RUSKIN - The minute you walk onto Ben Pate's 9-acre farm, you notice it.
The bustling, squeaking, squawking, scratching, gobbling and flapping.
Thousands of quail, turkeys, pheasants, peacocks and rabbits create a stir that's palpable.
Many of these creatures are destined for dinner tables throughout the Tampa Bay area.
Pate delivers rabbit meat and quail to retailers throughout the bay area and quail eggs to Asian markets in St. Petersburg. He also dresses rabbits and birds for discriminating taste buds of people willing to drive miles to buy a free-range quail or fresh pheasant.
On this Friday, Cleveland McCly stopped by to get rabbits for a stew his mother requested for Sunday dinner.
"I came all the way from Bradenton up here, so you know they've got to be good," McCly said.
Pate never gives his livestock hormones or drugs to fatten them up. He sticks to high-protein feed.
Right now, 50 turkeys, shipped in from Ohio in late April, are no bigger than a cup of stuffing. But by Thanksgiving they'll weigh in at 20 to 24 pounds, and by the time they hit the table for Christmas dinner, they'll tip the scales at 24 to 30 pounds.
Not all of Pate's livestock will end up on serving plates.
His peacocks, which cost from $25 in their first year to $100 if they're older than 3, make pretty pets, Pate said. Just keep them penned for a few days and give them plenty of food and water, he said, and they'll stick around the house, just like a cat.
The red golden pheasants, a stunning bird covered in brilliant red, blue and gold feathers, cost $75 each. They're just for show.
This isn't a big money-making venture for Pate. He lives largely off the pension he receives from Tampa. Pate retired from fire rescue in 1986 because of a bad knee after becoming the first black person to reach the rank of district chief in Tampa. He's an ordained minister at First Baptist Church of Sun City, and he and his wife, Gloria, lead services once a week at a Manatee County jail.
As a kid, he said, he rooted ornamental plants in a glass of water on a windowsill and planted vegetables in his family's rural back yard in Old Sun City. During the years he worked as a firefighter, he ran a tropical plant nursery and raised rabbits to supplement his income. Now he works full time on his one-man farm, on Gulf City Road near Cockroach Bay.
"I've always messed around with farming," Pate said. "I can't help it."
