Talking Turkey: Our Partnership with Minnesota’s Ferndale Market
Ferndale’s finest
Eighty-nine years ago, John Peterson’s grandfather, Dale, set out to farm turkeys. For that, he needed good land with well-draining soil and space to raise the birds free-range, ethically, and without antibiotics. He settled on land in a valley near Cannon Falls, Minnesota. A few years later, he met John’s grandmother, Fern. They dubbed their turkey business “Ferndale” and never looked back.
Three Generations of Farming
In the 70s, John’s father, Dick Peterson, took over the farm as the agriculture industry was undergoing major changes. Turkey production was increasing in scale, transitioning away from free-range to confinement, and many independent turkey farmers were absorbed by big meat companies taking shape in Minnesota. Despite these changes, Dick kept farming turkeys the way Dale had done before him. When John, the third generation, took over the farm in 2008, he knew it was time to do things differently, without compromising on his family’s legacy.
John began to transition the farm to direct marketing, a new frontier for Ferndale, establishing an on-farm store and selling to colleges, schools, and local retailers. Seventeen years later, Ferndale Market raises around 150,000 turkeys a year, supplying turkey to 75 retail stores and numerous restaurants and cafés, including every Bon Appétit account in the state of Minnesota (nine total).
During a visit to Ferndale in September 2024, I experienced the power of Bon Appétit’s Farm to Fork Program firsthand. I clambered into a wagon bed along with chefs, managers, and students from St. Olaf College (mine and Dick Peterson’s alma mater) and Carleton College. What really struck me about the tour of the farm, other than witnessing the source of all those turkey sandwiches and turkey burgers I ate in college, was hearing the stories John and Matt (Ferndale’s sales and partnership manager) told about their long-standing partnership with the two colleges and Bon Appétit as a whole.
The Peterson family at their farm.
A Partnership Takes Flight
Back in 2008, as Ferndale opened direct to market sales, one of their very first partners was Carleton’s Bon Appétit team. John expressed his gratitude to those chefs for helping guide him. “I understood very little about what an institution would need,” he said, and the chefs helped him figure out what products the college wanted to serve. Soon after Carleton, St. Olaf’s Bon Appétit team also brought Ferndale turkey into their café. One day, a St. Olaf chef challenged John to make a better smoked turkey meat. John accepted the task and began working with a local Cannon Falls smoker to produce a simple, clean, delicious smoked turkey breast. A decade later, that smoked turkey breast is now one of the top selling items across the entire business. John told me he feels a ton of gratitude to those Carleton and St. Olaf chefs who had the patience and willingness to work with Ferndale as they learned the ropes.
That’s what makes Bon Appétit unique: the partnership between farmers and chefs is not just transactional. In the case of Ferndale, there is mutual trust and respect between John, the farmer, and the chefs that serve the food. “It takes both of us to bring food to the table,” he says, and it’s also a rewarding experience to know that the turkeys they raise are nourishing and fueling students every day.
Teaching Others to Forge New Paths
John feels lucky, he says, to know the people who eat and serve his food, as most farmers don’t have that direct connection to where their food ends up. He’s heard from his fellow farmers that they feel trapped in the current system. They don’t have a choice over where they sell their turkey, and they don’t know their customers. After many successful years of trying a different approach, John is now teaching new farmers how they can build direct relationships with other farms and their customers.
Ferndale has an on-farm retail store that sells products from a plethora of different local producers. He is proud of building new economic paths for other farmers that don’t include selling to the huge companies that control so much of the industry.
Looking toward the future, John is committed to remaining independent and true to what his family and Ferndale Market have done throughout their history. He will continue working with the land and turkeys to produce better food, a fairer system, and support independent processors, with the goal to stay small, local and do something different than the big guys. In his words, “this is the sustainable path forward both environmentally and economically.”