Having bought ourselves three turkeys, it seemed sensible to dispatch one of them for Christmas. Question is, how do you decide which one? Bless their cotton socks, neither of the two fugitives seemed to be playing hard to get, so the decision came down to which one was closer. We had lots of theories about keeping the larger of the two for breeding purposes, by frankly, how do you tell? They are (were, in one case) both enormous, and with all that constant posturing and displaying, it is nigh-on impossible to tell how much is bird and how much is feathers.

So, grab a turkey by the leg, do the necessary, hang it up and pluck it. Easy-peasy, lemon squeezey, as Lexi would say. Actually, as it was the first one, it seemed a little daunting. Just killing the thing was a puzzle, and then dry-plucking and drawing a monster (6.5 kilos = 14lbs). Not the best way to get into the Christmas spirit.

For those who need to know, put a stick on the ground, put turkey’s head under stick (with back facing outwards, breast towards you, so the stick goes on the back of the neck), then put a foot on either end of the stick  and pull upwards). Works a treat with chickens; turkeys are a little more exciting once the flapping starts. Our volunteer WWOOFers were on-hand to experience the full Christmas spirit, as it were, with anatomy class and guess the name of the internal organ game played to the full.

To our surprise, dry-plucking was nowhere near the mission we were expecting, which made life easier. Drawing was easy too – just like a chicken, but not so fiddly. We use tin-snips to cut off neck and feet, and don’t worry about the tendons –there’s so much meat on the bird you won’t find them until three days after Christmas, when you are stripping the last of the meat off the carcass for that curry, mmmmmmmmm

We decided not to hang the bird with the guts in (nowhere to hang it in sunny Greece that is cold enough!!), so we plucked and drew it straight away, and then shoved it in the fridge for 5 days.

Never had a turkey like it! Moist, succulent, astonishingly fat (perhaps we have been overfeeding them?), and more flavour than you can shake a stick at. Finally understood why they are considered worthy of a Christmas Feast. Quite looking forward to the next year, assuming we get the two remaining birds to breed.