Well, the deed is done; twenty-six turkeys that spent their summer in a pen on my lawn are in the cooler, waiting for a ride to someone's holiday table. Last year, we had so many birds in the 30-40 pound range (and unhappy customers) that this year my husband Dan and I raised "heritage" birds of the same bronze breed, thinking that a bunch of 20-pound turkeys would please more people and at least fit in a standard oven without having to brace the door shut with a chair.
This Sunday we discovered that they aren't 20-pound turkeys at all. They weigh an average of 10 pounds with the smallest being merely eight. (If they were chickens, I'd have been ecstatic.) They ate apples, grain and grass for six months and turned out to be a huge disappointment (size-wise). Do you realize that a turkey weighing less than 10 pounds has hardly any flesh on it. For all the effort it took to chase them down and put them back in the pen every morning, they'd better taste good.
I have another large family gathering going on here at Thanksgiving. If that's not stress enough, for 24 hours I thought that I would be cooking up all the chickens from my freezer to feed them, but early this Monday morning, I had a lucid moment. I hopped in the car and high-tailed it to Bob's Meat Market in St. Albans. I had remembered seeing the 'order your turkey now' signs last Friday when we delivered two steers for them to cut up. I got lucky (I've been on a streak of the bad lately) because he had a 23-pounder coming the following day that hadn't been spoken for from Misty Knoll Farm in New Haven. Next best thing to one of our own, and I'm happy supporting another Vermont agri-business.
I love having a fresh turkey every year, and if you've never done so, think about searching one out sometime. Besides helping the local economy, fresh birds are moist and delicious without the hassle of taking up space in the refrigerator for a week while it defrosts.
This year we will be smoking the bird outside in the ceramic cooker, which sounds like a big production, but isn't - you just set it and forget it. Though I still like the occasional deep-fried bird, we haven't done one for a while. The last time, Dan had to put the fryer in the garage because the cold air cooled the oil, then the burnt oil smell and smoke got into the house and wasn't very appetizing. Roasting lost favor a few years back when we started cooking outdoors; we now have ample oven room for more 'sides'. You can never have too many sides.
I have to spend the rest of today sorting out which people on our list of buyers are declining a turkey, and pleasing those who, instead of one bird, now want two. May we all have a Happy Thanksgiving!
