Executioner's Song

Our writer kills three turkeys — right in time for Thanksgiving.

by Rachel Frankford

The birds don't struggle. That's the most important thing to know. I expected a battle, two strong men straining to pin down 40 pounds of thrashing turkey and frantically beating wings so the knife-wielder can do his job. But they don't struggle. Greg swept each one up by the legs and deposited them, upside down, in one of six metal funnels hanging in a row. Sometimes, a turkey twisted its neck from this undignified position, scouting about comically. But even though their dead compatriots were bleeding out of the other funnels onto the ground — turkey blood is amazingly bright, almost fluorescent pink — they didn't seem alarmed.

I killed three. Each time, the bird's head, eyes half shut, lay docilely in my cupped hand as I pulled the loose skin of its neck taut with my thumb. Two quick, hard strokes — across, down — and the wound gaped, head lolling, bone exposed, blood splashing or spurting. The weather was cold enough that steam rose off the blood when it hit the air. It's here that the turkeys grow violent; nerve impulses wrack their bodies with spasms up to a minute later.

HANG TIME: The turkeys, necks slit, bleed out upside down on this row of metal funnels. : Amanda McKenna

And so they go, over a thousand white, 16-week-old turkeys at Strock's Farm Fresh Meats and Catering in Mechanicsburg. Kent Strock, whose family has farmed there for four generations, is, as he readily admits, a rarity as an independent farmer. Today, most farming in America runs on corporate contracts. Companies like Perdue have agreements with farms that, while they may be family-owned, use feed and equipment supplied by Perdue and abide by its specifications. But Strock, who raises about 2,200 turkeys annually for Thanksgiving and Christmas, sells only to local retailers and people who come to the farm directly. He and his wife handle all aspects of the business themselves. "The only reason we survive is we process our own turkeys," he explained. "We're a dying breed."

At bigger farms, the "processing" proceeds mechanically. This means an electric knife delivers a shock to stun the birds before they're cut. And it means no Greg, whose huge frame and tiny eyes set inside blobby features make him look like the sort of person who, if you saw him at a gas station on the side of a highway at dusk, might make you decide that you have enough gas after all. But he turns out to be a big, sweet guy who hams up the bloodlust everyone rags on him about. Every year, Greg takes off work to help the Strocks slaughter and prepare turkeys for five straight days. This year, the other workers included half a dozen men, student-aged to middle-aged, who were part of a Christian rehab program and hadn't any idea what lay in store that morning. But they worked fast and cracked jokes like pros; they seemed to feel the same way I did — grossed-out, but cheerily pragmatic ("It's nice to get out of the compound," one said).

I've been an on-and-off vegetarian since college, more for environmental than animal rights reasons, but somewhere I acquired a belief that people who eat meat really should, at some point, kill an animal themselves. My reasoning tends to wander. Sometimes, it's knowledge for knowledge's sake — that's got a nice exalted ring. Sometimes, it's that eating meat really is wrong, and those of us who continue to do so should accept our daily complicity. Less exalted. Other times, it's a firm-but-fuzzy belief that we, the industrialized, should stop hiding from Nature and Life and get our teeth and claws a little red. That's more exalted, but creepier.

: Amanda McKenna

At any rate, there I was. The first time, I slashed timidly and drew only a little blood. The turkey just ignored me. Another, more determined try, and I'd done it. The turkey's head hung down off its bleeding neck. "I feel like I'm making it suffer," I said dejectedly, because of the first botched attempt and the frightened pause between what was supposed to be a quick one-two.

"Well, they do suffer, for a little," replied Greg, who until now had been singing to himself and grinning at people with his tongue out. "Everyone knows that. When I first started, I was a little..." he spread out his bare, blood-covered hands. "I'd killed animals before, hunting deer. But not like this."

But I did it again, and again, eventually stopping at three because I was starting to want to get really good at it.

Greg and his knife, though, were just the start. After the turkeys have bled out, their heads and feet were sliced off, the latter revealing the nub of bone instantly recognizable to anyone who has ever seen a drumstick. A tank of scalding water loosened the feathers before the birds enter the automatic plucking machine. It looked like a cotton-candy spinner lined with spikes.

: Amanda McKenna

Feathers piled up on the floor, and bald, pucker-skinned turkeys tumbled onto a long metal table. (One shot out at a funny angle and almost pegged the photographer.) They looked nearly supermarket-ready — except for the organs, which get pulled out in a set order. Intestines, gizzard, liver, heart, lungs, kidneys. The entrails are slimy and brown. The gizzard, slit open, reveals a pouch of what looks like wet sand, and the purple-black lobes of the liver put the puny heart to shame. The lungs and kidneys are hard to find. Even with the thick steam and a hot, rank smell that filled the cramped room, it was a party, random "Happy Thanksgiving!" yells included. "I'm the gizzard man!" declared the jolly soul charged with collecting the organs in a bucket.

Livers tucked back in place, legs folded inward, the turkeys were placed in tubs of ice for the night. Away from the falling feathers and hot water in steam, wings and rounded forms softly pink under the ice chips, they looked oddly pretty and mysterious.

Really.

(r_frankford@citypaper.net)

Strock's Farm Fresh Meats and Catering, 729 Williams Grove Rd., Mechanicsburg, 717-697-2824, www.strocksmeats.com.