Turkey Queen in November

Here’s my shocking admission today: Sometimes I have pork envy. (Bacon? Have you noticed recently that it’s everywhere?) Sometimes I have dairy envy. (Those cute cows plus the milk mustaches – who can compete?) Sometimes I even have just a little beef envy (in the form of a big, juicy New York strip).

But there is one time of year when this MN Gobble Gal is truly the turkey queen – Thanksgiving, baby!

The turkey owns this holiday. According to my friends at the National Turkey Federation, 95 percent of Americans eat turkey on Thanksgiving. (This is, in fact, the only time of year 95 percent of us agree on anything. Seriously.) And if you don’t serve turkey for Thanksgiving, it borders on heresy.

I can always tell when Thanksgiving season starts in my office (the Minnesota Turkey Growers Association) when these things start happening:

1) We get a phone call with a variation of some crazy person who requests something completely ridiculous … like last year: someone in the Twin Cities decided it would be a great idea to find a real live honest-to-goodness turkey that their family can use for a holiday photo in their backyard and then just release into the wild when they were done. Really?  Does this happen to the MN Pork Producers at Easter? I’m guessing people have enough sense to know releasing a pig into the wild wouldn’t be a good thing, but apparently turkeys are fair game. (Hint: domestic turkeys aren’t the same as wild turkeys, people.)

2) The media comes a’calling, looking for their Thanksgiving stories. This year, I’ve already talked to Reuters and Associated Press along with several regional and local reporters and I expect several more will track us down before the big day. Once I get back into the swing of being interrupted several times a day, it’s actually pretty fun to see who’s calling and help them find what they want.

3) The Governor of Minnesota wants to talk turkey! I have the pleasure of working with the Governor’s office to schedule an annual Thanksgiving press conference (all very non-partisan, by the way) at the State Capitol, where my organization announces a donation to Hunger Solutions Minnesota and the Governor talks about the importance of the turkey industry. This year, the Governor’s staff has decided to post several different stories on the Governor’s blog about Minnesota’s turkey industry, as well. It’s a double bonus for us, as we will put together some of the content for the blog posts, essentially guiding the direction of the blog to make sure we’re sharing fun, interesting information about our farmers and the birds they raise.

Have you noticed that Christmas is starting to do some major creep into Thanksgiving territory?  Yup, me too. It seems stores go directly from Halloween to Christmas now. Even my 8-year-old said this week at Target, “Why don’t they put up Thanksgiving decorations?  It’s already all Christmas in here.”

For me, I always hope this month doesn’t go by too quickly. No doubt it’s busy for me and I can get a little stressed out trying to fit in extra media calls with my usual workload, but I love it when we finally get to Thanksgiving Day. I love the simple pleasure of getting together with family, eating way too much and giving thanks for what we have been blessed with throughout the year.

In the meantime, when life in my office gets a little crazy, I always think of my friend Sherrie, who used to handle communications for the National Turkey Federation. She would email me and remind me to hang in there and enjoy being  a “Turkey Queen” for a few short weeks. That would make me smile.

Another thing that makes me smile? This cartoon! Gobble on, America!