Meet the Farmer: Ferndale Market

Eastside is proud to source turkeys from Ferndale Market, a third generation farm owned and operated by the Peterson family in Cannon Falls, MN. Get to know Ferndale and taste the local difference this holiday season.

 Ferndale's practices demonstrate a deep commitment to excellent care and animal husbandry. Each year the Petersons raise about 150,000 free range, all-natural turkeys on their 120-acre farm. Opting for sustainability over scale has kept Ferndale a medium sized operation and preserved their family farming tradition.

 Ferndale works closely with a local hatchery to incubate eggs naturally. Baby turkeys, called poults, are delivered to the farm within a day of hatching. Their first month is spent in the brooder barn, kept at a balmy 100°F, where the poults are hand fed and watered. As they mature, the turkeys roam freely on 20 beautiful acres and are rotated on a fresh pasture every week. No antibiotics, additives, fillers or saline solutions enter the raising and production processes. This free-range, natural upbringing makes for a better tasting turkey—the dark meat is especially rich because of all the muscle free-range turkeys develop.

 The Peterson family has spent three generations raising turkeys and refining their methods, but Ferndale's free range and all-natural farming practices have been in place since 1939, when Dale and Fern Peterson began their farm and their turkey legacy.

Our farm was started in 1939 by my grandfather, and he really believed that the best contribution he could make to the world was to grow happy, healthy turkeys to feed the average American family with affordable food. We still stand by that legacy today. We are doing things very much the way he did 75+ years ago.

-John Peterson, owner Ferndale Market