Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without the crowning glory of the dinner table, Roast Turkey. Turkey Farmer Rob knows a thing or two about rearing the perfect roast, so we caught up with to find out more about how our dinner get from farm to fork, and how he prepares his business for this hectic season.
Quick Fire Questions
Name: Rob Morton
What do you make: we produce free range bronze and Norfolk black turkeys from our farm in Norfolk; we have now also established a smokehouse on the farm where we smoke chicken and duck using chippings from old whisky barrels.
Where can we find your products: we do sell at some local farmers markets but generally most of our sales are through our website www.freerangeturkeys.co.uk where customers can order and pay online, some local butchers also sell our turkey’s. The smokehouse range is also offered online but plans are afoot to roll this out to independent retailers early next year.
Favourite product from our range: oak smoked gressingham duck, awesome
Christmas food heaven: need you ask, turkey with smoked salmon to start and a cold turkey sandwich boxing day.
Christmas food hell: Mulled wine
The Morton's Story
Tell us the story of how you got to where you are today.
MTT started back in 1998 when we started rearing a few geese for Christmas on our family farm in Norfolk. This then led onto doing turkeys and organic chickens. Moving on a few years we now contract grow about 30000 free range chickens a year and produce about 800 free range bronze turkeys for Christmas. We have also set up Mortons’s Smokehouse which specializes in smoked chicken, duck and game.
Describe a day in the life at the Morton’s Farm:
6am – pull on my socks, if on a smoking day then light the smoker
6.30am out of the door to feed the masses, up to 1000 turkeys, 5000 chickens, mainly hand fed, then litter down
8am – breakfast and prepare the children for school, manage orders
9am – load the smoker
10 – 3 pm monitor the smoking process
3pm – cook off the smoke duck etc in the smoker
6pm – pack the products
What does artisan mean to you:
In a nutshell food prepared properly using age old methods but brought into the modern day. It’s all about slowing the process down a bit with great ingredients.
As a business owner, what’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced:
Finding staff that are willing to carry out multiple roles and knowing it’s been done to your satisfaction.
Morton's at Christmas
How and when do you start preparing for the busiest retail season of the year ? Explain the journey that takes your turkeys to the table?
We start around March time, analysing the sales, where they have come from, weights etc. We would look at the previous year’s sales and on the back of that order the varying breeds of day old poults in to match the weights we require at Christmas. Poults come in in early June and are grown right up to about 3 weeks before Christmas. As a rule the first week of December is plucking time, we then hang the turkeys in a cold store for 10 days to mature in flavour (much like hanging game). About 7 days before Christmas day it’s all hands to the deck for dressing and boxing the turkeys ready for delivery.
How do you cope with the extra demand around Christmas?
We have some core part time staff that know what they’re doing and we all buckle down and get the job done
What is the most challenging aspect of running a small business at this time of year?
Weather! If it freezes the pipes to all the chicken sheds need thawing out before you start a day’s work. Snow can stop the pluckers getting in or the couriers delivering. Time is also relevant; we can’t move Christmas day just because we don’t get the work done in time!
What’s your top tip for small food businesses that are looking to prepare for their first retail Christmas?
Plan ahead, order early, get good part time staff and have a backup plan in place for manual despatch of products should the computer system crash - it gets very busy at that time of year.
What help and advice would you like to see available for small businesses at this time of the year?
Maybe help sourcing good part time staff, a pool of staff that have worked in the food sector who are busy during the summertime on other jobs and can then transfer to help Christmas producers.
What will you be serving with your turkey on Christmas day?
I like to keep it simple, just the usual roasties, sprouts etc. And a bottle of beer!
You can find Mortons on Twitter, @mortonsturkeys, on Facebook, or on their website here.
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