Talking Turkey (and ice cream) on Ekonk Hill
By Nancy Weiss
Photographs: Courtesy Ekonk Hill

“Pastoral” is the word evoked as one comes up on Ekonk Hill Turkey Farm. It sits surrounded by dairy operations in a brilliant green expanse on a multi-acre swath of preserved agricultural land in rural Sterling, hugging the Rhode Island border. At the farm’s bustling heart are Elena and Rick Hermonot, who, with plenty of help from their children, Christopher, Jonathan, Ashley and Katie, raise turkeys, chickens, capons, cattle, and pigs.

They also operate a café, bakery and specialty food shop. At Elena’s Milkhouse Bakery, the smell of baking pies, muffins, donuts, and cookies mixes with the aroma of coffee amid the lively banter of customers— more than 20,000 come by to sample Elena’s wares every year. In addition to drawing plenty of locals, it’s also a favorite stop with visitors on their way to the Rhode Island beaches who make deliberate detours to purchase something delicious from Elena. Her cider donuts top the list of favorites.

Ice Cream with a Taste of Terroir

During the summer months, ice cream made on the farm becomes the center of attention. To kick off the season on the first weekend of spring, the Hermonots offer a free all-you-can-eat ice cream extravaganza.  Visitors pour onto the farm, consuming over 80 tubs of ice cream and 1,500 make-your-own sundaes.

“It is an absolute zoo here, but we like to give back to the community.  People come and try the ice cream and then become customers for the whole season,” says Hermonot.

All the ice cream is made with local Connecticut milk and at 16 percent butterfat, the sensation is buttery on the tongue. Flavors reflect a sense of place, with names like Blossom’s Delight, an ice cream named after a particular Jersey cow, and Narragansett Cookie, named after the Narragansett turkeys at the farm—it’s black and brown like the birds. Black currant juice from nearby Maple Lane Farms goes into another flavor, and, for the truly adventuresome, there is Sweet Corn ice cream flavored with corn puree. This year Rick Hermonot plans to introduce cucumber ice cream as a new taste treat.

“Either you like it, or you don’t,” says the jovial Hermonot, who claims to personally love the Sweet Corn ice cream.

Pastured Turkeys

Ekonk Hill Turkey Farm is the largest producer of free-range turkeys in Connecticut. The birds are raised on pasture augmented with grain formulated to meet their nutritional needs. According to Hermonot, who holds a degree in Animal Science from the University of Connecticut, commercial turkeys (unlike their cousins in the wild) must be fed grain or they will not grow properly.

The Hermonots started out as dairy farmers and grew their turkey business slowly. Rick Hermonot always loved poultry and excelled in Future Farmers of America (FFA) at poultry judging, a skill both his daughters have inherited. In 1998 they started with 15 turkeys; they currently have 2,400—2,350 white breasted and 50 heritage.

“We have a family tradition of trying to raise everything on our Thanksgiving table ourselves,” says Hermonot, who is proud of the fact that they have been able to promote this idea with their customers by offering a variety of products, most importantly, turkeys.

At Ekonk Hill Turkey Farm, they raise seven different breeds, most of which are the ever-popular Broad Breasted White, a fast growing turkey with lots of breast meat, which is still preferred by most con sumers. But the Hermonots also raise the chic heritage breed turkeys that have suddenly garnered the attention of gourmet cooks, offering Blue Slate, Narragansett, Bourbon Red, Royal Palm, Chocolate, and Black Spanish, which sell for $7 per pound.

The poults arrive in July and are placed under a brooder for three weeks. They are slowly weaned away from the heated building and by four weeks are moved onto the pasture, which is surrounded by electric fence to keep out predators. The birds remain on the pasture until November when they are processed for Thanksgiving.

Jon Hermonot, a college graduate who majored in agricultural economics at University of Connecticut, is the production manager for the turkeys. He faces the challenges of keeping the birds safe. One year, he lost 68 turkeys in one night to a fisher cat. Last year a hungry owl liked to drop by and kill one or two birds each night. The farm is near the Pachaug State Forest, a natural haven for wild animals, so the Hermonots devise ways to keep predators out using an electric fence and other deterrents.

In November, the family gears up to process the turkeys on the farm. Rick Hermonot feels strongly that animals should be treated with compassion, so the birds are not moved from the property they have called home for many months.

“We treat them with respect right up to the last minute of their lives. These birds have no stress, which makes them a better quality product,” says Hermonot.

While Thanksgiving week is the height of the retail season at Ekonk Hill, consumers with a taste for a holiday style dinner on a more regular basis can enjoy a signature treat: the Hot Gobbler Sundae, so named because it is layered and served in a sundae container.

The dish features mashed potatoes, then stuffing followed by chunks of turkey breast smothered in gravy and topped with a dollop of cranberry sauce. The turkey dinner in a container sells for $4.99 for small and $7.99 for large.

Hermonot, who works off the farm as consultant for Farm Credit East, manages to find time to volunteer in a variety of agriculturally related organizations, including the Brooklyn Fair and the Last Green Valley, Inc. He, along with his son Jonathan and others, has promoted legislation that would allow farmers with poultry operations of less than 20,000 birds to sell their products to restaurants and specialty food stores. They could expand their market and respond to repeated requests from commercial enterprises for their farm-raised meat.

Every year the Hermonot family sits down together for their annual meeting. They review the previous year, looking at financial reports and evaluating practices as they plan for the next year. Everyone has a voice. Together they have grown Ekonk Hill Turkey Farm from a small operation into the largest producer of locally grown turkeys in the state and simultaneously created an enterprise that serves the community and tourists as well.

Elena and Rick Hermonot say that as each family member contributes to the whole and the operation flourishes, they see that the enterprise is far more complex than what they imagined it would become.  They’re happy to see that as other families feast on holiday turkey from Ekonk Hill, new traditions are being established that contribute to a growing support for Connecticut agriculture.

Nancy Pritchard Weiss is a writer and development consultant who lives in Pomfret on an 18th-century farm. She was the first director of development for the University of Connecticut College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. She worked with Ken Simon on the documentary Working the Land and is a consultant for Connecticut Farmland Trust. She writes a weekly column for the Villager Newspapers and contributes to four other publications.