Hi There!! It is about time to write with some kind of update! The last time I wrote, which was ages ago, was the last time it rained. So far, no rain!! This is a really, really early dry season for us; the animals are complaining like crazy, the plants are drying up and we are suffering too! Still no sign of rain. Our tanks are half full now and we are in conservation mode; all grey water is collected for plant irrigation. We are praying for this:

Anyway, these are the inevitable problems that we come up against while trying to run a farm. There are many lessons in practicality in the life that we have chosen! Right now…we are learning another lesson…how to sort out an unruly, disorganised gaggle of geese! Most of the problem is a consequence of our lack of decision-making because we didn’t want to slaughter any of them for meat. So what happened? The free foraging geese have eaten us out of house and home and reduced our beautiful grassy farm to shrub and wasteland.

We did eventually fence them in about 3 months ago and started feeding them with coconuts, grains and cut grass. Phew, it is a lot of hard work feeding a whole bunch of geese just for the sake of keeping them alive and off our grass. We finally did decide that we had to run the farm properly and that we had to make some practical decisions. Okay, so we finally looked at how many male geese (ganders) we actually had…it isn’t that easy to distinguish the sexes because we have a bunch of chunky hybrids (Chinese/German) and from our observation, it looks like a male reaches his full size in three years…younger males can look small and dainty like females. After close scrutinisation, it looked like half of them were males!!

We felt a bit sheepish when we realised that we had been keeping so many males around…you really should only have 1 male to about 6 females. And so we made the difficult decision to slaughter the some of the males…it is hard because you get so attached to them!! Anyway, we have been slaughtering one male a day and there are five in the freezer so far. Looks like there lots more to go…

I thought that the plucking would be terrible because the last time we plucked a goose, about 10 years, it took a very long time. This time round, we are managing to pluck a goose in about 30 minutes. It isn’t so bad because we realise that by reducing the population, the girls are getting to eat more food and it is a lot quieter because there are less males fighting amongst themselves. We have come to terms with it all because it is a more honest and truthful way of obtaining our own meat. We are using every part…I am saving the feet for some sort of yummy Chinese dish, the neck skins are being saved for sausage skins and we are even rendering the goose fat. I can’t believe it…these geese are not starving…they are sooo fat that they produce a cup of fat each!! Now I can rest assured that I have been feeding them well!

Right now we are getting up at the crack of dawn to pluck the goose in the cool of the morning. The rest of the morning, we are cleaning and maintaining the farm. I am still growing my own veggies despite the water shortage…next post I will have some pictures of my beautiful aubergines! I will write soon…promise!!

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