If you’re like most people, the first word that follows “Thanksgiving” is usually “turkey.”
And if you’re like most people, you’ll buy one of those huge birds from a grocery store that gets them from outside San Diego.
This year, a Valley Center project hopes you switch up the tradition and buy the centerpiece of a Thanksgiving meal locally.
On nearly 300 acres of sprawling farm land, 200 turkeys cluck and gobble in their poultry pens in the weeks leading up to the holiday.
They’re virtually the only ones raised and sold in a local zip code.
“It just makes a difference in the meat and the quality of the bird,” said Noel Stehly, the owner of Stehly Farms Organics. “It’s just a better way to raise them.”
Stehly is partnering with Taj Farms to pasture and sell these birds of November, ready to go on San Diego tables at the end of the month.
Local
“If you’ve had a fresh turkey, you’ll never go back to a frozen bird,” said Jack Ford, Taj Farms owner.
Both men are local leaders in the growing farm-to-table movement. Words like sustainable, organic and biodynamic are part of their life mission to get people to think differently about what they eat and where it comes from.
But quality does not come cheap. These birds run about $160 a piece – six to seven times more than a store-bought bird.
They’re hand fed three times a day with brewery grain and homegrown veggies fit for humans.
Unlike those in a store – factory-bred, frozen and in some cases processed over the summer – these turkeys will live right up to Thanksgiving.
Their onsite demise is based on when the customer wants it.
“Get it cold in an ice bath and then into a bag and then packed in an ice chest and put in a cooler, in that ice chest, and delivered either that day or the next day,” said Stehly.
The farmers are offering a box of their vegetables to round out a perfect Thanksgiving feast.
Giving what it costs them to raise the turkeys, they don’t anticipate to turn much of a profit.
They say this is about the bigger picture.
“It’s an education, and it’s teaching people what good food is and cheaper food is not better food,” said Ford.
