Four-year-old Charlie Gates, of Fairfield, pays for produce from Gazy Brothers Farm as he shops with his father for local ingredients for Thanksgiving dinner Saturday Nov. 23, 2013 at the Fairfield Winter Farmer's Market. Photo: Autumn Driscoll |
The pasture-raised turkeys at Roxbury's Ox Hollow Farm have never been more in demand.
"It's definitely on the rise," said Mark Maynard, who runs the farm. "We started out selling around 30 turkeys a year, and now it's up to 100, so it's definitely been going up."
All around southwestern Connecticut, the interest in local turkeys has been escalating for several years.
"There's no question, we can't grow enough to keep up with the demand," said Annie Dean, who runs the farm. "Literally, there aren't enough acres in this region to grow all the local food we would need to feed everybody."
Dean has been raising turkeys for decades, but in the past few years, she has seen a significant increase in awareness of local foods and the benefits it can afford.
The reason behind the uptick is simple, she said, attributing it to people's "concerns about having locally sourced food for health reasons."
Dean not the only area farmer seeing these concerns unfold.
"If the demand was a graph, it would be at a 60- or 80-degree angle up," said John Ubaldo, owner of John Boy's Farm in Pound Ridge, N.Y., just over the state line.
"There are a lot more people getting educated as to what's in their food, and a lot more people in our area who have children and don't want them to eat supermarket food," he said.
When Ubaldo left his job in corporate America to start his farm about a decade ago, he began raising a half-dozen turkeys each year, and distributing them to friends and family for their feasts on the fourth Thursday of November.
"It has really grown from there. I think we have about 320 in total this year, but some of those are for Christmas," he said. While turkey is the centerpiece of the traditional Thanksgiving feast, it's not the only ingredient gaining ground locally.
On a chilly afternoon in Darien last week, Greenwich resident Linda Haigh sifted through a table of vegetables for her weekly purchase, and planned the ingredients she would return for this week to add to her Thanksgiving table.
Celery, Brussels sprouts, turnips and squash -- the list went on.
"I'll buy ingredients for my Thanksgiving dinner either here or at the New Canaan market," she said last week, as she rifled through an assortment of vegetables at the Darien Farmer's Market in Goodwives Shopping Plaza.
Back in 1986, Connecticut had 22 certified farmer's markets, according to Linda Piotowicz, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Agriculture. These days, the number hovers around 125.
"It's a huge increase," she said. "A lot of people are really interested in buying products from local producers, and that extends from every day to holidays and so forth. And with the rise in holiday and winter markets, it's become easier over the last couple years to get products at this time of year."
For Haight, it's a matter of freshness.
"Stop & Shop has old stuff. By the time they get it, it's already old, because it's shipped in from all over," she said as she continued to shop at the Darien market, which sits just a few yards in front of a Stop & Shop.
"This is better. It tastes better," she said. "All summer long, I've been here, and when I cook, the ingredients taste so much better and the end product tastes so much better. That's why I don't go to the grocery store if I don't have to."
She's not the only one making that choice. Eileen White, also of Greenwich, said last week that she was hunting for fruits and vegetables at the stands set up in the market -- some for sides, and some as pie filling.
"I think it tastes better, number one," she said. "And if we don't support the local farmers, they're not going to be there for us."
SOURCE:NEWS
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