This article appeared in the November 2013 issue of Organic Hudson Valley.  (A direct link is under Links to Articles.)

 

As Thanksgiving approaches, the traditional turkey dinner calls, and those playing host for a holiday that many mark as their favorite have to plan their menus and gather the ingredients from the local fall bounty, the most important one being the turkey.

 

Many consumers have concerns about the antibiotics and chemicals that can be found in conventionally raised turkeys and seek out organic alternatives to prevent their family from ingesting unknown quantities of antibiotics and other chemicals.

There are many places to buy turkey, and it can be raised in all manner of ways, which can lead consumers interested in an organic bird to research which local farms raise and sell organic turkeys and what specific farming methods they use.

 

“When you buy an organic turkey, you are getting a healthier bird,” Lauren Graf, M.S., R.D., a Clinical Dietician at Montefiore Medical Center, said.  “Organic turkeys are fed a healthier diet that is free of pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics and hormones.  Organic turkeys are also at less risk for salmonella.”

 

Many farms in the Hudson Valley are proponents of organic farming and letting the turkeys roam free, providing area residents with the healthier turkeys when they celebrate the holiday.

 

Four Winds Farm

 

Four Winds Farm is a Hudson Valley certified organic farm located in Gardiner, New York.  The farm is 24 acres, with four acres devoted to growing vegetables and the remaining twenty acres used for raising meat and poultry, including turkeys.

 

“We started out raising turkeys for ourselves and selling a few to others,” Jay Armour, who has been a farmer for 25 years, said.  “When we realized how good they were and our friends realized how good they were, well, we continued.”

Four Winds uses natural fertilizer from their cows and poultry to provide them with manure compost.  They never use a plow or rototiller.

 

“We also believe that our way of farming is better for the Earth because we are less dependent on energy and capital consuming tractors and equipment,” Four Winds says on the web site.

 

The turkeys they raise are all certified organic and fed with organic feed.  “We use organic feed because it is the only way we can be sure the feed doesn’t have any GMO [Genetically Modified Organism] products in it,” Armour said.  GMO corn and soy seed allow farmers to use more herbicides, leading to more herbicide residue ending up in the feed the animals eat, leading to those chemicals ending up in the bodies of the people that consume them.

 

“Those chemicals can eventually end up in our bodies and cause serious health problems,” Armour continued.  While those are definitely things to be concerned about, according to Armour, “Most people buy our turkeys because they taste so much better than the fatty birds that are commercially produced.”

 

On Thanksgiving, when you’re enjoying the locally grown, organic turkey from one of these farms, the farmers will be enjoying their holiday break with their organic, farm raised turkey, as well.

 

“Thanksgiving is kind of like the end of the season for us,” Armour said.  “No more markets, no more responsibilities.  We usually have a quiet dinner here Thanksgiving Day and then go down to visit my parents in Philadelphia during the weekend.”

 

McEnroe Organic Farm

 

McEnroe Organic Farm, located in Millerton, New York, is another area farm that raises turkeys.  The farm covers 1000 acres and is “committed to organic and sustainable agriculture,” according to their web site.

 

The farm started with dairy cows in 1951, and became an organic farm in 1988, beginning with compost and vegetables.  They began raising beef cattle in 1995, before expanding into raising turkeys in 2000, as well as pork, chicken and lamb.

 

“Poultry seemed like the most efficient to convert into a saleable product,” Erich McEnroe, who works on the farm with his family, said.  “They’re beneficial, they’re seasonal, and they allowed us to expand into other markets and have a fall harvest for Thanksgiving.”

 

Learning to raise turkeys in the best way possible took some time.  It took almost a decade for the family to perfect their turkeys raising technique, according to McEnroe.

 

They began with very limited knowledge, with McEnroe describing himself as “just a college kid with some research.”  Though they made a lot of mistakes along the way, they now feel like they “have a pretty good system on how to raise them.”

 

Today, they raise the turkeys inside for the first six weeks because they’re “very finicky when it comes to temperature.”  Once the turkeys are about six weeks old, they get moved to outdoor pastures, where they also have structures for the birds to stay in at night, to keep them safe from predators.  McEnroe says the turkeys do the best in pastures, and they keep them in “the best, most lush pastures” on the farm.

 

This method of raising turkeys is the best for the turkey and the customer, according to McEnroe.  “They really enjoy the grass, and it gives them an exceptional taste, which translates into a very happy customer, because they’re getting a very happy turkey, with higher omega-3s.  It’s all about the grass and being able to get outside,” he said.  “They get to breathe fresh air and they get to run, and they’re not cooped up in big stuffy barns.”

 

Margo Morris, of Sprout Creek Farm, where they raise chicken as well as turkeys, though the turkeys are not for sale, agrees with McEnroe on this point.  “It’s not an easier method,” she says of organic farming.  “It’s often a harder method, but they taste better and the bird itself is healthier for eating more of what they normally eat.  It’s not confined so they can run around.  The meat is a better texture, so you can actually chew it.  It’s more flavorful, too.  There’s more of an herby quality to it, too.”

 

The McEnroe’s also grow their own grain on the farm, which they use to feed the turkeys.  The grain is a combination of corn, oats, alfalfa and other organic minerals.  “Turkeys enjoy alfalfa grass quite a bit.  They will eat quite a bit of that, especially the last month when it gets colder,” McEnroe said of the turkeys diet.  “When you get a frost, the grass dies, though they are still outside.”  Once the grass is dead, the grain makes up most of the turkeys diet, and it is all certified organic, non-GMO grain.

 

The turkeys stay outside in the pastures, where they are happier, and then after two to three years, the field gets rotated and the same field that held the turkeys becomes a cornfield, according to McEnroe.  Corn demands a lot of nitrogen from the soil, which turkeys provide, making them a dual-purpose animal, so it works out well to balance the farming process and lower fertilizer bills.

 

McEnroe is a big proponent of organic farming.  “I grew up organic, so I don’t know anything else,” he said.  His father, Ray, changed the farm to an organic farm after his father passed away from cancer at a young age.  McEnroe’s grandfather had used a lot of chemicals, and his father attributed the cancer to that chemical usage and wanted to move away from unhealthy substances.

 

The improved taste of organically raised turkeys is a great bonus on top of the health benefits.  “We’ve had customers who have done taste tests and side-by-side comparisons, and there’s a major difference,” McEnroe said.

 

McEnroe Farm is certified organic through the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York (NOFA).  It is a statewide organization that promotes sustainable, local, organic farming, according to the web site.  The organization was founded in 1983 with the goal to “educate consumers about the value in buying local, organic products, help consumers connect with regionally-based farmers, work to make local, organic food available to all people, and advocate policies that support a sustainable food and farm system.”

 

They certify their farm through this organization because it requires them to answer to someone.  McEnroe is concerned that not all organic farms follow a standardized organic methodology to ensure their goods are truly organic.

 

“The animals need to be out on pasture and be treated in a correct way,” McEnroe said, though he was quick to clarify that he was, “not saying non-organic people don’t do that.”

 

This is especially important when it comes to GMO products.  “With livestock, the GMO grains, I don’t think the story has been told yet about what the GMO is going to do to human health long term,” McEnroe said.

 

He is also particularly concerned with antibiotic use in farm animals.  Overuse of antibiotics in animals creates an antibiotic resistance, which can then be transferred into the human body when the animal is consumed, transferring the antibiotic resistance into humans.  This has the potential to create a major problem with important disease fighting antibiotics, as it can lead them to cease being effective at fighting illness, making illnesses that are currently easily cured into major medical catastrophes.

 

Chemicals seeping into groundwater and getting into the water supply are another issue.  “We keep a lot of chemicals out of water streams and water sources,” McEnroe said.  “Water is the most important thing on earth.”

 

Morris agrees with this point.  “The birds roam and they eat grass and bugs and all the stuff they’re supposed to eat,” she said.  “It’s beneficial to the animal, so it’s beneficial to us.  We cannot eat grass, but we can benefit from all the nutrients that are in grass because they are in the soil,” another reason to be concerned about chemicals getting into the soil.  “It’s better for you, it’s more flavorful,” and the birds are “better muscled without being tough.”

 

Farming issues aside, McEnroe likes the farm.  “It’s always enjoyable on a good, brisk October morning to hear them clucking and making enjoyable bird sounds,” McEnroe said, creating a picture of life that may seem old-fashioned to many.  “It’s quite enjoyable.”

 

The farm has turkey available for Thanksgiving, and welcomes people to stop by and enjoy the prepared meals made in the full-service kitchen where they cater meals made from specially ordered local, organic and gourmet products for customers to enjoy.  They will even be happy to provide you the recipe for any meal they prepare.  “We give special instructions on how we cooked different recipes to our customers, and we deliver if we need to.”  They also offer vegetables, as well as beef, pork and lamb, making them a viable one-stop shop for all your Thanksgiving ingredients.

 

Quattro’s Farm

 

Quattro’s Farm is located in Pleasant Valley.  The family has been raising turkeys since the 1930s and has three kinds available – domestic, wild and heritage, which are also known as Bourbon Reds.

 

The turkeys are fed a diet of vegetarian feed that has no added hormones.  The birds are free range and allowed to roam.  Quattro’s doesn’t use antibiotics on the turkeys, either.

 

“We feed them an all vegetarian diet of grasses, local grains, local veggies and fruits and we water them from our own artesian wells,” Joyce Quattro, the manager of the farm store, said.  “Good water is as important as good feed.”

 

The methods used on Quattro’s Farm echo those at used at McEnroe Organic Farm and Four Winds Farm.  “We are hands on and very in tuned with our birds,” Quattro said.  “We consistently produce very healthy, tasty birds.”

 

Northwind Farms

 

Northwind Farms is located in Tivoli, where Richard Biezynski runs the farm with his wife.  He has been farming since he was five years old.  He started raising turkeys because he couldn’t find any that were raised the way he wanted.

 

“During Thanksgiving, people would want turkeys,” Biezynski said.  “Nobody raised turkeys the way I raised them.”

 

He is adamant about not putting chemicals in the feed.  “You couldn’t even buy feed without chemicals,” he said of trying to raise chemical free turkeys when he first started raising them.  “I did this because I didn’t want it [chemicals].  I had no anticipation of it becoming what it has become.  Little by little, people heard about what I was doing and started coming by.  As people heard about how I was raising birds, by word of mouth it became a business without even advertising.”

 

He also reflected on the changing times, discussing the term “free range,” which didn’t exist when he started out.  “I don’t like raising birds in these cages,” he said.  “They were just loose birds.”

 

Northwind Farms main goal is to have clean, chemical-free birds.  “The animals come first on my farm, people come second.  It’s a very simple theory to that.  I didn’t care if my poultry tastes like wood, I just wanted them to be clean.  I’m not into high production,” he added.  “It’s always been that way.”

 

Biezynski talks about a major chicken supplier, which he wanted to keep nameless, but that he is happy to say, changed their method of doing things after talking to him.  “Maybe our growth rate is a little lower, but I guess, in my little way, I have changed the way things are.”

 

While he is against chemicals in the feed, Biezynski is more cautious in discussing GMO products.  “I’m mixed with that,” he said.  “I tried to use only hybrids, but that’s becoming more difficult.  You don’t have as many choices.  There’s guys that are selling organic meat, and I know the guys that supply it, and whether the guys that are getting it know it or not, it’s there, they’re getting it and it’s there,” he cautions of GMO being in food even when it is labeled organic.

 

When it comes time for Thanksgiving at Northwind Farms, they are ready for the season to end.  “We’re so exhausted, we’re so tired, our bones ache, our fingers are so cut up,” he said. We put a lot of hours in every day.  We’re probably the most unhappy people at that moment.  My wife still insists on having the meal here, but I’m exhausted.”

 

Still, though, even with the exhaustion, Biezynski enjoys farming.  “I like raising animals and I like animals,” he said.  And as far as the customers?  Biezynski said, “They’re always satisfied.”

 

List of Turkey Farms:

 

Four Winds Farm

Gardiner, New York

 

McEnroe Farm

Millerton, New York

 

Quattro Game Farm

Pleasant Valley, New York

 

Northwind Farms

Tivoli, New York

 

Farmer’s Markets/Places to Buy Organic Turkeys:

 

Four Winds Farm

Cold Spring Farmer’s Market on Saturdays

New Paltz Farmer’s Market on Sundays

Woodstock Farmer’s Market on Wednesdays

 

McEnroe Farm

Farm Store 528-789-4191, located on Rt. 22 between Millerton & Armenia

Turkeys are available for Thanksgiving, but must be preordered, delivery is available

 

Quattro Game Farm

Farm Store 845-635-2018, located in Pleasant Valley

Union Square Farmers Market (Saturdays, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving)

Rhinebeck Farmer’s Market (Sunday through the Sunday before Thanksgiving)

They begin taking turkey orders on October 1.

 

Northwind Farms

Red Hook Outdoor Market on Saturday’s