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When turkeys used to gobble throughout Cape Elizabeth

By Ellen Van Fleet

Turkeys used to gobble throughout Cape Elizabeth, even on Richmond Island. Cape Elizabeth resident Norm Jordan’s grandfather raised turkeys there in the early 1900s when he was farming extensively on the island.

Pomeroy Jordan didn’t keep his birds in pens—they were free-range turkeys before that moniker was penned. Pomeroy died in 1927 so turkeys were gone from the island by then.

Another Jordan, Lawrence, born in Cape Elizabeth in 1893, was known around town as “Turkey Jordan.” In the late 1920s and early 1930s he raised turkeys in fields that are now woods, located across the road from today’s Community Center.

Turkey, Norm Jordan’s uncle, lived on the property with Norm’s grandmother Emma Dyer Jordan. Norm still has Turkey’s “turkeys for sale” sign which advertised the birds at the family’s roadside stand.

Lawrence didn’t only attend to turkeys. As a boy, he attended Spurwink School, which is today’s Thomas Memorial Library. Norm has records showing that in 1905, 12-year-old Lawrence was paid $11.50 as the janitor for the school—a princely sum for a boy at that time.

Cape Elizabeth resident Beverly Brooking remembers white turkeys being raised by her father, Thomas Reed, on Spurwink Avenue.

“They were tough to raise because of diseases,” she says. For that reason, many people raised them above ground on wire mesh, though her own father did not use that method, says Beverly, not a big fan of her father’s turkeys.

“I hated them,” Beverly states emphatically.”

Beverly’s husband Wayne Brooking remembers helping Raymond Jordan out on Two Lights Road, when it was time to harvest the birds.

“He needed a little extra help,” Brooking recalls. “I was about 14 years old. My job was to go catch the turkeys. You bring them back to the shed, a turkey in each hand holding the feet with the turkey upside down.”

Raymond went around to various farms doing the killing. Anyone interested in more vivid detail can talk to Wayne, who can be found Thursdays from 9 a.m. to noon at the Cape Elizabeth Historical Preservation Society office on the basement level of Thomas Memorial Library.

These days, Cape resident Jodie Jordan raises turkeys in a barn on his property at Alewife Brook Farm. The first month after he purchases the chicks, which are a month old when he buys them, is difficult, because the birds have to be kept at near 100 degrees for that entire month, Jodie says.

But he’s more than accustomed to the process. Thirty years ago, Jodie started with 10 to 15 turkeys which he butchered himself. Today the family raises about 190 birds and on the Saturday before Thanksgiving Bib Jordan helps Jodie load the birds into a truck to take them to a slaughter house in Mercer, Maine. Jodie returns the same day with his turkeys on ice. He has a standing list of customers.

So turkeys continue to gobble in Cape Elizabeth, but they still don’t get much respect: Jodie says they are the stupidest birds around.