We drove out to Wasilla today to visit Triple D Farms. Triple D is a small family run poultry farm that raises a range of poultry, selling chicks, whole birds, and poultry products. The 'farm' is in the suburbs of Wasilla (a bit of an oxymoron as Wasilla is all suburb) and it wasn't nearly as agricultural as I expected. There was a pen of turkeys near the front of the compound (with a few guniea hens thrown in) awaiting their Thanksgiving Day fate and a flock of ducks waddling around the back. It's a large lot with a small house, a few pens, some open pecking space, and an abbatoir.
Here's their website with all their prices:
For sale, they had half turkeys, smoked turkey parts, whole chickens, and fresh eggs. If you catch them at the right time of year they will also have several types of fresh ducks, smoked ducks, duck and goose eggs, whole geese, guniea hens, pheasant, quail, and more. Triple D Farms also sells Matanuska Creamery ice cream (we bought chocolate and blueberry, $4/pint, $8/half gallon). Triple D Farms also carries Van Wyke pork by the quarter, half, full, and whole (a couple sizes) pig. (Van Wyke is the pork farmer out in Kenny Lake I wrote about last February.)
The birds you buy experience all stages of their life in the uncrowded, clean setting of the owners' property and the folks themselves have the right attitude for this sort of thing. Currently, you have to drive out to Wasilla to buy their stuff. I asked if there was any chance of New Sagaya's or another local food place carrying their birds, but she said no.
The reason is they would have to become certified by the USDA as a processing facility, an ordeal that would cost at least a million bucks. This is one of the ways large ag corporations are able to keep small, local producers out of the market, by pressuring the USDA to require somebody like Triple D to have an office and cleaning station for their own USDA inspector. I'd like to see this get challenged in court. Is there a bored lawyer in the house?
Triple D Farms is also known as the place where Sarah Palin was interviewed while the owner slaughtered turkeys in the background.
You can't make this shit up.
