Fall, as harvest season, is in many ways a time for goodbyes. We say goodbye to the lovely rows of crops in the field and goodbye to a number of the animals we’ve been raising for food. Oftentimes, the harvest is bittersweet, as we relinquish the lives and the companionship we share with our livestock, trading roles of nourisher and nourished. Tomorrow our turkeys will leave the farm. But we can’t honestly say we’re sad to see them go.

Turkeys are actually very good company, and that is what’s made them trouble on our place! Gentle by nature, they don’t run at you in a menacing way like hens sometimes do, or fly at you with claws extended like roosters. All during the garden season, they followed us as we worked outside, talking quietly and traipsing behind us in a line like ducklings. Turkeys have sweet, peeping voices except when alarmed, when even their gobble is rather muted. We enjoyed their pleasant conversation, their unflagging friendliness and the stunning beauty of their shimmery plumage. But when we weren’t outside, the turkeys waited for us on the front and back and side porches, pooping prolifically. Maybe since we started them as poults in the house, they never quite got over us as family.

But our turkeys weren’t just clingy, they were also curious. “Your turkeys are on our back porch,” called our neighbor one day in October. When the turkeys were small, we’d herded them, literally walking behind the group with a shepherd’s crook outstretched, into a little quonset hut every night and locked them in. But as they grew, they flew into trees to roost at night. That meant they were entirely on their own, and we no longer had any means to contain them.

As garden season wrapped up and we spent less time working outside, the turkeys weren’t content to hang around the house and wait for us to get up and out. They took off to look for us. First they strutted down our hundred-yard drive to the neighbor across the street. A few days later, they were heading down the road toward town by the time we woke up. One morning, we had to herd them back from the river through a corn field. On several occasions the schoolbus that stops in front of our house had to wait while Shannon or I ran out and scooted them out from in front of it. Our girls were absolutely mortified!

Thankfully, once the turkeys were rounded up and fed they tended to stick close to home until the following daybreak. But it got to be that we never knew where the turkeys would be when we woke up. We worried about them causing an accident on the road or being killed by a dog in a far field.

Finally, we corralled the turkeys in the front pepper garden, which is surrounded by a four-foot-fence, and clipped the tips off their wings. (Which doesn’t hurt, by the way. It’s like having our nails trimmed – feathers aren’t alive.) They still could scrabble up and out, but it took effort and slowed them down some. In discussions with other homesteaders who raise turkeys, I’ve learned that the modern commercial breeds most folks raise grow so fast that they are soon unable to fly, and are thus easily contained within a fence. In our ignorance, we chose to raise rare heritage turkeys to help the gene pool, with no real appreciation for the extra hassle keeping them would require. We hope that the taste is worth the effort. And we’re glad our turkeys got to have so many adventures in the course of their short lives.

But we are relieved the adventure is over for us. Tonight in the dark we drove the pickup out to the pepper garden and quietly began plucking silent turkeys off their roosts on the fence posts. As we tucked the birds into dog kennels and cages in the pickup bed, I marveled again at their gentle and quiet dispositions. Some peeped and hummed to each other. A few of the birds were asleep on the ground and we had to chase them briefly to catch them around their centers, wings enfolded under our arms, but even those let out no loud cries or gobbles. Our task accomplished, Shannon and I took a moment to look at our lovely and troublesome turkeys. We left them with a prayer for peace. In the end, we are thankful for the comedy and beauty they added to our lives and certainly for the richness they’ll add to our table.

And we’ll probably raise heritage turkeys again next year.