By Brook Larios | SDUN Columnist
I can’t stride, skip or jog anywhere these days without hearing someone bemoan the fact that, this year, they missed out on a Womach turkey. With little fanfare from the public, local rancher Curtis Womach took his last Thanksgiving 2010 bird order in March, leaving people who can hardly plan their lives a week out scratching their heads in disbelief.
Womach divides his time between his Talmadge home and a 13-acre Boulevard ranch, near Ramona, where, in addition to his turkeys, he humanely raises hormone-free goats, Red Wattle hogs, rabbits and about 1,400 of his ever-popular chickens. And he bats not an eye when relaying the disappointing “no turkey” news to his followers.
Juan Miron, a former employee of North Park’s The Linkery, who with friend and former co-worker Kevin Ho owns the popular roving MIHO Gastrotruck, nearly
missed his window of turkey opportunity last year. Intent on sitting down to a hand-raised turkey meal, he helped Womach slaughter the birds just so he could purchase one after the deadline.
Most of us will not be dining on a Womach turkey, but there’s hope yet. Every Friday, Womach hand-slaughters about 60 chickens, giving the birds to those that pray to the avian altar two days later for $20 a pop at the Hillcrest Farmers Market (9 a.m. to 2 p.m. every Sunday in the DMV parking lot). There, chicken seekers will meet the purveyor of their food face to face. How cool is that?
“Almost every week I feel bad with the last one I can catch,” Womach said. “This guy, out of all of those chickens, he escaped me the longest.”
Arrive at 1 p.m. and you’ll be sorely disappointed; the popularity of these fowl friends is trumped only by the hulking chartreuse one that talks on national TV. And you get the giblets, feet and head—if you want—so one chicken can get you through nearly an entire work week.
While $20 might seem steep, these are birds of another feather. Our nation’s taste for breast meat guided the chicken industry into solely breeding the Cornish Cross, a fast growing, bigger-breasted hybrid, many of which can barely walk, much less live out their days stress-free. Likewise, they’re mass-produced, often treated as commodities. Alternately, Womach raises a slow-growing heritage breed that’s visibly more well proportioned. The birds are free to wander and he uses temporary electric netting to deter them from flying the coop.
“They can get out if they want to,” he admitted. “But typically they don’t because it’s their home and they feel safe within the net.”
The Linkery and El Take it Easy, both owned by Jay Porter, are reputedly the only two restaurants in the world that serve Womach chicken. The latter, whose exotic menu was co-created with Chef Jair Téllez of Laja fame, features Womach chicken prepared as hot wings, taquitos nuggets with molé (a chocolate-based sauce popular in Oaxacan cooking), sautéed chicken spleens and sweet and sour chicken heads. Fried chicken appears on The Linkery’s menu most nights.
And that elusive turkey of Womach’s that’s so difficult to come by? It’s a Midget White—another heritage breed that contributes to genetic diversity. (Breeding the likes of these, even for food, keeps the species in the mix.) So, squawk at the price if you must ($5 per pound), but recognize that raising and processing animals humanely costs a wing and a leg, which is why factory farms opt otherwise.
For Brook’s Womach chicken soup recipe, e-mail her at [email protected].
