Volume 14, Issue 2-3, Winter-Spring 2004

2003 in Review
A close call, but we're ready for 2004

It was one tough year for raising Turkeys.  But tough as it was, the 18^th year of The Turkey Farm ended favorably and, as a result of the changes made in the past two years, the farm is on solid footing for its next few years.

Total sales dropped nearly 9 percent, but retail sales rose 9.6 percent.  Both figures are in line with our plans to scale back and to reorient toward retail sales without abandoning our wholesale business. 

If you are a regular reader of The Turkey Times (Summer 2003 issue), you already know it was a difficult year for raising Turkeys.  Losses to weather and predators reduced the number of birds we had available for Thanksgiving, and we also had to contend with the falling value of the U.S. dollar and with human errors (made off and on the farm).

But the year wasn’t without successes as we sold out again at Thanksgiving, had a strong Christmas, increased our sales at farmers’ markets and nearly held our own at wholesaling.  Our sales at the Fryeburg Fair fell 10 percent.

Some declines in sales were by design.  We reduced our sales of baby Turkeys by half.  Discontinuation of two wholesale accounts and the closing by the owners of another store reduced our sales of year-round frozen items by more than 11 percent, about in line with our plans.  Comparing same-store sales, we were off 1.9 percent, but we made one less delivery in 2003 because in November we had no Turkeys to process for frozen items.

Other declines were the result of the weather and predators.  The two busiest days of the Fryeburg Fair are usually opening day and Saturday.  In 2003, rain fell on both days, heavily on Saturday, when sales were off 43 percent.  Opening day was off 19 percent.  Overall, fair sales dropped 10 percent, the first time in 13 years that our Fryeburg sales fell. 

Because we had fewer birds available after the losses to weather and predators,  our Thanksgiving, sales fell by 3 percent. 

Christmas sales, not a huge factor in the mix, fell by  4 percent, largely because three wholesale accounts that ordered Christmas birds in 2002 did not order in 2003.

On the bright side, our sales of share in Community Supported Agriculture, rose by 15 percent, largely through an increase in sharers who shop at the Brunswick Farmers’ Market.  Total share sales rose to 46, the first time we have sold more than 45 shares since 1998.

And we had 12 work sharers in CSA, up from five in 2002. 

Sales at our farmstore (not including Thanksgiving and Christmas) rose by 3 percent.    Finally, our sales at the Saturday farmers’ market in Brunswick went up about 6 percent, although we sold there one day fewer that in 2002.  We also sold at the Sandy River Farmers’ Market in Farmington. 

If you look at our sales for 2003, we were up in  retail  overall  and down in wholesaling, which  was exactly in line with our intentions.

Three human errors caused problems  last year.  The first occurred at the hatchery of British United Turkeys of America.  Our main flock for Thanksgiving  was ordered as 200 toms and 1,000 hens.  But we were shipped at least 320 toms –  as hatchlings, poults are indistinguishable by gender to most of us, so we don’t know the sex of our birds until they are about 12 weeks old – making us short at Thanksgiving in the ranges of 14 to 18 pounds. 

The hatchery insists it shipped the correct order, but when we vaccinated those birds in September, we learned that we had at least 300 toms in that flock.  We have changed hatcheries for this year. 

During the summer, our feed mill mixed up an order, and turkeys that needed their finishing grain before slaughter received instead a grower ration that made their frames larger without putting meat on those bigger bones.  The mill has compensated us for the lost production.

We lost more than $2,000 worth of  young Turkeys and meat during the Fryeburg Fair when the young man taking care of the farm – he had done a wonderful job of tending the farm a year earlier – shut too many young birds into one bay of the brooder house and more than 100 piled up and died.  And, he left our walk-in freezer turned off, allowing more than $1,400 worth of  meat to rot.  Needless to say, we fired him. 

The mayor of Vancouver, B.C., once told a reporter, “I don’t care what you write about me, just spell my name right, because all publicity is good publicity.”

Our farm received lots of publicity in 2003, and not only did reporters spell our names right, they wrote very positively about our farm.

The publicity began with a feature in Maine Times, a monthly magazine that was making circulation and advertising strides until its owner, Christopher Hutchins, killed it this winter. 

Associate editor Ruth Jacobs spent a day at the farm and followed up with e-mails and calls to nail down facts.  A photographer spent half a day here.

We have had the article and photos  mounted and laminated for display.

Shortly after that article, in October, we were in the annual business review of the Central Maine Newspapers.  Reporter Mary Jane Kaniuka told of business choices we have faced and decisions made and pending.

The biggest blast of publicity came in mid-November when the Associated Press featured our farm as the Thanksgiving story on the national wire .  Reporter Jerry Harkavy spent an afternoon here, and photographer Pat Wellenbach snapped pictures of a turkey pecking at the whiskers of farmer Bob  Neal. 

That story and photo ran in newspapers from coast to coast and beyond, including Maine’s five largest dailies.  Fans of the University of Maine women’s basketball team, in Hawaii for the team’s first two games of the season, brought us copies of the Honolulu newspaper’s publication of the story and picture.

Readers sent copies from newspapers in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Texas, Florida, Indiana, Illinois, Washington, Oregon, California and Wisconsin.  Several sent e-mails wanting to order turkeys or wanting to know how to get into turkey farming.  A high-school classmate saw it in her newspaper in California and sent along a note.

Then, the week before Thanksgiving, Amy Sinclair featured us in the “Where’s Amy?” segment on Channel 13 in Portland.  She and a cameraman were here on a day so bitterly cold that waterers and the pumpkins we had set out for the turkeys had frozen.

Finally, the day before Thanksgiving, Eric Linebach and Mike Violette interviewed us on Maine in the Morning on WVOM, 103.9 FM.

The Maine Sunday Telegram is set to cover our farm on May 9 as part of a series about towns that have maintained their Maine character.

The mayor or Vancouver was right, and all the publicity was good.

Goals 2004:  More emphasis on retail

Every year, we set goals for the farm.  These are developmental goals, as opposed to goals we must meet every day and week just to keep the farm going.

Of our five goals for 2003, we met two and partly met three.

Our first goal was to develop an order form to use when customers ask for items to be prepared or saved.  The form is set up, so count this a goal met.  Now we need to use it regularly.

Our second goal was to improve our farmers’ market operation.  We wanted to make it faster and easier for customers to pick up their Turkey.  We accomplished what we set out to do, which was to build a higher counter and work space, to improve our signage (menu, promotions, etc.) and to add two items to our lineup.  We also joined the Sandy River Farmers’ Market in Farmington, and sold there 33 times.  Count this also as a goal met.

We still need to finish drawing up our plan for Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points, our third goal.  We can call this a goal partly met because the state of Maine, which has taken over review of producer-grower slaughterhouses, has accepted for now the plan we are using, which we got from Misty Knoll Farm in New Haven, Vt., a big (100,000 broilers, 21,000 Turkeys) federally inspected slaughterhouse.   We are doing everything the plan calls for but we haven’t yet written it all out.

Our fourth goal was to repair and improve fencing.  This has become an almost annual goal as frost heaves and the force of birds pressing through the fence to eat weeds take a toll every year on the woven wire, the fence posts and the gates.  We put a permanent electric fence around our south ranges.  We also built a shelter on one range, and we improved the woven-wire fencing that defines each of our nine ranges.  Count this a goal partly met.

Finally, we wanted to clear more land around our ranges, out to a distance of 50 feet from each fence line.  We made little progress with this  goal, but we can still count it as a goal partly met.   We cleared a strip of about 200 feet by 30 feet and another of about 100 feet by 20 feet.  We still have to clear about four times that amount of land, so we can assess our progress on this goal as partly met.

       GOALS FOR 2004

After 18 years of accepting business from all comers, we began consolidating our operations in 2003, following up on a major goal of 2002.  

This year, we are entering the second stage of shifting our focus from wholesale to retail.  The first five of our seven goals are specific to increasing the retail proportion of our income. 

Our first goal for 2004 is to reduce by 30 percent our commitment to wholesaling (in number of accounts served).  At the start of 2003, we sold to 23 wholesale accounts, almost all of them with year-round frozen items as well as fresh holiday Turkeys.  We need to reduce that number to 16.

Age and workload are catching up with us, and we can no longer spend five or six days a month cutting and packing meat and three days a month delivering it.  The only way to maintain that pace would be to hire more help, and our margins on these items are so scarily thin that much of this work must be done by the owners and regular crew rather than by added help.

 We are also going to concentrate our farmers’ markets activities.  In 2004, we need to reduce the number of farmers’ market days by nearly half. 

Our third goal is to realize a dream we have held vaguely for years, to develop at least six smoked Turkey items.  We have bought a smoker and will develop our own line of products.  With a smoker, we are freed from regulations that permitted us to take Turkeys off the farm for smoking only when the birds had already been ordered by the customer.  Now we can offer smoked Turkey as a standard item, always available.

Our  fourth  goal  for 2004 will be to increase  the retail  proportion of our Thanksgiving  sales to 48 percent of the total number of birds we sell.  This would mean that 55 percent of our Thanksgiving income would come from retail sales.  In 2003 about 40 percent of our birds were sold at retail, netting not quite 50 percent of our Thanksgiving income.

We took reservations for 629 retail birds last year, and more than 600 of those people showed up.  But we stopped taking reservations on Nov. 11, and believe we could easily have sold 800 at retail.

Fifth, we want to make our Fryeburg Fair operation even better by adding an oven exclusively for Turkey legs.  We want to move the sales of legs to the middle of our three tents, where we sell beverages and Turkey soups.  With one oven dedicated drumsticks, we believe we can have legs available during all the hours we are open.  To make room for the new drumsticks operation, we will give up making cold sandwiches, which we have offered for the past two years.  The cold sandwiches never did well enough to justify the effort, so we can improve our operation by eliminating them in favor an item customers clamor for every year.

Sixth, we want to build a shelter on our largest range.  The sideless shed built last year works so well that we want to build another to augment the natural shelter on the 1.5-acre range at the northwest corner of our farm.  We can get the posts for the shelter from our land clearing, and  we won’t need much bought lumber. The shelter can help head off some of the losses to weather that we suffered in 2003.

Our final goal is to finish up two of the partly met goals for 2003.  One is to finish our land-clearing and the other is to upgrade our electric fencing on the north ranges to the standard we established on the south ranges last year.  These seem to be nearly perennial goals, and this year we got a head start on them during the winter.

In fact, we hope that in 2005, we can report to you that for the first time The Turkey Farm met all of its established goals.

Ready or not, farmers’ markets set
to open with new  items

Farmers’ market season begins soon.

On Saturday, May 8, we will resume selling at the Brunswick Farmers’ Market at Crystal Spring Farm on the Pleasant Hill Road.  This will be our fourth season at Crystal Spring and our sixth in Brunswick.

The purchase of a smoker (see article on goals) has made possible two improvements at Brunswick.  We can now develop a line of smoked Turkey items to take to market each week.  We’ll begin with smoked Turkey breast, both sliced and whole. 

And, we’ll be able to serve lunch at  market, starting with smoked Turkey sandwiches.  

The Saturday market now has no connection to the downtown Brunswick market on Tuesdays and Fridays.  We had withdrawn from the downtown market two years ago, but half of our annual dues had continued to go to that organization, even though it did nothing for our farm.  With that tie severed, all of our dues now go to support the market at which we sell.

The market is open from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. every Saturday through at least Oct. 16.  We are not available for the first Oct. 2 and 9 because of the Fryeburg Fair.

The Sandy River Farmers’ Market in Farmington opens on May 7, and we will begin selling there in July.  In 2003, we had only a 10-week stretch during which we met our sales goal, so we will focus on that period from July until the Fryeburg Fair.

We will take smoked Turkey items to Farmington, but not lunch items. 

Farmington’s market is 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.  But, the heat at the market site can cause difficulties for our frozen and fresh meat items, even though most are frozen and all are refrigerated.  So, when the temperature is in the 80s or 90s, we may leave market before it closes.  On hot days at Farmington, please come early to be certain we are still there.    

Mickey’s got it just about right

We have never much liked the Golden Arches and probably don’t eat there once a decade.  But give credit where credit is due.   McDonald’s, the largest restaurant corporation in the world, has become a leader in three of the practices we consider basic on our farm: animal welfare, genetically engineered crops and medication of animals.  Years ago, McDonald’s hired Dr. Temple Grandin of Colorado State University to design more humane slaughterhouses.    Dr. Grandin says she can experience an animal’s last  moments.  And, she has been known to walk through slaughter plants on all fours to get a  “cow’s eye” view of the process.  Her key innovation was to design slaughterhouses two stories high.  Cattle walk around a circular ramp up to the second floor and enter the building without knowing what is hitting them.  Literally. Most animals sense impending death, but coming around 180 degrees on a ramp and climbing all the while, cattle do not smell or see what is happening inside the abattoir.  They are stunned as they walk through the door, so their end is as nearly painless as it can be.  McDonald’s requires all animals from which its meat is made to be slaughtered in this manner.  And, McDonald’s is so large that processors who want its business follow its rules.  (Dr. Grandin is autistic but has learned to live with autism.  She tells her personal story in a wonderful book, Thinking in Pictures, that she wrote nearly 10 years ago.)

Humane slaughter has been one of our rules since day one.  We stun turkeys before killing them so they won’t be aware of their fate.  And, we handle them with respect in the holding pen and while we’re rounding up and driving them to the slaughterhouse.

A couple  of  years  ago,  McDonald’s  decided it would not use genetically engineered potatoes for its french fries. And to this day, no potato growers that we know of in Maine – many of whom supply McDonald’s – are growing the genetically modified New Leaf potato.  McDonald’s made this move shortly after (we’re not implying cause and effect) we began feeding our turkeys only grain that has not been genetically engineered.  That was in 2001.  The insistence on conventional seed stock means we are not taking chances with human side effects as yet untested for and we are not risking releasing into an environment organisms that were not meant to grow there.  The vast majority of genetically engineered crops may be benign, but the science simply isn’t anywhere near complete.

Finally, McDonald’s is requiring its growers to gradually swear off antibiotics used in other than therapeutic ways.  Something like 85 percent of all antibiotic use in the United States is for growth promotion and other non-therapeutic purposes in food animals, according to figures cited at a conference on antibiotic use in animals held last July in Portland.   Since hormones are illegal for poultry in this country, agribusiness growers use antibiotics that encourage birds’ systems to retain water, thus gaining weight artificially.  You pay for the water, then you pay more to run your oven while it cooks the water out.

 Agribusiness   poultry  growers also use antibiotics to reduce stress (turkey Valium?) in flocks that are packed too densely inside confinement barns.

Nothing in McDonald’s requirement would prevent a farmer from legitimate medical use of any antibiotic, and that is exactly our policy.  We never use antibiotics as background. But if an animal is sick or a flock is clearly threatened, we will use any appropriate medicine to improve the health of the sick bird or to protect the flock against the threat until we can apply some some other tool, such as vaccination.  To do otherwise would be cruel  to animals. 

U. S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine,  has said she will co-sponsor legislation to ban the non-therapeutic use of eight specific anti-biotics in animals used for meat.  Look for a spirited battle in Congress as the U.S. Department of Agriculture lines up behind drugmakers and agribusiness to defeat the bill she and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., are introducing.  At that conference in Portland, sponsored by the Union of Concerned Scientists, speakers said we cannot rely on the free market to solve the problem of antibiotics in food animals.

But the steps McDonald’s has taken clearly show just the opposite.  It is not the government – which we can safely predict will continue to support widespread background use of antibiotics – but the private sector that is moving on its own and in response to customers’ wishes to remove inhumane slaughter, genetic engineering and background  antibiotics in food animals.

And that’s just what we’re been doing for the 18 years The Turkey Farm has been in business.  Welcome to our world, Mickey.

 The Times keeps up with the times

 Farmers, traditionalists that we are, are reputed to be slow to change.  But in an economic and regulatory environment that constantly drives farmers from business, we must grab at new tools to help do things better.

So it is with The Turkey Times and the computer.

Those customers for whom we have postal addresses receive The Turkey Times by mail.  Those for whom we have only e-mail addresses get e-mail notification when a new issue is posted on our website so they can dial up and read it.. 

More people are using the computer to order, too.    In 2003, nearly half of our holiday Turkeys were ordered and/or confirmed by e-mail. It is easier for us, so long as the e-mail address is letter perfect.

We plan to convert part of our Thanksgiving ordering to e-mail.  Each year, we reserve a  Turkey for anyone who has bought the same size bird for the past two years.

We send post-card confirmations, but  three-quarters of the people who don’t show up at Thanksgiving are on this reservation list.  So, we will convert that process to e-mail this year or next to decrease the number of no-shows

Beyond the holiday season, several customers a week contact us by e-mail.  CSA sharers write to learn their balance, customers submit orders, and people ask about how we raise our Turkeys or about nutrition and healthfulness.

Firing up the computer second thing every day (after feeding baby Turkeys) has become part of our drill. 

We look forward to hearing from you via e-mail.  Or in any other way.

Where to buy our fine turkey items ?

Click Here for an updated list.