The rising sun casts mellow hues over the mountain slopes painted with wild oregano and olive trees surrounding the farm. Inside the house, several cooks prep a feast.

In this rugged corner of Sicily, shepherds’ annual shearing is celebrated at the table, with a butchered lamb at the heart of the meal. Both the shearing and the cooking require many hands.

Nicola Leggio stirs up a hearty breakfast for the shearers in a large blackened pot that’s been kept conditioned over the years with a wipe of olive oil after each use.

“This pot has done a great amount of work,” the 59-year-old says, his eyes not straying from the vat of simmering onions and dark chopped lamb’s liver. He’s already fried 20 kilograms of sliced potatoes.

Outside, against a backdrop of cliffs and yellow broom shrubs, Nicola Mogavero watches a 100-liter quadara, a massive pot heated over a wood fire. He is preparing ragù—deep, red and bubbling. This recipe calls for 30 liters of tomato sauce, which was prepared last summer, then stored in beer bottles and sauce jars. The meaty dish is rich with lamb and flavored with carrots and celery.

Mogavero stirs the sauce with a long wooden spoon. It will cook for four hours.

Meanwhile, another pot of ragù simmers in the kitchen, a windowless room where food brought for the meal piles up: bags of bread, boxes of pastries, jars of olives and artichokes soaked in water, vinegar, sugar and lemon juice. The kitchen is fragrant with basil, celery, onions and ground meat.

An apron-clad Maria Lanza watches the sauce as she chats with other women. Her sauce is an alternative for those who don’t like Mogavero’s stronger-tasting ragù, made with castrato (castrated lamb’s meat).

Nearby, in a ceramic-tiled room, the farm’s owners, Pippo Onorato and his father, Nicola, stir milk as they make tuma, a soft unsalted pecorino cheese typical to Sicily. On another stove, ricotta is cooking.

Down in the shearing shed, men and boys straddle sheep, clippers in hand. The animals bleat, some struggle, others lie resigned. The men’s voices rumble as they call out to each other.

There are some 200 sheep, but with two dozen shearers, the work goes quickly. Men haul and tie the sheep, occasionally giving tips to the boys who snip at fleece, ensuring a tradition continues. The shearing is a scene—meal included—that plays out across the Madonie Mountains every spring.

Mounds of wool pile up. At one time it was precious. Today there’s no market for it. By 10:30 a.m., the shearers, older ones limping, take a break.

It’s breakfast. Plates fill with liver and potatoes. Steaming ricotta is passed around, as are cured olives, loaves of bread and plastic jugs of local red wine. The shepherds use wood-handled knives to eat, slicing off pieces of bread, stabbing at hunks of cheese and shaving off shreds of meat.

Another Nicola—yes, the name is a common one in the area, honoring Isnello’s patron saint—Nicola Vacca, a shepherd with playful eyes and a bushy, graying walrus-like mustache, eats with gusto.

“This is a passo tempo (a hobby),” he says of today’s sheep-shearing ritual.

In their youth, these shepherds often spent 40 days at a time away from home, sometimes walking 20 kilometers a day with their flocks. They had the same fare day after day: bread, ricotta, potatoes, pasta and wine. They slept on beds of broom plants inside thatched stone buildings called pagliai.

By early afternoon, the farmhouse buzzes with friends and family members. Each brings something: pastries, crates of fruit, meat, wine, limoncello.

Time for lunch.

People sit elbow to elbow on benches. The air fills with laughter, banter, conversation. Over the ruckus, women carrying plates cry out: “Chi vuole ragù?” “Who wants ragù?” “Pasta?”

Maria Scelsi is 89. She scans the tables.

“It looks like a wedding,” she says. “Before, it was for the family and for the workers. Now it’s a huge party.”