Family calls on turkeys

Since the end of June, Fenton and Jeanie Groat's children, Chelsea, 11, Haley, 9, Sam, 7, and Dylan, 5, have been tending a flock of 25 white turkeys at their home on West Brook Road. This week, the last 10 gobblers will go to the slaughterhouse. The first group went three weeks ago.

On Thanksgiving, the free-range poultry will fill several area homes, including the Groats', with the aroma of roast turkey.

Jeanie Groat said she has always home-schooled her children. Until six years ago, when she was pregnant with Dylan, she was driving a school bus to help supplement the family income.

"I decided to stay home and find other ways to make money for the school books and Christmas presents," Jeanie Groat said.

The first idea was raising chickens and selling eggs, which got off to a horrible start. A batch of 25 3-day-old Rhode Island Red chicks arrived and within hours, Woody — the family's Welsh corgi — had killed 24 of them.

"The kids went outside to see the chicks and came in crying. They were lying dead, all over the yard," Jeanie said. "I called my husband all upset and he asked me if I had counted them to make sure they were all gone. We went back and counted and realized one was missing. We found her, named her Angel, and we still have her."

Eventually, they got the hang of raising chickens and decided to move on to turkeys. They began with 10 turkeys, and the number has increased each year, with the birds arriving by mail.

"We get a call from the Walton Post Office that we have a package that's peeping," Jeanie said. "We get the turkeys when they are about three days old. They are soft and fluffy."

The family built a movable pen for the birds, and they go out every day to move it around the pasture to new areas so the turkeys have fresh places to feed.

"We lug water to them every day and move them around," Jeanie said. "They are funny birds, and really they are kind of stupid."

Chelsea said she went out to feed the birds one day and one of the toms just started gobbling.

"When he gobbled, it scared the other turkeys and they all ran away, and then he ran away with them," Chelsea said. "Then he did it again and they all ran the other way. It was really funny."

Haley said they sometimes have to set up a hospital pen for one of the birds, because some occasionally start pecking one of the turkeys, and then they all gang up on the one that's hurt.

"We usually only name them if they end up in the hospital pen," Haley said.

Sam said he named a turkey that flew up and landed on his mother's head.

"I named him Sky Born," he said. "I don't know why, I just did."

"We have a ball with them, and sometimes they are quite personable," Jeanie said. The toms will fluff all up when we go out to the pen. This year, we had an odd bird we named Edgar. He only had one eye and his beak was crooked," Jeanie said.

The first year the Groats raised turkeys, they didn't realize how big the birds would get. One weighed 42 pounds and the smallest was 27 pounds, so now they keep track of the sizes and have the turkeys slaughtered before they get too big.

Even though they sometimes single out birds for being unique, the children don't get attached to them and are very enthusiastic about eating them.

"I like turkey, but one year we had an awful lot of turkey," Chelsea said.

"People began hearing about the turkeys by word of mouth and wanted to buy them," Jeanie said. "They like knowing the birds haven't been given any medicines or chemicals. They are all natural."

Loretta Beckmann of Walton said she was thrilled to have a source for pasture-raised turkeys.

"We used to raise them ourselves, and I knew how good they were," Beckmann said. "I was looking for something to replace what we knew we liked. Jeanie's turkeys are exceptional. You can taste the difference.

"The turkeys you buy in the store were killed months ago, and they are injected with stuff to make them juicy. I don't know what it is, but it leaves a bad taste in your mouth all day. I got to the point I didn't like turkey anymore and then when we started raising our own, I realized why."

Jeanie Groat said she tries to incorporate lessons learned from raising the turkeys into the children's curriculum. They learn about how the birds are hatched, read books that incorporate stories about raising animals and even use them in math lessons.

"We go out and pick them up and try to guess their weight," Haley said.

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Patricia Breakey can be reached at (607) 746-2894 or at stardelhi@stny.rr.com.