THROUGH
MOUNTAIN MISTS
Early Settlers of
Their
Descendants...Their Stories...Their Achievements
Lifting the
Mists of History on Their Way of Life
By: Ethelene Dyer Jones
Doing Our Part
to Bring Thanksgiving to Many:
or a Venture Into Raising Turkeys on Our Farm
How my father learned about the
availability of baby turkeys that he could order-off for and have
delivered by
rural mail carrier to our farm at Choestoe, I don’t remember. However, I do recall our venture into turkey
raising when I was a child—or how we tried to do our part to make the
traditional Thanksgiving bird available to many people.
Maybe Daddy read about turkey poults
in the dependable “Market Bulletin.”
That was a farm paper that came regularly to
our farm mailbox and which he read avidly to keep up on the latest
bargains in
seeds and other farm needs. That was
probably where he learned about where to purchase the baby turkeys and
have
them delivered to our farm.
But before that adventure saw itself
through to the end, his third child was glad our latest enterprise
lasted only
a few years. I never did make friends
with those noisy turkeys, and the mean turkey tom, in particular, must
have
known I didn’t like him, because every time I was anywhere near him on
the
farm, he seemed to chase me and scare me half to death.
We built a special poultry house for
the anticipated turkeys, and since they were coming in early spring and
the
weather was still cold and unpredictable in the mountains, my father
knew he
would have to devise a way to keep the turkey house heated for the
darling
little poults. He put a small wood
heater in the house, and built a fence around the house, with chicken
wire
strung from pole to pole so the fowl would not wander.
I remember well the day the baby
turkeys arrived. The mail man (as we
called the postman) blew his horn at our mailbox, and since Daddy was
avidly
looking for his turkey poults, he hurried out to get the crates. We had a hundred of the little critters. They
looked so cold, and even ailing when they arrived.
What would we ever do to raise them? They
seemed so small and furry. Surely it would
take them years to grow into
eating-sized turkeys worthy for a Thanksgiving feast.
I’m sure Daddy spent sleepless nights
looking after those little critters at first, making sure they were
warm and
fed properly. I recall how rapidly they
grew, and maybe we lost a few, but as they developed from cuddly baby
turks to
lanky fryers, they had a mind of their own.
Their sounds grated on my ears—and soon they were outgrowing
their
fenced-in area and Dad was allowing them to range a bit farther out. By then that aggressive gobbler had taken to
my red sweater, or anything red, and chased me like I was easy prey and
something he wanted to sample for his own dinner. I
was mortally afraid of that barnyard
king-of-the-roost.
Since we had secured the 100 turkeys
very early in the spring, my Dad’s aim was to grow them off for
pre-Thanksgiving sale. He had to fence
them in again and give them special feedings of grains and nutrients to
make
them ready for market. They didn’t like
being confined, since they had been range turkeys for several months. They protested loudly, with a gooble- gobble
here and a gobble-gobble there. I, for
one, despised turkey language.
But then, who was I to complain? My
Daddy was always telling us that when he
took the turkeys to market, we would have more money for the things we
needed,
for the Great Depression had certainly not been kind to North Georgia
farmers. Turkeys were a “trial-run” crop
to help
restore the economy.
Then came time to catch those turkeys,
put them in coops and take them to Gainesville to market.
We kept about eight or ten from the whole
flock so that we and our neighbors could have a Thanksgiving feast from
some of
our own home-grown turkeys.
I don’t know how much money per pound
my father earned from those pestersome turkeys, but it must have been
enough
for him to try it again for about three more years.
For it seems that we repeated that process of
having baby turkeys delivered by mail and going through the same
process for
several years to grow them out for market.
And without fail, there was always one or more turkey toms in
the flock
that played havoc with my own peace and quiet.
Then my father told us how lucky we were
that we didn’t have to “drive” the turkeys by foot to market like our
grandfather used to have to do. It would
take two or three days to herd the turkeys along the wagon roads by
foot to
market, with the turkeys roosting in trees as they camped by night. I never did understand just how they managed
to keep those turkeys under control enough to drive them to market,
especially
when one in those we raised always gave me so much trouble.
As we gather around our Thanksgiving
tables this year, 2011, we feast on a roast turkey we purchased at the
supermarket. But in the 1930’s, in the
midst of the Great Depression, there was a time when turkeys were grown
on a
mountain farm and fattened up and marketed wholesale prior to
Thanksgiving. That helped people to have
that favorite of holiday meals—roast turkey.
I, for one, was glad our turkey venture didn’t last many years. But the business did aid
farm families to have a little more money for some of the barest
necessities of
life.
[Ethelene Dyer
Jones is a retired educator,
freelance writer, poet, and historian. She may be reached at
e-mail edj0513@windstream.net;
phone 478-453-8751; or mail 1708 Cedarwood Road, Milledgeville, GA
31061-2411.]
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