The Moyock Farm Market is bedecked with tidings of the harvest season: squash and pumpkins are on display and real pine wreaths and Christmas trees bring a festive feel.
Produce and honey line the shelves of the barn-turned-market in Moyock, North Carolina. A team of bakers hustle in a backroom to churn out pies for Thanksgiving.
Crowing the cornucopia is Tom — a 2-year-old turkey who watches the store with a weather eye.
Tom has become something of a mascot for the market, strutting the aisles while customers shop for local groceries year-round.
Moyock has a population of about 5,000 and only one grocery store, so the farm market has become a popular destination for food shopping in Currituck County. The market moved to the barn with double garage doors this year after outgrowing its original location at a small open air farmstand just off Caratoke Highway.
Tom is “majestic,” his owner Jamie Pittman said. Pittman owns the market with her husband Jonathan.
With his blue-red head, bright white tail fan and impressive snood — or “gooey thing,” as Pittman calls it — it’s easy to see why Benjamin Franklin may have once been tempted to name the turkey the national bird.
Tom is at the market every day. He lives in a small shelter next to the barn alongside a colorful array of chickens and goats.
When it’s cold, Pittman puts a heat lamp inside Tom’s house. He has his own fenced-in area with a straw floor and room to roam — but he also sometimes strolls across the gravel parking lot to the market where he enjoys greeting children and preening in front of his reflection in glass doors or the meat display case.
“Most people just love him and think it's the coolest thing, because have you ever walked in a place and been like, ‘There is a turkey walking around’? No, that never happened,” Pittman said.
“He's so patient and calm with everybody. He loves people, he struts for them and he loves to be pet.”
Pittman had never owned a turkey before Tom. A few years back, when she had an abundance of roosters, a friend offered to trade a turkey for two of her roosters.
That was Tom — full name Tommy Winchester. He’s been a part of the farm market brood ever since.
Pittman isn’t sure what breed of turkey he is. He resembles different breeds of heritage birds, a type of domestic turkey with a longer lifespan and slower growth rate that mirrors those of wild turkey.
Other types of turkeys are commercially bred for consumption and are selectively engineered to carry most of their weight in the breast at the expense of their ability to run, fly or reproduce without artificial insemination.
Heritage turkeys can live to be 14 or 15 years old. Commercial turkeys rarely make it past 14 to 18 weeks of age.
Although hale, Tom has suffered from a malformed foot since birth. It’s why he stays close to the shop and prefers walking to running, Pittman said. He’s also currently on an antibiotic regime prescribed by his vet for an eye infection.
Unlike other turkeys, Tom’s not too worried about Thanksgiving, Pittman said.
“I don’t think he gets any which way about it. He knows he’s part of our family,” she said.
“Of course, this time of year we get a lot of people saying, ‘Oh, I know what we’re having for Thanksgiving,’ or, ‘Is he going to be around after Thanksgiving?’ So it’s fun, but of course, he’ll be here.”
