Comments on: Turkey in the Straw:The Homegrown Thanksgiving

By: grey

grey — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:07:32 +0000

I laughed SO HARD at your description of turkey stupidity. I’m still trying to talk my hubby into a few chickens (we live in town, but poultry is considered OK here) so haven’t even considered going down the turkey path… but oh how funny. After reading financial news all morning, I needed a good chuckle. Thanks!

By: Deb

Deb — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:25:52 +0000

I’ve been thinking about Thanksgiving lately and family traditions. In our house it’s not so much about the turkey and gravy or sweet potatoes, although they are there. It’s about lefse. It is the first time of the year we eat lefse, and then only until Christmas. It’s tedious to make, takes a fair amount of practice and skill and isnt something you can buy in the store. You can buy it, but it’s just icky.

Lefse was always made by the matriarch of the family. My mother made it and my husbands mother made it. Now both are gone and I have to make it. I have the equipment, I have the ingredients–pototoes, lard and flour–, I even know how, but I just have a really hard time doing it.

I realized the other day that I have become the matriarch–the keeper of traditions, the teller of stories, the old lady in the house.

By: Sharon

Sharon — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:05:27 +0000

Re: brooding – when we’ve kept them in the past, they’ve done a poor job of brooding their eggs – they tend to get up before it is time. So to raise your own, I’d suggest brooding them out under a silkie, cochin or other broody hen, or a muscovy duck.

Re: raising turkeys – the reason people don’t want them to touch ground is that they can get a disease called blackhead from chickens. Once you get it, it is impossible to get rid of – it lives in the soil, and you basically can’t raise turkeys again. That’s one of the reasons I’m working on a self-reproducing and closed poultry flock – that way, we don’t import blackhead.

Assuming that you don’t actually have blackhead, you can raise them just like chickens (they are a little more delicate) and with chickens – ours live in the barn with our hens, and just get a higher-protein starter feed and a little bit of a warmer temp, but otherwise, are raised the same.

Sharon

By: Lori Scott

Lori Scott — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 02:49:31 +0000

I loved my gobbler turkey. He used to attack everyone but me, despite my husbands multiple efforts to kill him he just kept on attacking (protective?).

He had the noisiest gobble but was a great comfort as when I was severely stressed I could go outside and yell loudly at him and he would gobble just as loudly back at me. This to and fro could continue for as long as it took me to get tired and see the funny side.

They couldn’t breed to save themselves. I had two hens sitting on eggs (on the ground!) and they would spend their day stealing each others eggs. That was OK – they all got set but one morning a chick hatched out and the mothers fought over him until he was dead.

We loved turkey eggs which had a taste and texture just the same as hen eggs and hubby would accept them for breakfast where he couldn’t stomach duck eggs. We would cook with them in a ratio 3 to 1. Where a recipe needed two eggs, we were out of luck.

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:23:59 +0000

I would love some details about raising turkeys, or the resources you use. Every detailed source I’ve read insists that they must never come in contact with the soil or be rained on. Every more natural source has been really vague. Help!

By: Ellen Anderson

Ellen Anderson — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:39:16 +0000

Do your turkeys just take over a nest box when they go broody? I am trying to raise my own birds as well. So far have only succeeded with ducks but they get out and hide under shrubs. Does anyone have a suggestion for making some box that will be especially attractive to chickens and turkeys that want to go broody? I am trying Light Brahma chickens this year to avoid having to send off in the mail to the hatchery next year. I had heard that broodiness had been bred out of most chickens and turkeys but not out of ducks and, so far, that has been true. Any real life suggestions?

By: Sharon

Sharon — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:43:25 +0000

I agree that wild turkeys are extremely smart, although I’m not sure it is domestication per se that makes them dumb – there are other animals that seem to have survived the domestication process more or less intellectually intact.

Sharon

By: aimee

aimee — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 03:19:22 +0000

I am buying a pasture raised Bourbon Red from my neighbor ($70!!!!) and the rest of Thanksgiving will be filled out with food from my garden and from my trade network. We will have mashed potatoes with milk and butter from our own animals, pumpkin pie with pumpkin from our garden, greens ditto, and hard cider from apples we pressed on the farm. There will probably be some non-local items like wild rice and of course the sugar in the pie (though I guess I could make it with local honey… hmmm…). But all in all, that $70 turkey is looking less expensive when I realize it is my only real expense for a meal that will feed thirty people.

By: Brad K.

Brad K. — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:33:03 +0000

Sharon,

Thanks for a review of the year, and tying the garden year together.

Blessed be!

By: Greenpa

Greenpa — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:32:08 +0000

I’ve told this story over on my own blog; but- this kind of attitude DOES reach the kids. My son “Beelar”, now back and working with me, was assigned a 1st grade writing chore- “Write out your favorite recipe”.

His was spaghetti. And he started “First, you plant the tomatoes…” – and he went on from there. Wasn’t kidding! That’s how you get spaghetti. Though he didn’t know about wheat and pasta, yet.