This week I was able to make a contribution to a reporting piece regarding the supply-chain side of Thanksgiving turkey sales, published over at allrecipes.com.

Check it out here.

It was fun to have a part in the discussion from the small farmer perspective, since all the other voices were from much larger organizations.

I provided a little background about how we do our forecasting and the factors that go into the production cycle for turkeys. Since we focus on pasture raised turkeys, we can’t just grow out huge numbers of turkeys year-round. Our farming schedule is more seasonally influenced to ensure that our turkeys are on grass.

We start planning for the next season’s Thanksgiving turkeys in the winter, so we have to make some guesses on the number of turkeys to raise. In 2020 we kept our turkey numbers flat year over year and planned for smaller turkeys due to quarantine restrictions. For 2021 we bumped up the number of turkeys by about 10% and aimed for a slightly larger bird, anticipating more Thanksgiving gatherings and bigger groups of people compared to the previous year. Hopefully I guessed correctly. Ask me about it at the end of November…

And yes, if you are looking for a Thanksgiving turkey, we have them! Our certified organic, pasture raised turkeys are available for home delivery to folks living in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and all of New England.