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“I’ve done it since I was a little girl. My grandma was into it, and I started out in the back of this building,” Burt said. “We earned enough money to go to school by doing 100 to 150 chickens.”
Burt, 65, stood in the break room of her small poultry processing plant in Utica last week, her plastic smock surprisingly clean after processing 1,250 chickens and 50 turkeys.
What started as a family tradition grew into Burt’s Hilltop Poultry, which opened in 1997. Although business is swift, Burt plans to sell the three-day-a-week sideline to focus on two other family businesses in Eyota, Minn.
“Each year it’s picking up and I feel bad about it, but we just can’t continue on the way we are,” she said. “We’re hoping we can find somebody to take the plant over and keep it going.”
Burt’s Hilltop Poultry handles custom orders from five to a few thousand birds and offers organic processing and vacuum-sealed plastic packaging. The next closest plant of its kind is in Iowa.
The business will close Nov. 30 and be put up for sale by next year. If it doesn’t reopen, farmers say it could damage the local food network, drive up poultry prices because of increased transportation and push small farms out of business.
A much-needed resource
The custom processing plant serves about 400 customers in the Midwest and Canada. In the past year, Burt’s processed about 400 ducks, 600 turkeys and more than 200,000 chickens. Each year, contractors working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Minnesota Department of Natural Resources send as many as 2,000 nuisance Canada geese from metro areas to be processed for food shelves.
“It’s really critical for us and all the smaller producers around here,” said Jennifer Rupprecht, co-owner of Earth-Be-Glad Farm and a vendor at the Winona Farmers Market. Rupprecht and her husband, Mike, raise 2,000 organic chickens and 175 organic turkeys a year.
“Burt’s is really nice. The birds are so clean, hand-eviscerated and hand-cared for,” Rupprecht said. “It’ll be very difficult to match what they’ve been able to do.”
Rupprecht said their business — which started in 1994 with 25 chickens — grew right along with Burt’s. Rupprecht said they haven’t decided what they will do if the Burt’s plant doesn’t reopen. It might mean raising fewer chickens or none at all, she said.
The law requires Rupprecht to have the meat inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture during the processing in order to sell it in grocery stores and farmers markets.
Burt’s, which is inspected by the USDA, is only eight miles from their Lewiston farm.
Eric Hoiland, a Rushford farmer who lost his entire flock of more than 1,500 turkeys in the Aug. 18-19 flood, is already questioning his business’ future. Without Burt’s, he said, restarting would be impossible.
The demand for locally grown chickens has increased as farmers build relationships with the customers, Rupprecht said, but the fragile local food network could take a big hit if Burt’s closes.
Bob Otis has traveled 126 miles to get his chickens and turkeys processed at Burt’s for the past eight years. The Baldwin, Minn., farmer had 4,000 chickens and 350 turkeys processed at Burt’s this year. He said he’d be willing to sign a letter of intent to whomever buys the business.
“Chickens are my livelihood. I don’t know what I’m going to do now,” Otis said. “The next USDA (inspected) processing plant is another hour away in Decorah (Iowa).”
Unique among state facilities
Mike Schommer, communication director for the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, said the state does not have any other poultry processing plants like Burt’s, which offers the USDA inspection as well as the custom and organic processing.
A small facility in West Concord, Minn., might be able to pick up some of the work, Schommer said, but the closest facility for bird processing is in Decorah, although that processor doesn’t take as wide a variety of poultry as Burt’s.
Besides the added transportation costs, Otis said, it’s hard to find a plant that does organic processing and allows turkeys larger than 12 pounds. His turkeys average 15 to 20 pounds.
“I sell at St. Paul’s farmers markets, and I know two other farmers that are in the same boat as me,” Otis said. “I’d really like to get Burt’s sold. This business supports a lot of families.”
Burt’s is also important to hobbyists who raise birds for their own use.
Betty Landercasper raises about 50 organic turkeys and 50 chickens for personal use on her family’s hobby farm in La Crescent. She said she’ll probably stop that practice if Burt’s closes.
“A lot of people in the community who enjoy raising a few birds for their own table may not do that anymore,” she said.
“Just in my neighborhood, we have several neighbors who have or at some point raised maybe 50 chickens for their own use. Some will go back to processing their own, but for us it’s not an option,” Rupprecht said.
Burt family must move on
Burt won’t say what price she’s asking for the plant until she has it appraised. The facility could be sold by itself or with the surrounding 34 acres, she said.
After opening a beef processing facility and a pizza/movie business in Eyota, Burt said the family has been spread too thin and the poultry processing business has grown too big to be run only two to three days a week.
Three days a week, the processing crew arrives before 7 a.m. and gets done about 10 a.m. Many in the crew are related to Burt: son Kermit, daughter Kristie, sister Betty.
Donning smocks, hair nets and rubber boots, the crew works in an assembly-line fashion.
Live birds enter one room, where their necks are cut with an electric knife. They’re hung upside down to bleed for about five minutes. They’re scalded and spun in a machine that loosens the feathers.
Workers pick off any leftover feathers, and remove glands and feet. The bird is hung on a shackle and goes through a wash and comes to Kermit Burt, who pulls out its insides and cuts its tail.
A USDA inspector examines the birds and directs the “trimmer” to cut off any parts that aren’t up to snuff.
At another station, a worker uses a “lung gun” to suck out the viscera, and cuts off the head. The bird gets two more washes before it goes to a refrigerator for up to six hours.
Once it’s chilled to 40 degrees, workers package the bird in a plastic bag, dip it in scalding water to shrink-wrap it and send it to the freezer for the farmer to pick up.
Many people don’t want to be bothered with the process, but Burt and her family don’t mind.
“I still like it,” Burt said. “I always liked chickens and turkeys, and I just stuck with it and I got my kids involved. You make it fun.”
Contact reporter Amber Dulek at amber.dulek@lee.net or (507) 453-3513.
