high mortality rate and you want to let the soil warm up.

Maybe a month after corn, or something like that.

This is a variety called dale, and this is about 120 days to maturity.

MAGGIE: And we're surrounded by it cut down.

So what's the process of that?

Do you cut it with a machine?

Do you cut it by hand?

DANNY TOWNSEND: This is all cut by hand.

Kind of depends.

You can see some of it where it's kind of blowed down, or kind of fell down.

And then when it does that, it's been so long, you can hardly cut it with a machine, so this is all cut with what they call the corn knives.

We cut it and put it in small piles and that way we like to leave it on the ground for 3 or 4 days.

You see the leaves, how green they are; we like for them to dry up some, get some moisture out of them.

So we don't strip the cane, but we let them dry when they go through the mill, there's nothing that comes out of the leaves, but it actually takes juice to wet those leaves.

And then we come back with a wagon and we load them on this flatbed wagon, it's like tobacco wagons.

And then from there, we haul it to the mill and run it through the mill, or the press, they call it, squeeze the juice out of it.

Sorghum is not native to the US, but it came to the US, they say, in early 1850s.

So it's been here for quite a bit and it was really a staple food, a sugar substitute.

As the settler was going west and stuff, they didn't have any sugar, so they used sorghum, sweet sorghum serve, and people still use it quite a bit, especially in this part of the country.

The big cities and stuff, not normally so.

But we're promoting, we're working on that.

But all of a sudden, there was a lot of interest in sorghum for a drink, for alcohol.

so, the last few years, we've really been working with that.

So, we've had some distilleries that buy quite a bit of sorghum and make rum, which, normally, you couldn't call it rum, or some kind of say you can't call it rum.

But it does make a good drink, but it is a sugar, and you can use it for any sugar substitute, so we are working with some food companies.

We have a lot of chefs now that's really found out how good sorghum is in some of the recipes.

- Cheers to sorghum!

- Cheers!

MAGGIE: Tell me about your military service.

Well, I was in the army for 19 months.

I got drafted in 1969, and then I got out of the service in April of 1971, and I did get to go to Southeast Asia.

I spent 14 months in Vietnam.

I was in infantry.

I got there and I was in the Mekong Delta.

And then by that time, by the time I got there in early 1970 where they did the Cambodian push and stuff and it wasn't as bad.

A lot of the guys, really, really bad, but I was really lucky.

I was really fortunate.

I was infantry and I was there for a while, they actually made a, they called it SP, security police.

So I don't know, but I mean, it was just a good name for somebody to pull guard duty.

Can you tell me about the Homegrown by Heroes program?

Yeah.

That was started by the Department of Agriculture a few years ago, and they called, and I had something ready.

I always had sorghum stuff and they knew I was a veteran, so we joined that.

And that was really great that they actually would recognize a veteran and it gave people a choice.

If you put some stickers on your product and stuff, you give people a choice to where you can buy and help a veteran farmer, somebody benefit.

It's a really good program and when we came home back in 1971, you didn't get very many thanks, so this was really a kind gesture and I think it really went over great.

LINDSEY: What a time that was at the sorghum farm.

MAGGIE: Oh, that was so much fun.

It really was.

A lot of work.

It was harder than it looked.

Oh, well, and you actually got down into it.

I was very impressed.

But I did put some through the mill and I think the biggest thing that I took away from that is literally sorghum is just that plant.

- Yes.

- There's nothing else.

Yeah.

And talking to some of my old farmer friends, all of them remember growing sorghum on their farms because that was their source of sweetness.

Yeah, yeah.

And I love that you just eat it right there.

- That was so fun.

- Yeah.

That's one of those moments where I'm like, "Wow, nature is so incredible that it can give us something just that pure."

They were nice enough at Townsend Farm to give us a couple of sorghum recipe collections, sorghum treasures.

So, in going through those, I found a recipe for oven caramel corn.

Oh, I'm so excited.

I know.

Me, too.

And it involves sorghum, and it really does allow for that earthy deliciousness of the sweetness of the sorghum to come through.

So I thought we'd make some of that.

So, all right.

What we have here to get started, I have popped popcorn.

- Perfect.

- Yes.

And then in the pot, I have one stick of butter melted.

So, to that, I'm going to add a cup of brown sugar and then we're going to add this gorgeous sorghum we got from Townsend Farm.

Danny was really just a treat to talk to, and I love that sorghum has been in his family for so many years.

It's just like you were saying, a lot of farmers just have it on their farm.

He just kind of always knew about sorghum, yet here he is now making it his career and he's got award-winning sorghum.

MAGGIE: Yeah.

He's dedicated himself to that.

The system he's come up with, you can tell he has that engineer mind, too.

Oh, yes, yes.

It's really, really neat.

So, we're going to add his delicious sorghum here to the butter and the brown sugar.

And we now know how much work it takes to get that thick.

I mean, oh my gosh.

No, it's so true.

So, all of that, and then we are going to add just a pinch of salt and just a little bit of cream of tartar.

And then I'm going to take this back over to the stove and all we have to do is get it warming to a boil and we want it to boil for about 45 seconds.

We're not making a proper caramel, but it's kind of like we're mimicking that.

We're going in that direction and then we're going to pour all over our popcorn.

I'm going to take this over to the stove and bring it up to a boil, and then we'll get it on our popcorn.

- Great.

Let's do it.

- All right.

LINDSEY: So, here we are with our caramel corn sorghum topping.

We got it boiling, and then quickly added a little bit of baking soda and vanilla.

And now our popcorn.

- Wonderful.

- We'll put that down.

It really changed the color, the texture.

It did.

Yeah.

So, you can see it got light and tan and it starts to pull away.

The texture changes the viscosity.

It pulls away from the side of the pot.

One of the ways it's time to go.

So, we're going to just pour it.

I mean, is anything more decadent than that?

- [chuckles] - No.

LINDSEY: Yeah.

I love it.

And I really do think the sorghum comes through in this.

I mean, there's a lot of sugar in here with the brown sugar, but I think the richness of the brown sugar is a great compliment to the natural sweetness of the sorghum.

And what a great treat after you've been farming, you might want something sweet.

Oh my gosh.

I don't know about you, but this type of thing, for me, is very addictive.

It's that, "I have one little handful," and then, "Oh my gosh, just another handful."

And then all of a sudden, what happened to all the caramel corn?

So, we're going to stir this in and try to keep it in the pot.

- Yes!

- Easier said than done, but we just want to get it all coated through, and then we do need to bake it.

So, we're going to stick it in an oven just at 250 degrees for about an hour.

Every 15 minutes or so, I'm going to just kind of toss it and stir it.

But it really allows the sugars to properly caramelize and just coat all the nooks and crannies of the popcorn.

It's so good.

So, you can get really creative with this, too.

You can throw peanuts in here.

I mean, any sort of -- I mean, chocolate candies would definitely melt, but there's a lot of different things you could play with.

I like the idea of a peanut in this, that could be really delicious.

LINDSEY: Yeah.

Plenty of ways to make this even more interesting, but I think just right here, letting sorghum be the star is plenty good.

So I'm going to get a sheet pan out.

We're going to layer it evenly and then pop it in the oven and while that's in there, we'll get started on our shepherd's pie.

- Sounds great.

- All right.

LINDSEY: All right.

Alpaca shepherd's pie.

- Yes.

- I'm super excited about this.

And like you mentioned, Alvina loved the idea of anywhere beef goes and ground beef is involved, why not use alpaca?

And one of the tips that she gave us that I loved, she said in her chili, she does half of chorizo and half of her ground alpaca.

And I thought that was such a clever way to kind of change things up a little bit and I thought, "Why don't we do that same trick for our shepherd's pie?"

So, what's great about that is the seasonings here.

The chorizo-- hers is award-winning, [chuckles] really nice mildly spicy flavors, but it definitely adds a little bit of complexity.

And then we have this beautiful ground alpaca, so you can see, I think here she told us it is definitely a red meat, and I think that's very evident here.

And it acts very similar, but it is super lean, so healthy.

She talked about all the benefits to eating alpaca, and so, I'm ready to eat some tonight.

- Yeah.

- [chuckles] You can see there's some good fat in here though, so it'll be interesting to taste the difference between the flavor of ground beef and alpaca.

Absolutely, absolutely.

So, first things first, we're going to get some yummy aromatics going in the pot.

You've chopped up some carrots and onion and garlic for us.

And I really like, I've mentioned many a time, - I've always got greens.

- Yes.

Always looking for a way to use our greens and today, I have some kale.

Not only the greens, we'll stir in at the end, but these stems have great health benefits and we don't want them to go to waste.

So you taught me - Yes.

- the most fun way to strip.

Oh, this is a little mix.

There's some red Russian and some of the white.

Well, I didn't -- I hope that still works.

Thank you, farmers.

So we'll just do a quick -- we'll go ahead and add in the stems.

Okay.

You want me to chop these?

Yeah, do you want to do that?

We'll add those along with the carrots and the onion and get them sort of sautéed down.

And then we're going to add a few other tasty elements to just boost that base umami flavor, Worcestershire, some tomato paste, got a little bit of beef stock, so once the alpaca is in there to just stew it down a little bit, make everything merry, get super happy.

It wouldn't be shepherd's pie if we didn't put a whole mess of mashed potatoes on top.

Yes, I will take that mess of mashed potatoes.

I love shepherd's pie with mashed potatoes of all sorts.

I've had sweet potatoes, Yukon gold potatoes.

- Yeah.

- Maybe a little celeriac?

- Celeriac?

- Yes.

Celeriac.

And parsnips, you can -- Yes.

Oh, and mashed parsnips!

That'd be exciting.

Butternut squash, pumpkin, I mean, options.

Toppings galore.

Toppings galore and a bonus, it's a one pot meal.

- Yes.

- Fantastic.

So I'm going to get the oven turned on.

We'll start sweating these vegetables down and once they're nice and happy, the alpaca will go in.

Everything will stew.

Make good friends with each other.

Once that's done, we will add our kale, put it into a baking dish top with our mashed potatoes into the oven, just until things get brown and bubbly and it's time to eat.

All right.

We have our shepherd's pie filling.

It has our ground alpaca and alpaca chorizo.

Very excited about that.

So I'm going to go ahead and just transfer it.

We've got all the vegetables in here, it's cooked down.

It smells fantastic.

We're going to transfer it over to our baking dish and then we have our good old mashed potatoes.

And these are just my mashed potatoes, so just a fair amount of cream, a fair amount of milk, and more than a fair share of butter.

[both chuckle] Okay, so this is one of my favorite parts-- spreading the mashed potatoes on top.

[chuckles] And you can try to get fancy with this and make like little designs on top and all of that.

MAGGIE: Growing up, my grandma would always take a fork and make a very distinct... - Like little hashmarks?

- Yes.

I love it.

I love it, I love it, I love it.

So we're going to just pop this in the oven for, I'd say, 20 minutes or so till it's bubbly and warm and getting brown-- part of the reason you do those hashmarks.

And then our popcorn should be ready pretty soon as well, our caramel corn, so we'll get that out, and we will have dinner and dessert ready to go.

- Great.

- [chuckles] We've got to make sure we have no cracks so the bubbles are absolutely perfect.

I always read that about shepherd's pie recipes.

Make sure there's no cracks.

Yeah, seal it in.

Seal in that goodness.

All right.

Final crack.

Yeah.

There we go.

Sealed, unsealed, delivered to the oven.

- [chuckles] - Let's go.

MAGGIE: This is a great party favor.

LINDSEY: Look at it.

Definitely recommend putting down aluminum foil to save your pan because you get -- you can see just the sugars here are crunchy, caramelized, and delicious.

I'm going to have to have a little appetizer/dessert/snack before we... Oh wow.

A little teaser.

- It's so good.

- So crunchy.

- You can taste the sorghum.

- I was just going to say.

- The earthiness of it.

- Exactly.

LINDSEY: There's plenty of sweet going on here, don't get me wrong, but it's not just like sugar bomb, like there's some depth to it, and some character, and it's just beautiful.

Next time, I'm going to throw a few other fun items in here.

Yeah.

Some peanuts.

Oh my gosh, yeah.

And just snack on this all day long.

But I'm not going to ruin my appetite for dinner.

So, let's see.

I'm going to put this off to the side.

- I still have room.

- Yeah.

[chuckles] All right.

Put that off to the side, and let's check out our shepherd's pie.

Oh, bubbly!

Bubbly.

Beautiful markings!

All right.

Well, cheers to a beautiful shepherd's pie.

To the farmers and veterans that helped cultivate these amazing ingredients for us.

And to Homegrown by Heroes.

MAGGIE: Yes, Homegrown by Heroes.

LINDSEY: Yes.

Oh my gosh.

Whoa.

MAGGIE: Oh, I'm so excited to try alpaca.

- Chorizo.

- Yeah.

Delicious.

Award-winning for sure.

Really, really good.

This is just so soul warming.

- Yes.

- Right.

Like this type of meal and, again, it's meat and potatoes, but I think a little bit still homey and familiar, but refined to a degree.

Your mashed potatoes are phenomenal.

Very nice, appropriate amount of butter thrown in there.

Well, I'm going to dig into this more and then on to dessert.

Okay.