Turkey Season

Our turkey poults will be arriving in about a week and a half. In the meantime, the wild turkeys in our area have really been out and about. Nearly every morning, we see them strutting around in the neighboring field (35 acres, behind our fenced pasture), their tail feathers fanned majestically.

This afternoon, for the first time, a couple of big toms flew into our pasture --- but then they couldn't find a way out. One was on the sheep side of the pasture and the other was on the goat side; the two of them strutted confusedly up and down the dividing fence, stopping now and then to press themselves into it, not seeming to understand why they couldn't go through it and be together. (Even in the wild, it appears that turkeys are pretty dim-witted.)

Anyway, this had been going on for the better part of an hour before ten-year-old Homeschooled Farm Girl happened to look out and notice it. She came running to find me, and announced, "Daddy, there's a wild turkey on our property! Too bad you can't hunt it."

"I know," I replied, "but it's not hunting season."

HFG thought for a moment, and then asked, "Why don't we chase it into the barn, and then keep it there until turkey season?"

Smart girl. But, as I explained to her, that's not exactly legal. Or sporting.

And the best way to get delicious turkey is to raise it yourself. Which we will be doing, starting in less than two weeks.

Got Coon?

This yeoman "urban hunter" is managing to take advantage of the City of Detroit's regression to the wild. I'm just hoping that the City eventually decides to allow "urban farming" within the city limits. There are so many empty lots in Detroit, it's not even funny. (Kick up Google Earth some time and take a look yourself --- you'll see vast swaths of "city" that more closely resemble countryside.)

The only problem with farming in Detroit, of course, is that you'd need to erect a ten foot high concrete wall, topped with razor wire, to protect your livestock from drive-by shootings. So, for now, Glemie Dean Beasley seems to have the right idea:

Beasley, a 69-year-old retired truck driver who modestly refers to himself as the Coon Man, supplements his Social Security check with the sale of raccoon carcasses that go for as much $12 and can serve up to four. The pelts, too, are good for coats and hats and fetch up to $10 a hide.

While economic times are tough across Michigan as its people slog through a difficult and protracted deindustrialization, Beasley remains upbeat.

Where one man sees a vacant lot, Beasley sees a buffet.

"Starvation is cheap," he says as he prepares an afternoon lunch of barbecue coon and red pop at his west side home.

His little Cape Cod is an urban Appalachia of coon dogs and funny smells. The interior paint has the faded sepia tones of an old man's teeth; the wallpaper is as flaky and dry as an old woman's hand.

Beasley peers out his living room window. A sushi cooking show plays on the television. The neighborhood outside is a wreck of ruined houses and weedy lots.

"Today people got no skill and things is getting worse," he laments. "What people gonna do? They gonna eat each other up is what they gonna do."

A licensed hunter and furrier, Beasley says he hunts coons and rabbit and squirrel for a clientele who hail mainly from the South, where the wild critters are considered something of a delicacy.

Go read the whole thing. It's fun.

H/T: Anthony G.