Chicama Run Family Farm

Most people don't think about this, I know I certainly didn't when I wasn't a farmer.  What do farmer's DO during the holidays?  Simply put - we work.

So I put off writing this for a few weeks until after the stress of Thanksgiving was gone.  How do we plan Thanksgiving?  We start in December or January.  That's right, we start now.

First, we have to plan on how many turkeys we would like to butcher for Thanksgiving.  This year we butchered the largest number we have done so far - 74.  We placed that order last December and we STILL didn't get the delivery date we would have liked!

That done, we have the turkeys from July-the week before Thanksgiving.  We start selling in September even though most people aren't thinking of Thanksgiving yet, we've found it is a good starting place for us to take orders and most people have caught on and place their orders right away because we do sell out.

For us, by the end of the week, we have no desire to see another turkey!  This past season it took us 18 1/2 HOURS to butcher the turkeys over the course of 3 days.  It's exhausting work as a 20lb dressed turkey weighs in at about 30lbs live so lifting and moving the turkeys can take a lot out of everyone.  Imagine - our largest turkey this past season was 32lbs!

So while everyone else is planning their meals, we are working our asses off to make sure that we have everything together so that you WILL have a turkey.  Last year, in 2014, it was the first year we had to ask people to give up their turkeys and our customers were great with it.  For us though, it was heartbreaking.

After Thanksgiving, we took a few days of rest, which doesn't mean no work because the animals still need to be fed, cows still need to be milked, it means we didn't do anything extra.  I think we all took a nap or 2 during those days as well!  Then we start working on Christmas sales - for that season - we have our Prime Rib Roasts & hams.

We have people pre-order if possible so you can get the size that you would need and we have to plan for the butchering WELL in advance!  Did you know we book our steer and hog butcherings at the beginning of the year for the ENTIRE year?!

We work right through Christmas (animals still need to be taken care of!) and we just continue on.  We move right into the new year and keep going. This job is 365 days per year 24 hours per day.