Our Thanksgiving Story

We so hope you and your family had a thankful Thanksgiving.

Today, i wanted to share our Thanksgiving Story. Our Story actually began back in the Spring of this year.

As you know, meat was scarce and we had ramped up our chicken production to help meet the needs of our customers. And, the hatcheries were feeling the stress as well with a lot of orders above normal.

Well, along about week 5 or 6 in of one of those batches we noticed one of the broiler chickens was not a chicken at all. But was a turkey!

I took a picture and sent to Moyer's sales manager and asked if he noticed anything different about this chicken. He quickly replied that it looks like a turkey - guess what, it chirps like one too! And I went on to explain how he came with a batch of broilers about 5 weeks prior.

So, we raised this turkey with the broilers. And, since turkeys need more like six months to grow before harvest we simply moved him to the next batch of chickens when we crated the current batch for processing.

Many of the mornings when I went outside I would speak to him and eventually he started chirping back to me.

Along about September, Beth said it was time to process the turkey. It was a good thing as he dressed 20#.

This was the absolute best turkey I have ever eaten. Beth did an outstanding job preparing him.

She started by slowly thawing and once thawed she made a sea salt brine where he soaked for a day.

Next, she injected a Chipotle based seasoning and had Rose's smoke him.

The turkey was very tender, juicy, and full of flavor and a big hit at our Thanksgiving meal.

This year we had a lot of calls for pastured turkeys. So, next year we will add turkeys to our farm and have them available before Thanksgiving for our customers to enjoy.