How about something different for Thanksgiving? Our pastured rabbits are doing magnificently, and will be raised outside on grass until the snow flies. The next fresh rabbits will be available on Saturday 11/3rd. $20 each, limited availability- email us (farmers (at) ltdfarm.com) to reserve yours.
We’re getting awesome reviews of our rabbit:
“The rabbits we picked up are amazing. These may not last as long as I thought, but we’ll see. I braised one in red wine with carrots, leeks, garlic and a strip of bacon to keep it moist. 325 degrees for 2 hours. It was amazing. Thanks again for supplying a truly great product! It really shows when something is raised healthfully and with care. “ and then this…..
“We grilled one of your rabbits on Sunday. Have to say, it was the best quality rabbit meat we have ever had! Rubbed it down with olive oil, garlic, fresh orange zest, and some fresh thyme, oregano, sage and tarragon from our garden and then smoked it lightly with olive wood. Turned out incredible! Juicy, tender and flavorful. Thank you for the love and care you obviously show your rabbits and all of you animals. The quality of the meat is testament to your efforts.”
We do specialize in raising AMAZING turkeys too! We’re signing up the last of our small group of pastured, beautiful turkeys. 
They are $3/lb and we require a $20 deposit to hold a bird for you. You’ll come to the farm and pick up your beautiful turkey on the day it was harvested. Once you’ve had a fresh LTD Farm turkey, raised on pasture, with love and respect, fattened on organic grains and humanely harvested on the farm where it is not stressed…..well, you’ll never be able to eat a different kind of turkey. Start a new thanksgiving tradition we welcome you and your family’s involvement with the harvesting days! building a deeper respect for the bird your holiday dinner will center around. Email us to sign up; farmers (at) ltdfarm.com We harvest our turkeys here on the farm, the weekend before Thanksgiving. They keep perfectly in a cooler with ice until you are ready to roast!
How do you like to prepare your turkey? Ever year we always do the same thing, and that’s because it ALWAYS works: Low and Slow and Long. You will have the most succulent results, never ever a dried out turkey! You’ll have an easy time arranging the tender, juicy meat in piles ready to snarf down. It’s essential with this method, to keep the turkey covered. An enamel coated canning pot works great for really big birds! Breast side down, rub with salt and pepper, maybe throw some herbs under the wings and some chopped onions and garlic in the cavity. Throw the neck and giblets in to roast as well. Cover with lid or tightly with tin foil. Put in 350 oven for 1.5 hours then reduce heat to 250 and roast slowly for 3-5 more hours, depending on how large your bird is. Keep covered, when it starts smelling unbearably delicious, pull it out of the oven, check to see that the turkey is done (usually it is falling off the bone tender!), recover and continue on your other meal prep. The turkey will stay hot, covered for at least 2 hours. Wait until you are ready to serve to take it out!
Gravy- Take about 1 1/2 cups flour,whisk in 2 cups turkey drippings in a saucepan. Heat now on medium heat, whisk constantly as it cooks until it begins to thicken. Add in slowly: 2 cups drippings, whisking constantly. Keep adding turkey drippings until desired texture is achieved. Salt and pepper to taste!
Don’t think you like leftovers? Simply fill freezer bags with the leftover meat and freeze! Wait until january and you’ll have some delicious turkey sandwiches. When you buy a bigger turkey with saving leftovers in mind, you get a better value because there is a higher meat to bone ratio.
The Cornish Cross is a hybrid (different than genetically modified) chicken of the F2 sort, meaning these little meat machines come from a unique and secret combination of 4 different breeds. 2 different parent breeds make up the rooster side, and 2 different breeds of chicken make up the hen side. Then THOSE 2 different offspring are mated to make the Cornish Cross, which is a remarkable fast growing, hearty and robust bird. There are a few things to know if you are about to try raising your own. Keep them warm for the first 2-3 weeks. They grow muscles, not lots of feathers, so they need to be kept cozy in this tender period of their lives. After they are 4 weeks old, stop feeding them before 8pm each night to prevent them from growing so fast that they have heart attacks. Give them things to climb on when they are in the first weeks of life so they can develop stronger leg muscles. A piece of 2×4 leaned up on a block works well. They don’t like to roost, but they will climb up and on and over and get stronger legs in the meantime. From day 1 when you bring them home, talk soothingly and use this tone everafter, we croon “oh Too-Toos” for some reason, and they love it, and respond to this sound, & coming running! Also from day 1 give them tiny snipped up greens. Feed them from your fingertips, sprinkle them in the feed dish, all over. These ARE chickens, and they LOVE variety, but like a mother hen, you need to teach them some of this stuff. Give them a bowl of plain old feed and they will just sit there chowing down, like a kid in a bag of potato chips.
We raise the broad breasted turkeys, and have found that all the stigmas against them are just not true. They are bright, inquisitive, friendly birds. Being so closely related to the native wild turkey, many of their wild instincts are there, just waiting to be tapped into. Again, feeding them greens as babies helps them learn what they already know deep inside. Treating all animals with kindness and respect makes a world of difference in your relationship with them & their quality of life. Our summer turkeys have just graduated to being able to be free outdoors during the day, at night they’ve been staying in a chicken “tractor” to stay safe. One thing to watch with all birds on your farm/homestead is arial predators during the day, and the host of others potentially coming to dine at night. As the turkey babies have grown to large chicken size, we feel confident they will be safe out during the day, but night time is still worrisome, so keeping them contained at night is just safer.
We kept 4 hens from last spring to try our own turkey breeding experiment. We never got the heritage tom we were hoping to, in time to produce offspring ready for the Thanksgiving crowd. The 4 hens have been laying eggs for the last 2 months, unfertile, but delicious eggs which Heartland Restaurant has excitedly put on their menu. Something different. We have a beautiful relationship with these hens and are excited to see how they do next spring when they have a boyfriend to make those gorgeous eggs fertile. Turkeys are just a joy to have around.
