“This is what’s left of an operation that used to grow close to 100,000 turkeys”, Art DiPaola shared as I began my tour of his turkey farm, located in Hamilton Township, NJ.

DiPaola Turkey Farm was started by Art’s father 60 years ago.  What I saw on my visit is a business that has refined itself over the years:  they now raise fewer birds but sell at more farmers’ markets.. At the height of production, DiPaola Turkeys was raising their birds on different farms throughout New Jersey and then selling the turkeys up and down the Northeast coast, including a deal with the United States Postal Service in which every USPS employee got a DiPaola turkey (that translated to 22,000 turkeys).  In addition, DiPaola used to breed their own turkeys on site.  Art was palpably relieved to done with that side of turkey farming:

“I wouldn’t be in this business if we were still doing that.  Seven days a week; 24 hours a day; [it’s] not cost effective.”

My visit to DiPaola was months in the making.  Back on a bitter January day, I had engaged in a lively interview with Dan Deleo, one of Art’s main workers (and husband to one of the DiPaola cousins).  At the time of the interview, Dan had suggested that I call Art to arrange a time to visit.  Unbeknownst to me, calling in January meant that there wouldn’t be much for me to see; at DiPaola, turkey husbandry and slaughtering takes place from July to January.  The mid winter months are used for getting the farm back into shape and recovering. 

The months between January and July found me playing phone tag with Art DiPaola, as Art attempted to predict the best time for me to visit.  The final kink in planning my visit happened after we had already set a date.  Art thought my visit should coincide with the arrival of the newborn poults (baby turkeys).  Unfortunately, the poult drop-off date wasn’t definitive and ended up being delayed.  This situation did give me a small glimpse into the unexpected daily life of farmers.   Ultimately, I didn’t know I was heading over to DiPaola Turkey Farm until the day before my visit.

When I arrived last Tuesday morning, the operation seemed quiet.  There were two workers slowly strolling down the driveway and one worker—Dana—in the front office. At 10:30 on a Tuesday morning, I was only a few hours into my working day.  In contrast, the DiPaola workers had been up since 2 in the morning, preparing for the arrival of the poults.  A few of the workers had gone home or were about to, but Art and his ‘right hand man’, also named Dan (there are four workers named Dan at the farm!), were gearing up for one of their longest days of the year.  They didn’t expect to stop working until close to midnight. 

After hanging around the office for a bit, Art arrived, with a booming voice and firm handshake.  I slid some plastic boots on over my shoes and we walked to the first barn. The barn’s insulation raised the temperature on the already hot day to a stifling level.  I hadn’t known what poults looked, sounded, or acted like, and when I entered the barn, I was inundated by steady chirping. Instead of being grating the chirping was quite soothing.  Art agreed, commenting, “I love this; I love what I do”.

The two barns house about 15,000 of these chirping, eager, tired poults.  The birds had just arrived from Canada and Ohio.  Because I was there on arrival day, I witnessed the birds at their most confused and fragile, as they adjust to their surroundings and learned how to feed.

Art shared that the poults were 36 hours old and that he was pleased to see how lively they were.  For the first week, the poults are divided up by cardboard, each little unit equipped with a heating lamp, feeding troughs, and water.  The food (75% protein) and water is placed in the troughs manually because the birds are too small to reach the automatic machines.  After about a week, the cardboard dividers are removed and the poults “have the run of the barn”, before they’re moved into other barns.

Over the next four months, these little chirping birds will become the plump turkeys DiPaola sells at the markets and on-site for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Art is an inspired businessman with extremely high standards. His love for the birds and the operation was quickly apparent to me. Did growing up on a turkey farm easily translate into Art joining the family business?

“No, NO!”, Art laughed, drawing out the word ‘no’, in response to my question.  “In fact, I hated it, when my father started. My father always told me when I graduated high school, I better have one of two things in place:  enrollment in a college or a full time job.  I didn’t have either.… When I graduated high school, I said ‘please give me the summer off and then I want to work at the farm in September.’  It wasn’t until probably 5 years later that I realized I was watching his business grow…. I started looking at this stuff and said, it’s gotta pay off, if I stick with it.”

I visited a smooth running, confident operation.  Art only hires trustworthy people and has been known to terminate an employee 2 hours into his first shift.  Workers who succeed under his high standards are treated with care and respect.  The success of the business is due to years of hard work by Art and his brother (who got out of the business about 10 years ago).  Art’s role at DiPaola Turkeys has shifted from hands-on to “supreme allied commander”, as he described it.

Admittedly, Art misses working with hands and getting dirty.

“The fact of the matter is, I won’t get dirty today or tomorrow,” he says. “Everything I say to these guys [his workers] I’ve been there; I’ve done it all.  I have a nice little office, but I miss cutting wood, hammering nails.  I miss it.  We built all this I know how to build; how to put cinderblock together; I can shingle a roof.”

Over the years, the turkey farm has slowly become surrounded by housing developments.  Shockingly, many of the houses seem to be practically on top of the turkey farm’s property, the homes’ decks facing directly onto the farm.  Every home’s deed has a turkey farm clause (in case the homeowner was ignorant of the turkey farm across from them), yet the fact remains: sitting on one’s deck means that being directly downwind from a turkey farm.

DiPaola turkeys are a hybrid breed.  When the poults weigh 10-11 pounds they look like basketballs.  “People want to see plumpness”, DiPaola says.  These birds are cost effective in terms of feed conversion and are majority female (males are simply too expensive to produce as many need to be cut down for downgrades due to tough skin).  As the birds mature they have the option to remain inside or go outside, as they choose.  And on hot or rainy days, they frequently choose to stay inside!

Giving the birds outdoor space is not only about allowing the birds to have the best life possible.  Ultimately, DiPaola Turkey Farm is in the business of slaughtering turkeys and selling the best meat possible.  Offering the turkeys outdoor space translates to a better product.  Art shared that ventilation is the most important thing for a turkey’s helath and while he feels that grass in their diet is less important, he recognizes that people want to support a humane operation such as his.   He was quick to point out that, “No matter how humane you try to be, the fact of the matter is you have to cut the throat of that animal.  Or you just don’t eat meat.  I choose to eat meat.”

As expected, Thanksgiving is the farm’s most hectic, profitable day and is also the only time where the farm store does more business than the Greenmarkets.  Art described the chaos:

“I have a cop that I put out front, just as a courtesy to get people in and out of here safely.  When this business was built, Edinburgh Rd was a two-lane highway and my father might have sold 200 turkeys out of here.  Now, we’re up at 5,000 turkeys and cars are coming in and out of this little driveway.  To have people come in year after year, it’s a beautiful thing.  I’m actually getting grandkids! What else is there?! I answer my phone all through Thanksgiving Day.  The most humorous are the new brides, [calling] in a panic. I enjoy that experience [and tell them], relax, I’ll guide you through step by step.”

All of DiPaola’s birds are slaughtered onsite, in the processing facility behind the farm store.  They can put out 2,000 turkeys in 8 hours, though back when Art’s father was alive, they used to process 366 turkeys an hour (almost 50% more back then!).  The processing equipment was well taken care of and much older than I expected:  the line was 60-70 years old.  Art said that he could still buy replacement wheels and brackets for it, if necessary.

Art, who shared that he can multitask 15-20 duties at once, recognizes that he has high standards.  It’s his operation and it’s his name on the product.   My visit fell at the cusp of the busy season.  Throughout these next four months, Art knows that he will see an increase in business (currently, some market business is off as much as 35% due to the heat), culminating in Thanksgiving and Christmas.

After having spent a few hours observing the poults and chatting with Art, I had to return to the city and Art had to get back to work. But before I left, I made sure to ask Art for his favorite product. “The hot sausage—no question about it.”

You can find DiPaola hot turkey sausages and other products at numerous markets around the city.   Click HERE for a complete list.

Despite the heat, they’re still selling numerous products, prefect for barbequing and grilling.  The guys at the stand are cheerful and quick to provide you with tips and recipe recommendations.

See more pictures from my visit to DiPaola Farm HERE.

Happy Marketing!

-Meaghin

Stay tuned for pictures and highlights from our recent farm visits to DiPaola Turkey Farm and Hawthorne Valley Farm.  Here’s a DiPaola poult (newborn baby turkey) and a Hawthorne Valley dairy cow from each respective visit.

My husband distinctly remembers his first interaction with DiPaola Turkey Farm. He was at the McCarren Greenmarket for our Garden of Eve CSA pick-up and wasn’t planning on buying anything turkey related. It was a freezing, raining Saturday morning and most people just wanted to get through the day as quickly as possible.  He stopped by DiPaola’s tent for a quick look and the farmers were so welcoming and gregarious that my husband returned home with several pounds of turkey links.

Many market-goers will quickly tell you about how friendly DiPaola Turkey Farms is and how well they treat their birds.  The positive comments led me to seek out DiPaola Farms for a one-on-one interview.  On a frigid day in late January, I chatted with Dan Deleo, husband to one of the DiPaola cousins.  The cold didn’t seem to have any visible effect on his friendliness.  Despite the chill, we ended up talking for more than an hour.  DiPaola’s market and business philosophy can be summed up by this statement by Deleo: “If my customers are happy, I’m happy”.

Deleo became involved with the family farm in 2002 after being layed off from his job in customer relations.  DiPaola Turkey Farm was started in 1948 by the father of the current owner, Art DiPaola.  After the war, Art’s father worked as a potter and decided to buy a piece of property in Hamilton Township, NJ.  This 5-acre piece of property became DiPaola Turkey Farm.

The number of turkeys raised on the farm varies by season. The lead-up to Thanksgiving is considered “in season”, when they’ll raise about 15,000 birds.  It takes the turkeys 10-14 weeks to reach an average market weight of 12 pounds. The turkeys are your classic domestic large breasted white turkey, and have access to food (primarily soy and corn) and water at all times.  The birds are quite capable of walking around (unlike the reports one can read about confined birds being unable to move) and go outside to “peck around” daily.  “You can hear them all hours of the day and night clucking!” says Deleo.

Because DiPaola is a small, well-regulated farm, the turkeys are raised on the property from birth to death, with all of the processing done on-site.  Dan Deleo works on that processing line, as the grinder.  In one day, he can grind anywhere between 3,000 pounds and 7,000 pounds of meat.  “When [customers] ask me about the ground meat, I know what goes into it.”

After I heard Dan’s market day schedule, his friendliness and knowledge base became all the more impressive and humbling.  He gets to the farm at 4:20 a.m to load the truck.  He arrives at Union Square Greenmarket around 6:20 to set up and he starts breaking down the stand around 6:00 pm (“unless I sell out”, he adds).  He’ll get back to his house around 9:00 pm, only to wake up at 4:00 to start the cycle over for the Saturday market. “I just do it—I don’t know,” says Deleo with a shrug.  In addition to working at the farm (and his exhausting hours), Deleo is also back in school, studying marketing and finance.  I spotted a textbook near the cash register which he was planning on reading when things were slower.

The long hours don’t put a damper on Dan’s firm belief in the value of treating his customers with warmth and respect.  Deleo compared buying a product at a farmers’ market to trying to buy a car.  “What makes me crazy as a car buyer is to deal with a salesman who [doesn’t] know squat about the car,” he says. “I made a point to try and learn everything about our product.”  Dan recognizes that if he treats a customer poorly at the market, they may just walk right by next time and head to the heated Whole Foods.  DiPaola Farms recognizes that in everyone’s busy day-to-day lives, there’s real value in the customer connecting with a warm and friendly person.

—————————

Q: How do you determine the price of your turkeys?

Dan Deleo: “Feed—feed prices are driven by the price of fuel.  When the price of diesel spikes, the price of feed goes up.  A fuel surcharge…drives your price structure.  The feed is from a company in Pennsylvania.  Art [DiPaola] is very specific with his feed:  no growth hormones, no antibiotics; at times he’ll pay more money to get what he’s looking for.”

Q: What is your favorite way to prepare turkey?

D.D.: “I have access to all of these products, but the only thing I bring home are thighs.  If you ever come to my house, I pound them into cutlets and serve them up.”

Q: What is the best part about selling at a farmers’ market?

D.D.: “I really enjoy this; it’s the most fun job I’ve ever had…in my entire life…because you get to deal with people.  I worked in New York City for IBM and I was one of the 21 million people who commuted here but I had no concept that people actually lived here.  The coolest thing with the market is that you’re dealing with people who live here.  This is their park.  Getting to know people on that level versus breezing by them on a subway station is really interesting.  You also deal with the farmers.  If you were to interview each one of these people, everyone’s got a story.”

—————————

Where to Buy: 13 markets this season, with an additional 2 in the warmer months

Farm Address: 883 Edinburg Road Hamilton Township, New Jersey 08690

In May, I’ll be visiting the farm to see the newborn chicks and get a better idea of how the farm operates.  I’ll be sharing many pictures and a brief write-up after that visit.

Happy Marketing!

-Meaghin