Cari and Judd Culver and their Kelly Bronze turkeys in Crozet (Photo by Stephanie Breijo)
Before the mac ’n’ cheese, the marshmallow-topped sweet potatoes, and the ambrosia you wish your weird aunt would stop making, the Wampanoag tribe and some of America’s earliest colonists sat down for what is largely regarded as the first blowout Thanksgiving feast. It’s likely we’ll never know exactly what was on the table in 1621, though historians certainly have an idea. One of the two existing documents of the day details a hunt, and specifically mentions turkeys, though it’s not clear that they served as the centerpiece for the meal as they do today. What we do know is that these bird-beasts grew wild and roamed free.
Fast-forward nearly 400 years and you’ll find most Thanksgiving turkey is still related but far removed from the breeds our ancestors enjoyed. Industrially bred, mass-market turkey is engineered for maximum white meat, and it’s common for birds to be injected with sodium or other enhancements before they find their way to your freezer aisle.
“There are a lot of big growers in the Shenandoah Valley, more commercial growers, and they will grow year-round, but they’re growing them in turkey houses with grow lights and heat lamps,” says Belmont Butchery owner Tanya Cauthen, who sells a number of heritage- or hybrid-breed turkeys at her Carytown butcher shop. “They’re not going outside. What time of year it is doesn’t matter. But those aren’t the turkeys I want. To me, a good turkey is a seasonal product; it’s available in the fall and that’s it. It’s like the tomato: Unless you [preserve], you should just miss it a whole lot in the winter.”
Heritage breeds of turkey — much like other heritage breeds of meat — are naturally born, and are perpetuating a specific line of animal that may even be nearing extinction. A diet that includes foraging, as well as ample time outdoors, helps attain a nutritional balance and regimen closer to those turkeys enjoyed during the first Thanksgiving feast. Couple these factors with a bird allowed to reach full maturity, and you’ll grace your table with turkey that’s moist due to natural fat, with more complex flavor due to slow-growing muscle, and, breed depending, a more equal ratio of white to dark meat.
Cauthen knows a British expat who wants an invitation to your feast, but it’s no colonist; it’s the turkey itself.
Kelly Bronze turkeys in Crozet, raised by Judd and Cari Culver along with their sons Afton and Lachlan (Photo by Stephanie Breijo)
Somewhere between a chirp and a yelp, nowhere near a “gobble,” 1,250 Kelly Bronze turkeys are filling roughly 20 acres of Crozet farmland with staccato caws. It’s here that 4,000 to 5,000 Bronze-breed eggs arrive in the spring, fresh from the U.K., and are raised by husband-and-wife team Judd and Cari Culver, and sons Afton and Lachlan, throughout the year. “They grow June, July, August, September, October — not so much in November,” Judd says devilishly. “In this country, white, commercial birds are slaughtered between 12 and 16 weeks of age. Ours are no younger than 22 weeks of age, and as they get bigger, they eat a lot more feed.” The feed is at the crux of heritage breeds’ biggest consumer problem: price. Because the animals develop longer, they’re consuming feed such as corn and soya for weeks more; for Kelly Bronze, this accounts for 65 to 70 percent of the bird’s final retail cost. With extra lifespan comes extra labor, and, of course, there’s processing, especially for hand-plucked Kelly Bronze birds, which dry-age and ripen in traditional European fashion for up to 28 days. At Belmont Butchery, one of 10 retailers in the country offering this breed — and the only one in Richmond — a Kelly Bronze will set you back roughly $11 per pound.
“I want to encourage experimentation, and some customers, it’s what they get every year. It’s expensive, but they’re like, ‘It’s once a year, you know what, what the hell?” Cauthen says. “Get some sort of local something. Get a nice bird and see if you can taste the difference. I think you’re going to.”
