GREENFIELD — The turkey is the centerpiece of most Thanksgiving meals.
Placed on a platter, surrounded by mashed potatoes and green beans and stuffing and pumpkin pie, it’s a picture-perfect spread.
For many years, Bella Witte, alongside her friends in 4-H, has loaded helpings of those trimmings into grocery bags to be donated to the annual Feast of Plenty, where they’d help feed hundreds of needy residents who might not otherwise celebrate the holiday with a hot meal.
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Click here to purchase photos from this galleryBut this year, she wanted to do more to help with the annual community do-gooding dinner. She wanted to learn about that bird that brings so many to the table.
So, Bella, a sophomore at Eastern Hancock High School, has spent the past nearly five months raising 13 turkeys to be used for dinners at the 13th annual Lisa Muegge Feast of Plenty on Thursday. Now, the birds — all of which weigh upwards of 20 pounds — will join the slew of store-bought turkeys that will wind up on plates and in containers at the Feast of Plenty.
Bella said she’s so pleased the animals will be put to good use as part of a hearty meal for someone in need.
The Thanksgiving Day feast, named for its founder Lisa Muegge, who died in 2016, delivers some 1,200 meals to people in six counties. An additional 400 meals will be served to people who attend the event at the Hancock County 4-H Fairgrounds.
Organizers rely on hundreds of volunteers to make the effort successful. They do everything from shopping for items before the dinner to cleaning up afterwards.
Bella has lent a hand regularly over the years with the members of her 4-H group, the Blue Ribbon Bunch, often gathering canned goods and other items to donate to the dinner.
For this year’s feast, however, Bella, the daughter of Jana and Mike Witte, set out to make a bigger impact.
After talking with Jeff Muegge — husband to the Feast of Plenty’s late founder, who took over planning the event after his wife’s death — Bella decided to raise turkeys that would be donated to the cause.
In late July, Bella and her parents collected 13 poults (baby turkeys) from a nearby hatchery.
She spent the following weeks raising the birds on her family’s farm in northeast Hancock County.
Along the way, she worked toward her FFA proficiency in home and community development. That exercise requires FFA members to complete a supervised agricultural experience, learning while giving back to their community, according to the organization’s website.
Raising the birds to full size was an adventure, Bella said.
Her family has raised cows and pigs and shown those livestock during 4-H fairs. But turkeys were a first.
And they needed a lot of mothering at first because, well, they aren’t the smartest animals, Bella said with a laugh. It took a few tries to teach them how to drink from their water bin or find their feed. But eventually, they caught on.
It was fun to learn about their mannerisms and how they interact with each other and their human handlers, Bella said. Turkeys seem to enjoy copying behaviors, Bella learned quickly. They liked to follow her around the yard. At any noise, they’d swivel their heads around and squawk.
They have personalities, too, Bella said. Some of the males could develop an attitude from time to time and were often stubborn when it came to being packed away for the night.
She’ll miss the good-natured fighting she had on occasion to get the birds to cooperate. And she’ll miss that gobbling in the mornings.
But she knows her once-little birds are now going to be a part of something much more important.
Organizers of the Feast of Plenty typically buy 80 to 100 turkeys to round out their menu of mashed potatoes, green beans, sweet corn, cornbread stuffing, dinner rolls and sweet potatoes.
The meat from Bella’s birds will be dished out with the rest, packaged up and sent out to fill bellies and, hopefully, warm a few hearts.
For Bella, that will be the culmination of her labors.
“I’m really happy that they’re serving their purpose in a good way,” Bella said.
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The 13th annual Lisa Muegge Feast of Plenty, slated for 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday, delivers some 1,200 meals to people in six counties and about 400 meals to people who attend the event at the Hancock County 4-H Fairgrounds, 620 Apple St., Greenfield.
To volunteer or sign up for meal delivery, visit feastofplentyoutreach.com or call (317) 335-7590.
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Two local nonprofit groups team up to provide Thanksgiving meals for area veterans. Page A6
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