I’m lucky to have friends who make wonderful Thanksgiving meals. I am an appreciative guest at their tables, where I’ve eaten slow-roasted, grilled, hickory-smoked, deep-fried and beer-can turkey. But before last year I had never tasted a fresh-dressed, pasture-raised turkey.
The taste was a revelation. From the crispy brown skin to the succulent meat, the bird was perfection. “A lot of people tell me it’s the turkey they remember from Thanksgiving at Grandma and Grandpa’s house,” said Dan West, owner of Living Springs Ranch in Belleview, Mo.
West likes to raise a single age group of Broad-Breasted White turkeys, a commercial breed. This year, the same July storm that turned trees to matchsticks in St. Louis flattened the roof of West’s brooder house when his 400 poults were just 3 days old. “I lost 60 poults in one storm,” he said. “That’s the way farming goes.” He replaced the poults. Now he’s raising two groups of turkeys, side by side, and expects to sell around 300 of them for Thanksgiving.
Turkeys at Living Springs Ranch spend their days outdoors in West’s moveable poultry pens. When he moves them to new pasture, the grass gets “grazed down like a golf course” by the hungry birds. And even though the birds are conventional whites, they live far differently than the same breed raised commercially.
Bryan and Christina Truemper of Farrar Out Farm will offer about 60 pasture-raised Broad-Breasted Whites again this year, as well as 30 of a heritage variety, the Bourbon Red.
Less than 100 years ago, most turkeys were what we now call heritage breeds. With names like Black, American Bronze, Bourbon Red, Jersey Buff and Slate, the turkeys must have made the barnyard a pretty colorful place. These old-fashioned birds fell prey not to predators or disease, but to good old American economics: Driven by the market, a turkey with meatier breasts and fewer visible pinfeathers was perfected in the 1940s. Not only were the turkeys bigger and cheaper, they fattened faster, coming to market in only 16 weeks. Perfect for industrial farming. But the turkeys lost skeletal mass, a layer of insulating fat and the ability to reproduce without artificial intervention.
“I like connecting to the past with these heritage turkeys,” Truemper said. His Bourbon Reds arrived from hatcheries in early May. The heritage turkeys require a full seven months to mature, about 10 weeks longer than the commercial whites.
Not only does a farmer spend more time with the heritage breed, the poults cost four times more than a commercial white. And, for some reason, the heritage poults have a higher mortality rate in the first five weeks of life. “We lost about 15 percent of our red birds early,” said Truemper. “It’s not uncommon for a farmer to lose one-third. That hurts.” But once their immune systems mature, the heritage birds are hardy.
Truemper processes his own birds, butchering the Saturday and Sunday prior to Thanksgiving. Finishing the Bourbon Reds takes more manpower to complete the detail work of removing pinfeathers and hairs, and that makes for a more expensive bird. Last year, prices for heritage turkeys hit $8 per pound at specialty grocers. Truemper is holding his price for Bourbon Reds nearer to $4 per pound this year.
Last year, the Truempers served a heritage turkey at their own Thanksgiving table. Truemper likes to slow-roast his turkeys at 325 degrees, with the lid off. He adds a little butter and a bit of liquid to the roasting pan. “Some of the guests were kind of expecting a religious experience,” Truemper said, adding modestly, “I would say it was a really good turkey.”
It’s that time of year, so thanks, farmers, for all the good food
we share.
This article appears in Nov 1-30, 2006.