For some reason, I didn’t expect its blood to be warm. More than warm.
Its blood was hot, and as it flowed down my hand – the hand that was wrapped
around its neck – I was surprised. Hours earlier, I had been the one
responsible for submerging this turkey’s already-dead companions in a hot water
bath of 160 degrees; and now, being the one to nearly choke it, out of fear
that it would struggle itself loose from my grip, being the one to slit – no
cut; slit is too shallow of a word – its throat and hold its head while it bled
out, while it died, was an altogether different experience.
∙
This year’s Wilderness &
Civilization (WC) gang knew, in theory, what was in store for them come
November. The WC program directors had more than alluded to our upcoming participation
in the Thanksgiving turkey “harvest” at Prairie Heritage Farms, so as a
vegetarian, I had had a few months to prepare myself for my role in the harvest
on the 21st and 22nd of November.
∙
Prairie Heritage Farms (PHF) is a
small farm near Great Falls, Montana on the Fairfield Bench, outside of Power,
owned by Jacob and Courtney Cowgill. Hop on
over to their website, and you will learn that the farm is family-run and a
cultivator of organic vegetables, ancient and heritage wheat, lentils, a
variety of other seed crops, and heritage turkeys – these turkeys – which are
birds that a) are naturally-mating; b) have long outdoor lifespans; and c) have
slow growth rates. One can compare these turkeys to factory- and
commercially-farmed birds (which are none of these things) and see that PHF
turkeys are happy and raised with care. The PHF website reads, “Our turkeys are
more flavorful, juicier and just plain better than the factory-farmed ones you
get at the grocery store. They're more expensive, yes, but they're worth it – not
only because they're the best turkey[s] you'll ever taste, but also because
they're raised with love and care.” This TLC is why PHF has sold every one of
their turkeys every year they’ve offered them to the Montana public.
∙
Part One: The Killing Station
The Killing Station is more of an
open shed situated between a large, closed barn and familiar amber waves of
Eastern Montana pasture. There are two plastic, white buckets on the ground at
the left of this shed, which sit directly under two metal cones. In the barn, the
stomachs of one hundred and thirty-some turkeys, which were herded from the
farm’s open fields a day earlier, are getting lighter and lighter. Because
these turkeys are raised outside, they eat the grasses and the bugs that exist
there; and because it is easier to process turkeys whose gullets and gizzards
are empty of these foods, they are barricaded in the barn a day prior to
slaughter.
Enter four students charged with
the most physically challenging part of the process: catching the turkeys. Once
the first turkey is caught and killed, it is evident that the remaining turkeys
are, to some extent, aware of their fate. Cornering them seems to be the way in
which most students are able to catch them. Me, though – I’m not able to catch
a single one; the feeling of their weight and their frightened stiffness makes
me anxious and hesitant, two things you cannot be if catching a live bird is
your end goal.
Once caught, they are taken from
the barn to the open shed and held upside down, one student containing their
legs, another guiding their bodies through the aforementioned metal cones.
Their heads are pulled through the smaller, bottom hole, their necks held
firmly. With a steady hand, a knife is pressed to their jugular vein.
It takes a turkey somewhere
around five minutes to bleed out.
Part Two: The Plucking Station
Once a bird is caught and killed,
it is brought around the barn to the Plucking Station, which consists of: a
scale on which the bird is weighed (this immediate weight is called its “live
weight”); a large tub of scalding-hot water in which the bird is plunged for a
minute and half – this bath allows its feathers to be easily pulled and plucked
from its body; an automatic turkey plucking machine (what I will call a “turkey
spinner”) that does exactly what it sounds like it does – at its best, it
completely plucks the feathers from a turkey in a whirlwind of water and
extremely fast rubber “fingers” or knobs; and a stainless steel table around
which one to four people stand, plucking the remaining hangers on.
Part Three: Necking
Featherless, the turkeys are then
carried from the Plucking Station to two large sinks where the necks are
removed from the bodies. My participation at these last stations is limited to
observation, so I’ve enlisted the help of Jacob Cowgill to explain these
processes. (Matt Freeman, a WC student and KBGA college radio personality spent
the weekend recording the harvesting process for a radio spot, and I’ve used
his audio to paraphrase Jacob’s explanation about this processing stage.)
“You’re going to cut back towards
the base of the neck. Here, you’ll find the trachea and the esophagus, held
together by a membrane. Peel back the membrane, and you’re going to follow the
esophagus to the crop (which is where food is pre-digested), and what you’re
going to do is loosen the crop. You’re not going to take it out, you just want
to get it loose. The crop is sort of hard to see, but it’s a sack – a thin sack
– and it’s fairly tough, but it can break. You want to prevent that; you just
want to loosen the membrane from the wall with your fingers. There, at the base
of the crop, you’ll find the trachea. Clean up the skin here. Peel the skin off
the neck. Cut off the neck. You’re going to save the necks; they’re put back
inside the bird before they’re bagged. Finally, you’re going to want to cut off
the scent gland. You’ll see some ‘yellow stuff.’ Clear that yellow stuff away.”
Part Four: The Evisceration Station
The turkeys are then transferred
to the Evisceration Station, where they are gutted and given a final
inspection. Here, any remaining feathers are plucked, and organs are removed and
sorted; livers and hearts are saved, to be joined by the necks inside the
turkeys before they’re packaged.
Part Five: Post-Processing
The turkeys’ legs are zip-tied
together and they’re placed in coolers until they reach a temperature of
forty-one degrees (or less). They are then put in a bag, which is placed in hot
water in order to seal them. They are then weighed (given a “dead weight”) and
transferred to the truck that will deliver them to the Montanans that bought
them so many months prior to this weekend.
∙
There is a disconnect in the
American food system. Many people are unaware of the production and processing
methods that make a delicious Thanksgiving meal possible. So we, as a
relatively conscientious group of university students, set out to learn what
one of those processes consisted of. While doing so, we made sure to thank
those that were “giving” us their bodies; as each throat released hot blood,
and while each turkey struggled to survive the Killing Station – in a gesture
meant to convey the heavy-hearted emotions most of us were feeling and the
respect we had for their lives – we thanked them. We thanked them for being
unknowing participants in our food system and thanked them for the transfer of
energy from their living bodies into, theoretically, our own. In this sense,
the weekend was not only an education in poultry processing and ethically-sound
consumption, but it was also an exercise in mindfulness.
I went into the harvest weekend
believing that, should I be able to kill a turkey, I would or should re-evaluate
my own consumption, re-think my vegetarianism. As it turned out, however, the
weekend was lifestyle-affirming. I am still a vegetarian, but should I ever
choose to drift back to my omnivorous self, I know that I will be an educated
meat-eater, and I have no doubt that I will be a thankful one. Happy [Belated]
Thanksgiving.
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