Tag: free range

Thanksgiving 2010

Thanksgiving was a big success this year. Good food, good people, and a good time. There was a total of eight of us for dinner, it was a perfect number.

I did most of the cooking, and I wasn’t as flustered or crazy as I usually feel during the holidays. I tried to remain calm and relaxed and it was actually fun to prepare and cook the meal.

I was super organized, and that helped a lot. I made a list of all the meal items, and specified an approximate time that I needed to start to prepare. Turkey was scheduled for 9am, turkey breast was set for 10am, slow cooker stuffing was started at 8am. Keeping a detailed schedule reduced a lot of the stress for sure!

And of course, I had the help of a wonderful husband, and as usual, he’s my patient rockstar!!!

Turkey

We purchased a local free range 8 pound turkey from a nearby small farm. I was excited to try a truly natural bird. I knew it might not be the choice for all my guests, so I also purchased a 4 pound boneless turkey breast for those that enjoyed more white meat.

The taste of the free range turkey was definitely not conventional. I could taste the difference, and unfortunately, it was definitely a tougher, chewier texture. There was more connective tissue. More research on roasting methods are probably needed. I think it would have been better if braised, but how can anyone easily braise a big ole turkey! I might try lowering the oven temp and slow cook for a longer time.

The experience has not turned me off. I am definitely going to keep purchasing local humanely raised poultry, but I don’t know if I’ll purchase from the same farm again. It was disappointing to not receive a packet of giblets with my bird, and it seemed to be “processed” in haste.

One of its legs was broken, so the end of the leg was sagging, and there was a bit of gauze-like substance still attached to the broken leg. Plus, a few feathers remained, which really wasn’t a big deal. They were easy to pull off.

ETA: I just realized that my turkey was also missing the wing tips. Something didn’t seem right. All the Food Network chefs suggested folding the wings back under the back, but we couldn’t figure out how to do that with our bird. I think it was because the wing tips were gone. hmm, I wonder why they didn’t include the giblets and wing tips. Keeping them for their own turkey broth/stock? Strange and disappointing.

I don’t know if all locally raised fresh birds are like this; I realize that it’s going to be more rustic, and it could be that I’m just not used to the primitiveness… and it certainly hasn’t turned me off from trying other local farms! I just don’t know that this particular farm would be my choice in the future.

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Picked Up My Free Range Farm Fresh Thankgiving Turkey

Yesterday afternoon, I drove to the farm and picked up my wonderful fresh (frozen) truly free range turkey. It was an amazing experience.

When I drove it, there was another small group visiting the farm, so I got to tag along to see the new baby calf/cow in the barn. He was friendly and so cute – 6 months old.

We asked Mrs Farmer (I’m not sharing the real name of the farm since I don’t know if they want extra publicity since they are so small) all sorts of questions and it was fascinating! Her grass fed cows are raised for 18 months. Now that I have a new chest freezer, I can purchase more beef from her. The next batch should be ready in mid December.

So, I took my 9lb turkey home, and put it in the freezer for now. I think the plan is taking it out to defrost tomorrow (Sunday) morning. The online consensus is that it takes about 24 hours for each 5 pounds of turkey. So, theoretically 2 days should be enough time. It’s also safe to leave a defrosted turkey in the fridge for 2 days, and I’ll start the brining process on Wednesday afternoon sometime.

I have a large anodized aluminum pot and I’ll place the turkey in an oven roasting bag with the brining liquid. This is my first time brining, so I plan on taking notes and photographs. Oh gosh, I hope I cook this bird correctly!

Cancelled the Jaindl Farms Thanksgiving Turkey

It’s funny how some blog posts evolve. This started out as a post about ordering a “free range” Jaindl Farms turkey, and progressed into an investigation and a personal lesson learned on how turkeys are raised.

So, I placed my online order for the Thanksgiving turkey at Whole Foods Market, but so many thoughts kept nagging me. Where was my so-called “free range” bird coming from?

On the Whole Foods web site, it states:

From Jaindl Farms in Orefield, Pennsylvania. Our free-range turkey has 54% more white meat and 55% less fat. This has been the turkey of choice at the White House for more than 40 years!

It all sounds fabulous, until you really think about it. How are they raising turkeys with all that white meat? And we all know the “free range” claim isn’t always what it seems, so I decided to google “Jaindl Farms” and found their web site.

Jaindl Farms in Orefield, Pennsylvania

On their home page, message from David Jaindl states that they sell 750,000 turkeys annually. Three quarters of a million turkeys? Holy giblets batman! With numbers like that, how on earth could they humanely raise that many birds? My guess is they don’t, so I did some further reading.

Quote from David Jaindl:

Corn and soybeans, the main ingredients in our freshly mixed turkey feed are grown on our 10,000 acres of farm land. Jaindl Farms is a fully integrated turkey farm, breeding, hatching, growing, processing and marketing our premium turkeys.

So they grow their own corn and soybeans (and since they don’t state the opposite, I assume it’s GMO) for the turkey feed (1,800 tons of feed weekly). Using farm land to grow only two types of crops for the sole purpose to feed animals. hmmm. That doesn’t sound like sustainable, responsible farming, does it?

It’s just so big business – from the photos of the owners in their fancy suits (they don’t look like farmers, do they?) to the fact that they supplement their income with land development and rental management. I started to feel guilty for supporting a farm like this.

And then I found the Philadelphia Weekly article written about them back in 2008.

Their turkeys are bred to be “broad breasted and short legged.” Turkeys grown like this cannot walk very well, and they certainly cannot breed in a normal way.

The article stated that Jaindl Farm’s 23,000 turkey hens are artificially inseminated once a week for four months. By my calculation, each of the 23,000 hens needs to lay at least 32 eggs to produce the 750,000 turkeys needed for sale. And it’s just as bad for the poor male tom turkeys. Poor guys have to endure being milked for their sperm.

It’s all so cruel.

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