PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) – Two Sundays before Thanksgiving, my farming partner and I brought a live turkey in a burlap sack to our urban farm on the outskirts of Portland. The lanky brown-feathered bird quietly took her place in our chicken coop.
The turkey was intended to become Thanksgiving dinner, but she had other plans.
It was unusually cold, and in our haste we forgot to clip the turkey’s feathers. So one day last week, Turkey escaped the coop and flew above our suburban street to the top of a tree in the neighbor’s backyard. Our attempts to shoo her from the branches could not convince Turkey to come down.
My partner and I have raised chickens, goats, and ducks in Portland for the past five years. We keep animals because we love interacting with them, eggs and milk being added benefits. Occasionally we’ve made chicken soup out of a rooster, but we rarely eat our flock.
Still, I’d much rather eat a happy turkey that lived its life out on a small farm than a frozen industrial turkey deprived of space and sunlight.