Saving Rare Breeds

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Focusing on their success stories with the buying public, the Conservancy organized a marketing convention last fall in Wichita, Kansas. During the three-day event, much of the discussion centered on the story of the turkeys, although the marketing techniques and successes of heritage pork producers Jennifer Small and Mike Yezzi, and heritage beef producer Karen Thornton were chronicled, too. Small and Yezzi raise Large Blacks, Gloucestershire Old Spots and Tamworths on their Flying Pigs Farm in Shushan, New York, and Thornton raises Galloway cattle at Mount Vernon, Iowa. Ancient White Park cattle breeders Wes Henthorne of B Bar Ranch & Livestock in Big Timber, Montana, and Kent Whealy of Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa, also attended, having raised enough of their legendary white, horned cattle over the past 20 years to be in search of a market for their stock.

The Conservancy's Bender says the organization is in transition now, thanks to its successes to date. "We've gone from encouraging people to just raise these animals to helping them learn how to market them after they've raised them. And, to not burn out in the process."

She says Drowns and Reese "exemplify the depth of knowledge, passion and commitment to conservation found in the best stewards.

"They understand the importance of genetic conservation for the future viability of agriculture. Drowns is committed to maintaining and distributing the broad biodiversity expressed in endangered poultry and heirloom vegetables. Reese is committed to carrying forward the beautiful, delicious and productive Bronze turkeys."

Glenn Drowns and the Sand Hill Preservation Center

Drowns, a native of Idaho, lives with his wife, Linda, and their two sons, Nick, 19, and Cory, 18, on their Iowa farm, northwest of Calamus. A high school science teacher, he is driven by the same urge to conserve heritage turkeys as Reese, but rather than sell dressed birds, Drowns has collected rare poultry over the past 20 years and now sells their offspring. His family-run company, Sand Hill Preservation Center, is part heritage-breeds hatchery and part heirloom seed company.

Drowns says as a child he kept ducks and chickens because he wanted to grow things. "It worried me when certain songbirds didn't come back," he adds. "I learned about the dodo birds and the Labrador ducks becoming extinct, too. I was eight, and a real nut case, when I got my first birds — four little ducklings." Back then, Drowns says, he didn't know what a purebred bird was or that they could be mail-ordered from commercial hatcheries. It didn't take him long to find out, though, or to launch himself, while still a teenager, into his own hatchery enterprise, funded by lawn-mowing money. He bought a 250-egg incubator followed quickly by a 600-egg machine. Selling chicks locally, Drowns put himself through college. When he graduated in 1984 from Lewis-Clark State College, Lewiston, Idaho, he sold his incubator and chickens and moved to Iowa to take a part-time job cataloging the Withee Heirloom Bean Collection at Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah.

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