Keena Tracy stands Tuesday in one of her hoop houses at Little Ridge Farm on Gould Road in Lisbon Falls. Standing next to her is her dog, Benny. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

LISBON — This week nearly nine out of 10 people in this country will sit down to a traditional turkey dinner.

That’s according to Better Homes and Gardens magazine via statistics from the National Turkey Federation.

If you’re looking for a locally raised turkey, you’re going to have to look hard and fast to source one, with most area farms already sold out for the holiday season and many sold out since September.

Keena Tracy has been raising turkeys since she founded Little Ridge Farm in Lisbon Falls 15 years ago. She sold out in early October, which she said is pretty normal.

“Livestock was one of the first things we started,” she said. “Partly because they don’t overwinter, so I have a bit of a break from livestock in the winter.” That’s the practical side of the farmer talking — she can take a breath after a long spring and summer in the fields and get caught up.

Turkeys are seen at Keena Tracy’s Little Ridge Farm in Lisbon Falls. She raises about 50 pasture-fed birds and sells out by early October. Submitted photo

“But also, I love Thanksgiving. It’s one of my favorite holidays. And so, to have Thanksgiving harvest, including the turkey, is really great, and plus turkeys are very personable.”

Pressed for details, Tracy said, “They’ll be your best friend if you let them … they will follow you around. They’re very, very curious. So, if you have anything shiny or like a button on your pants, they like to peck at it. Not aggressively, but just out of curiosity.”

Tracy said the hatchlings, or poults, come in the spring. “We get them when they’re day-old birds, they come in the mail from a hatchery in Pennsylvania or Ohio.” They look similar to baby chicks, but a little taller and rounder. “And they’re super cute … they’re like, really fluffy.”

Cute, but vulnerable. Tracy said the poults must be kept in a very warm space of 95 F for the first several weeks, with no draft and lots of fresh water. “After that you can slowly start to let them out during the day and then they go back in their pen at night.” The young turkeys are cute until they reach about seven weeks — what Tracy calls their teenage growth stage.

“They start to drop their like fluffy feathers and put on like real feathers and their combs start to grow and they look a little bedraggled, but they’re still supercurious … every time we walk over there, they talk to us.”

A flock of turkeys is seen at Keena Tracy’s Little Ridge Farm in Lisbon Falls. She said they make a lot of different calls to signal, fear, sadness and even boredom. Submitted photo

And you thought talking turkey was just an expression?

“I just love their personalities,” Tracy said. “They have tons of different calls, and all of their vocabulary — it means something different. So, it might mean that there’s danger. It might alert me that one of them is out of the pen and it’s left behind and it’s sad. It alerts me when they’re hungry or thirsty or they’re bored. So yeah, I’ve gotten to know their calls.”

Biologists have confirmed that wild turkeys have nearly 30 vocalizations or calls, making them among the most vocal birds.

The turkeys at Little Ridge Farm are raised in pastures and rotated regularly. Tracy uses electric fencing — not to keep the turkeys in but to keep predators out at night. “When we move them, we just take the fence down and we let the turkeys wander around until we’ve got the new spot set up and then we just call to them” and they come, she said.

“They get fresh grass and then whatever they find in the grass. Bugs — and they love to eat bugs — they also eat rocks. So, like any pebbles.” It may sound strange, but turkeys don’t have teeth, so the pebbles or rocks are stored in the gizzard to help digest the food.

“Anytime we have vegetable scraps — like they love tomatoes. And it’s hilarious watching them run around, because they play chase. So, like one of them will pick up a tomato and then run around and the others chase it. They do. They’re very fun. And then we do feed them on GMO-free grain.”

Inevitably, fall heralds the upcoming holidays, which Tracy said is the worst part about raising turkeys.

“Processing them. In the end we do put a lot of love into all of our products here and I feel a little bit like I’ve deceived them at the end, but I also believe in what I do. I mean I want to eat meat, and I want to make sure that I’m eating animals that were raised in a really humane way and had a happy life.”

FRESH OR FROZEN?

The big difference between fresh, pasture-raised or free-range turkey and the frozen turkey in many supermarkets is flavor, texture and price.

Turkey farmers say their pasture-raised birds tend to have a richer flavor and are generally healthier, less stressed, and live on a varied diet of grasses, plants and insects. That makes them higher in nutrients such as vitamins and minerals.

Supermarket turkeys are grown in large barns with hundreds or thousands of birds and are typically fed genetically modified and medicated feed. They are also frequently sold packaged with additives, including sodium to add up to 10% of their weight.

Keena Tracy stands Tuesday in a greenhouse at her Little Ridge Farm in Lisbon Falls. She has been raising turkeys for 15 years and sells out by early October. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

Tracy keeps a bird or two for her family and friends and loves the taste. “Amazing. They’re super flavorful and moist. The texture is — I just feel like the texture of our meat products versus grocery store products is so different. It actually has consistency to it.”

Then there’s price. Supermarkets typically offer turkey as low as 69¢ a pound, known as a loss-leader item because they actually may lose money on the turkey, hoping shoppers will purchase more profitable items in the store.

A Little Ridge Farm pasture-raised turkey runs $5.50 a pound. Other farms in Maine charge similar prices, up to $7.95 a pound for fresh turkeys.

“It’s disappointing to me that that we as a society in the United States are so disassociated with our food and the reality of how much it cost to raise food,” Tracy said, something echoed by many small farmers in Maine. “People really expect things to be cheap and as a grower, that’s just not real.”

Fresh turkeys are defined as not being chilled below 26 F. Most farmers offering pasture-raised turkeys have to get in line early for processing and most don’t have the storage capacity to hold fresh birds until Thanksgiving week, so they freeze them.

In a typical November in Maine the temperatures are colder, which means water freezes every morning. Tracy said they have to feed the turkeys more grain because the grasses stop growing and the insects disappear.

“The grain that we’re feeding them, which is very expensive, they’re using it to keep warm, not to put on weight. And so for the happiness of the turkeys, that’s why we’ve started to process them in October, because then we know that that whole time they’ve had really great pasture.”

For those who may be wondering, toms and hens taste the same.

Roasted, smoked, deep fried, braised and sous vide method are some favorite ways to cook frozen or fresh turkeys — the latter increasingly in demand in Maine.

At its most fundamental level, sous vide cooking is the process of sealing food in an airtight container — usually a vacuum sealed bag — and then cooking that food in temperature-controlled water, according to bonappatit.com.

TIPS FOR COOKING PASTURE-RAISED TURKEY

From Grace Pond Farm in Thomaston:

Cook at 325 F about 7-10 minutes per pound. Pastured birds cook in almost half the time.

Cook breast side down on a rack. The delicate white meat of breasts are the first to give up their moisture.

Keep the stuffing separate. Dehydrated bread absorbs moisture from the bird, so juicy stuffing actually creates a less juicy turkey. Instead, stuff the bird with the moisture-giving treats that get mixed into the stuffing afterward, such as apple, onion and celery.

Grace Pond Farm produces between 300 and 500 pasture-raised turkeys a year. For availability call 207-354-5299 or email gracepondeatlocal@gmail.com.