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Leftover turkeys: Farmers keep busy after the big day

METHUEN, Mass. (AP) — You’d think a turkey farmer would get a day off once the Thanksgiving bird reaches the table. Jim Rischer gets something far less — at best.

“I try to work a half-day instead of a full day,” said the patriarch of the family that owns Raymond’s Turkey Farm. “Then I get ready for Christmas.”

After selling 10,000 birds in the three days leading up to Thanksgiving, the Rischers have to reload to sell 2,000 more before Christmas.

Then they have to scout out breeding stock. Then they have to plan the spring hatch. Then they have to manage growth through the summer heat. And by late fall, it’s time for another holiday harvest, when they sell more than half of the 20,000 turkeys they raise each year.

The same cycle plays out annually across New England at the dozens of family-owned turkey farms offering an alternative to commercial processors.

“People just see how busy this is this week,” Rischer’s wife, Patt, said as the first customer arrived at 6:20 a.m. “It’s busy all year.”

Each year, the activity peaks the day before Thanksgiving, when the last customer walks out the door with his bird. But life on the farm requires that someone work the holiday, and each year, there are inevitably four or five panicked people who show up at the farm, looking for a replacement for a botched supermarket bird.