TALLTREE FAMILY Farm

It is that time of year again when the weather gets cooler, the turkeys are larger, and wonderful family gathering events are growing nearer!

We have had quite a year with our birds. We had sold our beautiful breeding pair of royal palm turkeys to a couple that promised to sell us every egg they produced this spring. Unfortunately, they reneged on this arrangement and so we started over with a sweet pair of Lavender Heritage turkeys. We had a good hatch rate though, and added some eggs from neighboring farms -- we ended up with some heritage Bronzes and Bourbon Reds as well.  It was a very colorful year for heritage turkeys!

Then came the setbacks. Every year, we order about 50-100 broad-breasted Bronzes for those who want larger birds. This year just as we were about to order, we were told that the only poultry processor within 100 miles closed down. We didn't order any other birds, as we weren't sure how we were even going to process the ones we hatched. So we did not grow any 22 - 35 pound birds this year.

Then avian influenza came to this area. Other poultry farms that got sick birds had to have every bird on their property killed! Our response to the epidemic was to keep our turkeys in a smaller field this year, one that we could place a net over the top to prevent wild birds (that carried the virus) from landing among them. The downside is that it limited again how many birds we could realistically raise. But it kept them safe, and we could continue to let them be pastured happily as nature intended.

Then came the huge wind storm during a freeze in November that blew down the neighbor's giant Douglas Fir tree into our field; it knocked out our power for five days. Along with the water (which is from an artesian spring and electrically pumped) and along with our phone line.  Thus, it became impossible for people to order turkeys during the biggest selling week of the season.

But now our power is back, our phone is back, our internet is working again, and we have found a new butcher for this season. We are truly blessed!  We still have some heritage turkeys for sale, that will be freshly processed and oven-ready, for you to pick up on November 21 and 22. I am guessing that they will weigh approximately 12-15 pounds, and a few maybe as large as 22 pounds. We are going back to asking a flat fee this year, of $120 per bird. Since there are fewer of them, we have been able to give them extra attention and lots of extra scraps, which they gobbled up! They will be delicious, providing the kind of artisan meat that I've always aspired to create.

Thank you, as always, for supporting our small family farm.