Talking Turkey

Wild turkeys make their way across a field off County E.

How roasted turkey came to be the centerpiece of the Thanksgiving Day meal is lost to history, but it probably was not on the menu of the first Thanksgiving in 1621. An eyewitness account by Edward Winslow said venison and fowl (probably wild geese, duck and swan) were on the menu.

Some credit Charles Dickens and his 1843 classic A Christmas Carol for popularizing turkey as a holiday centerpiece when, after Scrooge endures the nightlong ghostly examination of his miserly life, he awakens as a new man and orders that a giant turkey hanging in a butcher’s window be delivered to the hard-pressed Cratchit family.

Twenty years after the debut of Dickens’ ghostly holiday tale, at the height of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday of November “as a day of thanksgiving and praise.” There was no mention of turkey in his somber declaration.

Thanksgiving of 1939 was going to fall on the last day of November. Since the Christmas shopping season traditionally starts after Thanksgiving, certain business interests felt that 24 days of shopping was not enough time.

President Franklin Roosevelt listened to them and changed the holiday that year from the final Thursday of the month to the third Thursday. Not everyone complied, and some called the new date “Franksgiving.” It caused so much confusion and rancor that Congress intervened in 1941 and declared Thanksgiving to be the fourth Thursday in November.

Through it all, roast turkey was well established as the main course of the holiday, to the point where some refer to it simply as Turkey Day.

Steve Northrop at Main Street Market in Egg Harbor took his first fresh turkey order for this Thanksgiving in August.

“A lot of people come up for Thanksgiving,” he said.

“We sell a lot more fresh than we do frozen,” he said. “People leaving for the summer and won’t be back until Thanksgiving, they know we start taking orders.”

Northrop said the store sells about 150 turkeys in a season, with about 120 of those fresh rather than frozen. He said the turkeys run 10 to 24 pounds, but people can special order larger turkeys. Customers can also request to have a frozen turkey thawed in the store’s refrigerator.

“A lot of people don’t have room to thaw a 24-pound turkey in their refrigerator,” he said.

Mike Krueger, meat manager at Piggly Wiggly in Sister Bay, said they receive two shipments of turkeys on four pallets, amounting to somewhere between 400 and 500 holiday birds.

“We’ve got fresh and frozen, but you have to pre-order the fresh,” Krueger said.

Of that large shipment of birds, Krueger expects to have 50 to 75 left over for folks who want roast turkey again for Christmas.

Deb Simon is in her first year as manager of the meat department at Pick ’n Save in Sturgeon Bay, so she’s not certain how many the store will go through this season, she just knows “It’s a pain to make room for all the turkeys,” she said.

Kathy Navis at Greens N Grains in Egg Harbor has once again been taking orders for fresh organic turkeys from Gifts from the Good Earth, an 80-acre organic farm in Milladore, Wis., owned by Mike and Deb Hansen.

In addition to pasture-raised turkeys that exceed the National Organic Program standards set by the United States Department of Agriculture, the Hansens pasture raise chickens, pigs and sheep.

“The turkeys did wonderfully on pasture this summer, with much credit to our son Jake, who came home from college to handle the daily husbandry tasks. He did a fantastic job!” Deb Hansen said. “The birds averaged 13 pounds, and their sizes range from 10 to 16 pounds.”