Governor Kim Reynolds has pardoned two turkeys raised by a teenager from northwest Iowa. Fifteen-year-old Ava Moline of Manson has been raising turkeys since she was nine.
Moline picked out a tom and a hen that the governor nicknamed Freedom and Flourish.
Moline’s profits go into her college fund and she took the rest of the turkeys she’d been raising to market earlier this month.
Ava’s father is Brad Moline, president of the Iowa Turkey Federation. During Monday’s turkey pardoning ceremony on the lawn of the governor’s mansion, Reynolds announced the Moline family has been in the turkey business for 99 years.
Reynolds noted turkeys at a previous pardoning ceremony had been a bit more aggressive — and that prompted a reaction.
The Moline family provided the very first turkeys that were pardoned at Terrace Hill by Governor Robert Ray in 1976. Ava Moline, the fifth generation of the family in the turkey business, is raising free-range turkeys, taking them to a small poultry processor near her farm and selling them as fresh, not frozen turkeys to Thanksgiving customers. Her Golden Prairie Turkeys are being sold in grocery stores in Manson, Pocahontas, Greene and Ankeny.
