Bags of oats, bags of bones

Damn fine turkeys, cloacal kissing, and the banality of farm to table

The footpaths along and among wooded understories and windblown outcroppings of oak and mulberry are bedded down in thick, fresh fallen leaves, tucking in the slumbering, trodden earth for the dark and cold ahead. Frost has come to wither and shrivel hedge leaves up here on the old fence line, the yellow-green fruits cascading in bouts of westerly wind, plummeting to the leaf-shrouded earth, spilling milky sap as they roll past dust bathing chickens and fat ducks scooting their bills through and along the crisp carpet of the growing season’s death shroud. The burbling rattle of rendering lard is often the only sound in our home during the limited daylight hours as we remain drawn to the remaining outside work while the weather is mild. The bones of dead okra and crumbling vines of tomato still stand in the gardens. The dairy herd produces less and less milk as the warm season grasses fade to dormancy and the cool season grasses, deprived of meaningful rainfall, lay low and hidden in the thatch. Life recedes to the roots, and all the dead things too are blanketed, buried, subsumed and scattered to the dark low places.

The boxes and bins of summer’s last gasp, small eggplants, half-ripened peppers, a final peck of tomatoes and some thin long beans are shoved and pushed round and round the kitchen, each with their own population of fruit flies. The unlaundered pile of bloody rags out near the hog gambrel attract desperate mosquitoes on balmy autumn afternoons, and the comings and goings of scavengers like possums, raccoons, and rats are noticeable in pawed open compost piles and distinctive scat laced with persimmon seed. We nibble through our stored caches, and so do they, the only crop remaining in field and wood being the pendulous ornaments of frost-ripened persimmon and the snuffling swine, loosed in the acorn strewn bottomlands.

In some years, the killing frost will strip these hedge trees bare of leaf overnight, by some combination of freezing, thawing, humidity and vascular stress I suppose, but at this point many of the leaves remain, albeit shriveled and diminished, upon the thorned branches, allowing for a dappled, low angle light to break through and warm the earth-plastered walls of this home on the clear and chilly days. But today is not chilly, and as much as my brain and body might prefer that I take the time to bask in the unseasonable warm sun, current work is unceasing, which is why I am forcing myself to take a seat by writing a moment

.

I’ve had some qualms about writing for nearly a week, fearing my inner monologue has been rather bitter lately, or like the persimmons, not yet made sweet with time. My list of grievances is long, my physical ailments both distracting and incredibly boring to consider, but you know what? Welcome to my pity party…my back hurts, I have some kind of bronchitis keeping me up at night, all my clothes smell like porcine bodily fluids, and lest you thought I was enjoying a simple and liberated existence here, I too must ceaselessly pursue capital in this, the hustle season. There was also a rather dark incident with a mother hen abandoning her chicks on a cold night…

Most folks, apparently, do not think about turkeys all year long. I do. After years of exclusively raising an eccentric pastured poultry line-up consisting of burly ducks, scrawny, tough heritage breed roosters (“full flavored and well-exercised”) and fat old hens, I got into the turkey game at the urging of several customers and neighbors. Caught in the classic farm-to-table grower trap of trying to provide everything people might buy, I ordered a couple dozen heritage breed turkeys, just to try things out, and it turns out that they are by far my favorite livestock to raise. There’s nothing prettier to me than a flock of turkeys strutting through the leafy duff of a wooded draw hunting for acorns, no farm animal sound more pleasant than the contented chirps of our herd out on fresh pasture. Contrary to popular notions, turkeys, or at least the wilder-type heritage breeds are not stupid creatures. They do not really drown by looking up at the rain, they just need to stay dry when young, due to underdeveloped oil glands. When raised in barns and concrete bunks they are aloof, confused, and through selective breeding measures, largely null and void in survival scenarios. In the past hundred or so years, agri-dustrial concerns have focused on breeding a bloated and docile turkey for a characteristically similar populace, a bird which does not resemble the canny and elusive North American fowl from which it was derived.

I adore their curious nature, admire the way these native birds interact with and compliment our tall grass prairie ecosystem, and hot damn, they are tasty. I suppose a part of my previous disdain for raising turkeys had to do with that bland and dry industrial product ceremonially dished out in celebration of early American settler colonialism and the subsequent genocide that was to follow… the Wampanoag, who feasted with the weary and nearly starved pilgrims back in 1621, would be victims of a full scale massacre some sixteen years later when local conflict lead to the intentional burning of a village in which as many as 500 people indigenous to Plymouth were murdered. It feels important to include that bit, as well as the fact that European disease had already begun to spread through the native population by the time of the first Thanksgiving. But ultimately, and not to brush that key piece aside, industrial turkey is like if oatmeal was a bird. Not like a bowl of oatmeal either, I mean a big, bland, dry-ass bag of it. 

And much like a dry-ass bag of oatmeal, industrial breeds of turkey cannot mate naturally. The “broad-breasted” genetic trait that produces so much sawdust-like protein in an industrial bird also physically makes it impossible for the necessary reproductive bits to reach each other, adding involuntary celibacy to the prison-like conditions that most turkeys are raised in. And thus, in order to produce more sad turkeys, artificial insemination is performed.  I don’t know if this is what we’d call the turkey baster method.

But here, we raise pastured heritage breed turkeys. They are free to frolic and fornicate like their forebears who have (and still do) inhabit the wooded bottoms, and tall grass fields. They can strut, and explore, and set nests and scratch through the forest duff and eat bugs and do the things that turkeys do. Their impact on the ecosystem is a mirror of the relationship between this place and their domestic cousins… reducing the tree population at the prairie’s edge by consuming seeds, deftly trampling and stripping seed heads of prairie grass, consuming rose hips and bramble fruit, providing phosphorous, and often enough, becoming food for predators. A flock of turkeys on native habitat is not disruptive to the ecology, because here, they are the ecology.

Heritage breed turkeys have a high potential as an agroecological product, because they mesh so well with a diversity of native North American ecosystems, from prairie savanna to pine woodlands and saw palmetto groves. With attentive management, they could be a crop that increases the food value of restored habitat. And so I think of them often. But, it turns out, habitat restoration and agroecology and turkeys with the genetic ability to, uh, fornicate (technically turkeys and most birds excepting waterfowl and ratites like ostriches perform what’s known as a cloacal kiss. Turkeys do not have penises, but ducks do, and yes, I know from experience) is not enticing to many turkey eaters. In fact, it would appear that most folks would do fine with a dry-ass oat bag, provided there was pie on the side. 

And so, as a producer of organic, pasture-raised heritage breed turkeys, it’s hustle season, and the ability to hold the average eater’s attention is just one more trying demand on my time in a world of escaping goats, languishing garlic seed, broken hinges and leaky roofs. And I normally do not bring up cloacal kissing in my elevator pitch. Perhaps that’s the problem. In the right circles, mostly places where I don’t belong, curating the most choice, sustainable turkey for our annual celebration (of what exactly?) of puritanical cults from Europe not dying and going on to damn near wipe out the existing human (and wild turkey*) populations of the continent, is a status symbol. And back when the government was handing out Covid stimulus checks, I was making a killing on all the killing I was doing, to celebrate all the killing, I guess. These days, it would appear, not so much.

In a world where food is abundant, and yet unavailable to certain populations, the idea of seeking the patronage of a status-seeking, if well meaning few, hardly feels important, even when that patronage supports the important stewardship work we engage in. If the greatest aspiration of a farm-to-table movement is merely providing luxury to those who can afford it, then our work is unimportant. And evidenced by many of my experiences in direct-marketing as a small farm, time and again I am taken aback to discover that many of my fellow hustlers can afford to lose money in this local, sustainable agriculture game, because they are supported by either a trust fund, or a high-earning spouse, or some other privilege that washes the salt from their earth.

Unfortunately, the cards are stacked against small scale producers who want to do good and get their working class neighbors fed: the economic inefficiencies of producing at a small scale quickly add up, and the diversity minded grower often ends up raising, and failing to profit on, a Noah’s ark style farm ecosystem that effectively mismanages several crops and programs at once. And the layered economic inefficiencies result in a product that only the peak of the income bracket can afford to buy… and in my experience those with the most tend to be the stingiest. I too have been trapped by the fool’s logic of diversifying my offerings at the request of customers who phase out their support over time, due to a variety of reasons. Yes, the farm should be an ecosystem, and the synergy of pigs consuming dairy waste, poultry adding fertility and breaking parasite cycles and so on and so forth does contain some validity. But one person, or a family cannot reasonably expect to do all these things well, without breaking or dying young. Unless they have enough money to keep throwing at the farm. And I do not. 

I am learning a lesson in all this, and I do see a way through without dropping out of the noble project that is feeding people. I’m only cocky about a few things… one of them is that I raise damn tasty turkeys, in a radically sustainable manner. And I see ways to improve. But it needn’t be our job as farmers to have to sell that which we grow. Hobby farming implies that the farmer has a split focus, and I’d rather not be an example of that. I want to be a part of the farm ecosystem, and I do want that ecosystem to include nut trees, and turkeys, and pigs and cows and produce, and sometimes I am even amenable to goats. But ultimately, this is the work of a collective of humans, each with their specialty and area of focus. In this way, each individual program of the farm ecosystem can become elegant and affordable, both efficient and resilient. Land stewardship, as traditionally practiced by humans, has always been a communal endeavor, from anthropogenic burning and stampeding of game to the peasantry of the feudal commons. Of course now, the efficiencies of a potential precision-ag AI powered nightmare are standing at the field’s edge, threatening to further create isolation in a human activity that has already been stripped deeply of its communal nature, at least here in the affluent Western world, for many decades. In other words, let me raise my damn fine turkeys, let someone else who smells better and smiles more sell them, and don’t even let me touch the cash! 

For the better part of the past couple of decades, ever since Michael Pollan did the disservice of unleashing schlockmeister, egomaniac and land-inheritance baby Joel Salatin into the public consciousness (to be fair, it’s fine to inherit land, it’s the suggestion that anyone can farm without his unearned priveledge and then write book after book extolling the virtues of bootstrap capitalism without offering solid business planning because the Polyface empire is essentially built on speaker fees and unpaid labor), the farm-to-table movement as a whole has done little to address the actual policies and practices of the status-quo dysfunctional food regime. Instead, many of us are forced to pander to those most fickle of moving targets: well-resourced foodies. I have many regrets as a farmer in my first decade of practice, but viewing common people as a non-starter for succeeding at the ultimate goal of farming, that is, feeding people, is perhaps the biggest one I have. That and some of the ludicrous stuff I bought early on, like the poultry catch net.

We have many fine products, but all raised in a manner that cannot necessarily make them affordable to most folks. And even if we do move our inventory at a rate that some would accept, it still wouldn’t qualify as a living wage. That said, we do manage to live. And eat well, as poor people, a privilege many others cannot entertain. 

It’s clear to me what’s to be done. Getting there requires I leap off this trudging treadmill of toil, debt and gradual deterioration of body and spirit and do fewer things more effectively. Like preparing the garden before winter, which I haven’t done, it requires that I once again feed the place that will feed us in the future, nurture some plot of soil where seeds will again find purchase. I must sharpen my tools and return them to their shed, and prepare a place at the table for those who need a seat there.

Agriculture, if it is about anything, is about control. While many areas of my life, particularly laundry, seem to be wildly outside my command, I have long committed to being the master of these fields and woods and admittedly overgrown garden beds, sometimes to a profoundly good effect, but also to my own detriment and the detriment of our goals. As farming becomes an increasingly isolated profession, the farmer can become trapped in a battle, not only with weeds and pests and disease and elements and the earth itself, but with markets and policy makers and ill-defined buzzwords and diet trends. Do not talk to me about A2/A2 milk please. If we choose to exist within this embattled position, within the deep dysfunction of a brittle and fruitless food regime driven by speculation and policy kickbacks for agribusiness fat cats, then yeah, I think we’re going to get even lonelier, and many of us too proud to quit may end up dead by stress or by our own hands, as is increasingly common in our profession. And it won’t be too many more decades before the human farmer is made entirely extinct by GPS operated harvesters, AI planters, and mostly our own unique brand of stubborn independence.

That, or we build a new food regime together, like humans always have.

Those dried out old hedge leaves, they cling awhile, but one by one they do drop, the nourishing dead flesh of trees laid down to feed and protect the precious gift of dirt beneath. Out in the pin-oak and locust laden draw to my south is a place where I have deposited cart loads of swine bone for the coyotes. The turkeys are with them, kicking through this year’s leaves, scattering last year’s bone in search of an acorn, a sleeping grub, a morsel or seed. I don’t think it’s too corny to admit that these turkeys are my friends, that I love them, and that I’ll be lonelier when they’re gone. When I process the pigs and feed their bones to our scavenging neighbors, it gives me some repose from time to time to come across an old pelvis or femur and recall the job well done, the sacrifice made for the provisioning of our continued survival, the flesh and fat cherished, the ultimate, intimate bonding. Right or wrong, it is profound and meaningful to eat what we raise to kill. 

If I am to succeed this year, the bones of these turkeys will be scattered throughout hefty bags by Black Friday, forever interred in plastic in some landfill so far from these acorn strewn draws, with enough cash on hand to keep the show on the road another season. It’s never been that I’m too tenderhearted to kill. It’s the sales pitching that I haven’t the stomach for.

Pressing on,

BB

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*In the three volume A History of Northeast Missouri, edited by Walter Williams and published in 1913 there are several accounts of settler interactions with wild turkeys, which ultimately led to their extirpation from the region until they were restored through conservation measures in the mid-20th century. Here are a couple of notable selections:

“The last elk killed in the county was in 1837 The deer however remained in abundance until late in the 50s and the last wild turkey killed in the county was about 1875 The prairie chicken disappeared soon after the turkey was gone.”

“This family built a one room cabin of poles and prepared to challenge the forest for a living. Wild turkeys were in abundance but they elusive and wary. One expedient for catching them was for one sprinkle corn on the earth floor of the cabin, meanwhile counterfeiting on a bone the cluck of a turkey while two others held a blanket over the top of the door ready to drop when the cautious birds had ventured in. More often than not this ruse was unavailing. But a turkey trap was maintained which was more successful in contributing the family needs … it became known that the turkey trap a quarter a mile away held a bunch of coveted birds. Mrs Coontz and the girls ran to the trap with all speed. Each grasped a bird but on the home they were compelled to frequently sit down and warm feet in their woolen skirts before dashing on, on another lap of the journey. These stories seem like a fiction coined by the imagination those who have seen these things still live and tell the story.”

I attempted, but failed, to find an account from some antiquated book on Northeast Missouri that I recalled reading about how plentiful the settlers found turkeys to be early on, but how their legs of the turkeys were rather tough so only the breasts were eaten, until all the turkeys were gone from the region, but could not rediscover it.

And, if you’re in the St. Louis area and want to receive a damn fine turkey (or duck or pork bundle) from me, follow this link to the City Greens Market order form. I can even take the bones back, if it makes us both feel better… Otherwise holler at me directly for birds in NEMO and Southeast Iowa. I won’t lie and say we can change the food system one meal at a time, or with one purely ceremonial turkey, but they are damn fine birds.