Today, we will be eating our first farm-raised turkey. My sister-in-law is roasting it today, and I’m excited to bring this experience full-circle.

In May, we received a batch of 15 Holland White heritage turkeys. By the time that we had them slaughtered, we were down to 11, and now we have four. One tom and three hens make up our breeding flock.

Anyone who has visited the farm in the last few months has inevitably been followed around by a flock of gobbling turkeys. There were a lot of toms in the bunch, so they were loud, loud, loud! Now that there’s only one male left, the gobbles don’t sound so powerful.

At least one of the hens has taken to sitting on eggs, both chicken and turkey. Turkeys are not the most graceful birds, so a few typically are cracked by the time that we gather them. I’ll be anxious to see how well the birds sit in Spring.

There’s always something to anticipate on the farm. I’m thankful for that.

-Brian