Farmers Form Partnerships to Offer Mail-Order Thanksgiving Dinners During Pandemic
Thanksgiving is usually a time when farmers, especially those who breed turkeys, rejoice with a slew of revenue coming their way. But like most things in 2020, times are just a bit different. Current CDC guidance suggests that those large family gatherings shouldn’t occur this year, and should instead be replaced by smaller, more intimate gatherings.
On an average Thanksgiving, Americans consume about 46 million turkeys with an average weight of 15 pounds each. That means those big turkeys will be in less demand as many families need less food to put on the table. As farmers face yet another challenge, many are getting creative. Some have formed partnerships with other food businesses and farmers to offer mail-order Thanksgiving packages featuring creative offerings.
See more: How to Host Thanksgiving: Do’s and Don’ts
The Need for Less Turkey
Shelly Herman, co-owner of Irv & Shelly’s Fresh Picks, a farm delivery service that works with an alliance of local Midwest farmers, is offering a few different choices this year. She has standard-sized turkeys, smaller turkeys and, new this year, boneless skin-on turkey breasts from Gunthorp Farms in La Grange, Indiana. Although they are still taking orders, she can see from the initial orders that 75% of them are for smaller turkeys or just the turkey breast.
“For some farmers, Thanksgiving is their whole year,” Herman says. And it’s not as easy to just decide they will raise smaller turkeys this late in the game. Farmers plan far in advance, and those who don’t have processing plants on the farm have to book their processing far in advance as well.
With the larger, more commercial processing plants having issues, sustainable, pasture-based farms like Tea Hill Farms in Loudonville, Ohio, which produces about 1,000 turkeys a year and processes them on their farm, started receiving phone calls from those who want to process on their land.
“We are now booking one and a half years out – it’s crazy,” says Cara Tipton, who manages the family farm.
This year she partnered with Ohio neighbor The Chef’s Garden to ship out turkeys. Tea Hill doesn’t typically ship – their consumers are generally restaurants or those who pick up from the farm. But earlier this year, The Chef’s Garden was able to successfully pivot to offer a robust national delivery program, so the partnership made sense. The Chef’s garden provides everything needed for the sides, while Tea Hill is able to distribute its turkeys across the country.
A Surplus of Vegetables
Like turkey farmers, vegetable farmers like those at The Chef’s Garden are also dealing with a surplus of produce, as they typically supply restaurants across the country. At the beginning of the pandemic, they started shipping produce boxes and did a few partnerships with national chefs and other farms, so this partnership was a no brainer for them.
For a Thanksgiving dinner without the turkey, they’re offering small, medium and large “Everything but the Turkey” boxes filled with typical Thanksgiving produce, including potatoes, sweet potatoes and squash, plus fall herbs, fall salads, mixed roasting vegetables and more. Included with each box are recipes and a grocery list to complete your Thanksgiving meal.
Similarly, Irv and Shelly’s Fresh Picks is offering a “Thanksgiving Fixins” box complete with produce and recipes from their network of farms.
Forgoing the Turkey
Turkeys can be intimidating to prepare, and if you’re used to someone else stepping up to the challenge on Thanksgiving, it can be a daunting task. That’s how Boonville Barn Collective, a farm-to-jar spice farm hat grows chilies for signature Piment De’Ville spices, got the idea to partner with other local farmers to create something different. Krissy Scommegna, owner of Boonville, reached out to Vincent Ricchiuti from Enzo Olive Oil Company and Paul Greive from Pasturebird to offer something unique. The result is the “Thanksgiving Chicken Change-Up,” a mail-order Thanksgiving dinner that includes four half chickens from Pasturebird, a jar of Piment De’Ville, Enzo Olive Oil, and Jacobsen Salt out from Portland, Oregon.
“We thought about the fact that not everyone was going to cook a 20-pound turkey,” says Ricchiuti. “And we figured all of our small companies could provide a beautiful option for Thanksgiving.”
The kit comes with instructions on how to prepare the fresh pasture-raised birds, plus a recipe for lemon potatoes to make it a full meal.
The package, available on the Pasturebird website, has been well-received, and they plan to offer other creative packages for upcoming holidays.