Taking the homemade Thanksgiving meal to the extreme

Meet Turkeys No. 1, 2 and 3.

They're a surprisingly social flock who've been hanging out in a field near Barrington, waiting for Thanksgiving.

But these "turkeys" are perhaps a little more anxious for Thursday's feasts to begin than the feathered creatures they've spent months raising.

Turkeys 1, 2 and 3 - a.k.a. Phil Muscarnero, Bob Felsenthal and Nick Colagrossi - constitute the aptly named Turkey Club. They're friends and co-workers, electricians with a Streamwood business, who had a bar-stool epiphany: Why not raise our own turkeys for Thanksgiving?

"I told my husband to get a hobby," laughs Colagrossi's wife, Tracey. "I thought, OK, he'll take up golf, or softball."

It's unlikely most people see their Thanksgiving turkey until it's on the grocery store shelf or the table.

But raising the bird wasn't so far afield for Colagrossi, who grew up on the small acreage near Barrington where he lives and which provided the home for this free-ranging flock.

The Colagrossis raise chickens for eggs, and their children, 12-year-old Nico and 9-year-old Anna, showed a rooster at the Lake County Fair that won grand champion.

But farming truly was foreign to Muscarnero, who lived on Chicago's Northwest Side before moving only a few years ago to Arlington Heights.

"I was one of those scaredy-cats, a typical city boy," he said. "If it moved, I didn't want to see it."

At first, the plan was to raise four or five turkeys, enough for the families and in-laws. When the men learned the Iowa hatchery they'd found on the Internet had a minimum order of 15, they just decided to go for it, lining up other friends and relatives to purchase the remaining birds for $80 apiece.

The chicks were shipped by mail and picked up at the airport.

"We thought it would something different to do ... grab some turkeys, do what we have to do and see what happens," Felsenthal said.

Mostly, Muscarnero admits, the weekly Turkey Club meetings involved having a couple of beers, watching the turkeys, feeding them apples and taking them out for walks around the property.

But the men also did plenty of research into organic farming techniques and what to feed the birds.

"Everything they've eaten, you can eat as a human," Felsenthal said.

Following the much-anticipated meals Thursday, the members of the Turkey Club will be left to ponder their encore. They've been joking about raising buffalo this time.

Buffalo? Don't put it past these turkeys!