Paying $120 For a Local Turkey

[dogg57]

Millions of Americans with bloated stomachs and stuffed refrigerators probably don’t wake up the day after Thanksgiving with an acute craving for turkey.
More likely, they’re sick of it.
But Carla Growney is already taking orders for next year’s holiday. At her home in Tabernacle Township, Burlington County, she raises free-range turkeys that people reserve more than a year in advance for their family meals.
This is “slow food.” It takes time and care to produce, and Growney said she has found people throughout South Jersey who gladly sacrifice cost and speed for quality and peace of mind.
“It’s a movement where people care more about how it’s treated and how it’s fed than they’re concerned about the cost of it,” said Growney, owner of 7th Heaven Farm on Old Indian Mills Road.

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/...cle_3b0fc15c-1720-11e1-85e6-001cc4c002e0.html

 

[this_is_nascar]

I'm all for supporting local businesses, but only to a certain point. I think this passes that point many many dollars ago.

 

[Spung-Man]

D57,

Great food for thought. Timely too.

This Thanksgiving’s store-bought turkey was expertly cooked - crispy-golden outside, tender moist inside, yet all at the table lamented the bird lacked any real flavor. Ultimately we decided that the problem was one of quantity over quality. Everyone expects farm products to be as cheap, and as a result there has been this race to the bottom when it comes to flavor. Having grown up on a Richland poultry farm, I’m ashamed to admit that I too have been selling out my taste-buds to save a few bucks.

Simply put, traditional Pinelands agriculture has become economically marginalized. The Growney’s are artists, worthy of a handsome reward for preserving a heritage-based food system. Few of us think it indecent for Wheaton Village to charge $125 on an expertly-crafted melted lump of sand to put on a shelf, yet many of us find it difficult to spend $125 on expertly-crafted turkey to share with the ones we cherish most. Next year I know where I’m going to buy my bird, feeling privileged to have helped maintain a local livelihood.

If gourmets are willing to spend their tourism dollars supporting Pine Barrens agriculture, so be it, even promote it.

S-M

 

[Gibby]

Free-range fowl have unsurpassed flavor. Most of us are so used to birds that are fed production feed and hormones for fast growth and weight gain, that we wouldn't even recognize the taste of a free-range bird. Well worth the price. If anyone gets the chance, try a cut a beef from an animal feed only grass. You will be suprised. Your taste buds will definetly know the difference.

 

[RednekF350]

For a lesser amount in license and permit fees you can hunt and kill your own NJ wild turkey.

 

[Boyd]

I could run out into my yard and grab a wild turkey here... There are really a lot of them, and some are pretty bold.

 

[Spung-Man]

R-350,

I can make a venison-parsnip pie that’ll knock your barn doors off, but can hardly justify its cost after factoring in a license, ammo, and time afield required to fetch Milmay beef. A farmer’s sensibility prevents me form stalking prey anymore. Give me a broomstick to catch 50 sea bass from a wreck and I’ll be satisfied. Let others cast a fly all day for a trout.

Here’s a photo of some Meleagris gallopavo viewed through the screen of my office window entertaining “Clover,” our duck. They’ve since moved on towards Richland proper for hunting season, where its safer than in my woods. Coyotes don't seem to bother them, just people. Magnificent birds.

S-M

 

[46er]

Those are hardly free-range birds. I'd rather use the money saved to buy a couple more frozen hard as a brick commercial ones and donate to a food bank. Historians debate whether there ever was a Thanksgiving turkey as we celebrate now, more apt to be a goose or seafood. It wan't considered a holiday until Lincoln declared it in the mid 1800's.

 

[this_is_nascar]

D57,

Great food for thought. Timely too.

This Thanksgiving’s store-bought turkey was expertly cooked - crispy-golden outside, tender moist inside, yet all at the table lamented the bird lacked any real flavor. Ultimately we decided that the problem was one of quantity over quality. Everyone expects farm products to be as cheap, and as a result there has been this race to the bottom when it comes to flavor. Having grown up on a Richland poultry farm, I’m ashamed to admit that I too have been selling out my taste-buds to save a few bucks.

Simply put, traditional Pinelands agriculture has become economically marginalized. The Growney’s are artists, worthy of a handsome reward for preserving a heritage-based food system. Few of us think it indecent for Wheaton Village to charge $125 on an expertly-crafted melted lump of sand to put on a shelf, yet many of us find it difficult to spend $125 on expertly-crafted turkey to share with the ones we cherish most. Next year I know where I’m going to buy my bird, feeling privileged to have helped maintain a local livelihood.

If gourmets are willing to spend their tourism dollars supporting Pine Barrens agriculture, so be it, even promote it.

S-M

I'd venture to guess this is highly physiological, meaning anyone that spends this much on a turkey (just like those who spend $35 for steak) "believe" it tastes better. Does it actually? Maybe, maybe not, but how many who will spend that much will actually admit they overspent? Probably not many. Most people won't admit when they were disappointed over-spending on something that didn't meat their expectations. Those expectations that were set by something so overly inflated in price, that most will not have the courage to complain about, so the cycle continues (people overpaying, because of not admitting to the fact that got taken). To use the turkey as an example, what is that, 4 or 5 times the price of a "normal" turkey? Are you actually getting 4 or 5 times the favor or value? Who knows, but I'd tend to doubt it.

True story. I was asked to be responsible for the cupcakes at a gathering a couple years ago. I forget exactly how many, but it was several dozen cupcakes. The host of the party choose the place, placed the order and all I had to do was pick them up and pay for them using my money. That was my "contribution" to the gathering. The host choose this bakery because 1) it was local bakery (in Haddonfield), 2) his friends recommended it and 3) because it's a place you'd think would be pretty good.

Imagine my surprise to find out I was paying over $25 a dozen for cupcakes that were no larger than an extra-large egg. The whole time to the gathering, I'm thinking, "well, that's OK, I'm supporting a local business and they must be good due to the "you get what you pay for" theory". Let me tell you something. These were the most tasteless cupcakes my wife and I have ever eaten and we've eaten plenty over the course of our 50-years on this earth. Do I regret the purchase? You're damn right I do. Would I lose any sleep if that local business shutdown tomorrow? If all their products were as bad as those cupcakes, absolutely no sleep lost for me, shut it down.

 

[Jerseyman]

Historians debate whether there ever was a Thanksgiving turkey as we celebrate now, more apt to be a goose or seafood. It wan't considered a holiday until Lincoln declared it in the mid 1800's.

46er:

While you are correct that Thanksgiving did not become an official national holiday until Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 presidential proclamation, most states did set aside a day during the fall—with each state announcing its own date—for a Thanksgiving celebration. During the American War for Independence, the Continental Congress established a Day of Thanksgiving in November 1777, despite the desperate state of the revolution. Washington’s army had just suffered a tremendous defeat in the Fight for the Delaware and the Philadelphia Campaign and the rag-tag ranks of men marched wearily towards their winter quarters in Valley Forge. One of these soldiers, a 17-year-old private named Joseph Plumb Martin serving with the 8th Connecticut Regiment, noted with great sarcasm his feelings about this congressional proclamation in his diary:

“While we lay here there was a Continental thanksgiving ordered by Congress; and as the army had all the cause in the world to be particularly thankful, if not for being well off, at least, that it was no worse, we were ordered to participate in it. We had nothing to eat for two or three days previous, except what the trees of the fields and forests afforded us. But we must now have what Congress said—a sumptuous thanksgiving to close the year of high living, we had now nearly seen brought to a close. Well—to add something extraordinary to our present stock of provisions, our country, ever mindful of the suffering army, opened her sympathizing heart so wide, upon this occasion, as to give us something to make the world stare. And what do you think it was, reader?—Guess.—You cannot guess, be you as much of a Yankee as you will. I will tell you: it gave each and every man half a gill of rice, and a table spoon full of vinegar!! After we had made sure of this extraordinary superabundant donation, we were ordered out to attend a meeting, and hear a sermon delivered upon the happy occasion.”

Although our domestic economy, our international image, and our moral foundation have all suffered serious damage, we have, as a nation, come a long way from the days of the Pilgrims and those intrepid soldiers and militiamen who fought to establish a new nation.

Best regards,
Jerseyman

 

[Boyd]

I heard an interview with somebody who raises these "heritage turkeys" out in the Midwest, and they aren't really what I expected. He said they were brought to Europe by early settlers in the US and refined through breeding there. Then in the 19th century these European birds were brought back to the US where a few farmers have had flocks continuously for over 100 years. So they really have very little relation to the original American turkeys or the the wild turkeys that we see today.

Sounds interesting, and I do try to support local businesses, but I'll pass on this one...

 

[46er]

Yes there were many celebrations in years past. The natives had many harvest celebrations prior to the Pilgrims. Perhaps this is just something else taken from them.

 

[dogg57]

I say if you can swing it why not. Life is to Damn short.You dont have to spend like that everyday but when I watch the animals on tv fighting for tvs and phones For Christmas I rather use that money for a meal that will let me remember that day I enjoyed that 1 time a year meal.

 

[Spung-Man]

I like to think of the southern Pine Barrens an ethnic archipelago as described by Richard Stockton’s Libby Marsh (see Marsh, 1979; Berger & Sinton, 1985: 97-99). Her model suggested that railroad-era Pinelands Villages were settled by specific ethnic groups on higher ground parcels surrounded by swampy patches. Each “island” had a distinct suite of European refugees, something akin to city neighborhoods, only spread out. Germans came first (c.1848), followed by Italians (c.1870), Jews (c.1882), and others (e.g., Welsh, Ukrainians, Cossacks, Kalmyks, Puerto Ricans).

Many of these immigrants had left squalid conditions back home. They were tired of poverty, war, and hunger, and sought out an agrarian utopia at a discounted price. My family was no different. My father was named after an uncle who died of starvation along the Ukraine/Belarus border, so concern over food security was very real to us. We live pretty frugally but somehow make an exception when it comes to hospitality.

Prices will drop with competition anyway. A neighbor has been trying to bring back chickens to Richland Village, but the Township won't let him. It goes against the municipality's quest for "New Urbanism." I fought for and got a model "right-to-farm" ordinance passed here, so it may get interesting.​

S-M​

Berger, J., and Sinton, J.W., 1985: Water, Earth, and Fire: Land Use and Environmental Planning in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press. 228 pp.​

Marsh, E., 1979: The southern Pine Barrens: an ethnic archipelago. In Sinton, J.W. (ed.), Natural and Cultural Resources of the New Jersey Pine Barrens: Inputs and Research Needs for Planning. Proceedings and Papers of the First Research Conference on the New Jersey Pine Barrens, Atlantic City, N.J., May 22-23, 1978. Pomona, NJ: Stockton State College. pp. 192-198.​