The pecan orchard where thousands of turkeys freely roamed just a couple of weeks ago is kind of quiet now, empty except for a few lonesome birds.
Inside the cluttered offices of Bates Turkey Farm in rural Lowndes County, though, it's as busy as the post office the week before Christmas.
"Hello, Bates Turkey Farm," Becky Bates Sloane says as she answers the phone. "Yes, ma'am. . . . OK, can you hold on a second?"
Sloane, who has a visitor, hollers to someone in the adjoining room: "You want to take this order?"
The latest flock of about 4,000 turkeys arrived here as day-old poults from a hatchery in Ohio about four months ago, and they'll leave here in Styrofoam ice chests, destined for Thanksgiving dinner tables from the Carolinas to California.
"We ship a lot to California," Sloane says. "We've had regular customers in California for 25, 30 years. And we ship a lot up the East Coast and to Georgia, Tennessee, Louisiana, Texas. Pretty much everywhere."
In addition to the last-minute Thanksgiving orders, this year, Bates Turkey Farm is partnering with a local charity to prepare enough turkey and dressing to feed the residents of Hurricane Michael-ravaged Mexico Beach, Fla.
"I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to cook enough turkey and dressing for a thousand people," Sloane says. "We're going to send food down to Mexico Beach for Thanksgiving Day."
W.C."Bill" Bates Jr., is pictured in 2001 in front of the old family farm house where he is born in the small community of Logan, Ala. bn
A wedding gift from Aunt Mamie
The story of Bates Turkey Farm begins in 1923, when World War I veteran Willie Claude Bates from the little Lowndes County community of Logan married Helen Hudson from nearby Mount Willing, and the newlyweds received nine turkey eggs as a wedding gift from W.C.'s aunt Mamie Bates.
"Like everybody back then, they farmed," Sloane, one of W.C. and Helen's granddaughters, says. "They had ducks. They had chickens. They started the turkeys, and I guess it became a little side thing for the holidays."
When times got hard during the Great Depression, it was the turkeys that kept their farm going, and in 1938, W.C. Bates mortgaged 200 of his turkeys for the $75 he needed to pay the property taxes on the farm.
In 1946, after serving in World War II, W.C. "Bill" Bates Jr., W.C. and Helen's son, dropped out of Auburn University and came home to Logan, about five miles from Fort Deposit, to help run the family farm.
"When Daddy got out of World War II, he said he was going to come home and work for himself, that he was tired of taking orders and standing in line," Sloane, one of Bill Bates' five children, recalls. "He was ready to come home and be an entrepreneur."
Bill Bates was the visionary who grew the turkey farm from a little family business into a nationally recognized brand that now sells and ships it turkeys to customers throughout the continental United States.
"Anybody can sell a turkey," he said in a 2001 interview with The Birmingham News. "But to stay in this business, it's all about marketing."
And Bill Bates was a marketing whiz.
In this 1949 photo, W.C. "Bill" Bates Jr., holding the turkey, looks on as Gov. James "Big Jim" Folsom signs an official pardon sparing the turkey from the Thanksgiving dinner table. (Photo courtesy of Bates Turkey Farm)
A 'pardon' from the governor
In 1949, to drum up publicity for the state turkey growers, Bates went to Montgomery to get Gov. James "Big Jim" Folsom to officially "pardon" a tom turkey and spare it from a Thanksgiving death sentence.
It began an annual Alabama Thanksgiving tradition, and the walls inside the Bates Turkey Farm offices are now covered with framed, 8-by-10 photographs of Bill Bates and his soon-to-be-pardoned turkeys alongside governors from George Wallace and Fob James to Bob Riley and Robert Bentley.
In exchange for pardoning the turkey each year, Bates also presented the governor with a dressed turkey for Thanksgiving dinner.
"George Wallace got most of 'em," Bates told The Birmingham News in 2012. "In fact, he and I got to be good friends. He said I was the only Republican he ever liked. I said, 'I guess so, I've given you enough turkeys.'"
Bates named each one of the pardoned turkeys "Clyde," in honor of one of his fishing buddies.
"About the second year of the pardons, a reporter asked me what the turkey's name was," Bates told The News. "I'd just been on a fishing trip with Clyde, so that's how it happened.
"At first, I tried to number 'em all, like Clyde I, Clyde II and so on. But I didn't learn my Roman numerals past 12, so I just called 'em all Clyde."
Bill Bates died in 2013, but the Thanksgiving tradition that he began in 1949 lives on.
This week, at a ceremony at the Governor's Mansion in Montgomery, Gov. Kay Ivey officially pardoned the 70th Clyde, along with the hen Henrietta.
Like most of the previous Clydes, this one will come back to the farm in Lowndes County and live out the rest of its life in the cool shade of those pecan trees.
For a turkey, it beats the dinner table.
W.C. "Bill" Bates Jr. and Teresa Bates' five children are pictured on the family turkey farm in Logan, Ala., in 1962. From left are Jane, Becky, Pete, John and Thomas. (Photo courtesy of Bates Turkey Farm)
A life down on the farm
Becky Bates Sloane and her younger brother John Bates grew up working on their family's turkey farm, as did all three of their siblings, Jane, Pete and Thomas.
"At one time, everybody has worked here," Sloane says. "There's five of us, and everybody worked here.
"I loved it," she adds. "I thought growing up like that was the best thing in the world."
Early on, though, Sloane learned that she shouldn't get too attached to the birds, that those cute, little one-day-old poults that she watched mature into full-feathered, fully grown turkeys would one day get butchered and plucked, and that she would have to help do it.
"When we were little, we kind of did (get attached)," she says. "But being on the farm, you learn the natural order of nature, so you don't let that bother you."
John Bates, Becky's younger brother, was about 6 years old when his parents put him to work on the farm.
"Back then, we used to process chickens," he recalls. "We killed chickens three days a week -- Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. And back then, you caught 'em early in the morning.
"We would get up at like one o'clock in the morning and go catch chickens," he adds. "We got through about daylight, and then we came in the house and washed up and got dressed to go to school."
By the time he turned 16, John Bates was driving a truck and delivering turkeys to customers all around the state.
"I remember showing up at a place in Dothan," he says. "I pulled up, and I said, 'I'm here with Bates Turkey Farm.' The man said, 'Boy, are you old enough to drive?' I said, 'Well, I just got my driver's license back in the spring.' You couldn’t do that nowadays. They kind of frown upon that."
These days, John Bates manages the turkey plant, while his sister Becky spends most of her time at the restaurant. Their brother Pete helps with the turkey sales.
One of Sloane's three daughters, Cheri Weekley, works as the office manager and takes care of all the shipping, and another daughter, Michelle Sloane, manages the restaurant. John Bates' son Ben raises the turkeys with his dad and helps around the farm.
A couple of Sloane's grandchildren also work at the farm and at the restaurant, and they may be the next generation to carry on the Bates family tradition.
"It's all a family thing," Sloane says. "I don't know if any of them will continue in it, but we'll see."
Bates House of Turkey, which opened in 1970 in Greenville, Ala., is a familiar landmark to travelers along I-65. (Photo courtesy of Bates House of Turkey)
A familiar landmark along I-65
As clever as Bill Bates' turkey-pardoning publicity stunt was, he came up with an even better idea that really put Bates turkeys on the map nearly 50 years ago.
"We sit right here on (U.S.) Highway 31," Becky Sloane says of the turkey farm, "and when we were growing up, this was the highway from Chicago to Mobile. If you were going to the beach, if you were going anywhere, you came down Highway 31.
"As young people, we got to take turns sitting out here on Saturdays for people coming off the highway buying turkeys."
All that changed, though, with the completion of Interstate 65, which routed traffic a couple of miles west of the farm, leaving it off the beaten path.
"When the interstate came through, Daddy, like I said, he was really a visionary, he was always thinking ahead," Sloane says. "So he bought a piece of property in Greenville on the interstate. And back then, I think there was just the Gulf station and the Holiday Inn at the Greenville exit."
On March 1, 1970, Bill Bates and his wife, Teresa, opened a restaurant they named Bates House of Turkey, and they made a conscious decision to serve only turkey dishes made from the free-range birds grown on their farm.
"People said, 'How in the world? Is that all you're going to serve?'" Sloane remembers. "'Surely, you're going to have something else.'"
But like many of Bill Bates' crazy ideas, that one worked, too.
An Alabama institution, Bates House of Turkey has become a familiar landmark for hungry travelers who pull off I-65 and drop in for a turkey sandwich or to pick up a smoked turkey to take with them to the beach.
In addition to roast turkey dinners and smoked turkey sandwiches, you'll find everything from turkey lasagna and turkey tetrazzini to turkey chili and turkey gumbo, all of which are recipes Sloane developed.
"We've been so blessed because of the interstate and all of the traffic from it," Sloane says. "From March, whenever people start going on vacation for spring break, we are tremendously busy at the restaurant.
"People just eat more turkey now," she adds. "It tastes good and it's healthy and it's good for you."
A little bit of turkey every day
Customers can rest assured that a turkey from Bates Turkey Farm is, as the slogan says, "grown natural, as natured intended," with no growth hormones and no food additives.
"When you get our turkey, you are getting a hundred percent turkey," Sloane says. "You are not paying for water and salt and phosphate. And when you taste it, you can taste the difference."
Sloane believes eating a little turkey every day helps keep the doctor away.
And she's probably on to something.
Bill Bates, her father, lived to be 89, and her mother, Teresa Bates, who died six months after her husband, lived to be 84.
"I go to the restaurant, and I'm going to taste turkey every day," Sloane says. "My daddy ate turkey every day. He was going to have some turkey every day.
"When we cook the roast turkey, and they put it out there and slice it, I just like to get a piece of that," she adds. "To me, it's like a good filet."
Where to buy: Bates Turkey Farm free-range turkeys are available at Bates House of Turkey in Greenville, at Mosley’s Meat Market in Mobile and at Piggly Wiggly stores in the Birmingham metro area. To order online, go to batesturkey.com.