Turkey Time!!!
I don’t collect shoes. Patrice already knows I am not a “clothes horse”.
I do however have my quirks and quarks and things I collect.
Mortars and pestles come to mind. I collect them.
Irish Wolfhounds, that’s obvious.
Unusual horse bits. That’s a good hobby.
Rocks, I collect them too, but only pretty ones that appeal to me.
Ah, but………….frozen turkeys…………..now that’s a problem area. Plus, it’s that time of the year again. It’s “the” time to collect frozen turkeys.
I have already defrosted my chest freezer in the garage in preparation.
I’ve kept the obligatory goat colostrum, and the candied ginger and fruit for this coming baking season. Oh, and a couple of briskets……………..but that’s about it.
We are officially frozen-bird ready!
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As an aside note, I did start raising Bourbon Red turkeys (of the live sort) a few years back. But they turned out to be so bizarre and so pathetically stupid…………………………well, you know, like turkeys……………………..that I couldn’t butcher them.
And that’s saying a lot around here. Look cross-eyed at me, or miss a step, or aggravate me just a little, and…………………………..Off With Your Head and then before you know it, you’re wrapped up neatly in white butcher paper.
But our live gobblers. Nope……………can’t. They are so pathetically cute. They sure did get whacked with an ugly-stick. What is it with those head wrinkles? Plus, they don’t have an ounce of self-preservation or common-sense in their tiny, tiny heads.
Minutia time———–Did you know that the long, colorful, dangly-bit over their nose is called the “snood”~~~~~why yes, yes it is~~~~~I thought you would like to know that one.
And when they stare up at the clouds during a rainstorm (and they do——–I’ve watched), they have to keep flopping their heads back and forth to keep the “snood” out of their eyes, so they can keep their eye on the clouds…………………..bet you didn’t know that one.
When I originally picked this breed of turkeys, one of the reasons was because they were “natural breeders”……………………well, I thought about that one quite a bit……………………..hmmmmmmmmmm……………………T.M.I……………………..But then I said to myself, why wouldn’t they be?
So I read up on some of the other turkey breeds. Osceola do okay on their own. Narrangansett appear to have things worked out in that department………………………..But, we have hybridized some turkey-types to the point that they neither know how to do “it” anymore, or they just can’t manage to do “it” on their own. And they only live long enough to stay on their feet with top-heavy breast-meat and then……………….basically, if they are not butchered to eat, they die.
Tough news, but true. So those Presidentially-Pardoned White House turkeys don’t have too long a future on their own.
I needed a breed that could run for their lives here and do that whole-reproductive-thing all by themselves. And live a normal, turkey-life.
So I established guide-lines for my necessary “one—two—punch” where turkey protocol was concerned.
……………………..plus, as we have already established, I am partial to bourbon. So it wasn’t a big stretch to go for the Bourbon Reds as a beed. Plus it was too hard to spell or say Narrangansett and Osceola’s run away…………………………
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But I digress…………………our live turkeys are safe here, unless it’s from their own devices of stupidity, or wandering too close to the neighbor’s property line………………..you know, the bad neighbors.
Did you know, I think one of our other neighbors stole a couple of our turkey hens! Right about the time they put up a shadow-box fencing enclosure, we started missing some of our wandering turkeys (now we have a turkey coop———-for the predators———-of the human-sort!). And now I can hear gobbling behind their fencing……………………………..
So, some up-coming dark night, I need to drag my stepladder down there and peer over their fencing (while not getting shot) and see if they are my birds!!! HA!………………………then what will I do? Hmmmmmmm…………………….I’ll have to think on that one……………………..I’m not sure, yet…………………………
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But I digress, again…………
I was talking about frozen turkeys. And this week my local Winn-Dixie grocery store has them for $ 0.48*** per pound! Forty-eight cents per pound!!!!!
Patrice and I are the regulars at the turkey freezer. I’m hanging over the edge, butt up in the air, klunking & rifling through frozen turkeys. I’ve even suffered collateral damage with my fingers being smashed between frozen birds……………..(Why do they always put the biggest ones at the bottom with their weight-tags underneath them?)
But I’m not proud. I’m that old broad in over-alls, draped over the freezer case again. People tend to give me a wide berth anyway. But they give me an even wider berth when they hear muffled oaths coming from the depths of the frozen food case while my barn clogs are flailing in the air.
As of the current count………………..I have nine. But I don’t want to be done yet. I really don’t. Like I said……………….it’s a sickness.
It’s a sickness. And I don’t want help.
I’ve run out of room in the chest freezer. I had one I had to shove into the garage refrigerator freezer…………………no room at the Inn.
I’m tempted to toss some of the unidentified, aluminum foil-wrapped blocks of things to the pigs———————just to make room for my precious cement blocks of turkey birds.
So I guess I’d better stop frozen bird shopping for a while. My husband’s bound to open the freezer soon.
Maybe we can eat down some of the other freezer oddities and there will be more frozen turkey sales before Christmas?
One can always dream.
