Its turkey time!

Can you guess how many pounds our turkeys dressed out at?  Today was the big day.  We dropped them off last night at a local amish butcher.  When I went to pick up the turkeys to put them in the trailer they decided to put up a good fight.  I am not kidding I was beat up by a turkey.  One hit me in the jaw and it is bruised today, one hit my in the cheek and it is sore, one hit me in the arm and left a nice bruise and one some how scraped my arm and left me bleeding.  I think I need some turkey lifting lessons or maybe it was the fact that they were like 40 pound monsters!!!!  The turkeys may have won the battle but I won the war...LOL!!!   They dressed out at 34, 33, 28 and 22!!!!  I came home today with 117 lbs of turkey!!!

We are grinding two of them.  Boiling down the carass for broth and the rest of the meat that we didn't get off the bones since we are NOT professional butchers.   Then two will remain intact for Thanksgiving and another special occassion.  We got one ground tonight and here is that experience.  It was a whole family event.  Well except for Kelcie she really didn't have much to do with it.

Here is one of the biggest, 34 pounds! 

Ryan's job was de-boning and cutting.

I manned the grinding station.

The two kids weighed and baged it.

15 pounds of turkey burgers, tacos, chili, meatballs and yummy turkey goodness!

By the end of raising these birds I said I was NEVER doing this again.  It is a pain in the butt and I don't even know if you save very much money.   But it didn't take long after having them in my fridge/freezer to get me thinking about how nice it is going to be to have all this meat.  So I am sure I will be going for it again next year.