Out and About - Winter 2021

Out & About feature

the office and admin side of things, making sure that the website is up-to-date and the online order process is working properly. Helen said: “Many people order online these days and we start updating the site in September, ready for when people start thinking about getting their turkey.” are wandering around the noise is constant, although surprisingly less intrusive than I imagined. “You don’t really notice,” said Kate. “Although sometimes they all have a chat at the same time and the noise levels go up. But at night they’re completely silent.” Preparing turkeys for the Christmas market is quite a balancing act. The chicks are bought in in late May – “they’re tiny, you can hold a handful of them at a time” – when they are kept indoors and in the warmth to help them grow. “We bring them out in September,” says Kate. “We feed them once a day in the morning and then let them roam around the field, until it starts to get dark and we round them up to go to bed.” Rounding up nearly 10,000 turkeys can be quite a task and usually takes about 45 minutes. “They seem to sense that it’s ‘bed time’ and quite happily go in to sleep – but occasionally, just like children I suppose, they play up and can give us the round around.” It’s a particularly crisp, sunny autumn day in early November when we visit and the turkeys are curious to see who the visitors are. They follow us as we walk through the field, but always keep a respectful distance. I felt as if we were playing Grandmother’s Footsteps As we walk through the field where the turkeys

Kate, Edward and Helen

her sty and run off to have a chat with a couple of horses grazing in the next field – she was surprisingly agile, but once she’d caught up on the day’s news with the other animals, she happily trotted back to her home. The family also cultivate some of the fields to grow the barley and oats that feeds the turkeys. “It’s important to us to maintain our traditional home grown approach,” says Helen. “Our customers know that the turkeys are

– whenever I stopped and turned around the turkeys would all stand still and talk among themselves. It is quite a comical sight. “The most important thing is making sure the fields are fox-proof,” says Kate. “And we do that by just building high fences – fox’s don’t jump!” The farm isn’t just about

turkeys, there are also cattle, sheep and pigs. In fact one of the pigs

chose the moment we were walking past to jump out of

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O&A WINTER 2021