As some of you who read my column earlier this month know, I was very excited that my family was going to eat a locally raised turkey for Thanksgiving.
On Thursday, our local turkey was a huge success. He weighed in at a whopping 36 pounds — more than enough the 11 of us who gathered together for our annual feast.
Our turkey was a broad-breasted bronze, a breed created after Europeans arrived in the Americas by cross-breeding domesticated European turkeys with native wild turkeys.
Our bronze was raised at Lazy Eight Stock Farm in Paint Lick, just a few miles from his ultimate destination at my mother-in-law’s house in Berea.
The turkey was ordered about a month in advance and picked up de-feathered and ready to be cooked from a local farmers market.
The bird was so large, it will be feeding all the different members of my family for several weeks to come. We had to cook it upside down because it was so big it didn’t balance normally right-side up.
When we pulled it out of the oven, it was so tender and juicy it began falling off the bone right there on the cutting board. It wouldn’t surprise me if being raised locally as a free-range turkey helped improve its quality and taste.
It was one of the tastiest turkeys I’ve ever eaten. If you didn’t get a local turkey for Thanksgiving, it’s not too late to eat local for other holiday events.
Farms like Lazy Eight offer vegetables, herbs, eggs, meats like poultry and beef and more.
Eating locally supports local business, protects the environment and is super-tasty.
Now that I've had a taste of local turkey, I want to try to create an entire meal from locally-sourced foods.
I could go on for a while about the benefits of eating locally, but all that turkey is making me sleepy, so I think it’s time for a nap.
Amanda’s Animal Fact of the Week:
Species of the turkey subfamily have been around since at least 23 million years ago, and they may share a substantial amount of DNA with dinosaurs.
