American farmers just weren’t raising standard bred birds anymore, at least not in significant numbers. “The commercial industry had developed a couple varieties that cost less to feed, fattened up faster, and sold well, and farmers raised these to the exclusion of all others,” Reese explained to me. “This means that one flue could wipe out every bird in this country.” To make matters worse, he said, commercial birds—a broad-breasted white variety developed in the 1950s—all tend to taste the same. “They have no flavor! No individuality!” he lamented. Reese began expanding his flock. Meanwhile, he worked as a nurse at a hospital in San Antonio and eked out additional money by taking odd jobs and even modeling. In his early 30s, Reese looked every inch the Marlboro Man, whom he once portrayed in an advertising campaign.
Texas was fun, said Reese, “but it was no place to raise a turkey.” So, in 1989, he moved back to Kansas, bought a farm outside Lindsborg that he called Good Shepherd Turkey Ranch, and ramped up his breeding program. He was more worried than ever about American poultry. “The bloodlines were dying out. Norman didn’t want to believe me,” Reese recalled. “He was in his late 70s, but he got in his truck and went looking for his birds. He went to every farm he’d sold to, and he didn’t find one Norman Kardosh Narragansett.” Reese’s other mentors were beginning to pass away. Norman was the last to go,” Reese said, “I promised him that I would not let these birds die off the face of the Earth.”
By 2002, Reese had increased the national population of standard bred turkeys to such an extent that he was able to sell to some restaurants and individuals. “The only way to save these birds is to get people to eat them,” he said. Reese created a cooperative of several farmers in Kansas and sold 800 heritage turkeys--as the farmers branded their standard bred birds--that first year. Two years later, Reese took on a business partner, a young poultry farmer named Brian Anselmo, whom Reese considered to be the next heir to the old-breed poultry legacy. In 2007, the number of farmers in the Good Shepherd co-op grew to a dozen; they sold 10,000 old-breed tur- keys that Thanksgiving. It wasn’t much compared with the 46 million industrially raised turkeys sold during that holiday each year, but it was a mile- stone nonetheless.
In 2008, Anselmo died suddenly of compli- cations of asthma at the age of 28. Reese, recog- nized by then as the premier source of old-breed birds in the nation, became even more focused on selling his breeding stock. “I’m all these birds have now,” Reese said. Nowadays, he’s pouring his energy into plans for the Standard Bred Poultry Institute, a place where farmers will learn how to breed, raise, preserve, and cook these birds. He is building on the facility, using his own savings, and, he hopes, donor money, on the ridge just beyond his barns. “I’m leaving it all to them,” Reese said.
We’d been sitting in his dining room for a long while. Outside, the wind was keening around the house. Reese pushed back from the table, and I followed him as he walked to the kitchen, zipped a barn jacket over his flannel shirt, pulled on a stocking cap, and walked out his back door.
We headed toward the pasture next to the larger of the two red barns. There, under a darkening sky, hun- dreds of turkeys were already crowding at the fence, strutting excitedly, puffing their feathers, and craning their wobbly-skinned necks. The birds mobbed Reese as he pushed through the gate. At the center of this shiny, feathery universe, Reese chattered and scolded. Bending down, he scooped up a huge Bronze and cradled it in the crook of his arm.
“This is Norman,“ he said, beaming. The bird had bright eyes and copper-colored feathers with black edges. He put Norman down, and the animal spread its lush tail feathers in an impressive rainbow. “Isn’t he something?” said Reese. “We’ve been hanging around for a few years. Norman isn’t going anywhere. Norman’s staying right here.”
Winter/Spring 2012
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