Our Turkeys

 

Our Turkeys are completely free range and have access to pasture and orchards during daylight hours. Turkeys eat a lot of grass and unlike other poultry they love weeds -particularly nettles. Hooray!  We keep a rare breed called the Norfolk Black which grows slowly in comparision with commercial strains. Its a strong hardy bird with an old fashioned flavour.

Please note:  we are in organic conversion currently abiding by Soil Association standards. We will be selling fully organic turkeys next year.

Traditional Farm Fresh Turkeys. Read this.

Six Brothers produces traditional farm fresh turkeys - the sale of these is uniquely in the hands of small farms like ours.  You can't buy one in the supermarket. All supermarket turkeys - the free range turkeys, even the organic ones, are killed plucked and gutted and stuck in a polybag in 5 minutes at an enormous processing factory dealing with thousands of birds an hour. A Traditional Farm Fresh Turkey is killed and plucked and then hung in cold store for two weeks so the flavours can develop and the meat can mature. It is then gutted and dressed. They are a work of art, not a print.

Welfare. Read This.

Welfare is important to us.  All our turkeys are killed, plucked and dressed by hand, by me the farmer,  on our Somerset farm near Glastonbury.. No terrifying last journey on the motorway to an abattoir in a plastic crate.  They are handled individually, gently, and they are treated with respect and with compassion. Our turkey is produced in exactly the same way it was 100 years ago – except they are better fed and probably more kindly treated.

 In the splendid Delia Smith's Christmas, the leader herself writes:

The good news is that of late we have seen a revival of interest in flavour and more important - breeders who are prepared to return to the traditional methods of rearing. I  have located a farm (not mine alas but you get the idea - Ed)  which still produces the Norfolk Black Turkey: it does have a more pronounced and infinitely better flavour.