Tune your television in this Tuesday, December 6th at 7pm EST! Moose Manor Farms is featured in "The Local Buy: Heritage Waterfowl" on Maryland Farm & Harvest Season 4 Episode #404.

MF&H airs on the MPT channel (812, 522, or 1022 depending on your service provider) Tuesday's at 7pm, Thursday's 11:30pm, and Sunday's at 6pm. Or you can watch full episodes online at http://video.mpt.tv/show/maryland-farm-harvest/.  I recommend watching the entire episode to learn more about Maryland farming operations but if you're in a hurry you can view our spot on "The Local Buy" segment located at minute 19:47 of the video.
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In November 2016 NPR 's Allison Aubrey came out to the farm to interview our Narragansett turkeys for a Foodways piece posted on 'The Salt'. Give it a listen but ignore me trying to talk to the tukeys...
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Heritage Turkeys Make A Comeback, But To Save Them We Must Eat Them:  They're descended from birds brought by British settlers that mated with turkeys native to the U.S. These birds taste much more like the turkeys that were on the table in the 17th century.  

​In April 2013 the Washington Examiner came out to the farm to interview me about my philosophy regarding using antibiotics in farming animals for food and to find out why I think it's important not to. Here's his 5 minute video discussing Antibiotic Resistance in farm animals, how that transfers to the humans who consume them, and the looming health risk we face due to rampant overuse and misuse:

You had a lot on your mind this November so you may not have put a lot of thought into your Thanksgiving dinner this year and we totally understand.  Have no fear! Moose Manor Farms still has a good selection of free-range, organic, GMO & Soy-free meat available for your family table.  

We’re sold-out of heritage Narragansett turkeys but we have juicy broadbreasted turkeys, French Muscovy, heritage goose, heritage duck, and even select heritage pork cuts available (call or email about the pork).  All birds are scheduled for harvest the weekend prior to Thanksgiving with pick-up available Sunday, November 20, 2016. 

Be sure to place you your order for a delicious Thanksgiving bird today!    
​http://www.moosemanorfarms.com/meat.html

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Reservations are now available for your holiday birds!

Preparing a goose for a special holiday dinner is a time-honored custom across many cultures but has become a rare pleasure in America. With turkey in abundance here,it's certainly narrowed the availability of dressed geese for our holiday tables. 

Revisit this venerable tradition with a lovely goose for your celebration feast, you'll certainly decide that it's far too wonderful to serve only once a year! 

​ Please check the meat products page for availability via the order form at the top of the page.  Once reserved, you may come by to pick up your birds on Sunday, December 20th from 11am - 4:30pm or Monday, December 21st between 6pm -8pm.   Monday at 8pm all uncollected birds will be placed in the freezer.   Please do not order birds that you don't intend to pick up.  To reduce work, I only harvest what you order and I don't keep an inventory of frozen birds available for sale - I do NOT have a staff, it's usually just me out there on harvest day.

I love this time of year... when we're blessed with a season that appeals to all five senses.   While the foliage turns warmer the air is crisper and it carries the occasional sharpness of wood smoke.  Leaves crunching underfoot scenting my path with earth and loam and clove.  Osage oranges spice the air... now full of nostalgia and subtle citrusy, appley scents.  Brilliant blue sky splashed with orange, yellow, and bright citron-green colors.  Pumpkin patches sprawling across farm fields.  Ahhhh, autumn...

Time too for family and dear friends.  Big gatherings full of big belly laughs and big plates of food.  It's so nice to share our company and our favorite recipes, telling favorite stories with our favorite people.  This is my season!

I look forward to flying home to California to a house full of family... but before I do I offer just a few Thanksgiving birds to you and your family to share for your holiday meal.  This year I'll have big, beautiful broadbreasted turkeys finished on corn and molasses, luscious golden goose, and, of course, my trademark duck.  Please reserve your choices soon as I'm only offering a small number of each, I'll have them packaged up for you Sunday, November 22nd and ready for pick up at the farm between 10:30 am and 5:30 pm.  www.MooseManorFarms.com/meat 

I wish you the finest fall and blessings of good health for you and your family!

Join us the first weekend in October in Sharpsburg, MD for our annual sustainability summit fondly known as Homesteading Days.  Erin has finalized our schedule of classes, see it here: http://www.ghfarm.org/

I'll be teaching a Modern Homesteader Poultry Processing Workshop Saturday, October 3rd at 3:30 pm.  Class Description: This 1.5 hour workshop is a hands-on class imparting humane killing techniques, scalding, plucking, butchering, and bagging.  $60 per participant; Cost of the workshop includes a processed chicken from our flock to take home for their freezer ($20 value).

Come on out for my small-scale Poultry Processing workshop!  Learn how to safely and humanely process poultry in my hands-on class.  I'll show you how I transform my healthy, home-raised poultry into a beautiful and delicious packaged product ready for the freezer or the dinner table.  We'll use modern techniques including cones, scalder, and plucker and every workshop attendee will have the opportunity to experience each station in the process if so desired - it is perfectly fine if you simply want to watch, learn, and ask questions. 

If you've ever wanted to be more self-sustaining... or meet like-minded folks, come check it out.  Stay for the entire weekend and enjoying camping, cookouts, bonfires, blacksmithing, beekeeping, canning, butchering, timber framing, solar power seminar, basket weaving, and more! Our Saturday Evening Mead Making Seminar is completely FREE and open to the public. Soiree the evening away with live music from Copper Canyon Bluegrass while tasting locally made mead, enjoying some local eats and chatting with great company.

Bunnies are really stinkin' adorable... and so are ducklings, chicks, and goslings.  They're sometimes completely irresistible!  And they can make wonderful gifts for the right person.  For instance, your girlfriend has a flock of chickens and mentioned a breed she'd love to start raising so you buy her 3 to add to her flock.  That's a nice gift!  When you've done your research and have the equipment it's a wonderfully appropriate gift.  But if you were charmed by chicks while shopping for veggie seeds at your local farm store and made an impulse buy that's a whole other story.  

All these cute and fuzzy animals come with years long commitments.  They make amazing pets if you're prepared with the proper brooding equipment and housing... they're really not hard to raise either but like every baby I've ever met, they require a lot of up front care and they tend to make a mess.  So a little research and some inexpensive equipment will go a long way.

If you've already purchased these babies and have now realized you weren't set up to raise them, please don't release them into the wild.  For the same reasons you wouldn't abandon a puppy in the woods, don't release ducklings onto a local pond or bunnies into a golf course.  These are domestic animals that have been bred for hundreds of years to rely on humans for food, shelter, and protection from predators.  

Domestic ducks have very low survival rates on wild ponds and a lot of folks also don't realize that baby ducks that aren't being raised by a mama duck can't swim.  Well, they can swim for a few minutes, then their fuzzy down becomes water-logged and they sink underwater and drown.   Additionally, who will warm them after a dip in the cold pond?  Other mama ducks won't accept them into their little brood so don't expect to find an adoptive wild family either.  

Duck dumping creates complicated problems for wild ducks and their natural habitat, often upsetting entire ecosystems of waterfowl populations.  Domestic animals compete for limited food with wildlife and may even breed with their wild counterparts which reduces the genetic fitness of wildlife populations.  There is also a real possibility of introducing domestic diseases to wildlife that have no immunity. This may cause die-offs, sometimes on a massive scale.  Think of the first Europeans landing in American and spreading new diseases to the indigenous population... ugh!

Plus it's against the law. "Any person who willfully abandons an animal is guilty of a misdemeanor."

So if you have any Easter impulse-buy ducklings, goslings, chicks, or bunnies that you need to rehome, here are some folks in Maryland (and one in Virginia) who are already raising farm animals and are more than happy to help.  You can contact them through their facebook messenger:

I'm pleased to announce that the 2015 Moose Manor Farms wall calendar is now ready to adorn your office or kitchen for only $20 each!

Featuring original photography of the farm by the Head Mooseherder, this beautiful 11 x 8.5 calendar is also chock-full of useful information: U.S. holidays, key vegetable planting dates, monthly beekeeping reminders, as well as Moose Manor events and harvest dates.  Keep yourself well organized with this lovely photo journal of Moose Manor's monthly farm scenes and activities.

Roasting a goose makes any holiday feast merrier. Not only because it’s not the same old turkey or beef roast, but because goose meat has the intense meatiness of a steak, richly flavorful, dark and earthy.  This deliciousness is further cloaked in a layer of unbelievably rich, crispy skin.  Although it has a high fat content, it’s not greasy or gamey, most of the fat is under the skin instead of marbled in the meat, so during cooking, it melts and bastes the meat, keeping it juicy.  Crispy goose skin is one of the greatest pleasures of the dining table.

As an extra bonus, a goose also leaves behind a gift: lots of delicious goose fat.  You’re likely to run out of the fat before you run out of ways to use it. Roast or sauté vegetables, pan-sear seafood, fry chicken, make duck or goose confit or chicken liver pate…the possibilities are endless. Rendered goose fat keeps for months in the refrigerator or just about forever in the freezer.

It's true that the meat-to-carcass ratio on a goose is lower than it is on a turkey. But goose meat is much richer than turkey meat, and also much more flavorful:  not so much a strong flavor but a substantial one. Once you've tasted a well-roasted goose, the contrast between its rich dark flavor and the bland flavor of turkey will surprise you.

In estimating serving size, you should allow 1 ½ to 2 pounds of goose (raw weight) per person.  An 8-pound goose is the perfect size for about 5 people but can feed more if you have a lot of sides, which is common at holiday dinners.  Reserve your pastured goose

When cooking your goose, don’t compare it to cooking chicken or turkey, think of it as beef with an overcoat of fat and crispy skin.  Breasts should always be served pink (medium-rare) and legs and wings should be slowly cooked, like beef brisket.  Roast the goose for a while, then slice off the whole breast and finish it in a pan, skin side down, once the legs are done. That way you still get a nice roasted flavor on the whole goose, and you get crispy skin and you get properly pink breast meat.  Find a tutorial for roasting your goose on my recipe page.

The most traditional way to balance the richness is to invite mustard, horseradish, vinegar, or pickles to the party.  You need something sharp for balance.  Fruit adds another element to goose.  A tart fruit such as a cherry or black currants, blueberries, or cranberries can almost single-handedly achieve that perfect balance of flavor: sweet, sour, savory, salty.

I highly recommend making a gorgeous goose the centerpiece of your table this holiday season!

Reserve a pastured goose for your Christmas dinner for pick-up in Pomfret, MD December 22 & 23 by appointment.