92 animal, vegetable, miracleThe American Livestock Breeds Conservancy keeps track of rare
varieties of turkeys, chickens, ducks, sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle that
were well known to farmers a century ago, but whose numbers have
declined to insignificance in the modern market. In addition to broader
genetic diversity and disease resistance, heritage breeds tend to retain
more of their wild ancestors’ sense about foraging, predator avoidance,
and reproduction—traits that suit them for life in the pasture and barn-
yard rather than a crowded, windowless metal house. Many heritage
breeds are adapted to specific climates. Above all, they’re superior in the
arena for which these creatures exist in the first place: as food.
Heritage livestock favorites are as colorfully named as heirloom vege-
tables. You can have your Tennessee Fainting goats, your Florida Cracker
cattle, your Jersey Giant chickens, your Gloucester Old Spots hogs.
Among draft animals, let us not forget the American Mammoth Jack Ass.
The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy publishes directories of
these animals and their whereabouts, allowing member farmers to com-
municate and exchange bloodlines.
We decided to join the small club of people who are maintaining
breeding flocks of heritage turkeys—birds whose endearing traits include
the capacity to do their own breeding, all by themselves. Eight rare heri-
tage turkey breeds still exist: Jersey Buff, Black Spanish, Beltsville Small
White, Standard Bronze, Narragansett, Royal Palm, Midget White, and
Bourbon Red. We picked the last one. They are handsome and famously
tasty, but for me it was also a matter of rooting for the home team. This
breed comes from Bourbon County, Kentucky, a stone’s throw from where
I grew up. I imagined my paternal grandmother playing in the yard of the
farm where these birds were originally bred—an actual possibility. Fewer
than two thousand Bourbon Reds now remain in breeding flocks. It struck
me as a patriotic calling that I should help spare this American breed
from extinction.
Slow Food has employed the paradox of saving rare breeds by getting
more people to eat them, and that’s exactly what happened in its 2003
Ark of Taste turkey project. So many people signed up in the spring for
heirloom Thanksgiving turkeys instead of the standard Butterball, an un-
precedented number of U.S. farmers were called upon to raise them. The