It’s almost that time of year. Chilly air, crackling fire, and the holiday roast goose is on the table. Well, maybe up until the Cratchit dinner in Dickens, but not so much anymore here in the U.S. And why is that? We don’t know, to be honest, as this is said to be one of the tastiest birds used for human consumption.
And even better, the goose is a multipurpose animal. It is said to be a great forager for grasses, bugs, and the scattered grains that might be left in the fields after the fall harvest. It’s the cleanup animal that gives back, in the form of (sometimes messy) fertilizer and (definitely messy) family holiday get-togethers. Geese are used as an early warning system on military bases in Europe, whiskey warehouses in Scotland, and are said by Livy to have given the alarm when the Gauls invaded in 390 B.C. They’re pretty good at the confrontation part, too, and can do some fairly nasty physical damage when they get vexed.
We’re meeting with John Metzer of Metzer Farms, in Gonzales, California. Ducks, geese, chickens, or pretty much anything fowl (ha) is his bailiwick, and he’ll talk about all of the above with us from his farm in the beautiful Salinas Valley agricultural region. We also get his opinions on biodiversity, and thinking outside the box in marketing. He runs one of the premier hatchery providers in the country, and taught us one or two things in there that were new experiences to us.
What on earth is balut, anyway?
For more information, here are some places to start…
https://www.metzerfarms.com/index.cfm
https://vric.ucdavis.edu/virtual_tour/salinas.htm
https://center-of-the-plate.com/2017/12/06/why-we-eat-goose-at-christmas/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guard_goose