Maryland Community Newspapers Online
Julie and Bob Bolton stood in a grassy pasture that stretched along an unlined gray road north of Rocky Ridge Friday afternoon, facing a flock of sneezing, chirping white-feathered turkeys, one pecking at Julie's jacket.
A barn cat soon traipsed into the pasture, and the turkeys surrounded it.
The Boltons have pre-sold each of the roughly 70 turkeys they have for the Thanksgiving season, at $4.50 per pound. In fact, they've been sold out since mid-October.
The Thanksgiving turkey business is "huge," Julie, 50, said. "I probably could have sold 150, easily."
The turkeys were scheduled for butchering sessions at the farm on Wednesday and on Monday.
Nationwide, an estimated 271 million turkeys will be raised this year, earning farmers an expected total of $4.3 billion.
In 2001, after Bob Bolton took a job with the U.S. Department of the Interior in Washington, D.C., where he still works, the Boltons moved from a 300-acre farm in southern Oregon to "Groff's Content," a farm established in the valley between Catoctin Mountain and the Monocacy River in 1752.
They immediately began the three-year process of turning the farm into an organic operation. That meant no chemical fertilizers for the ground and no hormones or antibiotics for the farm's cows, lambs, goats, chickens, turkeys and, since September, pigs.
They got their certificate in 2005.
"It is a pretty challenging process," said Deanna Baldwin, program manager for the Maryland Department of Agriculture's food quality assurance division and an accredited agent for U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Organic Program.
Baldwin said farmers who go organic have to pay more for organic feed for their animals and have to be content with a smaller production per area ratio than conventional farmers.
But the choice to farm organically is often about principles rather than dollars and cents, she said.
"Some of them just feel it's more environmentally sound and they believe in it and want to farm that way," she said.
Certifications for organic farms have increased by 10 percent each year since the program's founding in 2002, according to Baldwin.
Farming organically is also more labor-intensive.
The Boltons relocate their movable coops for their free-range turkeys and chickens every few days. On Friday morning they butchered 90 chickens by hand. A cart full of Muscovy ducks awaited the cleaver later that day.
They depend on a pair of border collies and a towering Anatolian Shepherd named Rambo to herd their animals and protect them from predators such as foxes. Their 14-year-old daughter helps sometimes.
This year, their third raising turkeys, a majority of the flock died early.
"We need to figure that out," Julie said.
Nonetheless, organic farming is flourishing in northern Frederick County, which is home to 10 certified organic producers. The county as a whole has about 20.
Many of Groff's Content's customers are loyal regulars. The farm finds new customers when the Boltons travel on summer weekends to farmers markets in Frederick County, Montgomery County and Washington, D.C.
