I didn't really understand it was the grass.

We wanted to raise the best lamb in the country, which we did, and I didn't think it was going to be anything like the size that it ended up being.

We always came to farming through food.

I think that's why we were different, because we wanted to make sure that the product tasted good.

And so we came at it from a different angle.

So we found an old house in Pleasant Unity, but the guy wouldn't sell it without the 65 acres that went with it.

So we bought the whole place, which we didn't want to do.

And over the years, we got more interested in farming than we did fixing up the house.

Well, her father thought we were crazy.

He thought it was, as he always liked to say, a one way ticket to bankruptcy.

Was it bankruptcy or...?

I think it was.

Yeah.

I had been laid off from the coal business in‘85, which is one of the reasons we started this in the first place.

Sukey had a catering business.

Somebody wanted lamb for one of the dinners.

So we just started raising lamb.

But nobody in western Pennsylvania would buy from us.

I knew of a guy who was a big salesman at, uh... ...Heinz.

I arranged for a lunch with him.

The purpose of the lunch was to have him tell me there was no future in what I was doing, so I could go back into the coal business and be a big boy and... ...and support myself, because I was- this wasn't working.

And so he has me at lunch and says, the future of your business is in restaurants.

And I said, you've got to be kidding me.

He said, I'm doing a lunch for Children's Hospital, and I'm having the seven best chefs in the country cook.

If you send them information about your lamb, they will buy it.

Jean-Louis was one of the seven chefs.

At the age of 12, Jean-Louis Palladin would rather peel potatoes in a restaurant than go to school.

And at 28, he became the youngest chef ever to be awarded two stars by the Guide Michelin.

Tell us about your new restaurant.

It's a beautiful place.

If you want to eat well, you need to come there.

If you want to lose money, don't come there, you know?

This is a lovely book.

This is- This is photos of your food, which I think the book is actually cheaper than a meal.

That's how that adds up.

So Sukey and I took the lamb down to Jean-Louis.

I’s a Friday night and it's the best restaurant in the country at that time.

And it was just busy as hell.

And he takes a lamb, he rips everything open, and then he dives into the into the chest of the lamb.

He's speaking in French, rapidly and loudly.

Waving his hands.

Gesticulating.

He starts tearing up and he said, I am so sorry, I have not seen lamb like this since I am in France.

I went, whoa!

When he was an apprentice at age 12, one of his first jobs was buying lamb.

And so he knew everything about baby lamb.

And so he always felt that the taste of the lamb that we had tasted like one in France called Sisteron.

Because of the elevation, because they were eating more or less the same herbage.

But he understood it was the grass and I didn't really understand it was the grass.

He told all his friends.

And then they started buying from us.

And that's what started us being known, I would say.

I said, someday I'm going to write all these stories down.

We came up with the name of the book, Coyotes in the Pasture and Wolves at the Door 30 or 40 years ago, and it was just about the coyotes in the pasture, that is, problems that you have in production with the animals.

You know, yo’d have coyotes come in and eat a lamb, or not have enough rain, or have too much rain, or whatever the issues may be.

But that's, you know, that's life.

I was learning the sheep business as we went along because none of us- we didn't know anything about it.

Farmers were’t used to selling to chefs.

Their way of raising lamb was just get it as fat as possible, as fast as possible and sell it at the auction.

So they never tasted it.

When we started getting the reaction that we did from Jean-Louis, and other high end chefs, then we realized that the grass here was really something and that we wanted to raise the best lamb in the country, which we did.