Greg and I got started on this crazy farming adventure together back in 2015 and it all began with 150 little Thanksgiving baby turkeys.
After months tending to the animals, rotating them through borrowed pastures and learning how to build a farm on the fly, turkey day finally arrived.
This was my first time processing poultry and despite all the words of encouragement from Greg, I was totally unprepared. This might be best exemplified by the fact that I wore jeans (yes, jeans) for this very wet job and proceeded to get frost-bite, on both hands.
There was this important moment from our first turkey day that I don’t think I’ll ever forget. It came after we got a look at the birds, all cleaned and plump, sitting in the chill tanks. And after our bellies were filled with food. And after my hands, starting to warm up again, began to burn.
It was the moment that we realized that our brand new customers, the ones we worked so hard to find that first year and who didn’t know us from a hole in the wall, were coming to pick up their turkeys in 1 hour and literally NOTHING was ready.
Those precious birds had not yet been bagged, weighed or labeled, or sorted by size. The feathers and the blood and the guts were still in buckets and strewn about. It was also getting dark (very dark), and we didn’t bring any lights for customers to see us!
I’ve come to realize that there are two reasons why our business didn’t flop right then and there. The first is that we are lucky enough to have an incredible crew of friends (see the picture above) who were just as cold and exhausted from processing turkeys that day, but who chose to stay with us and help us till the bitter end. Bless them, right?
And the second is that we have amazing customers who were able to look past, what must have been, the most peculiar farm experience EVER and trust that their turkey they had just picked up from us was indeed safe for human consumption.
We just finished our 5th Turkey Day and lots of things are different now – we’re on our own farm, processing and pickup happens on separate days, things were organized and in place weeks in advance. But a few things are absolutely constant – we still have that amazing group of farmer friends who help us pull the whole thing off AND those incredible families who trust us to grow their food. This is what gratitude feels like on the farm this week.
Your Farmers,
Jenny & Greg