GRANDVIEW, Wash. -- Ten turkeys enjoyed their last meal in a way any turkey would love -- in a spacious pasture under a gray November sky.

The next morning was not so pleasant. No breakfast on the day of slaughter, when 18-year-old entrepreneur David Cover gathered them in crates, hung them upside down from a fruit tree and butchered them one by one.

"It's a lot cleaner if their systems are emptied out," said David, a home-schooled high school senior starting his own sustainable farm.

Today, six families will pull up their chairs to his pastured-raised birds, while his own family will eat four of them.

But this Thanksgiving story goes deeper than turkeys, entrepreneurship and sustainable farming practices. It's about a family of 10 that teaches hard work through a combination of necessity, intention and prayer.

"I like knowing I'm needed," David said.

Broad-breasted bronze turkeys are just the latest adventure.

Teaching self-reliance

David's parents, Dwight and Sherrill Cover, moved from Grandview to their 2-acre parcel north of town in 1999, partly for more room and partly to instill responsibility.

"How am I going to teach these young men how to step up and be a man?" Dwight remembers thinking.

Over the years, the Covers have raised sheep, pigs and chickens while home-schooling their children. They spent nearly four years building an addition to their home without borrowing money, sometimes using salvaged lumber.

Part of it simply was stretching the budget the way any large family would. Meanwhile, Dwight has served as the pastor of different Grace Brethren churches and has not been able to farm full time.

These days, Matthias and Benjamin, ages 8 and 10, haul firewood and pull weeds.

The older boys do most of the work with the egg hens and five pigs, while Sherrill oversees the garden with the help of all the kids, including 13-year-old Lydia. This year, 15-year-old Gregory harvested 10 gallons of honey -- plenty for the family -- after he learned to build beehives.

Samuel, 20, is pursuing a liberal arts degree online and possibly a career in law enforcement. Timothy, 22, has one more year of distance-learning law school. Only one of the siblings is married and lives outside the home. Jessica Klewin, 24, studied creative writing and lives in Ellensburg.

There is no blueprint for all the things the Cover family values -- financial security, schoolwork, respect and work ethic. They have just cobbled those things together the best they could over the years.

"We've done far from a perfect job," Sherrill said with a laugh.

Farming interest

So far, David has shown the most interest in farming as a career.

As he's grown, he has established some animals as a business venture, though his brothers help him with that, too. He has had his own meat chickens for a few years now, and added turkeys this June.

He thinks the interest took hold about age 11, through prayer and reading farming books. His favorite was "You Can Farm," by Joel Salatin, a Virginia third-generation sustainable farmer who calls himself "a Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic."

Salatin oversees Polyface farm, which has 10 employees and millions in annual sales, according to the company website. David attended one of Salatin's speeches in Corvallis, Ore., last summer.

David keeps his turkeys in a small pasture, moving their shelter every few days to spread out their droppings and wear on the grass. He hopes to rotational graze with fences next year.

Turkeys eat both grass and bugs, but David supplements their diet with wheat, cracked corn, minerals and soybean meal.

Turkey niche

David may be the only turkey farmer in the Yakima Valley, said Mike Bush, interim director of Washington State University's Yakima County Extension service. Jennifer Loyd, the extension center's program coordinator, has never seen turkeys at the Valley's 4-H shows.

And statewide, there are only a small number of turkey producers listed on various websites.

"I would think that there would be a niche market like that," Bush said.

But, as he often warns Yakima Valley growers, it's not whether you can grow, it's whether you can sell. The term sustainable has to carry some financial meaning, too.

David is just starting, so it's too soon to tell how successful he'll be. But his turkeys ended up weighing twice as much as he predicted Tuesday when he butchered them -- between 17 and 34 pounds. He sold all his surplus birds at $2.55 per pound. Though his feed is not organic, he commands a premium for range-fed meat.

"Needless to say, I am not unhappy," he said in an email following his slaughter.

He learned one important lesson: Watch out for the wings. One of his turkeys flapped so hard it chipped a tooth.

"They have plenty of power," he said.

* Ross Courtney can be reached at 509-930-8798 or rcourtney@yakimaherald.com.