Thanksgiving Traditions at Crazy Hart Ranch

It’s that time of year again, when visions of Thanksgiving start dancing in our heads. Ever since the pilgrims and Indians broke bread at Plymouth Rock 400 years ago, the turkey has been the centerpiece, and for Linda Hart that means a Narragansett heritage turkey raised on her Crazy Hart Ranch in Fellsmere.

That’s where her current flock grazes, pecking and plucking away on a diet of organic grain and what they find while foraging on the ranch’s 5 grassy acres. Hart makes sure not one antibiotic, hormone, additive, or preservative touches their busy little beaks.

“Our mission is to provide healthy, humanely raised heritage turkeys in a natural environment. They’re sensitive when they’re young, so we have to keep everything clean and dry.

“Hippocrates said, ‘Let your food be your medicine and let your medicine be your food.’ That’s kind of a paraphrase, but I really think our first line in heath care is food without chemicals in it,” says the former surgical nurse who has been raising Narragansett heritage turkeys since 2003.

A graduate of Texas A&M with a degree in biomedical science, Hart was lured by a job opportunity from her farm in northeast Texas to Florida, where she met her husband, Mark, who, she points out fondly, “is a soil health expert; he really doesn’t have a heart for poultry.”

No matter. Hart has more than enough for the two of them, and it shows in the care she takes with her feathered flock. She chose the name Crazy Hart Ranch because she figured anyone who decided to raise Narragansett heritage turkeys in southeast Florida had to be a little crazy.

She had a reason and determination. “Way back, probably about the late ’90s, I was wanting to do something different with the farm,” says Hart, traces of the Lone Star State in her voice. “Around that same time I was talking with my brother, and he suggested I read a book called Pastured Poultry Profit$ by Joel Salatin. In it he writes about mainline experts predicting the demise of the family farm, and that pastured poultry was the way to go in the future.”

When she began looking into the possibility of going the poultry route, Hart learned that heritage turkeys were on the critically endangered list. To make matters worse, many considered the Narragansett, which had fewer than 100 being raised on hobby farms, at risk of being gone forever. Then and there Hart made it her mission to help bring them back.

“I wanted to raise healthy, happy birds,” she says. “Because I don’t use automated feed machines or supplements, my heritage turkeys have longer legs, larger wings, and they can fly. That’s why we say ‘from tree to table.’

“Heritage turkeys just taste so much better than the big-breasted turkeys you buy in the grocery store during the holidays. The dark meat is darker and so much richer, and the breast is absolutely delicious and juicier. Heritage turkeys are the traditional kind our grandparents ate, the ones that fed us long before the kinds of turkeys we have in stores now.”

Hart’s turkeys begin their tree-to-Thanksgiving-table trek in early April when pairs of breeding turkeys begin to lay eggs. There’s no prompting or prodding the birds to produce.

“We don’t use artificial insemination,” Hart points out. “We let the birds be themselves, do what comes naturally. They’re allowed to take their time; it can take a while, so you just have to be patient.”

That patience pays off. Babies (poults) are born and grow into gangly teenagers (jakes and jennies) before reaching maturity somewhere between 25 and 30 weeks, at which time they become toms and hens. Hart is attuned to their every action and sound along the way. They can be pesky, playful, and unpredictable.

“Heritage turkeys are very personable,” Hart says. “They’re like the family dog—they’ll follow you around, go where you go. I had one that would always peck at my shoestrings, and there was one that would fly down from the tree and sit on my head.” With a laugh she quickly adds, “I had a hat on and the hen was small, so it was fine.”

“Turkeys are funny,” she explains. “They’ll be playing, then all of a sudden they’ll just turn around and knock each other silly for who knows why. And they make sounds. In the morning, just from what I hear I’ll know what’s going on. For instance, when a hen has babies and is content, she makes a purring sound. When she makes a series of ‘putt’ noises, she’s signaling danger, sounding an alarm telling everyone to scatter. And yes, they do cluck and gobble.

“Turkeys have a higher social level than chickens. They’re also more refined; they have more class…. I really like my turkeys,” says Hart, eyes bright.

Fall is a bittersweet time at the ranch. By the end of October, it’s time to slaughter and process the birds in preparation for Thanksgiving. Everything is done by hand using a three-step kosher process, after which each turkey is fresh-frozen and labeled according to orders.

Hart admits she gets very attached to her birds, but she’s quick to point out that what she does is a business, and a successful one as orders come in early. Repeat customers know the birds go fast.

“We do orders online. We don’t ship because we’re a small operation; all our sales are mostly picked up at the ranch or an alternate site in Melbourne during certain hours. The turkeys will all be sold; then we’ll start all over again next spring.

“This year we’ll have about 38 turkeys available. The hens are smaller than toms, and if I have one that’s a little smaller I’ll take that one for me.

“Thanksgiving is a big holiday for us. We invite friends over and really enjoy the day,” Hart says, smiling at the thought.

“It’s like farming gets in your genes and your blood. If I could be doing anything else, I would still do turkeys, but I’d become a breeder. As I said, I really like my turkeys.”

In a few weeks, families and friends will gather round a table to give thanks.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Americans eat an estimated 46 million turkeys each year. When they head to the grocery store to pick out their Thanksgiving bird, most shoppers won’t think about where it came from or how it was raised and what it was fed during the course of its brief life. I never did, but after talking with Linda Hart, I do.

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. Memories of a childhood spent giving thanks over a plump browned-to-perfection turkey with plenty of homemade stuffing and bowls heaped high with mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, and cranberries make me teary to this day.

The preparation of the main attraction seemed so simple back then as Mom, a former home economics teacher and a real whiz in the kitchen, cleaned, stuffed, then tucked a 14-pounder into the oven and set the timer. As the bird baked, the smell awakened our taste buds, and by the time we sat down to eat we couldn’t wait for Dad to give the blessing so we could dig in.

It was a feast thanks to Mom, who rose before dawn and spent hours in the kitchen chopping, dicing, stirring, basting, blending, and baking. Smiling from ear to ear she would fuss over her favorite Jell-O mold salad in between whipping up pumpkin, apple, and mincemeat pies. When everything was ready, Sis and I would carry the steaming bowls of plenty to the table, where aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors, and an occasional stranger gave thanks and then filled their plates.

It was a Norman Rockwell moment shared and forever treasured.