A new children’s book is making the rounds this Thanksgiving which tells the story of a modern turkey farm in north-central Iowa.
The author is Katie Olthoff and the book features her family’s third-generation farm near Stanhope. Olthoff says “My Family’s Farm” was assembled as if it was created by her six-year-old son, Adam.
“It’s got a lot of photographs from inside of our barn, photographs of our family working together and it explains how we take care of the turkeys from Adam’s point of view,” Olthoff says. “It also has a section of text for older students and adults, it gives more background information on the turkey farm, the turkey industry here in Iowa and it explains things in more depth.”
Unlike most children’s books, Olthoff says this book isn’t for sale in book stores or on Amazon.
“We’ve been able to make it available to teachers in Iowa,” Olthoff says. “They can each get a free copy of the printed version. We also have an e-book version that is free online so anyone can go online, check it out and use that in their classroom or with their kids, maybe on the iPad before bedtime.”
The Olthoffs raise three flocks of turkeys at a time, with 20,000 birds per flock.
Thanksgiving can be a frustrating time for turkey farmers, Olthoff says, as people are fed a lot of misinformation.
“Most of the Thanksgiving discussion is on the First Thanksgiving and wild turkeys and people don’t always talk about the way turkeys are raised now,” Olthoff says. “Iowa is the 9th state in the nation for raising turkeys, 5th in processing, so it contributes a lot to our economy and it’s important for people to know how modern turkey farms work.”
See the book at www.iowaturkey.org.
Thanks to Pat Powers, KQWC, Webster City