GEORGETOWN, KY – From Elmwood Stock Farm in Scott County, Ky., to families in more than 40 states, roughly 500 unique Heritage-bred turkeys are shipped off to dinner tables each Thanksgiving.

Farm owner Mac Stone said they may look like regular turkeys, but these birds are set apart from the flock. Stone said it’s their background and the way they’re raised.

“They’re sleeker, they’re smarter, they communicate with each other, they have this communal brain,” Stone said. “They still have that natural instinct like their wild cousins, but they’re domesticated to where they stay here and we can feed them and take care of them. The Broad-Breasted Bronze turkeys have full, plump white team breasts many of us are accustomed to. These look like the turkeys you find at the grocery store, but the similarities stop there. The Heritage turkeys are barely domesticated cousins of the wild turkeys you see along back roads and hiking trails. These have a more equal white-to-dark meat ration, and the meat overall has a deeper, richer flavor and texture.”

Elmwood Stock Farm is a sixth-generation family farm situated on nearly 400 acres just outside Georgetown. A USDA-certified organic operation, Elmwood Stock Farm produces vegetables, fruits, pantry items, pasture-raised poultry and pork, and grass-fed, grass-finished beef and lamb for direct sales to customers through the CSA Farm Share and online store, as well as for wholesale and restaurant accounts. When Thanksgiving rolls around, the farm is best known for its Heritage-bred turkeys.

Elmwood Stock Farm is one of a few farms in the country growing organic, Heritage-breed turkeys. Elmwood’s Heritage turkeys are not of one particular breed, but made up of a group of breeds. They include Narragansetts, the oldest-known American breed, Slate turkeys, and a few Bourbon Reds, named after neighboring Bourbon County.

For around two decades, Elmwood has raised the Heritage turkeys to prevent the birds’ extinction. But they’re not the only turkeys at the farm. Elmwood also raises Broad-Breasted turkeys.

Whichever bird a customer chooses at Elmwood, the price is much higher than what they’d pay at the supermarket – up to $299. Stone says it’s worth it.

“Yeah, they’re paying a lot of money, but they know where it’s going, they know they’re gonna keep this land farming longer, and again the taste is the total difference,” Stone said.

According to Stone, some characteristics that distinguish the very rare Heritage turkey from the standard Broad-Breasted variety are slower growth, more proportionate breasts to legs, and the ability to naturally breed.

Elmwood’s turkeys have become so popular, especially the 15- to 22-pound Broad-Breasted Bronze birds, that they sell out weeks in advance of Thanksgiving.

“If you want a big turkey, you have to order early,” Stone said.

The Elmwood turkeys’ diets consist of grass and bugs, supplemented by organic feed.

“We move the turkeys around the pasture so they’re always on fresh grass,” Stone said. “We give them feed from organic grain farmers in western Kentucky.”

That organic composition includes a mix of corn and soybeans, roasted so fat remains in the beans.

“It helps impart a nice flavor to the bird, which is why ours don’t taste gamy like wild turkeys,” Stone said. “The unique flavor leads to a lot of repeat customers.”

“About 15 years ago, we were asked by the Livestock Conservancy to help preserve these Heritage breeds,” Stone said. “I told them we’re not in the zoo business, but if you can eat them, we’ll raise them. It’s been fun. They have more personality than Broad Breasted birds.”

Unlike the lumbering Bronzes, the Heritage breeds can fly.

“It took a few years to learn to get an animal that flies into a cattle trailer,” Stone said, noting he uses netting to contain the birds when loading them.

Elmwood’s Heritage breed turkeys were “recommended” in a taste test by Cook’s Illustrated. It was the only organic turkey to receive such a distinction from the national magazine, which described the flavor as “rich without gamy notes” with a “texture like velvet.”

Vogue Magazine called Elmwood the “best place to order Heritage turkeys.” The Spruce Eats, an online food site, listed Elmwood among the nation’s 11 best mail-order turkeys, naming its Broad-Breasted Bronze variety the Best for Large Gatherings.

“The Heritage turkey hens laid their eggs, and we hatched them in the incubator back in the springtime,” Stone said. “They’ve been living on our rolling pastures since coming out of the brooder barn at a few weeks of age. This represents the essence of farming optimism: turn an egg into the centerpiece of the Thanksgiving feast, and have some fun while doing it.”

To place a turkey order, visit www.elmwoodstockfarm.com.