The Turkeys

It was an experiment, really.

I wanted to see if we could successfully raise turkeys for our Thanksgiving feast. I'm not a big turkey fan myself, but Bo and the children eat it up. For the past several years, we've cooked our Thanksgiving bird on the charcoal grill, a tradition that has served us well. So, while I'd be content with mashed potatoes and homemade cranberry sauce on my plate, I know my family would prefer some meat.

I picked up the turkeys from the grain mill early in the year. I think it was around April. I believe we started with ten or twelve, but we lost a few right away. It seems that turkeys like to die almost immediately after being born, and continue to want to die until they're about six weeks old. After that, killing them is virtually impossible. I let them loose in the barnyard, and off they went, happily devouring everything in sight. They kept most of the bugs out of my garden. Then again, they kept the tomatoes out of my garden, too. Next year, that will need to be remedied.

When people would come to visit and see the large birds waddling around my yard, they would generally make two comments. The first was always in reference to the fate of these beasts.

"Will you eat them for Thanksgiving?"

When I answered affirmatively, there would always be an awe in the response. Sometimes it was a positive awe. "Really? Wow! That's pretty cool!"

Sometimes it was more along the lines of a sympathetic kind of "awwwww...."

"You're really going to kill them and eat them for dinner?" the guest would ask.

"Yup," I would affirm.

"Will you be able to eat them now that they've been your pets?" the guest would ask.

"Yup," I would repeat.

Turkeys, I would tell them, are not exactly pets. Yes, they do get into the dog food occasionally, but that does not make them dogs. Yes, the black lab does chase them fairly often, but that does not make them cats.

Still, to be fair, I did feel that it would be a little difficult to see them go to the Big Platter in the Sky, because I truly did like them. In more than a food relationship kind of way, that is. I enjoyed watching them grow, watching them scamper across the yard, seeing them come when I would call them with a bucketful of goodies, and I was grateful for their apple orchard cleanup duties--devouring all of the falls and the nasty worms along with them.

And that leads me to the second statement people would make about turkeys.

"They're pretty stupid, aren't they?"

I've heard that said, but, honestly, I don't believe it. I tend to think they're more on the trusting and naive side, more calm and tame, more curious and persistent than chickens. I've heard stories of them standing in the rain with their beaks in the air, drowning because they didn't have the sense to keep from doing so.

I never saw that.

What I saw was a group of birds who knew how to find food and water, who knew where to roost at night, who recognized the sound of the garage door opening and made their way quickly to try to get in before it closed so they could raid the dog food dish or all kinds of tasty scraps.

So when the day came to load the five birds into the feed sacks and tote them across town for their Big Day, I did feel a bit sad. I talked to them all the way there, trying to assure them that it would be okay. I don't know who I was trying to kid. I don't think the turkeys bought it.

When it was time to load my feathered friends into the killing cones, I bowed my head and said a prayer of thanks, reminding myself that it's hypocritical to refuse to butcher my own turkeys yet eat or serve inhumanely raised, trash-fed birds that are mass butchered in slaughterhouses after having never seen the light of day. It was hard to watch the lifeblood drain from my turkeys' bodies, puffs of white escaping their nostrils, indicating to me that they were still hanging on in that cold morning air. It reminded me of the snowy winter days when I would test the temperature by sniffing hard, trying to make my own nostrils stick together, forcing hot air from my open mouth to determine whether I could see my breath. As Big Tom breathed his last steamy breaths that morning, I thanked him for his life, and I was grateful that he'd lived a very good one, devouring my tomatoes, swiss chard, green peppers, eggplants and even our carved pumpkins.

Aside from Tom, we butchered four other turkeys that day. Tom was the biggest, weighing in at 20 pounds. The other four, their gray feathers a dark contrast to Tom's whiteness, were each around 17 pounds. I had a hand in every step of their processing, from loading them into the cones, to removing their feathers, to pulling them from the ice water bath and dropping them into their individual bags.

There's a certain maturity that comes when you produce your own food, especially when you raise and butcher your own meat. The mystery is removed. The fear is irradicated. It's not the horribly messy, disgusting process you would imagine it is. It's fairly clean, straightforward and simple. There is a process (thus the term "processing") that everyone in the family, no matter the age, can participate in. You become intimately acquainted with your meal. You become much more grateful for it. You become more aware of what it takes to live, to thrive. I think it may be part of the problem in our culture, part of what's missing. We aren't acquainted with our food anymore.

Tom, being the largest of the turkeys, traveled with us to my inlaws house via a big cooler full of icewater in the back of the minivan. Once there, he became our second Thanksgiving dinner, a small gathering of my parents-in-law, my children, Bo and I. His cavity was filled with fresh herbs, lemons, garlic and onions, and he was basted with apple juice as he browned for hours over indirect heat on the charcoal grill, Bo faithfully tending him all along the way.

The final result? Not bad. It wasn't all I had hoped for, but it wasn't a failure. I think he could have been more flavorful and a bit more tender (sorry, Tom. I still love you), but he was juicy enough. Probably from all of those tomatoes.

I think it was a good experiment. I'll definitely do it again next Spring. Until then, we'll feast on the other four turkeys who are waiting patiently in the freezer for Christmas, Easter and summer picnics.

I think we'll try experimenting with a big, fat piggy next. A freezer full of nitrate-free pork would make my family very, very happy.

It's a simple life. And a very good one at that.

Unless, I suppose, you're a turkey.