Through the picture window in my bedroom, the outline of the house is clear in the snow. North facing tree branches are white with lines of snow, shining in the moonlight. The ravine behind the house drops 40 feet then rises another 100 feet on the other side. From my chair I look directly into the tops of the trees growing in the ravine, a favorite nesting site for wild turkeys.
Turkeys can fly but they don’t go far or high. At dusk, a flock of turkeys will stand in the pasture on the far side of the ravine. One or two tom turkeys (males) chase the younger birds until they take flight into the treetops. From the top of the 100-foot ravine the birds don’t have to fly far to reach their treetop perches. Each bird runs about 10 or 20 feet flapping their wings. At the edge of the hill, they lift off and flap another 40 or 50 feet to the top of a tree. The tom turkeys stay on the ground chasing the others into flight.
When most of the birds are in the trees, the remaining toms join them. In the past, the flock nested in another field with a cemetery nearby. The cemetery in that field was fenced with a foot wide stone wall. The birds would use the cemetery wall as a runway. They would hop on the cemetery wall, run along it and then leap off flapping into the nearby trees.
During the day, the turkeys hunt for food. In fresh snow, they leave tracks that wander away and join up again as they meander through our pastures. With no bugs to eat, they seem to do well on seeds leftover from summer and some that drop from the hay we feed our cattle and horses.
The turkeys are safe from predators in the trees. The other night I heard the local coyote pack howling nearby, but since the turkeys are high in the trees at night, they are safe from the coyotes. At Miles Smith Farm, our adult cattle are too big for the coyotes to attack but the calves aren’t. A lone calf would be fair game for a pack of coyotes, but our herd of 65 cattle keep the babies safe from attack. As long as the calves stay with the herd, they are safe. If a calf wanders off into the woods, well that can be bad news for the calf.
So far this year we have not lost any calves to coyotes. I don’t know about the turkeys, though. They are safe in the trees for now, and I get to watch from the warmth of my house. If the weather is mild and the winter short, they might all flap their way into the spring.
At this time of year, turkey makes a great holiday feast. Wild turkeys are abundant, but locally-raised farm birds are far more tender and are available from local farms. Think about helping a New Hampshire farmer. Unless you are a hunter, admire the wild turkeys but eat a bird from a local farm.
As the trailer backed into the holding pen, I put up my hand to signal stop just before the trailer hit the building. The truck driver, my husband Bruce, understood and stopped the rig at just the right spot. Farming and hand signals go together. At Miles Smith Farm, Bruce and I have created our own vocabulary of hand signals for all farm work.
With equipment running, it is impossible to use spoken language to direct equipment or cattle. Tractors, Bobcats, trucks or mooing cattle are so loud, voice commands don’t work; hand signals do. The first step to using hand signals effectively is eye contact. Once you have the equipment operator’s attention, the correct hand signal is critical. Stop is easy but I’ve gotten creative with other signals. To lift and deliver a 1,000 pound bale of hay, I open and close my hand like a jaw and point to the field where the hay goes to.
It’s always helpful to discuss plans with the operator before starting the noisy equipment, but even so, plans change and hand signals help clarify intentions.
Having a helper on the ground helps when feeding cattle. It takes a single operator twice the time to feed. The single operator has to move the bale, climb out of the Bobcat, strip the bale, climb back into the cab, drive to the pasture, climb out, open the gate, climb back in the cab, drive into the field, deliver the hay then return to the gate, climb out of the cab, chase cattle who have escaped back into the pasture, close the gate, climb back into the cab, repeat. You get the idea.
A good team will have common hand signals to get farm work done safely. I’ve often thought that learning sign language would help as well. Of course, there are those universal hand signals that we all use to communicate. You know some of them, right? While I try to be polite in my signals at the farm, sometimes, behind my back, I let out some frustration. When shouting won’t work, hand signals will. Remember that when your spouse claims he didn’t hear you.