When Better Homes and Gardens wrote about a “fuss-free” Thanksgiving, clearly they weren’t picturing me, my husband, our cousins, two turkeys and a hatchet.
A devotee of the local food movement, this year I decided to grow some of my family’s food in the garden and raise two free-range turkeys for consumption during the holidays.
My husband was skeptical, but I drowned out his murmured objections by reminding him that last year’s free-range turkey cost more than $100, and I encouraged my son by telling him that it was important to understand where our food came from.
In the spring, we purchased two turkey chicks. They looked like cotton balls with legs, but we were assured that by the fall they wouldn’t be nearly as cute. We named them Christmas and Thanksgiving, lest we forget their purpose.
It might be an opportune time to interject that most folks consider me a vegetarian. I’m not, since I eat a little chicken and fish, but in general, I am an herbivore. My husband and son, however, are carnivores, and I had this idea that I’d serve them a truly home-grown and home-cooked meal for the holidays.
The turkeys joined our chickens in the henhouse, and while the chickens grew friendly and docile, the turkeys grew (in the immortal words of our pet sitter) “freaky.”
And freaky they were. The turkeys got ugly, big and aggressive. They were possessed when it came to their food and tried to shove the chickens (and the humans who fed them) out of the way to get to the grain.
You’d think, given these bad manners and unseemly behavior, it would be no problem to “off” them when the time came. But, as the holidays grew closer, I brought up the subject and my son announced that he could not eat the turkeys because he had gotten to know them.
Then I told my husband I’d found a Web site showing how to slaughter turkeys and asked him when he’d be ready to start the process. My husband, who is a large animal veterinarian, considered this proposition for a few moments and then said “I think you’ll have to find someone else. I’ve taken an oath.”
Just for the record, he regularly treats “food animals,” and used to work in a slaughterhouse.
I was beginning to smell mutiny.
But just when it looked as if the turkeys might get a Thanksgiving pardon, our cousins Jessica and Chris came to visit.
Over dinner, I told them about my Laura Ingalls Wilder vision of raising our dinner for the holidays, and I launched into my now finely tuned lament about the freaky turkeys, their food consumption and our best-laid but ill-executed (no pun intended) plans.
When I was done, Chris said, “We could kill them tomorrow.”
“Really?” I said, sure that it was the wine talking. Chris is a lawyer and a sheriff’s detective who’d just had gall bladder surgery two days prior to his visit. Not a likely turkey executioner.
But, after breakfast the next morning, the plan was put into action. A hatchet was sharpened and for good measure, a small-caliber shotgun was loaded as backup. Suddenly, I began to feel queasy.
As the first turkey took its slow, unsuspecting waddle of death from the coop to the chopping block, our chickens merrily followed in tow, pecking and scratching. Curious by nature, nothing could deter them from seeing what excitement awaited the turkeys.
However, as the turkey was restrained, incessant flapping ensued and the chickens turned on their heels and high-tailed it back to the coop with me trotting alongside them.
Safe in their nesting boxes, the chickens decided to lay eggs. Whether it was proving their worth or just an instinct amid chaos, those ladies shot out eggs like poultry Pez dispensers.
After the slaughter was over, the turkeys were cleaned, wrapped and put in the freezer. We gave one to Jessica and Chris to take home. They decided that, having killed their own turkey for Thanksgiving, they were now prepared to handle anything.
Considering the fact that I didn’t have the stomach to pluck even one feather and that now I have a 24-pound turkey in my freezer that no one in my family will eat, I announced that this might go down as one of my worst ideas … ever.
Next year I’ll happily spend $100 to buy a pre-slaughtered, unnamed, free-range turkey that none of us have ever met.
Caitlin O’Halloran is a fifth-generation resident of Dixon, Calif. This piece appeared originally in The Reporter of Vacaville, Calif.
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