The price of the main staple on the Thanksgiving dinner table is going to be cheaper this year. After a big jump last year, retail prices for turkey are lower. Still, some people are willing to pay a little more for something fresh.

The sounds coming from a Brockport farm are sounds of the season. Turkeys have their own way of expressing it.

"Yeah, they’re very curious," said Travis Mattison, owner of Ridgecrest Turkey Farm, as several birds pecked gently at his legs. "Turkeys aren’t mean, but they're not nice at the same time either."

Mattison raises about 1,500 free range turkeys on the farm each year. It’s truly a farm-to-table operation. The turkeys are processed in the week leading up to Thanksgiving, and sold fresh to customers.

At $3.95 a pound, Mattison’s turkeys sell for more than those frozen ones sold at the store. But, he says, there’s a good reason.

"You will not find a turkey fresher anywhere locally for Thanksgiving," he said.

A lot of it has to do with scale. Mattison cannot produce the turkeys for as cheap as a farm that's growing 60,000 of them a year.

"So we are $3.95 a pound, but then again this turkey’s processed five days before you eat it," he said. "That frozen one has probably been sitting in a warehouse or a trailer for six to eight months."

Last year, Thanksgiving turkey prices were up significantly. Much of the reason was attributed to supply and demand after an outbreak of Avian Flu in large production facilities wiped out flocks and hurt production.

"That definitely affects bigger facilities a lot more, because once you one of them gets it, it just spreads so rapidly," said Mattison. "We’re able to do a pretty good job of minimizing any diseases here."

High feed costs also impacts turkey prices. Since Mattison grows all of his own feed crops on the family farm, which was started by his grandparents in 1984, he is able to keep those costs down.

"So I have a lot less risk than a lot of people, because I can produce it at my cost," he said.

Mattison says he expects he’ll be taking orders for Thanksgiving turkeys, which people can pick up fresh at the farm, right up through the week of the holiday.

After serving in the Army and attending Cornell University to study agriculture, Mattison couldn’t resist the farm’s calling. Now he’s building toward the season’s harvest.