For dinner I roasted a chicken. It was too big for the roasting lid to fit, so I covered it with foil and gave it an extra hour. With the kids at the table, Rory pulled the bird out, lifted the foil and said, “Um, Becca. This is a turkey.”
“What? No. How do we have a turkey in the freezer? Where did it come from? Shoot. I should have kept it for thanksgiving! But that’s really small for a turkey.”
I took a bite, “this is not turkey.” He took a bite. “Hmmm. You’re right.” A conversation followed about how it might be a goose. We all had a vague memory of someone coming to our farm and saying they left a goose for us in the freezer.
Rory prayed, “Lord, we thank you for every way you provide for us. And tonight we thank you for this… poultry. Whatever it is.”
“Was it from Lorry and Jen?” Yes! Yes, it was agreed. This was a goose from our friends.
After dinner I attended a homeschool meeting with moms from the area. A discussion started up: tell me you live in the country without telling me you live in the country. One mom spoke up: “Today my husband had a bunch of important meetings lined for work and the Internet went out. Turns out gophers had chewed through our fiber optic line.”
Then I said, “Oh, I’ve got one. Tonight I roasted a bird for dinner, and we still don’t know what kind of bird it was…”
Later I texted Jen, “Had your goose for dinner!” She replied, “Might be the best text I’ve ever received. We don’t raise geese.”
Meanwhile, Rory was texting her husband:
For the record, we still do not know what we are dealing with. It has a VERY tough skin. My personal best guess is that it was a rooster from the hen house we had butchered with the fryers this summer. I think that’s pretty likely, but Rory isn’t on board with that theory. He’s certain it is not a rooster.
So let us know if you happened to slip a bird in our deep freeze. And if you did, sorry about what I said about the tough skin!
3 comments
Best blog ever! Love the story. You would know it was a goose if it had A LOT of fat drippings. Geese are very high in fat. I have had the following poultry with tough skin: turkey in the freezer WAY too long, post-menopause hen, rooster dying of old age. The last two were given to us by friends who had just started farming.
I love it!!
The “best” chicken and noodles need an old, tough hen/rooster boiled all day with root veggies then the addition of homemade noodles. That was and still is Mats favorite. Some old layers can get big.