Buying a Local Turkey

After, my initial idea to post about getting local, organic foods for Thanksgiving, I started doing some research online. I was quickly overcome with the amount of information to sort through. There are a lot more farms and farmers markets in our area than I had realized. So, I've been compelled to break down my local food quest into smaller chunks. First, let me link to LocalHarvest.org. That link will take you to search results for the Cincinnati area. The LocalHarvest.org databank holds entries for farms, farmers markets, CSA's, restaurants, and grocery/co-ops. If you have any interest in finding local food, LocalHarvest.org should definitely be your starting point.

I thought, rather than trying to summarize the entire local food scene, I'd do small research projects of particular foods, particular farms, or particular markets. Let's start with turkey. In Cincinnati, most people know about Findlay Market. Located in historic Over-The-Rhine, Findlay Market is open year-round and has merchants indoors and outdoors selling meats, produce, spices, flowers, and much else. I browsed through the list of merchants selling poultry and found a few that claim to have turkey: Busch's Country Corner, Charles Bare & Sons Meats, and Heist Fish and Poultry. Busch's page says that their poultry is free-range, has no preservatives, no hormones, no chemicals and is never frozen. A similar approach is used to raise poultry at Greenacres Farm.

Ok, that's as much as I have discovered on local turkey so far. Here are a couple other links that are good jumping off points for further research:

http://100milediet.org/home/
http://features.cityguide.aol.com/cincinnati/farmermarkets/
http://wyomingfarmersmarket.net/bookmarks.htm
http://www.oeffa.org/
http://hydeparkfarmersmarket.com/
http://www.pickyourown.org/OHcinc.htm
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060920/LIFE/609200301/-1/back01
http://www.junglejims.com/index.cfm