WISCONSIN — With Thanksgiving almost here, places such as Alden Hills Organic Farms in Walworth, Wis., are hard at work making sure Wisconsin families have turkeys for their tables.

What You Need To Know

  • Turkey farms are hard at work to make sure Wisconsin families have their Thanksgiving staple

  • Alden Hills Organic Hills raises its turkeys organically

  • Not only does Levi Powers raise turkeys, he also owns Twin Cities Pack

  • Twin Cities Pack helps farmers in region process their turkeys to be sold to consumers

Levi Powers, the owner of Alden Hills, added turkeys to his farm five years ago. Every day, he feeds the flock. He said it takes a lot of work to make sure all his animals are being raised organically.

“We are moving our animals constantly. So we are moving them to fresh grass, then moving them to fresh ground," said Powers. "It’s not enough to raise your birds outside; we believe they need fresh forage every day. We move our cows every day. We move our chickens every day. We move our turkeys every day.”

While Powers does everything he can to make sure the birds remain healthy, he said raising turkeys is particularly tricky. It’s often their own behavior that determines how successful the harvest will be.

“The saying with turkeys is that for the first six weeks of their lives, literally anything will kill them," said Powers. "They will kill themselves. They will drown themselves just by staring up at rainstorms. It’s amazing.”

Powers expects to raise about 400 turkeys this year. He considers that a good harvest, but making sure they’re the size people want can be a challenge.

“Every single one of those is going to be reserved or sold by Thanksgiving Day, so it can be really stressful on the farmers as we try to get the turkey sizes they want," said Powers. "Right now, we are fielding a lot of phone calls from people, getting a lot of emails from people.”

(Spectrum News 1/Phillip Boudreaux)

After noticing a growing need, Powers also started helping other farmers throughout the region process turkeys. He recently became the owner of Twin Cities Pack in Clinton, Wis., which gets the birds ready to be sold to consumers.

“Since COVID-19, I think we have lost about 75% of the poultry processors in the state," said Powers. "A lot of them are just going out of business, so for us it was a way to keep the services available to our own farm and also keep the services available to other local farms."

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