The Michaelmas Goose

While most of our geese will be ready for the Christmas market, we will have quite a few ready for Thanksgiving. I am keen to see if I can have one ready for a Michaelmas dinner - 29th Sept - since this was when rural folk - admittedly mostly in eastern England - would kill the "green" goose which had been grazing on the pasture throughout the summer and for which they had no winter fodder when the grass finished. May have to resort to fattening one of the bigger candidates over the next few weeks to achieve this.

As you can see from the photo they are being pampered -the inflatable pool from Argos only lasted 4 weeks because they kept biting the air tubes. Managed to replace it with a hard plastic pool (sandpit) also from Argos. They are also a greedy lot and I have to move their 50m electric enclosure every night to give them fresh grass. In return they have done a great job of cleaning up the grass on the paddock - with a little help from weedkiller and fertilizer.

I'm sure the work will be worth it when we taste the first one fresh from the oven!