CROZET, Va. - Because of what lurks in the Virginia night, eager to feast on turkey - bears, coyotes, skunks, foxes and more - Judd and Cari Culver have spared no expense or effort on their electric fence.
They patrol it twice a day, pruners in hand, as even one stray blade of grass could lessen the fence's potential jolt. Theirs is a smartfence that will text the Culvers if it somehow loses power. And, despite all that, should something actually break through, the Culvers have two llamas standing watch - beasts whose hateful temperaments make them effective guard animals.
Extraordinary turkeys call for extraordinary measures, and these turkeys inside the Culvers' smartfence might be, according to those who have tried them, the most extraordinary birds you could serve this Thanksgiving. They are, accordingly, expensive: $12.55 a pound at retail. A marauding opossum could erode the Culvers' bottom line quickly; the fence is key.
America, meet the KellyBronze.
"Kelly" is for the English farmers who started this whole thing. "Bronze" is for the turkey's color, that glossy brown of the quintessential Thanksgiving turkey. By the mid-20th century, bronze turkeys had almost completely been replaced in commercial production by white-feathered breeds that were considered more appealing on the grocery store shelf. The white turkeys were also bred for rapid growth - at the expense, turkey connoisseurs would argue, of flavor.
Jump to the 1970s, when bronze turkeys were getting truly rare and times were getting tough for Derek Kelly on his farm in Essex, England. Kelly began buying up all the remaining bronze turkeys he could find and, with his son, Paul, set to work on the idea - long before it went mainstream - that going retro might be the key to getting ahead. They started selling KellyBronzes in 1984.
"We didn't have any money at all, and we were trying to bring a new product to market," remembers Paul Kelly, who runs the business today. "It was really tough, but we knew in our heart of hearts we were doing the right thing."
The name "KellyBronze," Kelly emphasizes, denotes more than a heritage bronze turkey breed. KellyBronzes are strictly free-ranging and receive no antibiotics, feed additives or growth hormones. They grow slowly, meaning they're older and fatter at slaughter than the average turkey. Each one is hand-plucked, dry-hung and aged before hitting the shelf. The whole process is slow and labor-intensive; hence the high price. But the result is a bird that cooks quickly (at 350 degrees, a 12-pound turkey should take less than 2 1/2 hours; a 20-pounder should be ready in little more than three) and tastes, Kelly says, "genuinely better."
Things started taking off for the Kellys in 1990, after the celebrity English cook Delia Smith recommended the KellyBronze in one of her books. The KellyBronze also steadily won fans at Christmas dinner - the primary turkey event on the British calendar - and demand continued to grow.
"At the end of the day, quality does win," says Kelly, who now raises 43,000 KellyBronzes every year. When you include other farms that he has franchised, total annual U.K. KellyBronze production is about 65,000.
The British Turkey Federation (Paul Kelly is its chairman) says Britons eat 10 million turkeys every Christmas. Our National Turkey Federation figures Americans eat 46 million turkeys every Thanksgiving, making this the true land of turkey opportunity.
Selling a $200 turkey
It's hard to find exact numbers on this, but Cari Culver might be Virginia's only turkey farmer with a PhD in immunology. Before she had any idea she'd ever raise turkeys, though, a post-doc in cancer research took her, with Judd tagging along, to Dundee, Scotland. Judd, who'd worked for large poultry companies in the United States and had written his master's thesis on turkey nutrition, took a sales job with a poultry nutrition company. He traveled a lot, calling on customers all over the United Kingdom, including Paul Kelly.
After Cari's post-doc, the Culvers moved to England, more centrally located for Judd's job. By then they had a young son, Afton. From before his first birthday, the Culvers suspected he had autism. (Formal diagnosis came when Afton was 3.) Their experiences with public health care and social services in rural England were trying, and the private therapy they began paying for themselves was expensive. Judd and Cari, who'd met as grad students at Virginia Tech, had always talked about returning someday to rural Virginia. Afton's need for better services accelerated things.
In the midst of this, Judd paid a visit to Kelly's farm. At the end, Kelly dropped a surprise question: Would Judd want to farm KellyBronze turkeys in America? "He had all the experience needed, and I liked him," recalls Kelly, who'd been eyeing the American market for about a decade. "That was a pretty good recipe as far as I was concerned."
The Culvers loved the idea, and, after considerable searching, decided on Crozet as the best place to make it all happen.
Crozet is definitely rural Virginia. It's close to their families and just down the road from Charlottesville, where the Virginia Institute of Autism and the University of Virginia hospital offer top-of-the-line services for Afton. The Culvers love the public schools in Albemarle County, where Afton, now 5, has started kindergarten and where their younger son, Lachlan, 3, will soon enroll.
And it would be hard to find a better place for a first KellyBronze colony in the New World. Crozet lies within easy reach of the D.C. metro area, home to some of the country's wealthiest counties and a thriving local-foods scene.
"If we can't sell a $200 turkey in Northern Virginia, then we're not going to be able to sell it anywhere else," says Judd.
Last fall, the Culvers bought their 100-acre farm in Crozet and moved back from England to become turkey farmers. Judd has a new sales job with another poultry nutrition company. Because he's frequently away, Cari is the main one in charge of the country's first KellyBronze flock, now nearing maturity. The couple's boys are thriving.
"What little boy wouldn't love it?" she asks.
'Our turkeys will fly'
The Culvers' plunge into upper-upper-crust turkey farming wasn't made in haste. In 2012, while still in England, they persuaded another farmer in Virginia to raise a test batch of 150 KellyBronzes. Using the cold call as their primary marketing strategy, they sold 125. In 2013 and 2014, still managing things from afar, the Culvers tested the waters with 250 and then 500 KellyBronzes. They sold out both of those, mostly to butcher shops.
"Every year we get more and more [customers] coming back, raving about how great it was last year," says Don Roden, owner of the Organic Butcher of McLean, who just started taking KellyBronze orders for this Thanksgiving.
The Culvers "really sold me on how they raise their turkeys and how good they are," says Roden. "The idea of them coming . . . here to Virginia was pretty cool and a great opportunity for us."
The Whole Ox in The Plains, Va., has also sold KellyBronzes since the trial phase. The first year she carried them, co-owner Amanda Wyne Luhowiak compared one with another turkey in a Thanksgiving Day taste-test. The KellyBronze won hands down and has been the only turkey on her table ever since.
The KellyBronze story and the KellyBronze taste, she says, are two major selling points. The fact that the birds are quick and easy to cook is another significant plus, says Wyne Luhowiak, who begins taking orders for Thanksgiving on Oct. 1.
"I think it's really important, because people only cook turkeys once or twice a year, and there's so much pressure on it turning out perfect," she says.
The Culvers have 1,000 KellyBronzes on the farm now, in their first official season. They also have plenty of space for more; best-case scenario, five years from now, they might be raising 10,000. Last winter, announcing the expansion to Virginia, Paul Kelly was quoted in the British press as saying he was "aware that America is the graveyard for lots of English food firms, but I am confident our turkeys will fly."
The smartfence has held. The Culvers' pasture has not become a KellyBronze graveyard. By mid-September, the flock had grown big and bronze in the Crozet pasture. Next year, there will be more. So far, so good for the KellyBronze's American debut.
KellyBronze turkeys are available for order, starting at $150 for a 12-pounder, at www.kellyturkeys.com, where you can also find contact information for the 10 Virginia retailers taking KellyBronze orders for Thanksgiving.
Jenner writes frequently about farming. He lives in Brazil.
