In The News
Mason farm raises turkeys for Thanksgiving
By ROWAN WILSON
For many American families, preparing a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner is an unwavering tradition.
According to the National Turkey Federation, the United States is the largest producer and exporter of turkey products in the world. In 2021, 5.1 billion pounds of turkey was consumed in the United States, and about 46 million turkeys are eaten on Thanksgiving. So with all those plucked and golden-roasted birds on the table this holiday, where are they coming from? And what is the life of a turkey really like?
Amanda Cannon, who runs Autumn Frost Farm in Mason with her husband Matt, knows that not all turkeys are equal.
“The difference is in how they’re raised,” Cannon said. For an average grocery store turkey, “bulk is the key word,” she said.
Some turkey farms raise thousands to tens of thousands of turkeys a year. Often, Cannon said, they spend their entire lives inside. In contrast, Autumn Frost Farm raised around 50 turkeys for this year’s Thanksgiving season, and for the majority of their lives, they are outdoors.
The turkeys come to the farm in March or April.
“For the first few weeks of their life they are in a brooding box because they need heat,” Cannon said. “They live in there until feathering out – when they have feathers enough to keep warm,” which varies depending on the weather and how cold it is.
When they are ready, the young turkeys are moved to a chicken tractor inside an enclosure. This provides them with a shelter to keep warm and will protect the birds from predators.
“After four or so weeks in there, we have a three-sided coop to roost and rest in at night,” Cannon said. The turkeys have a quarter- to half-acre enclosure to roam in, where they grow until it’s time for slaughter. They put no more than 50 birds in one enclosure and would set up another one if they had a bigger flock.
“They spend their day foraging through grass and leaves. You see them fly into trees, run and chase each other,” Cannon said, “It shows in the taste of the meat.”
Cannon and her husband started Autumn Frost Farm because they wanted to produce meat they felt good about eating. They don’t use antibiotics and aim to give their animals the best quality of life they can.
“We pride ourselves on ethically sourced meats,” Cannon said.
The species of turkey the Cannons raised this year was called broad-breasted bronze turkeys. It is the same kind that someone would find in a grocery store.
“The difference is how they’re raised,” Cannon said.
Sometimes they raise heritage-breed birds. These turkeys, Cannon said, are like the “wagyu” of turkey, referring to the Japanese beef.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 49 million birds, including millions of turkeys, have died of avian flu in 2022 in 46 states. Cannon said their flock fortunately has not been affected. But “due to the avian flu and larger facilities being shut down and quarantined, it has affected cost,” Cannon said. The baby turkeys, or “pullets,” were more expensive this year and feed has cost more.
Cannon said they’ve been lucky to make the numbers work and haven’t had to raise their prices, but it has been a struggle for many small-scale farms. And “every time I see a goose now I chase it out,” Cannon said.
Next year they are considering keeping a few male and female turkeys to breed themselves so they won’t have to rely on getting babies from an outside farm.
Cannon attends the Peterborough Farmers Market on Wednesday afternoons and was a vendor at the Jaffrey Farmers Market, as well. She has seen an increase in people interested in eating locally and sustainably in the last couple years.
“People definitely want to know where their food is coming from,” Cannon said. She believes this is due to national supply-chain shortages and people being more conscious of their food. And once they realize there’s a big difference in taste, Cannon thinks it’s hard for people to go back to just any ordinary turkey.
Autumn Frost Farm’s turkeys typically range from 18 to 25 pounds. They are available for pre-order now for next season.
They may have a couple turkeys left for this Thanksgiving, and they raise and sell chicken, eggs and pork as well. Cannon can be reached on the farm’s website, autumnfrost.farm, or called at 603-706-2971.
https://www.ledgertranscript.com/Story-on-turkeys-48772981
Couple works to learn history of historic Mason home
By ROWAN WILSON
At the end of Black Brook Road in Mason, the lush June forest opened up. The driveway skewed left and ran between a white clapboard home and a lawn lined with thick-trunked maple trees. To the right, a logging road ran into the forest. But straight ahead, slightly up a grassy incline where a welcome sign might sit, were two tombstones, rectangular chunks of granite stacked up the hill. The engravings on the two stones were well-worn and filled in with lichen. There was a border around each name.
Matt Cannon said, “That’s Elias Elliot and his wife.”
Elias built the home in 1762, and it was in the Elliot family for 157 years.
The house was owned by a few other families, and then at the end of March 2022, Matt and Amanda Cannon bought the Elliot homestead and moved in with their family and their business, Autumn Frost Farm. They’ve been busy building their farm back up on the new property, clearing the heavily weeded fields and dealing with predators preying on their chickens.
But they’ve also been curious.
Ever since arriving, the Cannons have been fascinated by their home’s history, and they’ve learned a lot in the last few months. They’ve been in touch with local historians and have been able to get documents and old deeds. They’ve uncovered discoveries inside the home and on their property and they are excited to continue to explore. Matt has started building a timeline for the farm’s website, adding information on the farmstead and the Elliot family as he learns more.
Although the Cannons can’t be positive the founding bodies are buried at the entrance to their home, they think there’s a good chance they really are. They discovered an Elliot family plot in a graveyard down the street, but these Elliots weren’t there.
The right side of the house was the original structure. The left side was added later, in the 1800s. The porch in the old section leads into the kitchen. It’s bright and clean. It feels fully functional as a modern kitchen, but there are elements that are undeniably older. Amanda peeled back the tablecloth and revealed thick boards, a row of nails. The table was made from the original floorboards. There’s a brick bread oven on one wall, added after the home was built, and the view over the sink looks out at a field recently cleared by the Cannons. A couple hundred years ago, Mitchell Hill Road would have run through that field and the house would have faced that direction.
Amanda pointed out what would have been the front door in the newer section, similar to the front door on the other side. “The two sides of the house sort of mirror each other,” she said.
Mitchell Hill Road is still an active road that connects to Wilton; it just doesn’t extend into the Cannons’ property anymore.
The majority of the 522 acres they now own in Mason is wooded land protected under a conservation easement. Amanda explained that the easement allows for forestry, agriculture and low-impact recreation like hiking. There’s a logging road that runs into the woods, eventually connecting to a trail that leads to the ruins of a grist mill. Just the foundation is left, hunks of granite built around a stream flowing from a pond up on higher ground. The mill would have had a water wheel.
“It was really breathtaking the first time we did this run,” Amanda said, looking down at the ruins hidden by the foliage. A little bit farther along the path was the remnants of a bridge that would have connected the grist mill to the house more directly from Mitchell Hill Road. The bridge had been built in the 1700s and collapsed during a storm. Now the huge stones sit in piles in the river on either side.
“You see these stones and think people must have moved all this by hand,” Matt said, “Just incredible.”
Matt started farming “because I wanted to know where my food was coming from,” he said. He and Amanda started Autumn Frost Farm in New Ipswich a few years later.
But “we were running out of space there,” said Amanda. So they started looking for a new home. “We thought we were going to have to go further for this much land,” she said.
The Cannons are excited about the space, but there’s a lot to maintain. Matt explained that the weeds are really invasive, he ran into poison ivy and “predators have been a huge problem.”
“There are foxes, coyotes, we’ve seen a bobcat,” he said. “There are fishers and a bear.”
The Cannons raise laying and meat chickens, along with turkeys, and will raise pigs again once they get the permit for their new land. Their goal is to create a local “butcher box” or a meat CSA. During the pandemic, Amanda started delivering orders and it has been successful.
“I tell everyone I live in the most-magical place on earth. They say, ‘Isn’t that Disney?’ No, it’s my house,” Amanda said.
Amanda and Matt are interested in learning more about the history of their home. If anyone has any information or photos, they can be contacted on their website, autumnfrost.farm.
https://www.ledgertranscript.com/Couple-timelines-history-of-farmstead-in-Mason-46743669
Conservation district celebrates veterans with farmers market vouchers
By MOLLY BOLAN
Aug 8, 2021
In its celebration of Veterans Appreciation Month, the Cheshire County Conservation District will offer veterans $20 vouchers for local farmers markets throughout September.
The markets in Jaffrey, Keene and Hinsdale are all participating in the program, and veterans can pick up one voucher from each market every weekend. The vouchers are not transferable between markets, but any unspent funds can be used later in the month from the market where they were issued.
This is the conservation district’s third year facilitating such a program, according to the district’s outreach coordinator Benée Hershon. In 2018, the organization met with staff from Vouchers for Veterans, a Rochester-based nonprofit that provides vouchers to help veterans purchase goods from farmers markets across New Hampshire and Maine.
While the Cheshire County Conservation District is not officially affiliated with Vouchers for Veterans, it drew inspiration from the initiative.
The conservation district’s Veterans Appreciation Month isn’t a need-based program — all veterans are welcome to participate regardless of income. But it does address a challenge faced by veterans across the country. According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, veterans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan are almost twice as likely to be food insecure as the general population. Food insecurity is the lack of access to nutritious food necessary for a healthy lifestyle.
And the program isn’t only meant to benefit veterans.
“It also really helps the farmers we work with at the markets,” said Hershon, adding that farmers often have an abundance of produce during the fall’s harvest season. The vouchers can help to advance sales of the extra fruit and vegetables. It’s a win-win, she said, as it channels money to vendors and nutritious goods to veterans.
The program is funded by the Center for Population Health at Cheshire Medical Center and aims to promote the goals of the Healthy Monadnock Alliance.
The TEAM Jaffrey Community Farmers Market is on Fridays from 3 to 6 p.m. on Main Street. Saturday hours for the Keene Farmers Market on Gilbo Avenue are 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. The Hinsdale Farmers Markets runs the same hours on Sunday and is hosted on Main Street.
People interested in participating in the program must present a valid veteran ID and proof of Cheshire County residency.
