Event

Homestead Heritage Turkeys

Let's Talk Turkey!

Learn the fundamentals of raising heritage breed turkeys in your own backyard or urban homestead!

Turkeys have wonderful personalities and make a great addition to your flock. This is also a great time to begin raising them to have them ready for the Holiday table.

In this workshop, you'll learn about breed selection, brooding poults, housing needs, feeding requirements, general management, and more! Rachel will bring some of her flock to show off, and we'll also have a limited number of turkey poults for sale.

Instructor: New York native Rachel Kayen raises heritage breed turkeys at City Lights Urban Farm, her half-acre property in the Laurel district of Oakland. She is a graduate of The State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

A lover of the outdoors and lifelong 4-H member, Rachel eventually went on to teach farm ecology and horseback riding. She recently teamed up with the Montclair (Oakland) 4-H Club to lead their first turkey raising project.

Rachel believes that it is important to have a connection to where our food comes from, and has raised and harvested a number heritage Blue Slate turkeys for Thanksgiving for her family and friends. Next year she hopes to have her birds naturally breed and produce most, if not all of the turkeys of the next generation.

She is an avid cook, intrepid urban farmer, and continues to hone her homesteading skills.