SEQUIM — A cooperative of farms on the North Olympic Peninsula soon can begin marketing their home-grown poultry and rabbits to local stores thanks to a pioneering family farm.
Tom and Holly Clark, owners of Clark Farms, are the first local poultry farmers to receive U.S. Food and Drug Administration certification to process their turkeys, chickens, peafowl and rabbits using a mobile poultry processing trailer owned by the Western Washington Poultry Farmers Cooperative.
The trailer will allow Clark Farms, and eventually other farms on the Peninsula, to process their own locally grown poultry and sell those products to area stores and restaurants in numbers large enough to make the business sustainable, the Clarks said.
The Clarks received certification to use the trailer last Nov. 21 — just in time to harvest their turkeys for Thanksgiving.
They quickly found they didn’t have enough turkeys to meet the demand, they said.
Their first sales from use of the trailer included 62 heritage Narragansett turkeys sold from the farm store to grace the Thanksgiving tables of shoppers quick to get on the list early for one of the farm-fresh birds.
“We even sold some of the turkeys meant for our own table to those on the waiting list,” Holly said.
Tom said another, smaller run of turkeys to sell is being raised on the farm, and those are expected to be ready for market in February.
The Clarks said they will raise more turkeys and chickens this year, and said they hope to expand their market to more restaurants and local stores with the use of the new trailer.
They also raise beef, pork and lamb, and slaughter many of those animals using a mobile trailer owned by Pierce County Conservation District and operated by the Puget Sound Meat Producers Cooperative since 2009.
That mobile unit was designed and certified only for hoofed animals.
USDA requirements are different for the smaller turkeys, chickens, ducks, peafowl and rabbits, and requires a separate license to operate for wholesale processing.
In November 2013, Clark Farms was among a group of about 30 farms from Clallam, Jefferson and Kitsap counties that pooled funds to buy the $20,000 poultry processing trailer and register it under their new name — Western Washington Poultry Farmers Cooperative.
Any licensed member of the cooperative can reserve use of the trailer to process poultry.
However, none of the members of the new cooperative had a USDA license to operate the trailer for commercial animal processing at the time.
When the trailer was purchased, only two such trailers existed in the state.
The one the cooperative bought was in need of upgrades to meet health and safety standards, the Clarks said.
Work on the trailer included installing divider curtains to limit possibilities of cross-contamination, improved plumbing and a cooling system to bring the freshly processed meat down to a safe storage temperature within two hours.
Clark Farms has sold whole chickens in small numbers from the farm store at 863 E. Anderson Road north of Sequim and from their booth at the Port Angeles and Poulsbo farmers markets.
They initially used the trailer to process chickens as a “test run” under their existing state “on the farm sales” license.
Their state license allowed them to harvest as many as 1,999 birds per year but also limited how they could sell the heritage breed chickens they slaughtered on their farm without a federally certified processing facility.
Initial sales of the chickens served two purposes, the Clarks said: to determine the best ways to use the trailer and to begin to offer farm-raised, organic poultry to their customers as a new option.
The farm sold about 400 chickens per year in 2011, 2012 and 2013, Holly said.
She said she considered using SpringRain Farm in Chimacum, which has a permanent on-site processing facility that can process up to 19,999 birds and opens the facility for home-scale processors, but the Jefferson County farm did not offer processing for producers who planned to market their birds.
Poultry intended for stores or restaurants had to be transported to a USDA-certified processing plant in Mossyrock, south of Olympia, then transported back to Sequim, where the Clarks distributed the chickens and rabbits to customers.
“We would go with a fully loaded horse trailer,” she said.
Holly said the expense of the trip and the processing fees meant high prices for the birds and little reason to keep raising poultry.
“There was no profit at all,” she said.
Working with state food inspector Kim Hoffman, the Clarks and members of the cooperative worked to make the trailer acceptable to process poultry for commercial sales and to meet certification requirements for the farms to sell their products to local stores.
The Clarks said that while there are cooperative partners in Clallam, Jefferson and Kitsap counties, no one else has yet begun the licensing process.
They said they want to help their neighbor Nash Huber, owner of Nash’s Farm, work through the system to be able to process animals raised on that farm, they said.
The process to gain certification takes one or two months, she said.
However, Patty McManus, promotion coordinator of Nash’s Farm, said the farm isn’t ready to add poultry to its line of natural food offerings.
“It’s on our wish list,” McManus said.
The farm currently has only laying hens and would have to reorganize to make room for meat birds, she said.
The Clarks said that despite having cooperative members in Jefferson County, none have expressed an interest in becoming licensed to use the poultry trailer in the immediate future.
Small farms in Jefferson County that raise poultry include Sunfield Farm in Port Hadlock, Finnriver Farm in Chimacum, Solstice Farm in Chimacum, Twin Vista Ranch on Marrowstone Island, and Moonlight Farm in Quilcene, said Kellie Henwood, small farms coordinator for the Washington State University’s Jefferson County Extension Office.
However, while there are plenty of chickens raised in Jefferson County, the local poultry farms primarily raise laying hens.
“For our farm it’s not a focus. We aren’t raising a lot of animals for meat to sell,” said Beth Ann O’Dell, Sunfield organization coordinator.
O’Dell said the farm does occasionally process a few hens at SpringRain Farm, but not in the numbers or frequency to make use of the cooperative trailer.
Sunfield is not a member of the cooperative, she said.
Some members of the poultry cooperative joined mostly to support other local farms.
Julie Boggs raises cattle in Chimacum with her husband, Chuck Boggs, and said that while they don’t raise poultry and currently have no plans to do so, they joined the effort to purchase the new poultry trailer as part of their support for local farm options.
Boggs manages the Puget Sound Meat Producers Cooperative trailer for hoofed animals — used extensively by both Jefferson and Clallam County farmers, Boggs said.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arice@peninsuladailynews.com.