Food hero: A goose farmer

The white clouds on Walsgrove Hill near the Worcestershire village of Great Witley signal the Goodman family farm long before you reach it. As you get closer, the clouds fragment into groups of hundreds of white dots. Nearer still and a hum that sounds like a crowded cocktail party hits your ears. The hills, you realise, are alive with chattering geese.

Judy Goodman, as friendly and chatty as her birds, has been rearing geese since 1982 and has probably done more than anyone else in Britain to put the goose back on the dinner table. Prized by chefs from Rick Stein to Delia Smith and Jamie Oliver, her geese are seen as a tasty alternative to turkey at Christmas.

Judy and her husband Geoffrey have birds in the blood, as both were brought up on farms that raised at least some poultry. At Christmas, birds were naturally an important feature on both families’ festive table: Judy’s mother would buy a live bronze turkey from the farm next door, then kill it and pluck it, watched attentively by her daughter.

Geoffrey’s family ate goose, which they had reared on their farm. After meeting Geoffrey at the Northamptonshire Farm Institute in the late 50s and marrying into the Goodman family, whose 600-acre farm Geoffrey had taken over at the age of 21, Judy became familiar with the taste of goose at family Christmases with the in-laws. But she never imagined she would ever rear the birds. Until Christmas 1981, that is, when disaster struck.

Judy saves the day

Geoffrey’s parents, who lived in a bungalow on the farm, couldn’t find a goose for their Christmas lunch. Being people of habit, this was nothing short of a catastrophe. So their dutiful daughter-in-law stepped in, and in May the following year, she ordered 26 day-old goslings from a hatchery near Blackpool. When the tiny chattering balls of fluff arrived, she borrowed her father-in-law’s haybox to keep them warm. When they were three weeks old, she converted a free-range hen pen so they could run around on the lawn by day.

“Soon after we got the goslings, the paper delivery man saw them and told me to be sure to provide them with a bucket of water to dip their heads in, as they are aquatic birds,” says Judy. “I had no idea about how to look after them, although Geoffrey had had two geese called Bill and Ben as pets as a child, so he gave me some tips.”

Slaughtering the birds, a couple of weeks before Christmas, was not too much of a problem as Judy had seen her mum give the “broomstick treatment” to her live Christmas turkey at home. “The bird’s neck is placed beneath a broomstick then pulled up until it breaks. It’s a knack, you hear it click,” she tells me. Farmers through and through, Judy and Geoffrey had no time for squeamishness.

The birds were plucked while warm then, in time-honoured fashion, left to hang for a week from a hook in an outhouse with innards still in. Eventually the magical day arrived when it was time to cook one and proudly carry it to the family Christmas table. Stuffed with homemade sage and onion stuffing and served with apple sauce and potatoes roasted in goose fat, it was greeted with whoops of glee as enthusiastic as those mustered by Tiny Tim in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

By then word had got out about Judy’s goslings. Lucky neighbours and family members were given some of the other geese she’d raised. Local butchers took a few and found they flew out of the shop. Friends and customers started asking for more. So, in May 1983, Judy ordered 50 day-old goslings, which she collected from Worcester station. The goose business was born.

Plucking nightmares

Judy realised she’d found her metier, and she soon earned the nickname of Mother Goose. “Geese make brilliant pets. When young they’re inquisitive and fun to watch,” she says.

She also started to see the size of the task she’d taken on. “Plucking a goose is a nightmare,” she says. “It takes an expert 20 minutes to half an hour, compared to a turkey, which you can pluck in minutes.” After a few years of plucking by hand amid flurries of feathers, she bought her first plucking machine, which soon transformed the hectic pre-Christmas months.

The timing was good. The farm relied mainly on dairy cattle for its income, but in 1984 milk quotas arrived, forcing the Goodmans to produce less milk. “We needed to find something else to give us an income,” says Geoffrey. “The geese helped to fill the gap. As well as selling the birds for meat, we also sold the feathers and down, and we now sell the goose fat as well.” With time, the farm would give up dairy altogether, instead relying on arable crops, asparagus, bronze turkeys, Longhorn cattle – and, of course, geese.

The next challenge was finding markets. Judy and Geoffrey went from butcher to butcher to secure orders. Judy recalls visiting Rackham’s department store in Leamington Spa, carrying four geese in a basket. They were long-legged, which means they still had their legs and head on. “We had to walk through the lingerie department to get to the food hall,” she laughs. “People seemed rather surprised to see our dead geese.” But the visit paid off, as Rackham’s placed regular orders, and other stores and butchers followed suit.

By 1985, Judy had ordered 300 goslings and for the first time was spotted by the media. “A chap from the Worcester Evening News was passing and saw a white cloud on the hillside. He came over to see what it was and wrote a story about my geese,” says Judy. “Then ITV filmed us, and the phones started going mad. We sold out weeks before Christmas and Geoffrey and I nearly had to go without!”

Now, over 25 years later, Judy rears around 4,200 geese a year, helped by her two sons, Andrew and Michael, and her husband. Newly hatched goslings arrive in May or June and by five weeks old are allowed to graze on grass outside.

Continuing tradition

While the numbers have grown and the machinery modernised, techniques are still much the same as when Judy started. The geese are fed a mix of grass, straw and cereals, just as they would have been in the old days, when geese grazed on grass and were then let loose on the corn stubble at harvest time.

At around 25 weeks, the birds are killed by hand using a simple cone-shaped gadget that simulates Judy’s mother’s broom handle. They are then plucked while warm (impossible once cold, as they go rigid) and hung in a cold room for up to two weeks to allow the flesh to develop flavour.

A couple of hundred of Judy’s geese are sold at Michaelmas, 29 September. Traditionally this holy day, coinciding with the end of harvest and the autumn equinox, was celebrated with the eating of a goose.

Judy says she has seen a resurgence in interest in Michaelmas goose. But even more marked is the rise in enthusiasm in goose as a Christmas bird instead of turkey.

Goose, as anyone who has read Dickens’ A Christmas Carol will know, was traditionally a favourite festive food. Turkey is a relative newcomer to the Christmas table, introduced from North America in the 16th century. Apparently Henry VIII was impressed and ordered turkey for his Christmas dinner.

In the 1970s and 80s, growing numbers of us turned to turkey, partly because it had become cheap, but also because the goose available was often poor quality.

Many geese were imports from Poland or birds that were reared by farmers’ wives for pin money and were often old and tough. Now that around 50 producers are rearing geese to high welfare standards in this country, its image has improved, she says.

“People want a change from turkey; they want something different. Word is getting around as to how good goose is. Last year we sold out, and I’m sure it will be the same again this Christmas.”

THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN ISSUE 41 OF COUNTRYFILE MAGAZINE. TO NEVER MISS AN ISSUE SUBSCRIBE TODAY!