Bad Turkeys

Did you know that turkeys eat tomatoes?  I didn't.  It makes sense, and I probably should have foreseen problems with free ranging my turkeys. After all, chickens love tomatoes and turkeys aren't a whole lot different from chickens in my experience.

But, I hadn't free ranged turkeys before, and I didn't think about what might happen when the tomatoes started to ripen.  I had welcomed the turkeys, and the ducks, and the geese, into the garden with me when I was weeding.  They were great at eating bugs, especially those pesky Japanese beetles that seem to show up out of thin air in August and then proceed to defoliate my bean plants.

Turns out turkeys are also great at poking almost ripe tomatoes full of holes.  They don't even pick them first, they just peck away at that nice juicy orangey red globe hanging from the tomato plant.  You know, the one I've been keeping an eye on all week in anticipation of a sun ripened tomato.  Thick, juicy, deep red tomato slices on a BLT. . . Heck, a warm,freshly picked tomato as a snack while weeding the garden, tomato juice running down my arm as I take a bite. . .

Yeah, neither scenario has happened yet, because my bad turkeys have beat me to every dang tomato before it turned from orange to red.

So much for free ranging my turkeys.  They are now on lock-down until November when they will meet their fate (Thanksgiving dinner for one, freezer camp for the others.)  I didn't plant 100 tomato plants so they could gorge themselves on my tomatoes before I got a chance at them.  No, those tomato plants are supposed to be canned tomatoes, tomato juice, tomato sauce, tomato paste, and salsa for the next year, plus enjoyable fresh eating from now until frost.

Honestly, I'm tempted to forego the nice plump Thanksgiving turkey and just do them in now.  Then I can cook up the breasts and slice them for sandwich meat.  A nice, juicy, thick red tomato slice on a turkey breast sandwich sounds pretty good right about now.  A little bit of karma, you could say.