My Life Monday

My friend Rachelle had a fantabulous idea. It's called "My Life Monday", a blog entry totally devoted to writing about YOURSELF and what you are all about. Sounded like fun to me and I'm always looking for some good ideas on what to blog about. It's much easier when someone chooses a topic for me. I'm lazy like that. And if you are lazy like me, go get the dish on "My Life Monday" from her site and join the craze.

Today's My Life Monday topic: My Most Memorable Childhood Experience.

Hmm. I had a lot of childhood experiences, some good and some bad. How do you choose just one? I've had an entire week to think about it and I STILL couldn't come up with one single event to talk about. The more I thought though, the more I realized that most of the childhood experiences I remember all had to do with one thing.

Yup. That's a turkey. I grew up on a turkey farm. It's true, I did! We raised them from when they were cute little balls of fluff (that would poop on you), to when they awkward teenagers (that would poop on you), to when they were big and ugly grownup birds that would peck your eyes out (and poop on you) if you got too close. They aren't the most intelligent or attractive animal around. Have you ever tried to herd a turkey? It's like herding a group of 2 year olds hopped up on Fun Dip. (Which is why my 2 year old has never experienced Fun Dip)

So let me tell you about my life as a Turkey Grower. (Warning: If you came to my site today looking for a laugh you may not find it here. Growing turkeys is NOT a laughing matter, my friend. I am serious about that!)

Okay, so growing turkeys. The cute little chicks entered this world at the hatchery and then came to live in our brooder coops. The coops were heated and had a fresh 6-inch layer of sawdust on the ground. (Spreading sawdust was one of the more fun things because it was momentarily poopless) The brooder coops were DEAFENING. Picture thousands of birds chirping together all at one time. When I left my ears would ring. Kinda like after a rock concert, only less of an adrenalin rush.

The baby birds eat, sleep and poop just like every other newborn that I know of. They also liked to cuddle together, sometimes a little too much. They would pile up and smother each other if we didn't check them often. We would go in every couple hours to unpile the turkeys, remove them one by one until there were none left at the bottom of the little turkey huddle they had going on. Sometimes we didn't get there quick enough and one or two would die. It was always very sad when they died, especially when they were so small. You'd pick up the dead one by it's ankles and toss it in the bucket later to be thrown in the Dead Pit. (We'll get to the Dead Pit later. I promise I won't skip that hellacious tidbit.)

When the turkeys are little they are cute. I used to love going when they were so small. It was cozy and warm inside the coop, sometimes TOO warm. (Baby turkeys need it hot since their mommies aren't around to keep them cozy, hence the piling) The brooder coop had a wonderful aroma of sawdust, at least for a couple of days. Slowly the smell of turkey poop took over, the sawdust turned to muck and the cute balls of fluff morphed into crazed teenagers.

We fed and watered the turkeys every day. Well, someone in my family did anyway. I didn't do it every day since I was less than 12 years old and in school. We patrolled the place for dead, sick or maimed turkeys and got them out of there. Turkeys can be brutal to the less fortunate. They would pick on the weakest bird and then peck and peck at it until it died. This taught me an important lesson about making fun of others. I never wanted to be the bird that did the pecking or that was being pecked. Neither side looked enjoyable.

When they started to do the pecking thing it was time to debeak them to avoid further deaths. Debeaking is cutting off the top 1/3 of the bird's beak. You used these scissorlike things to do it and it takes forever because you have to do it to the turkeys one at a time. I hated doing it. HATED it. I always felt like I was hurting them even though I knewthe alternative was letting them peck each other to death. I always tried to find different things to do rather than the actual debeaking, like gather the turkeys up or fetch things. Anything to get out of it.

The only redeeming quality I remember about debeaking is that my whole family would help. My parents would turn on Huey Lewis and The News or something equally as fantasic and we would all sing as we did it. We would give each of the turkeys a name as they came through the line and we would laugh until we were silly. After we were finished we would get to have a pop and a candy bar. I always chose Grape Crush and a Big Hunk. Yummers.

When the turkeys came of age and got their Big Boy and Big Girl Feathers it was time to move them to the bigger coop. It was HUGE. There were 20,000 turkeys in there at one time. (Is that right, Mom? I thought it was, but that seems like a lot...) The turkeys grew a lot bigger there and I think the only thing that did NOT grow bigger was their brains. They were pretty stupid. We did the same thing in this coop. Feed, water, patrol for dead.

When the birds died we took them to the Dead Pit, a hole dug in the ground with a huge metal lid on it to cover up the overwhelming stench. It was so gross! I always tried to throw them in as fast as I could, put the lid on and get away. I made the mistake once of looking inside with a flashlight and had dreams about festering maggots for a week. (are you LOVING this oh-so-happy post? lol)

We did this whole process for about 5-6 months. At the end big trucks would come, we would load the turkeys on and off they would go to become someone's tasty Thanksgiving treat. Then we (my dad, mainly) would shovel up the no-longer-sawdust mucky mess, we would sanitize the place, clean all of the water troughs and feeders, and start the operation all over.

It was a lot of hard work. Gross, dirty work. Not something that I ever have a desire to do again. I never realized until I was much older how good it was for us to work on that farm. I learned how to be a hard worker there. I learned to appreciate where food comes from. I learned that sometimes in life there are things that you don't want to do but you have to Man Up and do them anyway.

Fast forward to this weekend.

Greg and I spread 3 truckloads of mulch on our flowerbeds. It took us all day Saturday and it was tiring. As I shoveled and carried and dumped I started thinking about my parents and how physically demanding it must have been to work on that farm every single day. Not only did they have the farm but they worked full time as well and still barely made ends meet.

I am grateful for the sacrifices they made for me and my brothers and sisters. I am grateful for the experiences I had growing up because it made me who I am today. I hope I can teach my kids the value of hard work too. Maybe I'll ship 'em off to a farm in the summer.

Sidenote: To see pictures of the whole process click here. I wanted to put the pics in this blog but they were copyrighted and I didn't want to deal with the legal issues.