The idea of green living has come home to roost, literally, as Thanksgiving dinner increasingly involves organic or natural turkeys to serve loved ones. But just as there are many recipes for the best dinner, so there many variations of turkey that, while not necessarily labeled organic, qualify as healthy food.
“There is a lot of interest. We do sell a good number of organic turkeys and each year the interest increases,” said Leigh Denardo the marketing team leader for the Whole Foods Market store in White Plains. The company has outlets in Connecticut and Long Island and elsewhere in the Northeast as well as in Canada and England. She said the reason is not hard to figure even beyond the rising interest in natural foods. “They are delicious.”
The organic turkeys the store in White Plains sell come from a supplier who has contracts with farmers in Pennsylvania, all of whom follow a chain of reporting requirements to ensure that consumers who are paying for organic poultry are getting what they pay for ”“ birds who eat organic grain and are not injected with growth hormones or other drugs. They are not drastically more expensive, about $4 per pound, as opposed to $3 per pound for a Plainville natural turkey.
Â
And it is not only larger markets that are seeing the interest in natural and local foods rising among consumers.
“We can”™t keep up with the demand for our organic turkeys,” said Annie Farrell, farm manager at Millstone Farm in Wilton, Conn., who along with owners Betsy and Jesse Fink have created an example of sustainable agriculture from the ground up.
Â
The farm raises organic poultry and produce including about three dozen “heritage” turkeys each year for sale to farm volunteers and workers as well as those who are lucky enough to sign up early. “We don”™t really advertise, they are just sold out long before Thanksgiving,” Farrell said. “People come out of the woodwork, we never have enough to meet the demand. And we like to have a few ourselves.”
The birds are expensive to raise and expensive to eat; about $8 a pound. And at that price, Farrell said, the farm barely breaks even, but undertakes the effort to keep the breeds alive. She said the birds would flourish and the price diminish if more people buy in.
Farrell said the heritage or heirloom birds are varieties that are smaller, tastier and healthier for people and for the ecosystem than the traditional turkey that may be grown in a cage and fed on grain and pumped up on chemicals.
“Our heirloom breeds are not commercial turkeys, they are heritage breeds, which mean they still have the characteristics of a real turkey ”“ they can breed, they can fly and they can walk,” Farrell said .
She adds that although the birds can fly, “They don”™t want to fly away because they have such a great life here.”
Â
The Millstone Farm raises 15 varieties of heritage turkey, including the Bourbon Red, the Spanish Black and the Royal Palm. She said the breeds began to develop back when America”™s first Europeans were taking over and bringing familiar poultry along with them. Spanish Black Turkey”™s were bred with American native wild turkeys to create the Narragansett Turkey.
Â
Other breeds developed elsewhere particular to their region but many began fading away and some went extinct as large scale commercial poultry production idealized big breasted Butterball-style birds. Farrell said they are neither a natural nor a healthy bird.
“They are bred to have such large breasts that after several months they literally cannot walk,” Farrell said, adding that the birds are often caged and grain-fed, which results in development of Omega-6 fatty acids, that are tied to harmful health effects, while the “pasture fed” birds she raises results in birds that are rich in Omega-3 fatty acids that are said to have beneficial health properties.
Farrell traces the growth of interest in healthy and local foods and sustainable agriculture and in particular the rise of interest in heritage turkeys to Marian Burros, a New York Times food writer who first wrote about heritage turkeys in the 1990s. “Sometimes when a well-known writer wants something then everyone wants one,” she said.
The Bourbon Red heritage breed is the most popular, she said, as well as her personal favorite. A small bird, “It tastes delicious, very much like a wild turkey, with lots of dark meat.”
