OK, so the first Thanksgiving holiday we lived here, we were so close to broke we might as well have been. The littlest had just been born not many weeks before (at home!), Kiddo's SSI hadn't come through yet, no other real source of income besides my child support and Blacksmith's custom knife work.
(Somehow we never missed a utility or mortgage payment, but we were also hitting the food banks to make it between spurts of money and were out of propane for a day and a half before we had the money to refill the tank.)
We were waiting for a really cheap sale turkey, and were talking about having T'giving a day or so late, just to catch the turkeys on clearance. Then a friend of mine called, she knew things were tight, she told me she'd just cleaned out her chest freezer and had one turkey too many for the space, could I use one?
Well, heck yes! We grownups could cope, but the kids would have been really sad to be turkey-less.
That was one of the biggest. I may not be making it sound like a big deal, but frankly it was amazing.
And yet, the Universe still would have provided.
One of our neighbors up the road, he's got peafowl, lord knows why. I sure don't. They're pretty, and stupid, and loud, messy eating machines that were a challenge for my garden greens. Because you see, they get loose pretty frequently and only go home when the pickings are slim. He even had to build a giant pen - for his garden! To keep the darned things out. 'least, I *think* they're his. Either his or the other neighbor around the corner.
Well, one day the little flock of braying dummies got into the dog yard. Most made it on to the roof of our house, but one ended up with a broken leg and skittered under the house. The Eldest Little Viking and I had to go crawling under the house with work gloves, corner it, catch it, then I had to bring it out still alive so I could get it in position to break its neck. They are looong bodies and I was afraid the thrashing would bust a pipe. (Yes, our plumbing is Epically Bad.)
Then he and I, we plucked and gutted it, it was a youngish one, no tail feathers yet. I prepped it for the freezer, and a week later we had both turkey *and* peacock for Thanksgiving.
Peacock tastes like big quail. And no, we'll never forget that.