zucchini larceny 185day, and only had to be shut in at night. The turkey side had a hatch open-
ing into a large, wire- enclosed outdoor run.
The turkey poults had recently figured out how to fly out through this
hatch and were enjoying the sunny days, returning to the indoor coop
only to roost at night. Although most people think of chickens and turkeys
as grain- eaters (and for CAFO birds, grain is the best of what they eat),
they consume a lot of grass and leaves when they’re allowed to forage.
Both chickens and turkeys are also eager carnivores. I’ve seen many a
small life meet its doom at the end of a beak in our yard, not just beetles
and worms but salamanders and wild- eyed frogs. (The “free- range vege-
tarian hens” testimony on an egg- carton label is perjury, unless someone’s
trained them with little shock collars.) Our Bourbon Reds were skilled
foragers, much larger than the chickens now, but a bit slower to mature
sexually. It wasn’t yet clear how our dozen birds would sort themselves
out in that regard. Frankly, I was hoping for girls.
/My kids find this hard to believe, but when I was a child I’d never
heard of zucchini. We knew of only one kind of summer squash: the yel-
low crooknecks we grew copiously in our garden. They probably also car-
ried those down at the IGA in summertime, if any unfortunate and
friendless soul actually had to buy them. We had three varieties of hard-
shelled winter squash: butternuts, pumpkins, and a green- striped giant
peculiar to our region called the cushaw, which can weigh as much as a
third-grader. We always kept one of these on the cool attic stairs all winter
(cushaw, not third- grader) and sawed off a piece every so often for our
winter orange vegetable intake. They make delicious pies. And that is the
full squash story of my tender youth. Most people might think that was
enough.
Not my dad. Always on the lookout for adventure, he went poking into
the new Kroger that opened in a town not far from ours when I was in my
early teens. Oh, what a brave new world of culinary exotics: they carried
actual whole cream pies down there, frozen alive in aluminum plates, and
also vegetables of which we were previously unaware. Artichokes, for ex-