The collective groan arising from bathroom scales across this great land of ours signals that it’s the feasting season once again.

This season kicks off with Thanksgiving, although one could argue that it actually begins with Halloween. Or Labor Day, or the Fourth of July, or Memorial Day, or Easter, or Valentine’s Day, or the Superbowl, or New Year’s Eve. Let’s face it, we’ll latch onto any excuse to feast, including Arbor Day.

My family’s traditional cold weather feasts traditionally involved turkey. I have dozens of cousins, so several animals were needed to feed everyone.

Our youngest son, who lives in Kansas City, hosted my wife and me for Thanksgiving. Barbecue is a religion in Kansas City, with many delicious interpretations of the gospel of smoke.

Mention that you’re smoking a turkey to 10 different people in Kansas City you’ll get 10 different sets of advice. Anyone, including your hairstylist and the clerk at the Dollar Store, will give you an intricate set of instructions regarding how to properly barbecue a turkey.

Dry brine or wet brine?

Should the bird be injected with a blend of spices?

If so, what specific spices?

Does the turkey need to be organic and free-range?

Was the bird offered cultural enrichment opportunities such as listening to a hoedown band playing the song “Turkey in the Straw”?

A person can take turkey preparation to outlandish extremes. I know this because I was once gripped by turkey prep fever.

It all began when I learned that the predominant breed of turkey to grace our tables is the Broad Breasted White. As its name implies, these birds have such large chests that they are composed of approximately 99% white meat. That’s troubling enough for a guy who prefers dark meat, but even more disturbing is that the Broad Breasted White has become so bulky that it can no longer reproduce naturally. It made me sad to think of all those toms who looked longingly at all those hens and thought, “Darn it! If only my chest wasn’t so broad and studly!”

This prompted me to take an interest in heritage turkeys. One spring, I decided to buy a handful of Bourbon Red turkey poults. As their name suggests, most of their feathers are the hue of well-aged bourbon. Their flight feathers — wings and tailfeathers — are mostly white. It’s a striking contrast.

Domestic tom turkeys, I discovered, are incredibly stupid. Make any noise that sounds remotely similar to a gobble, and they’ll gobble back. They’ll even gobble at the toot of a car horn.

Toms are incredibly creepy. They have a long, fleshy appendage called a snood that dangles over their beaks like a humungous night crawler. They have the creepy ability to make their snoods longer or shorter.

Their creepiness doesn’t end there. Toms can make their heads turn brilliant red or sky blue, as if they are part chameleon. They are also social scoundrels. Toms constantly strut for the hens — if no hens are available, they’ll display for anything, including a fencepost — as if to say, “Hey baby, want some of this?”

One of the hens obviously did because she built a scraggly nest in our chicken coop and laid a dozen eggs. I didn’t want to disappoint her after she had expended all that effort, so I let her be.

After her eggs hatched the mother turkey proudly led her brood across our farmstead. It was cute — for a while.

The poults soon gained the ability to fly, which gave them the ability to roost on our deck rail at night. This was fine except that every single turkey sat with their exhaust port pointed toward the deck.

Every morning, I had to hose a mess off the deck. It occurred that I was going about things the wrong way, so instead of hosing off turkey doots in the morning, I hosed turkeys off the deck rail in the evening. They quickly got the hint and began to roost in a nearby tree.

In due time, the turkeys became guests at our dinner table. It was challenging to cook a turkey that hadn’t been pre-prepared in a factory. I learned that you need to use a brine that’s approximately as salty as the Dead Sea.

The Bourbon Reds were leaner and chewier than commercial birds. I never calculated the cost of raising them, but it probably amounted to something like $50 per pound.

It would have been cheaper and more efficient to simply buy turkeys at the supermarket. But then I would have been deprived of the deeply satisfying knowledge that the bird had been properly prepared and cooked. At least according to me.

— Jerry’s book, “Dear County Agent Guy”, can be found at www.workman.comand in bookstores nationwide.