Today we harvest the final turkeys for our Thanksgiving sales. After extensive emails, phone calls, and lists of lucky customers, we know who these next 35 turkeys belong too. We just have to get them ready. We've never done this many in one day. It should be an adventure.
This year has been another year of experimentation in the turkey operation. Will we sell them in the summer? Yes! How many can we raise? We maxed out at 150 for the season. Will we put people on a waiting list again? No! Besides our fresh turkey list of pickups, next year we have to come up with a better solution than a wait list. If anyone has any suggestions, I'm listening. Bill had it right when he said we should just offer them for sale first come, first serve. Next year, that's the way it has to go. The only problem is the freezer space it takes each week if they all don't sell. Where do we put the next batch? Maybe another freezer is in our future.
Another thing we learned this season is how hard it is to clean ducks. Again, I had to learn it the hard way. Poor Bill, I keep insisting we can do better with ducks and I order the next batch. Then comes butchering time. No matter how you slice it, it still takes hours to clean just a few. We could have done 50 chickens in the time it took to do 12 ducks. So... I guess I'll leave the ducks to the experts for now.
Something else that we are looking into that I'm really excited about is more sheep. Bill and I have been talking to other farmers about raising sheep for meat. I have been trying to convince Bill for a long time to let me have more lambies. I think I'm addicted. Now it looks like I'll get my wish. All we need is more fencing. Lots more fencing than we have. Hopefully the turkeys will help with the fence projects. I'm going to try to get the two sheep that I already have to be bred for spring. Oh, I can't wait to hold baby lambs!
