Carol Clement starts thinking about Thanksgiving in January. Soon after the calendar flips to a new year, she reviews the numbers on how many turkeys were sold at her Heather Ridge Farm, in Preston Hollow, during the previous Thanksgiving. She sets her processing dates for a week before the next Thanksgiving, and then in March she places her order for turkey poults, raising the little hatchlings through spring and summer until they reach a desired plumpness in the fall.
But this year, Clement watched the news as much as she reviewed the previous year’s turkey sales. As numbers for COVID-19 seemed to tick up across the globe, she intuited that sales for her free-range turkeys might dwindle. And she was right, sort of: as the pandemic stretched into the holiday season, people’s demand for turkey remained; they just did not want the 25-pound gobblers that traditionally grace their Thanksgiving table. Instead, with the push to limit the amount of people gathered for the holiday to curb the spread of COVID-19, those cooking turkey wanted a bird that was proportional to a smaller crowd.
“Everybody wants a smaller turkey,” said Clement, who chose not to reduce the number of turkeys she normally purchases but instead set two processing dates, one for normal Thanksgiving turkeys and one for customers who preferred turkey parts. "People are always asking us for ground turkey," Clement said. She sent her eight largest birds to the processor earlier than usual to accommodate both the request for smaller turkeys and the desire for individual legs, breasts and ground turkey. The bones returned from the processor were made into stocks and gravy by farm chef Rob Handel and were available to customers for pre-orders, which Clement said began in August.
Offering turkey parts and ground turkey was a way for Clement to accommodate longtime customers, 75 percent who are repeat customers for Thanksgiving birds and are used to receiving a bird close to the requested size. “Last year was an ideal year. Everyone got a bird within a pound of what they asked for,” she said, with the average turkey ranging between 15 and 25 pounds. This year, there were many requests for birds in the 8- to 12-pound range, and Clement offered to have turkeys cut in half for customers willing to share birds. She also suggested customers try cooking goose this year — which she also raises on her farm — but mostly said she has been convincing people to love leftovers.
“We have seen that farms that (directly) market to consumers and can pivot with their marketing have fared better overall during the pandemic,” said Steve Ammerman of the New York Farm Bureau. With the close lines of communications she has with her customers, Clement was able to fabricate a turkey sales process that allowed her to still profit on her birds and not disrupt operations extensively. “I have a whole system for how we do turkey,” said Clement, who says pickup weekend is the kick-off for the holidays at her farm. Her husband roasts chestnuts outside of the farmhouse to share with guests and the usual two-people-at-a-time pickup system was reduced to one person allowed in the farmhouse to shop and pick up their bird every 15 minutes. “I’m going to miss the hubbub of the season,” she said
Ammerman said that a trend across small New York state farms is increased production (including turkey sales) because the pandemic has pushed consumers to buy local products. According to the USDA, Americans consume 16 pounds of turkey per person each year, up from 8 pounds per person in 1970. The focus on bigger birds that provide a generous feast for larger family holiday gathers and processing into individual cuts and ground meat at commodity-level poultry farms has given small farms the advantage of being able to closely monitor the needs of their customers and deliver a preferable turkey size.
While demand for small, local birds (or halves of turkey) is high, some farms still had birds available leading up to Thanksgiving. At Wm. H. Buckley Farm in Ballston Spa, only one size of turkey (in the 19-pound range) was offered this year for pre-ordering on its website, but just a few days before Thanksgiving it listed on its website that turkeys under 12 pounds were ready and available. As recently as Nov. 19, Mariaville Farm in Duanesburg advertised having turkeys still available for purchase.
The biggest problem for turkey farmers this year is the same as it is in other years: storage. Clement said small farms like hers do not have the capacity for harvesting birds early to store and freeze them until Thanksgiving pickup as a means to control their size and produce smaller birds. Most customers prefer a fresh bird, she said.
At Sap Bush Hollow Farm in West Fulton, Schoharie County, Shannon Hayes said it is hard enough to fit turkeys into the processing schedule as butchering turkeys is not as profitable for slaughterhouses as larger livestock, and ensuring repetitive processing dates is rarely an option. “It is a massive storage issue,” said Hayes on harvesting turkeys early, but still, of her 60 turkeys available this year, she anticipates selling all of them. Most of them will be sold as halves and customers have agreed to share the cost of the extra processing as a way to get a smaller portion of turkey this year. Customers will receive their turkeys in a self-serve pickup station outside of the farm store and cafe instead of coming into the store. Hayes said she will likely lose some sales if customers do not come into the store, but overall she forecasts that her Thanksgiving-related revenue will be about the same as in other years.
Those ordering turkeys from small, local farms have been gracious and understanding of the situation this year, Hayes said. She refers to it as a surplus of gratitude and a true bright in a stressful time. “The customers’ spirit of flexibility is so moving. They are saying to us, ‘You are doing your best and we appreciate it,’” Hayes said, and the meaning of Thanksgiving is extended beyond the moments at the table and customers recognize the diligent year-round toil local farmers offer so that the annual feast may be plentiful.
Deanna Fox is a food and agriculture journalist. www.foxonfood.com, @DeannaNFox
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Local farms on processing the star of Thanksgiving: The turkey - Times Union
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