Farming Friends

An article written by James Gulliver of Gullliver Geese on the Growth of the UK market for Fresh Goose. Gulliver Geese are the largest producer of day old goslings in the UK and have goslings for sale from April through to August.

The Goose Market is Getting Fat

Historically Goose was eaten on special occasions such as Christmas and Michaelmas. The celebration of Michaelmas is seldom recognised and Christmas Goose has been sidelined by the American import, the turkey.

But goose is making a come back….

As Goose producers and members of the BGPA, the British Goose producing Association, Gulliver Geese are well placed to comment on the popularity of fresh goose at christmas. “We have seen a steady increase over the last ten years in the demand for day old goslings” says Martin Gulliver of Gulliver Geese “this increase is reflected in a recent report published by Defra.”

The increased demand is being driven by people becoming more food aware with food becoming a pastime as opposed to a necessity where quick preparation and ease of cooking is paramount. The evolution of the Celebrity Chef has helped to put goose back on the table due to its unique taste.

Goose related products are also becoming more popular, Goose fat is now firmly believed to be the best fat to roast your potatoes in. Sales of goose fat in 2007 outstripped supply leaving goose producers with a totally new problem,Not enough fat!

Michaelmas Goose is also making a come back with some restaurants pushing the Michaelmas or “Goose Day” very hard.

Michaelmas coincides with the autumn equinox, historically, the day of the year on which the serfs of the manor elected a reeve. The reeve was expected to ensure all other serfs started work on time and that no one was cheating the lord of the manor out of any money. This day was also recognised as the beginning of the farming year , the time for rents and debts to be paid to the lord of the manor. Many landlords would hold a goose feast for all tenants to supposedly protect against financial hardships.

Michaelmas is still celebrated in many European countries and Michaelmas goose is starting to gain popularity within the United Kingdom. Michaelmas goose is also known as the ‘green goose’ as they have been fed on stubble and grass as opposed to the Christmas goose which is finished on corn. Many restaurants and butchers have started to promote Michaelmas goose reviving old recipes and folklore surrounding Michaelmas

Look out at your local butchers and restaurants for Goose and give it a try, you won’t be disappointed.

The Goose Market Is Getting Fat By James Gulliver from Gulliver Geese.

If you have a farming story, memory or farm visit that you would like to share or a farming issue that you would like to raise, then please send me your story or article and I will happily include it on a guest appearance post.

John Gossop is an East Yorkshire farmer with over 45 years experience, author of the blog Peakfood and avid researcher of threats to food production. I am pleased to say that he has written a thought provoking article for farmingfriends entitled Efficient Farming.

Modern farms, with their giant tractors and gleaming machinery give the impression of being highly efficient. And so they are in terms of output per man. Each man now produces many hundreds of tons of food, much more than at any time in the past.

However, we must remember what it is that farmers do. Our job is simply to convert the sun’s energy into food energy, something we are now doing very inefficiently and unsustainably.

Up until WWII, most of the energy used in farming was collected by plants that used solar energy through photosynthesis to provide food for the millions of horses and men doing the work. Since then we have increasingly used the solar energy from millions of years ago, stored as fossil fuels to increase our labour efficiency but decrease our energy efficiency.

Amazingly, on average it now needs about 10 calories of finite fossil energy to deliver 1 calorie of food energy. It should be obvious that such a system can only work while supplies of fossil energy in the form of oil and gas are reliable and while fossil calories are cheap compared to food calories.

If we don’t plan now for the inevitable day when oil and gas are neither cheap nor plentiful, we will face a disaster.

Efficient Farming By John Gossop, author of Famine in the West(£6.49) and Peak Food.

If you have a farming story, memory or farm visit that you would like to share or a farming issue that you would like to raise, then please send me your story or article and I will happily include it on a guest appearance post.

My friend Trisha from Bird Table News has sent me some old farming photographs.

Horses were used alot on farms in times gone by but children were also able to enjoy the working horse as this photo shows.

Trisha’s husband’s Grandma is pictured in this photograph with their free range hens. Trisha tells me that her husband’s family have kept free range chickens for years.

Here all the farmers are gathered after the hay has been gathered. In the picture you can see a haystack, hay rick and part of a threshing machine.

Thanks Trisha from Bird Table News for sending in these fantastic photographs of farming times gone by.

Trisha from Bird Table News has kindly shared her brother’s farming memories with me. Bruce has written a number of farming stories which I am going to post. This post is entitled 19 Fine Days and was first published in the Burton Fleming newsletter in 2004. Bruce’s farming memories will not only transport you back to 2004, but the 1950’s and 1960’s, so sit back and enjoy the trip down memory lane….

“Recently on the radio I heard comments that farmers would have great difficulty in completing the harvest before the end of September if the weather didn’t improve and hold up. It has surely been a miserable summer for them and everyone else. Hearing this conversation reminded me of a saying I heard when I was able to help out on the farm during the late 50’s, early 60’s. We only tend to remember the blue skies and sunshine but there were also times when comments and concerns were expressed about bad weather and the late harvests back in those days. It would have been during one of those wet summers that Maz, who helped out on the farm during the harvest, tried to console people that if the harvest wasn’t home by the end of September it would always get done in October.

“There’s always nineteen fine days in October”, he would say with a certainty that nevertheless was no consolation to the farmer.

Of course in those days the reaper cut the corn into sheaves which had to be stooked in the field then led home to be stacked. If it rained there was nothing at all to dry the corn or straw except the wind and sunshine. Persistent wet weather meant that the sheaves still laying on the ground had to be turned inside out, each one by hand until they were all dry enough to be stooked. The stooks, if sodden, had to be re-stooked with the inner side facing outwards until the sheaves dried out and, of course, the corn stack had to be left dry always. To us kids they were marvellous summers but to the farmer in those days nineteen fine days in October must, at times, have been a Godsend.”

19 Fine Days By Bruce.

If you have a farming story, memory or farm visit that you would like to share then please send me your story and I will happily include it on a guest appearance post.

In the early hours of the morning (2.45am to be precise!) I was awoken to the sound of barking. I jumped out of bed and peered through the curtains to ascertain what was making the noise. I couldn’t see anything. Steve and I decided to get up and check that everything was ok with the guinea fowl, cattle and pigs. Our first stop was the guinea fowl.

When we approached the guinea fowl area a border collie dog ran off. With torch in hand we assessed the situation, hoping that none of the guinea fowl had fallen prey to the dog’s appetite. The torch light revealed the ground covered in guinea fowl feathers and on close inspection we found a dead guinea fowl. The dog had managed to dig it’s way under the hut and had obviously pulled the guinea fowl out. The other five terrified guinea fowl were foolishly still sat near the hole. It’s beyond me why they just didn’t move to the other end of the run, but the mind of a bird is still a mystery to me!

As we checked the other huts and tried to do a head count, I noticed that the A frame which earlier had housed 6 guineas now only seemed to have three. Steve suggested that they must be in the upstairs compartment, yet when I flashed the torch into the opening, no guinea fowl birds were present. Then we saw the opening in the wire and realised that the dog must have taken the three guinea fowl.

Our investigation revealed that three guinea fowl were missing and one was dead. We couldn’t find bodies for the others but daylight would probably reveal the deadly horrors of the night’s attack.

We bricked up the hole near the side of the pen and covered the a frame hole. A quick check of the cattle and pigs found no disturbances caused in either camp much to our relief. We returned to the house to sleep, although mine was a restless sleep as I listened out for the warning cries from my guinea birds or the bark of a menacing dog.

Day break came and I hurried out to check the full extent of the damage. I was pleased to discover that three guinea fowl had managed to escape and were roosting in the hedgerow just out of “paws”, I mean harms way! What a relief, still only one casualty, although that was one casualty too many. 

We have yet to discover whose dog it is. I just hope that it doesn’t return, although I am moving all my guinea fowl into huts on concrete bases so that predators and pests cannot dig their way under the sides of the huts.

A couple of weeks ago on my usual Saturday search for the photo hunters, I came across a very interesting post all about a farm that became a successful amusement park. Ellen @ The Happy Wonderer was the author of the post. I was so taken with this article that I contacted Ellen to ask if she would let me post it on my guest appearance and guess what, she said yes!

In the 1920s, Walter Knott (December 11, 1889–December 3, 1981) and his family sold berries, berry plants and pies from a roadside stand beside California State Highway 39, near the small town of Buena Park. In the 1930s, Walter Knott was introduced to a new berry which had been cultivated by Rudolph Boysen. The plant was a combination of the red raspberry, blackberry, and loganberry. Walter planted a few plants he had received on a visit to Boysen’s farm, and later started to sell them at their roadside stand. When people asked him what they were called he said “boysenberries”.

In 1934, Knott’s wife Cordelia (b. 1890 - d. 1974) began serving fried chicken dinners, featuring boysenberry pie for dessert. As Southern California developed, Highway 39 became the major north-south connection between Los Angeles County and the beaches of Orange County, and the restaurant’s location was a popular stopping point for drivers making what at the time was a two-hour trip. Until the development of the 605 and 57 freeways in the late 1960s, Highway 39 (now known in Orange County as Beach Boulevard) continued to carry the bulk of the traffic between eastern Los Angeles and Orange Counties.

Within a few years, lines outside the restaurant were often several hours long. To entertain the waiting crowds, Walter began to build a ghost town in 1940, using buildings relocated from real old west towns such as Calico, California and Prescott, Arizona. They added attractions such as a narrow-gauge train ride, a pan-for-gold area, and the Calico Mine Ride. Frequent activities at what Knott called a “summer-long county fair” included — naturally — boysenberry pie eating contests. When Disneyland was built in nearby Anaheim, the two attractions were not seen as direct competitors, due to the different nature of each. Walt Disney visited Knott’s Berry Farm on a number of occasions, and hosted the Knotts at his own park. The two Walters had a cordial relationship, and worked together on a number of community causes.

In 1968, the Knott family fenced the farm, charged admission for the first time, and Knott’s Berry Farm officially became an amusement park. Because of its long history, Knott’s Berry Farm claims to be “America’s First Theme Park.”

Knott’s Berry farm by Ellen from The Happy Wanderer.

Ellen’s original post was full of photographs and memories of her parents’ visit to Knott’s Berry Farm, so please go and visit and read this wonderful post in full. 

If you have a farming story, memory or farm visit that you would like to share then please send me your story and I will happily include it on a guest appearance post.

My husband came downstairs the other night and said that he had just seen a bat fly past the study door.

“A bat?!” I said, “That can’t be right. Tell me what happened.” And so he did.

As my husband sat at the computer, he saw something fly past the door. It caught his eye because it was larger than a fly. Anyway he didn’t think too much about it until it flew in the other direction confirming that he had seen something and it wasn’t a fly. When he got up to investigate a bat flew across the landing.

So what did my husband do? He closed the door on the bedroom where he had last seen the bat.

I couldn’t quite believe my ears. A bat in the house. I went up to investigate myself. I gingerly opened the door and was confronted with nothing.

In fact it wasn’t until the following evening that the bat reappeared. The first I knew about the reappearance was when my husband came down to say that he had just shut a bat in the bathroom.

My parents were staying for the weekend and so Steve, dad and I (armed with camera as this was obviously a photo opportunity not to be missed) rushed to the bathroom. We opened the door and all squeezed into the narrow and now somewhat overcrowded bathroom.

Yes indeed there was a bat in our bathroom. The bat had landed on the window ledge but as I attemped to focus the camera before we let it out the window, the bat decided it would fly around the bathroom.

As it circled the ceiling, I ducked down and didn’t see much except the floor in the bathroom, which I’m pleased to say was clean! I’m especially pleased as my nose seemed to be practically touching the floor as I tried to dodge the bat. Needless to say I didn’t manage to get a photograph of the bat.

Whilst I was inspecting the floor for dirt (my excuse anyway!) my dad and husband managed to open the bathroom window and let the bat fly out safely and untouched by human hand.

We have often seen bats in the barns at night although never one in the house, but then as they say there is always a first time for everything.