Smokin' Turkey

Day 1:  Thawing the turkey

We butchered our turkeys in July because they grew so darn fast we could let them get bigger or they wouldn't fit in the oven (or smoker in this case).  Which meant we had to freeze them post butchering.  (Note to self - if we want fresh turkey for Thanksgiving next year, don't get the baby turkeys until mid-summer.)  And that means thawing the turkey.

As anyone who has ever made Thanksgiving dinner can attest, you have to be prepared and start early.  Turkeys have to be thawed in the refrigerator.  Thawing anything a in a cold environment takes days.  I put the turkey in the fridge on Tuesday.

Day 5:  Brining

It's now Saturday morning and the bird still not completely thawed.  But never to fear!  I'm brining it :-)  Water thaws like 80 times faster than air.  (I made that up, but still.)  Even cold water in the fridge is faster than no water.  So, the turkey will be thawed before smoking.

My brine consists of 1 cup salt and 1 cup sugar per gallon of water.  Keep in mind as you pour the salt, sugar and water into the very large pot (or 5 gallon bucket) that the turkey will displace a lot of the liquid.  I only used about two gallons of water.  Once the ingredients are in the pot, stir, stir, stir.  Make sure all the salt and sugar are dissolved so that you get even taste in the bird.  Then I added four sprigs of fresh rosemary and a bunch of fresh sage.  My thyme didn't make it so I had to use a tablespoon for dried thyme.  Really, you can add any spices that sound good.

Unwrap the turkey.  Remove the bag of giblets and give her a little wash with cold water.  Then set her into the pot.  The pot has to be big enough that you can tip the bird to get air out of its cavity and brine in.  You will also need to flip the turkey once or twice to get even flavor.  I'm using one of my huge canning pots.

Technically, the whole pot and bird are suppose to go in the refrigerator.  Keeping the bird cold is important to prevent disease.  I don't know about you but my fridge is full of other food.  I can't exactly put the milk, yogurt, butter, etc. on the counter for 24 hours.  Thankfully, it's October and the weather is nice a cool outside.  Plus my back deck is north-facing and gets no sun.  So the pot (covered) is on the deck for the next 24 hours.

Day 6:  Smoking

The directions say 30 - 40 minutes per pound in the smoker.  But also, when the internal temperature is 165 F.  Well, our turkey is 14 pounds, so that'd be like 7 hours.  But we knew from smoking a store bought turkey last spring that the internal temp will be reach in more like 3 hours.  So, we put the bird in at 11am.  At 2:30pm it hit 165 F and we took her out.

Look at that bird!!

We let her sit for another 30 minutes so the juices can set.  Then Jeremy sliced her just like on Thanksgiving. I couldn't wait for it to hit the table - I snuck in and grabbed a piece of white meat.  Oh my delicious!  But then I tried the dark meat.  Holy crap!  The oils in the dark meet took all the flavor and smoky goodness in.  I only ate dark meat the rest of the night :-)

Day 7: Picking the Bird

This afternoon I sat and picked every last bit of meat off the carcass.  It was messy and took forever, but it will make really yummy soup later this winter.  I froze the meat for now.

Farm-Quality

The first time we purchased any farm animals, we did a lot of research. The best piece of advise came from Storey's Guide to Raising Sheep. This book has become a sort of bible for us; we reference it many times a year regarding lambing, sicknesses, injuries, etc. The book said that your first purchases should be directly from a farmer or rancher. And it was recommended that we go to a few farms to look around and check out the facilities. Then it said "... don't judge [the farm] on the 'fanciness' of the facilities. Some excellent shepherds (especially if they are full-time farmers) have old, unpainted buildings .... Although the facility may be old and in need of a coat of paint, they should be clean."

Not having a working farm yet, we had this idealistic view of what a farm should look like. Beautiful read barn with pearl white trim. Wood fences, rolling pastures of evenly eaten grasses. You know, what you see on the packaging of any food that says "cage free" or "farm fresh." When we read that passage, it kind of relieved some pressure. We weren't attempting to create green acres; we wanted to farm.

After seven years of buying and trading animals, I have seen a lot of farms. Now I can wholeheartedly agree with Storey's recommendation. Farmers use what is on the farm to build and repair everything. Farmers try to avoid buying new materials unless it necessary. And baling twine and duct tape really does repair most anything. What really matters when buying animals is cleanliness. No matter how shotty the workmanship, the water trough should be full of nothing but water. The oat trough should not have poop in it. The floor of the stalls may have a few piles of poop, but not much and the straw should be thick and pretty fresh looking.

In the past seven years Jeremy and I have made many a farm-quality items and the "new" outdoor baby turkey is no exception.

Last weekend I told Jeremy that I was worried that the turkeys, four of them, were too crowded in the brooder we were using. Our brooder was an old horse water trough, emptied of course. We use an old piece of plywood set across the top to hand the heat lamp. Add some bedding (wood shaving) and put the feeder and water in. It was a perfect size for 7 chicks, but not 4 baby turkeys.

Our plan was to put the turkeys in the pig's stall since we aren't raising pigs this year. (The stall has been well mucked and new hay added.) But that is a big space - covered and uncovered - and the turkeys at their current size (like football size) could easily get out through the pig fencing. So Jeremy took 2 uneven pieces of plywood, leftover from some other project, hammered nails in the edges and used baling twine to connect the two piece to each other and to the pig stall walls. Then he hung the heat lamp from the pole barn rafter. Last he laid two pieces of old fencing across the top. It was almost perfect. The one problem was a triangle shaped space between the fence tops where a turkey could fly out or a raccoon could jump in.

For the first few days it worked great. Then we came home and went down to refill the turkeys water (and feed the rest of the animals). I looked in and said "why are there only 3?" Jeremy said "Look!" The forth was sitting on the fence top right on the edge of the triangle opening. We shooed him back in. Then Jeremy found a third, really bent piece of fence to through across that opening. It's worked perfectly since.

Here is a picture of our farm quality turkey enclosure.

Lesson Learned

Tuesday evening, Jeremy came back from a round of animal feeding and said "We need to be careful feeding the turkeys. One tried to fly right out of the brooder." Then he wrote on the white board to-do list "cover brooder."

Fast forward to last night. Jordan and I got home from our Friday night tradition of getting fudge, for Jordan, and wine, for me, at Battle Ground Produce Market. Then we headed out to visit all the animals. First stop was the turkeys.

We are keeping the turkeys, four of them, in the garage, in an empty horse-water-trough. We hung a heat lamp from a 2x4 and set it across the top. At one end we put the water and at the other the food. When one of us reaches in to retrieve the food or water the turkeys run to the other side like we are wielding knives at them. As the cute, fluffy turkeys have grown real feathers, their run has become more like flapping attempt at take off.

I opened the garage door, Jordan walked in and said "Why are there only three turkeys?" "What?!" I looked in an there were only three. "Jordan, stand still." And I shut the garage door. We started quietly looking around and listening. Nothing. Then I got to thinking, what if the turkey ran out of the garage when I opened it?! Crap! We opened the door again, just high enough for us to get out, and quickly shut it. We looked all around the cars in the driveway, the side of the house, behind the house - no turkey. It dawned on me that the others could probably fly out too. One escaped turkey is bad enough.

The previous owners of our house had five dogs and used wire fencing and cages to corral the dogs. They left all the fencing and cages (and lots of other stuff) when they moved. It turned out to be a blessing because we've used the fencing for all kinds of keeping-an-animal-where-it-is-suppose-to-be activities. And now to cover the brooder.

As I was walking back up with some fencing, Jeremy came home and Jordan explained the last 15 minutes. All of us went back into the garage to look around. Jeremy used a flashlight to check behind all the boxes, the garbage cans, the work bench. No turkey. Of course when any animal is scared it uses huddles up and makes as little noise as possible. So we decided to give it a break and come back after dinner.

Later, Jeremy spent another 20 minutes just sitting quietly in the garage listening and hoping the turkey would get lonely and start calling for the others. But no sounds and no luck.

Then this morning I woke up early worrying about the little guy (or girl - we can't tell yet). Our bed room is above the garage. And I heard peeping. Maybe!!!! I threw on sweatpants and a t-shirt, grabbed a flashlight and went outside.

My first thought was that if the turkey was right by the brooder and I opened the garage door it could get scared and run off again. So I laid down on the driveway, cracked the door just a bit, and looked under to see if I could see the turkey - just to confirm that it was in fact alive. But I didn't see anything and my face got cold on the concrete. I could hear the peeping still. Next I very slowly opened the garage door just enough so that I could scoot under making no sound. The peeping stopped. Stealthily I tiptoed to look in the brooder - the other three turkeys were fast asleep. That meant the peeping had to be from the forth turkey. I craned my neck to look over the brooder to the other side and there he was!!!!

The poor thing was shivering. Very quietly I walked over and squatted down. It didn't move. I gently picked it up. It tried to run, but ran at me so it was easy to catch. I put him right back in the brooder and put the cover back on. The other turkeys woke up and came over to say hi. The now-returned turkey went directly under the heat lamp and one of the others moved over and leaned against him. Love.

Lesson 1: Turkeys can fly.

Lesson 2: When you think to yourself, self, you should cover the brooder. Don't wait. Just go cover it.

Update - I just checked them. It's been about 2 hours since the escapee was returned. All are doing great. Moving around, eating, drinking. Whew!

Turkeys Are Here!

Good friends of ours, who moved into the country shortly after we did, raised turkeys last spring/summer. It was their first attempt and were winging it (pun intended). Thankfully they had a great experience and shared the ups and downs with us. For example, you can house turkeys with your chickens but when the turkeys get big they will be mean to the chickens. Also, if you buy the baby turkeys in February, then you'll have full grown, butcher-ready turkeys in September which means you'll have to freeze them (no fresh Thanksgiving turkey).

So, this year we are giving it a try. (I should note that our friends raised 4 turkeys last year and are raising 8 this year.) We bought 4 standard bronze at Wilco Farm and Feed yesterday. They are housed in a large, horse-sized black plastic water trough (empty of course), with cedar shavings and a heat lamp. The whole thing is in the garage so that no would-be-turkey-eaters (e.g. raccons, possum or kitty) can get to them.

Here are some pictures ... too cute!

Stories from Grandma

Grandma will turn 90 in June. That's a lot of years of living and enough stories to fill two long novels. My favorite stories are the ones from when she was a girl growing up on her family's Ohio farm. We got two gems on Saturday when Jordan and I stopped by for a surprise visit.

"We raised turkeys in the pasture to have them ready to sell for Thanksgiving. Around the pasture were trees where foxes lived. The fox would come in and kill turkeys in the early morning. So my dad came up with a plan. He had Girly (that is what he called my Mom - she was a big woman) go outside and run the car at 4am. The exhaust from the car would keep the foxes off the pasture. Every morning from when the turkeys were out of the brooder until they were butchered, Girly was up at 4am running the car for 15 minutes."

"Sundays we would killed a couple chickens for dinner. My dad had a stump that he used to chop the heads off the chickens. My brother Jack would catch a bird and Dad would chop. I hated to hear that ax come down - Whack! So I would go inside the play the piano as hard as I could so I couldn't hear the chop. I just hated that the chicken was being killed. But I sure did love the tasty chicken for Sunday night dinner."

Turkey

Next year we must raise our own turkey for Thanksgiving dinner!

I know nothing about raising a turkey other than the ones at the county fair are mean and not very cute. Do they need as much space as a chicken or more or less? Can they share a space with the chickens or do they need to be separated? Do turkeys roost? Coop or no coop? Wow, we really have no clue.

But they are so, so delicious. And it is ridiculous expensive to buy a "free range", organic turkey. My mom bought this year's turkey and spent an arm-and-leg for the lovely bird. It was yummy but I have to assume, like everything else we've raised ourselves, home grown turkey will be ten times as good.

Seriously though, do they fly? If so, how high does the fence need to be to keep them in? Kitchen scraps like the chickens eat or not? ???