NATURAL PERSPECTIVES:

Many people like lamb for Easter. We think of it as spring lamb, but actually lambs are born in spring and slaughtered in the fall. To get a leg of spring lamb now means buying meat from Australia or New Zealand, where it is fall.

You know how Vic and I feel about imported food. The more distance our food travels, the more fossil fuel is burned in its transport. That means more carbon dioxide in the air, which increases global warming, which raises sea level, which will eventually flood out Huntington Beach.

We’d like to think that our town will go on forever, but some of the current figures we’ve seen on melting ice in Greenland and the Antarctic suggest ocean levels may rise 20 feet within the lifetime of people living now, and may rise up to 200 feet in another couple of centuries unless something is done to curb carbon dioxide emissions. That level of sea rise would spell doom for coastal cities like ours.

Vic and I wanted lamb for Easter, but we didn’t want it to come from down under. So for our spring lamb, we planned ahead. Way ahead. Last fall, I visited localharvest.org to find some lamb growers in Southern California. I had two goals. One was to find a local farmer who would sell me a lamb. My second goal was to support heritage breeds. By buying (and eating) a rare breed of lamb, we would be promoting the survival of that breed.

All domestic sheep are the same species, but a tremendous amount of genetic diversity exists among the different breeds. The same holds true for other domesticated livestock and poultry.

These various breeds have been developed over many, many centuries throughout the world. Each has unique genetic characteristics such as resistance to disease or tolerance of extreme climate conditions. This may become of great importance.

When a particular breed dies out, its unique genes are lost. Modern food production promotes the use of a very few specialized breeds. These animals are raised by agribusinesses to the exclusion of other breeds. Fortunately in developed countries, there are a handful of farmers who are committed to preserving endangered breeds.

I found such a farmer, Rainer Kleinsheck of Vista. He had four rare breeds of lambs. I decided I wanted a Border Leicester, also known as the Leicester Longwool. This breed of sheep was developed in Leicestershire, England, in the early 1700s. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both kept herds of the Border Leicester. But by the 1930s, this useful breed had nearly disappeared from North America.

Before buying my lamb, I had to research how much meat a lamb would yield (about 60-70 pound) and how much our refrigerator’s freezer would hold (6 cubic feet). I calculated that our freezer would hold half a frozen lamb plus a 12-pound turkey and a few packages of frozen vegetables. Since we couldn’t fit a whole lamb into our freezer, we asked Dave and Margaret Carlberg if they would go halvsies with us on the lamb. They were delighted to do so.

When I called him last September, Rainer had 10 ram lambs left. I had never seen a more handsome group of sheep. I picked one out and paid Rainer $200.

My next task was to find a full-service butcher. Bob Trimble at Specialty Meats in Escondido says he’s the last butcher in San Diego County who will slaughter, dress and freeze farm animals. He charged $154 to go to the farm, slaughter the lamb there, then cut, wrap and freeze the meat. At least our lamb didn’t have to undergo the trauma of being trucked to a slaughterhouse. We’ve been enjoying lamb chops all winter, but saved the leg roast for Easter.

Spring lambs were born in Southern California last month. If you’d like to follow in our footsteps and reserve one for fall, you can call Rainer Kleinsheck at (760) 390-9739. The number for Specialty Meats is (760) 839-6850. Remember, eating is an environmental act.

On another note, the council is being asked to support legislation in Sacramento (Senate Bill 1295) that would eliminate the right of members of the Coastal Commission to appeal land use decisions of local jurisdictions.

Local jurisdictions have a sad record of approving environmentally destructive projects, but the Coastal Commission has been a bulwark of protection for our beaches and wetlands.

In fact, few communities in California have benefited over the years from a good strong Coastal Commission like Huntington Beach has. We hope the council did not vote to endorse SB 1295.

VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and environmentalists. They can be reached at vicleipzig@aol.com.