Talking turkey in the ’burbs

Woman behind Roperti’s makes case her birds are atop the pecking order

MARNEY RICH KEENAN

According to the American Farm Bureau Association, turkey will be served on an estimated 46 millionThanksgiving tables across the country this year.

According to the petite firecracker who runs Roperti's Turkey Farm in Livonia, the only turkeys on Thanksgiving tables sure to be extraordinary are the ones she raises here on a 5-acre plot of land smack in the middle of suburbia."There is a world of difference between my turkeys and what's in the store," Christine Roperti opined recently, her dark brown eyes sparkling with determined enthusiasm. "I'm telling you, you can go and get Amish. Or you can go to Whole Foods and get organic. Or you can go to Hiller's and get fresh. You can go anywhere you want. But they will never taste like my turkeys. Never."

It's no wonder Roperti is so proud. For more than half a century, beginning with her Italian immigrant parents Tom and Mary, Roperti's has raised turkeys in the same location. Now, second-and third-generation Ropertis work here.

Roperti says her Wilford White turkeys are so superior because of what they eat. They are fed a diet of "corn, wheat and oats mixed with a mash concentrate of vitamins and proteins." And, too, they are free to roam outside instead of being cooped up in a barn.

"During the Lions game when they cut to a break and show the turkeys? Those are MY turkeys on TV. Millions of viewers have seen MY turkeys."

This year, Roperti will sell 4,000 turkeys in four days. During those same four days, she hires about 40 employees. "People have been with me, 15, 25 years or more," she says. "It gets nutsy, nutsy around here, let me tell you."

As usual, Roperti will get little to no sleep. "For four days before Thanksgiving, I usually average about three to four hours," she says.

People driving by Five Mile may be startled into slowing down when they come upon the sea of white turkeys sandwiched in between two subdivisions. Soon that field will empty as her husband, Wesley Bates, and two sons, Tony and Tommy, begin what is discreetly called "the production line" in the white barn. The turkeys are killed by an electric volt in the "red room," and hung upside down for draining, thus the moniker "the red room."

Next is the scalding room where vats of water heated to 150 degrees helps to loosen the feathers. This is followed by "the picker:" a machine that sloughs off 99 percent of the feathers. Any remaining feathers are

hand-tweezed with pliers. In the dressing room, six men do nothing but gut and clean the inside of the turkey.

Placed in one of 14 huge steel tubs, the turkeys are doused with continuously running cold water. Finally, the turkey is bagged, weighed and put in the cooler in rows: small, medium and large.

"I'm telling you," says Roperti, (and by now "I'm telling you," is making you smile). "There is not one job on this farm that's easy. Not one."

By the time Thanksgiving arrives, Roperti says her family is so sick of turkey she wouldn't dare serve it. Instead, she serves filet mignon, homemade gnocchi and crab claws and key lime pie, the latter two she

exchanges for a turkey from a niece in Hollywood, Fla.

Like last year, Roperti expects to be sold out of turkeys by Dec. 23. Then, they will clean the dressing rooms, rake the fields, bolt the barn until next August when she picks up the 9-week-old turkeys from her

grower in Holland and starts all over again.

"It's such a great tradition," Roperti says. "I love seeing all my customers carrying home their turkeys. Let me tell you: they are going to have one great meal."

mkeenan@detnews.com

(313) 222-2515

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