FELLSMERE, Fla. — Americans eat an estimated 46 million turkeys each year with the vast majority bought at the grocery store, according to the USDA.
However, a handful of those holiday birds, no more than a few dozen, are raised on a Treasure Coast farm.
The week of Thanksgiving is quiet on the Crazy Hart Ranch in Fellsmere. However, the weeks leading up to the holiday are a busy time.
For two decades, Linda Hart has been raising her Heritage turkeys as one of just a handful of Florida turkey farmers.
"I kind of got hooked into the chicken business and my neighbor had turkeys next door, so I started taking eggs and hatching them and raising turkeys," Hart said. "They're out where they can eat grass. They roost in the trees. We feed them organic feed."
Hart said her birds can fly and breed naturally.
"The bird you buy in the store, if you run him 50 feet, he'll drop over dead," Hart said.
At one point, Hart would raise a few hundred birds a year, but that number has dropped to a few dozen.
That's why customers like Cecilia Walsh Karp will pay a premium, driving more than 100 miles from Boynton Beach each year for her holiday bird.
"It just tastes fine and clean and you know that you're getting something good in your body," Walsh Karp said.
It may seem hard to believe, but Hart said each year those turkeys almost become part of her family.
"They love you. They will come up to your house, they will wait at the door for you," Harp said. "They're like a dog."
So while it is bittersweet each fall, Hart said this is a business, and she's doing her part to help save these birds from extinction by bringing them back to the table.
