Thanksgiving 2017: about 9 months in the making

It's no secret that our favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. No presents or even decorating, just lots and lots of food and friends.

This year was day after Thanksgiving Thanksgiving for us since Keith was (and currently is) working this whole weekend. Which just meant that most of our friends got 2 big dinners this year-no one was complaining!

I was nog sure if we were going to raise turkeys this year. I needed to raise something that I could feed all the gallons of protein rich whey that is a by product of making cheese all summer and the options are pigs or turkeys. While I really want pigs, we are already set up for turkeys. Also I happened to be at Grain Growers when they only had a few turkeys chicks left and were looking to get rid of them-perfect timing!

So at the end of March I brought home 5 turkey chicks and popped them straight in the greenhouse with the ducklings I raised this year.




And while the turkeys grew bigger everyday, I worked in the garden to get the rest of Thanksgiving going. Potatoes and squash was planted, root vegetables seeded, onion starts planted.

As I said in the previous post, this was an amazing tater year. With my goal being 100 lbs of potatoes and actually producing 150 lbs, we clearly had enough to makes loads of mashed potatoes! One of the varieties I grew this year is called Mountain Rose and it produces bright pink potatoes, so this year we had pink mashed potatoes this year for dinner!


I have no idea how many pounds of winter squash or beets/carrots/turnips we grew this year, but again, more than enough. Squash was roasted up to make puree for the (not) pumpkin pie and also went in to the sweet potato casserole. Beets, carrots, turnips along with loads of onions and garlic were roasted up for the corn bread with roasted fall vegetable stuffing.



Since I got the turkey chicks to early, by September they were ready to be slaughtered. Thankfully I didn't have to do it! I drove the turkeys, along with some chickens and ducks, to Wallowa to be slaughtered and processed there. I brought them alive and barely contained in boxes and picked them up the same afternoon all packaged up and ready to go!

We ended up with 2 toms and 2 hens. The toms weighed 36 lbs each and the hen 22 lb.




It took 9 days to thaw out a 36 pound turkey, then we brined it for a few more days.

Keith helped get the giant bird in the oven before heading out to the hospital yesterday morning. A quick rub down of (homemade) butter and lemon zest under the skin before it was loaded with stuffing and stuffed inside the oven and of course the obligatory photo of the turkey being bigger than our cocker spaniel!




As usual, I have almost no pictures of actual Thanksgiving. We had about 25 friends over and they all also made delicious food! Chatting, drinking, eating- there really isn't any time to take pictures! Amazingly everything turned out great and I was only frustrated with Keith a couple of times! We all made an insane amount of food and I think (hope) everyone got to take a fair bit of their favorites home.



And instead of cleaning up after a giant party today, I get to mostly just hang out since everyone helped do all the dishes and get everything put away last night-amazing!

And I am so thankful!

Thankful to have a husband who supports all the crazy things I want to do, thankful for being able to be physically able to do all the crazy things I want to do, thankful for all our animals-we have most of them their whole lives and no matter how short or long that is they all bring so much joy and silliness to our lives, besides being delicious and producing eggs and milk we enjoy every day, thankful for all the friends in my life and for all the happiness and richness they bring to my life, and thankful to our families who still feel close even though we are so far away.

Love you all and hope you had a great Thanksgiving!

The Words of House Turkey: Thanksgiving IS coming

**Be aware that there are some turkey slaughter pictures in this post, please proceed with caution!**

Also, I'm both reading and watching Game of Thrones...can you tell?

The turkeys have come and gone. They started out cute, got really annoying, then thankfully got too big to escape, and finally were delicious!

I'm not sure if raising them is something we will do again. Actually, all summer I've been saying 'Never again!' but now that they are gone, it really wasn't that bad...was it? At least we would know what we were getting into (maybe?). I have to remember that I did not have a corn harvest this year because the turkeys and a couple rouge chickens escaped to eat three rounds of corn sprouts...we would have to me much better prepared next year, so I don't spend a summer yelling 'Off with their heads!'

I would much rather raise a couple pigs-they take about the same amount of time to raise and space, albeit with a lot more food, but in the end you get bacon. Figuring out the space to raise both pigs and turkeys would take some doing, but maybe it'll be something we can figure out....we'll see what I get talked into next year



We originally planned to raise the turkeys in the pasture, as with everything, that was easier said than done. They would escape and eat all my corn sprouts, roost all over the place, it would take forever to get them back in their pen at night, and while they were out exploring, the sheep would eat all their food. Ok, so plan B.

We ended up using about twice as much netting as I thought we would need to keep those wily beasts locked in. Every time I would think I had them on lock, one would escape out of a tiny gap (that is now a giant hole) and greet me on the wrong side of the fence. Using even more netting, they were on permanent lock down and they just kept getting bigger!



Finally turkey dead day was upon us. Seven of the eight turkey chicks we raised made it all the way to the end, but were they big enough?! Yes, the toms, with their feathers all puffed out looked huge. And yes, I usually referred to them as the velociraptors instead of turkeys, but still we haven't done this before and I was weirdly anxious about this! We had all these people ready to help, paying a lot of money for turkeys-did I do part part of the job good enough?



Yes, I did! They weighted between 20-40 pounds. The three hens ranged from 20-25 pounds, while the toms ranged 34-40 pounds-YAY!






In general, we had a great crew all working together on Dead Day. The amount of people willing to help slaughter turkeys on a cold November morning blew me away.

For me this was the best dead day ever, mostly because I didn't really have to do anything but organize, delegate, and help folks find our bathroom-not hard work! With so many people there to help, we decided it was the perfect day to get rid of some ducks too. You may remember my post about all the ducklings-it turned out that most of them were male and they had to go. They were so tiny after dealing with turkeys! It turned into a buy a turkey, get a duck free morning! I'm so happy we won't be feeding those little beasts all winter!



But let's get to the good stuff! Thanksgiving!! We got our 40 pounder in the brine as soon as everyone left, but not before we reenacted last years picture!



Our thanksgiving dinner just kept getting bigger and bigger, it felt a little like the whole county was coming and we just kept saying yes when folks asked if we still had room. With 19 people coming, it was a bring your own chair kinda party. The turkey took a little more time than I hoped, but was still delicious!




Keith is fairly certain that we could have a few more people next year, I guess we'll see! But does that mean we have to raise turkeys again, to make sure we have one big enough?

Hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving!