Turkeys by way of strawberries

For Thanksgiving, Nick Martielli raises and sells certified organic turkeys that are free-range on certied organic fields. The fields are certified by NOFA-NY. His flock of 200 turkeys are fed certified organic grain from Keystone Mills of Romulus, NY.

He’s had annual standing orders since he started selling turkeys since 2019 from Bluebird Dream Farm in Trumansburg, NY. But he started raising and selling turkeys long before that.

Martielli specializes in providing different sizes to order, as some customers celebrate Thanksgiving early or late due to varied and complicated family calendars.

He landed at Bluebird Dream Farm via a circuitous route. In 2000, Martielli started volunteering at the annual Strawberry Festival hosted by Thomas Porter, founder of the Kanatsiohareke Mohawk Community, a spiritual community that Porter re-established in 1993 in Canajoharie, NY.

According to Martielli, Kanatsiohareke means “cooking pot that cleans itself,” referring to a rock over which a turbulent river rushes along. Caught sand swirls and bores a hole in it, forming a natural pothole.

“In 2011, I asked Tom if I could move up there and start farming,” he said, and the answer was yes. Martielli sold his house in Long Island and quit his job as a high school physics teacher to start farming. He became a member of NOFA and has attended their conferences for decades.

When he asked Porter for guidance as to what should he raise, Porter answered, “Thanksgiving turkeys.”

Fulfilling his dream, Martielli raised his first flock of 25 Broad Breasted White turkeys.

He is a first-generation farmer. “Im Italian. In Bari [Italy], my family were farmers and fishermen. My father owned a tackle shop and a very classy trailer park” in New York, he said. The closest he was to poultry were the nearby duck farms. He was a physics teacher, a scuba diving instructor and learned electronics.

This diverse skill set comes in handy when fixing the freezers that he uses to store his processed turkeys waiting for customer pick-up.

After the Mohawk Community, his next move was to the Piggery Farm in Ithaca, NY, eventually raising as many as 5,000 turkeys a year, getting the meat ready for the well-known but now defunct Piggery Deli.

“They didn’t want to raise prices for organic certification,” he said, so the turkeys were not then organic.

In 2019, Martielli returned to Thanksgiving turkeys. He raises 200 Broad Breasted Whites a year on leased land.

“I like it better this way. Since 2019, I have had the same customers. You’ve got customers asking for a 12-pound bird. I like to raise small birds,” he said.

During COVID, people started requesting smaller portions, so he now provides bone-in breasts in four- to five-pound packages, and turkey parts, as well as whole birds.

“I grow a couple big birds for a few customers. Six birds got up to over 20 pounds this year. The majority are 11 to 13 pounds,” he said. “We never clip birds’ beaks or wings. They are fed so well, they dont fight.”

The turkeys are guarded by a livestock guard dog (LGD), a Maremma named Bear. His fellow LGD, a much beloved 12-year-old Anatolian Shepherd named Tiger, passed away this summer.

Each poult starts with five to 10 square feet in the barn, where they get to run side to side. They are fed with “hover brooders,” which are removed as the birds get older. Then they are pastured at his friend Casey’s farm in Reynoldsville, as he owns no land (yet).

Finding a slaughterhouse to process the turkeys was a challenge. He takes the turkeys to the Goffle Road Poultry Farm in Wyckoff, NJ, where they can do certified organic processing. He loads the turkeys in a 16-by-7-foot, two-level stock trailer, loading at most 100 birds on top and 100 on the bottom.

The owners at Goffle Road Poultry Farm “are Italian – four generations. They are wonderful to work with,” Martielli said. “I help them unload the turkeys. I am first in line in the morning because they do organic first. They clean the blades with OMRI cleaning solutions.”

He brings the frozen turkeys home where they stay in the freezer, ready for his customers to pick them up, placing their orders online.

Martielli conceived the farm’s name to honor the eastern bluebird, New York’s state bird, when he first started fulfilling his dream of farming and raising Thanksgiving turkeys.

In October, he and his wife celebrated their first wedding anniversary, fulfilling another of his dreams, as he married his sweetheart of now 11 years, Lynn. Lynn built the website and helps with the business.

For more information, access bluebirddreamfarm.net.

by Laura Rodley