When it comes to farming, there’s no secret recipe, simple hack or product that solves everything. For better or for worse, I think most farming and animal care knowledge is gained best through experience. If we have a secret sauce around here, it’s that we’re blessed with an incredibly experienced farm team. For those keeping track at home, this is certainly one of our good fortunes over the years at Ferndale Market.

As evidence of our staff tenure, we had an employee retire last fall after working beside us for 50 years. He was hired out of high school by my grandpa, a decade before I was born. Over the years, he’d likely seen it all. He knew the seemingly small, everyday things that keep turkeys happy. As he liked to remind us before he retired, our farm may fall apart without him. Thankfully, the rest of our small farm team has been at this for years too. My quick math says they have more than 100 collective years of turkey farming experience. If we really wanted to gin the numbers, we could add us Petersons and our partner farmers and we’d rack up enough years to claim centuries of experience!

Our team has seen the good, the bad and the ugly. With any luck, we’re using our experience to avoid the bad and prevent the ugly! It’s this experience that helps us see subtle changes in our flocks, or attempt to see through the smoke of each hot new must-have piece of equipment.  Yes, we’re fortunate to be surrounded by a team of experienced turkey farmers. No doubt it’s another of our good fortunes.