Growing up on a turkey farm instilled memories of hard work and happy times around the dinner table. In the years that have passed, recalling those memories has produced a deep appreciation for the value of good food and good family, and the recognition that not all persons around the world have been so blessed.

I grew up on a turkey farm in Iowa. That’s not the only thing we raised on the farm – we cultivated corn, oats, alfalfa and soybeans and kept a herd of beef cows and feed hogs. But it was turkeys that distinguished our farm, and the farms of my two uncles, from the other farms in the community. We were the only farmers in the area that raised turkeys.

My grandfather started raising these quintessentially American birds during the Great Depression of the 1930s. He was what one nowadays would call an “entrepreneur.” He was always looking for a new angle or new crop to make some money. Grandpa Klopfenstein, descended from the agriculturally astute Swiss Mennonites, was the first farmer in the northern part of Henry County to plant hybrid seed corn. When he read about how to raise turkeys in one of those farm journals like Wallace’s Farmer, he figured turkeys offered a profitable niche in an otherwise depressed farm market. He was right.

Raising turkeys is not for the faint-hearted or the less motivated. It’s a lot of work – especially when you are growing 4,000 of them as we did on our farm. The turkey chicks arrived on the farm by truck from a commercial hatchery when they were just a few days old. That is the only time that turkeys are cute. When the young chicks were delivered in mid April in special cardboard boxes with holes on top and on the sides, we would carry them into a large brooder house and place them under gas heating stoves to keep them warm until they were large enough to generate their own body heat. When the chicks were about ten days old, we had to pick up each and every bird and clip half of its upper beak away. This bloody procedure prevented the turkeys from pecking at each other’s backs.

The young turkeys were kept in the brooder house until they were about six weeks old, when once again we gave each bird some personal attention. This time we would shoo them into a small pen, and my dad and uncle would give each turkey a shot of medicine to protect them from turkey cholera and encephalitis. After the shots, the turkeys were transported by wagon to a fresh June field of alfalfa. Here, the turkeys grew strong on the free range and simultaneously fertilized the field with their droppings. Every two weeks we would move the 4,000 turkeys and their outdoor huts, feeders, and water tanks 30 yards down the field to fresh fodder. By the late fall, the alfalfa was gone and the whole field well manured.

ROUNDUP TIIME Two big trucks with small cages would arrive early in the morning in late October, about a month before Thanksgiving. My dad, brother, uncles, cousins, and I, as well as a couple of strong high school kids we hired, would be at the turkey field to meet the trucks. This was “turkey catching” day – the day we sent the turkeys to market. The younger kids and grandpa would round up the turkeys in bunches and herd them into a pen. Then, the most strapping of the high schoolers would enter the pen and grab the now 25-pound birds by their two legs and hoist them to the men standing on the side of the truck. It was important to get a hold of both legs before handing over the bird to the men on the truck. A loose leg meant an uncontrolled turkey and a sharp flap of the wing in the face. Once the turkeys were passed to the men on the truck, they were stuffed eight to a cage until the truck was fully loaded. “Turkey catching” took about three hours and was followed by a hearty breakfast served by grandma, aunts, and mom.

We would always reserve a couple dozen turkeys for our own use – to grace our table and those of friends and neighbors. About a week after we had sent the other turkeys to market, we would dress the remaining birds. (This was another bloody procedure not recommended for the faint-hearted). My family’s Thanksgiving turkey was always one of those birds.

Thanksgiving celebrations around my house were always pretty much the same – same time, same guests, same table, same menu, and same rituals. We held Thanksgiving dinner at midday, which was always when the big meal of the day—dinner—was served in the farm states of the Midwest. Usually, dinner was on the table at noon, but because of the extra preparations of food and the unpredictable time of cooking the turkey, the actual sit-down-at-the-table time slipped to about one o’clock.

Even though I grew up with all of my cousins, aunts, and uncles on my dad’s side of the family within a two miles radius of home, Thanksgiving was an intimate family affair. My mother’s parents would drive up from their farm forty miles away and join my brother, mother, father, and me – making for a table of six. Grandma and Grandpa Sander would always come a couple hours before dinnertime, bringing their contributions to the meal and offering to help in the kitchen.

SETTIING THE TABLE
We usually ate our meals in the kitchen, but Thanksgiving, along with other holidays and birthdays, merited eating at the “nice” dining table in the living room. My father and I would pull out the table from the wall, add a leaf, and then drape a freshly ironed tablecloth on the extended surface. (A tablecloth was special –we usually just ate with our plates on place mats). The table was always set the same, with the Japanese china my father sent from Okinawa to his soonto- be bride when he was an Army corporal in the Korean War; with silver my father’s parents gave the newlyweds in 1953, and with crystal given to my folks by mother’s brother’s father-in-law (an Italian Catholic immigrant glass cutter from New Jersey who married a Russian Jew from Boston and moved to California in the 1920’s). Gracing the table was always a centerpiece with gourds, bittersweet ( a North American woody vine, bearing orange or yellowish fruits, often used as decoration), and some caricature (ceramic or wax) of a turkey (after all, we were turkey farmers).

The big holiday menu was also a constant. Of course, the center of the meal was the homegrown turkey – usually a 20 pounder. The most important side dish was bread stuffing, which we called dressing (and was never stuffed in the turkey because my mother had read somewhere that one could get food poisoning from undercooked stuffing). The other sides were mashed potatoes, giblet gravy, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, corn (harvested from the field, blanched and U.S.SOCIETY&VALUES / JULY 2004 12 frozen the summer before), and an odd cranberry concoction of mashed cranberries, orange rind, walnuts, and jello (a favorite of my mother’s, but no one else). The meal was always followed by grandmother’s homemade (and I mean completely homemade – crust, filling, everything) pies. She served two kinds: pumpkin and pecan.

The table ritual was also always the same. My mother sat at the end of the table next to the kitchen. Father sat opposite to her. I sat on the side next to my grandmother (I was grandma’s boy) and my brother sat next to grandpa. We gathered around the table and Mother would ask one of us boys to say the blessing; my brother usually did it. Then, my father would cut the turkey and we would pass our plates and load up on the side dishes. My mother and grandma would talk about her old neighbors and friends back in her hometown and the two farmers, grandpa and dad, would talk mostly about agricultural stuff. My brother and I would vie for the adults’ attention. Occasionally, the table topics would turn to the events of the day: the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, inflation; but mostly the talk was local.

APPRECIIATIING THE BLESSIINGS
I never thought much about the significance of Thanksgiving when I was a kid. I guess I knew that it was about good food and good family and being thankful for both. It wasn’t until I was much older and left the turkey farm that I realized one should not take good food and good family for granted. Such things are not as prevalent as I thought, and one should appreciate such blessings.

It has been many years since I have spent Thanksgiving on the turkey farm. Many things have changed, and loved ones have passed on. But, Thanksgiving is still the holiday for which I am always most homesick. So, when I cannot be with my good family, I at least make sure I have good food. Of course, I can’t go out to the field and fetch a turkey for the table, but I can insist that the pumpkin pie be made from scratch. That’s because I make it myself, from a recipe I inherited from my grandmother.

GRANDMA SANDER’’S PUMPKIIN PIIE RECIIPE
(Quantity: two eight-inch diameter pies)
(Measures: 1 cup= 237 milliliters; 1 inch= 2.5 centimeters)

Pie Crust
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup lard (or shortening or butter or combination)
1 beaten egg
1 teaspoon vinegar
5 tablespoons water

Mix flour, salt, and lard together with fingers until crumbly. Add egg, vinegar, and water. Mix together. Divide dough in half and roll into two balls. Wrap each ball in flour-dusted plastic wrap. After dough has hardened (30 minutes or so), place ball on flour-dusted surface and roll out crust. If dough is too sticky to roll, add more flour. Move rolled-out crust into an eight-inch pie pan. Flute the edge of the crust. Repeat with second ball of dough.

Pie Filling
3 cups of steamed, mashed pumpkin
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger (fresh or powdered)
1 teaspoon salt
4 eggs
3 cups milk
1 cup light cream

Stir sugar, spices, and salt into pumpkin. Beat eggs slightly and mix with milk and cream. Blend two mixtures together well and pour into two prepared (unbaked) crusts (see recipe above). Bake in hot (400 degree Fahrenheit) oven until pumpkin custard is firm (about 45 minutes). Cool pies before serving. Garnish with whipped cream.