...YOU’RE WELCOME
Uxbridge throwback farm has the perfect turkey for all of your Thanksgiving needs
UXBRIDGE — Health and wellness may be the usual targets of Thanksgiving gratitude, but in this neck of the woods you can bet there are a few dozen families who are thankful for Mike King.
The proprietor of Ironstone Farm, King is the guy who puts the big bird on their holiday plate – farm-to-table style. And raising turkeys isn’t even his job – at least not the one that pays the bills.
King, 54, is employed as a software engineer at Perkin Elmer in Hopkinton, a company that specializes in computerized DNA sequencing. He also raises cows, poultry and field crops at Ironstone Farm, a year-round endeavor he calls a hobby – a physically demanding one that stretches his on-duty schedule of chores into hundred-hour weeks, no matter what it’s called.
“It’s a hobby and they’re both good complements to each other,” says King. “It’s good, hard physical work and it isn’t sitting at a desk.”
Situated on the rise of a gentle slope overlooking the crystalline body of water for which the farm was named, Ironstone Farm, located at 5 South St., would make a fitting scene for a New England postcard – quintessential red dairy barn, silo and a rambling, white-clapboard farm- house, built in 1831, according to family lore. King is the fourth generation of his family to run the 50-acre spread, where the chief source of income is derived from the sale of eggs. There’s a cubbyhole shop inside the barn where regular customers pay in an honor box – no cashier.
If it seems like a slice of yesteryear, it is, says King, who’s worked on the farm as long as he can remember and says things haven’t changed much since he was a kid.
That applies to the turkeys. Supermarket shoppers may
enjoy the convenience of making a quick pit-stop into the poultry aisle for the Thanksgiving oven bird, but the turkeys have been with King since July, when they were just fuzzy, featherless chicks, or poults in turkey-talk.
They spend most of their time inside the coop when they’re young, but they begin wandering about the ample pen with more confidence, in plain view of passersby,
around the time the goldenrod starts to wither. In other words, just as summer is transitioning to fall.
The white birds – about 60 in all – are almost adults now, with a full array of dense white feathers and a quirkily curious manner. The all have plumage-free, red heads, but certain distinguishing features may be more pronounced in the males, or toms, including a flashy appendage the dangles across the beak, known as the snood, and a flap of skin under the chin – the wattle.
When King shows up at the edge of the pen, the whole flock huddles and crowds against the fence as if they’re happy to see him.
“They’re hungry,” says King. “They’re waiting to get fed.”
Turkeys aren’t very bright, says King, and they’re easily spooked. When they’re nervous – they all gobble nervously in unison – though it’s impossible to tell what sets them off.
He’ll process the birds for customers about a week before they’re ready for the oven, says King. They’re never frozen.
About the largest he ever raised weighed about 37 pounds. But King says that by the time he hands off the flock to his customers, most will weigh between 15 and 30 pounds each.
As they mature, turkeys become voracious eaters, says King. They fatten on a steady diet of Blue Seal turkey feed – a mixture of corn and soy – which they are currently ingesting at the rate of about a pound a day per bird.
That’s a lot of investment in a bird. Luckily, says King, he buys it directly from the Bow, N.H.-based grain and feed company – by the ton. It boils down to about half
what it would cost if the same weight were purchased one 50-pound bag at a time.
King says the cost of a farm-raised turkey is significantly more than one would pay for a typical Butterball at Walmart, but he doesn’t get any complaints. As for Butterballs, King has never eaten one, and he practically winces when he hears the word.
“Everyone that gets a fresh turkey – they never go back,” says King. “No one’s ever said boo about the price because they know what they’re buying.”
King says he doesn’t tell customers his birds are organic – they’re not – because their feed isn’t organic. But they are locally raised, natural and free-range birds – all descriptives in high demand these days among those who care about sustainable, healthy food. Indeed, says King, the reason he keeps the flock to 60 is mainly because it represents a manageable workload.
“I can sell as many as I can buy,” he says.
After all, there’s plenty more to do around Ironstone Farm than just raise turkeys. Much of the 50 acres at the farm is devoted to hay and corn to feed the cows. King, who lives on the farm with his wife, Michelle, and two of their five children, also fixes most of the machinery when it breaks down, and tends three family gardens scattered about the property.
There are also a couple of dozen apple trees on the farm, where the family occasionally processes the fruit into cider. Though King says he doesn’t consider farming a job, it generates some revenue that he tries to pour back into the farm so that the operation comes as close as possible to paying for itself.
Until a couple of years ago, he was still baling about 1,200 bales of hay a year by hand, says King. But he’s made a few changes since his father, Bill King, died a couple of years ago. Among them were the acquisition of an automated hay baler and a two-row chopper that processes corn into silage to feed to the cows.
“I have more chickens than anything else,” says King.