On a first trip to Bob’s Turkey Farm on Old Common Road, just off Lancaster Five Corners, it’s easy to think Google Maps has goofed. The residential neighborhood seems an unlikely spot to find a farm that sells up to 10,000 turkeys for Thanksgiving. The only clue is a small, attractive turkey sign near the mailbox of a neat, 1950s-era home with an extra driveway.
The driveway leads to a compact retail store that becomes a model of efficiency in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, when customers pick up pre-ordered fresh or roasted turkeys. A police officer keeps traffic sane in the small parking lot, and, indoors, the regular staff helps the stream of customers get their bagged birds, along with pies, gravy, sauce, and anything else that says “Thanksgiving.”
Other times of the year are more leisurely, as long-time customers go straight to what they came for or others linger over decisions: pot pie or lasagna? Chili, sausage, or soup? For leftover seekers, it’s “white or dark?”
Robert Van Hoof, who started the farm in 1954 with 125 turkeys, still has his eye on things, but the next generation has taken over running the family business. Son Richard Van Hoof raises the birds. He keeps a breeding stock in Ashburnham, where he hatches the poults and gets the youngsters off to a good start, the key to healthy mature turkeys, the older Van Hoof has said.
Of the up to 15,000 turkeys Richard Van Hoof tends, two-thirds are raised at the Lancaster family farm and the rest in Ashburnham. The broad-breasted breed is grown without steroids and in barns and pens where they can move freely.
Through May, June, and July, Richard sells one-day-old poults to other farmers. Backyard farmers can buy them, too, but state law requires a minimum sale of six.
Bob’s daughter Susan Miner does the bookkeeping and oversees the retail store, which her sister MaryBeth Blanchflower, the kitchen manager, stocks with frozen meat, prepared turkey dishes, pies and crisps.
As anyone would guess, the dozen or so regular staff works hard for several weeks up until the night before Thanksgiving. But, in a turkey’s gobble, Thanksgiving Day is over and it will be time to get ready for Christmas and New Year’s, when roasted birds and prepared platters are popular.
Miner said the farm downsized a little this year.
“Grain prices went up so much and we can’t—we don’t want to—pass all of it on to our customers,” she said. “And we don’t want to have turkeys we can’t sell.”
Miner said they raised prices seven percent, although grain prices for the year rose 14 percent. She attributed the big rise in feed costs to the use of corn in making ethanol and to the bad drought in the Mid-West.
“We have to decide what we would like—food or fuel,” she said.
“We have loyal customers who want to support local agriculture,” Miner said. “We can’t compete with supermarket prices, but ours taste better.”
