A Hedgebrook Dairy Farm Turkey Will Grace Our Thanksgiving Table This Year

Gobble, Gobble It Up!

Hedgebrook Farm, the dairy farm where we board our cow Aster (who, by the way, just had a baby!) offered to sell us our Thanksgiving Turkey this year. Since the whole Hartke clan and some of my family will be with us, I thought it would be wonderful to get our turkey from them. The breed of turkey is a Texas White, and this is a photo I took of some of these beautiful, patriotic looking birds.

When I first saw their red, white and blue faces, I understood where Ben Franklin got the idea to have turkeys be our national bird! That idea didn’t fly, I guess because the early settlers didn’t cotton to the idea of serving up the national bird on the holiday dinner table!

Last year was my first experience with a heritage, pasture-raised bird. I learned that brining these types of birds is pretty important, to help tenderize the meat. Since they are free roaming and are very muscular birds, they need to be cooked a little differently than their conventionally raised competitors. Be sure and ask the farmer his suggestions on how to cook these beautiful, strong birds.

Local Flavors Farm Buyers Club put out this notice yesterday: “Turkeys! Turkeys! Turkeys! This is the last week to order your Thanksgiving Turkeys! We’re offering turkeys from both True Grit Farm and Ayrshire Farm this year. For more information, pricing and our delivery schedule, please visit our website at: www.FarmBuyersClub.com/turkeys”

For more information about one of these farms, Ayrshire Farm see this recent article:

Ayrshire Farm Beef Tasting - Judge’s Panel

by Jordan Wright, Whisk and Quill Blog

I recently received an intriguing invitation to judge a beef tasting competition at the magnificent Ayrshire Farm in Upperville, VA. Participating would be the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, Humane Animal Care, Slow Foods USA, Chefs Collaborative and dozens of cattle ranchers, who brought their heirloom beef for the tasting, would be in attendance. It was all to be held at Ayrshire Farm, a picture perfect farm that is a working model for the sustainable breeding and natural raising of farm animals.

Ayrshire Farm, which prides itself on raising rare and endangered breeds on 800 rolling acres that most pigs, cows, turkeys and chickens could only dream of, is owned by Sandy Lerner, the co-founder of Cisco Systems, the networking systems giant. They employ strict organic farming methods and their livestock and vegetables are raised without hormones, pesticides or antibiotics. In 2004 they became the first farm in Virginia to meet Certified Humane Raised and Handled standards.

To Continue reading, visit Jordan’s Whisk and Quill blog.

This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays. See more scrumptious articles on local foods on Kelly the Kitchen Kop blog.