Tony left Sutton Valence school at the age of 18 to study soft fruit farming at agricultural college.
After 2 years Tony left college and decided he wanted to travel the world and so spent the next year working for Alan Firmlin, tractor driving to save up money to go on his travels. Tony set off to Canada and after working his way around for just over a year he continued on his travels into America, Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, India, Afghanistan, Turkey, Greece and returned home across Europe. As you can imagine, the photograph album is a large one.
Tony returned to Sutton Valence and rented a soft fruit farm in addition to working as a contractor. He grew raspberries and strawberries for several years before buying part of Coombe Farm next door.
In 2001 Tony decided to pursue a long held ambition to farm free range turkeys. He had seen turkey farming on his travels and through the help and encouragement of Paul Kelly from KellyBronze Turkeys, Tony was able to realise his dream. He began with just 150 birds and from small acorns……
In 2015 Tony decided to leave soft fruit farming and concentrate of the turkey business. He bought Woolpack Corner Farm in Biddenden, 16 acres of pasture ideally suited to the needs of the turkeys.
Woolpack Corner Farm has changed quite a lot over the years and today you can see a roadway and car park with an avenue of trees lining the driveway into the farm. A fully enclosed barn housing a cold store, an office and the most recent addition – our Scandinavian log cabin.
Grazing happily in the fields are our 1,200 KellyBronze Turkeys.
We pride ourselves on being able to provide our turkeys with excellent living conditions where they are free to roam and explore their environment during the day and come in at night to clean straw beds and fresh drinking water with food always available. This results in healthy birds who are never given antibiotics or extra additives. Turkeys need plenty of shade in the summer and so in addition to the shade provided by the boundary trees Tony set about planting hazel hedges to not only provide shade but also to provide habitat and improve the local environment. As a fruit farmer Tony is an expert in the construction of poly-tunnels and these have proven to be ideal housing for the turkeys at night, providing protection from would be predators.
None of our birds leave the premises. When the time comes, they are dispatched humanely and the process is licenced by DEFRA vets. This ensures that there is the minimum, if any, stress caused to our birds. The birds are then hung in the cold store for 10 days whole before being prepared for the table.
As a franchisee of KellyBronze Turkeys, we are inspected by KellyBronze in order to meet their extremely high standards as well as being inspected by the local Environmental Health Officer (EHO).
We are a family business and we all get involved in the run up to Christmas promoting our KellyBronze Turkeys at tasting events around Kent. We only sell direct to the public, with collection points across Kent and do not supply butchers, so you can be assured that every turkey from Kent Turkeys is top quality.
We welcome visitors by prior arrangement so please feel free to come along and see the turkeys.
Rearing KellyBronze turkeys at our family Woolpack Corner Farm in Biddenden, we are truly passionate about what we do.
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