Last week, when I was lying listlessly on the settee and feeling somewhat sorry for myself my elder daughter rang and without so much as a mild enquiry about my health said 'do you want goose for Christmas dinner or shall we have a couple of ducks?'

Now normally the thought of a dark brown crispy goose, its skin oozing delicious fat and its centre stuffed with apples and sage and onion, would send me into a state of euphoria. But with a stomach which felt like a vastly extended hot air balloon and which only contained a slice of wholewheat toast minus the butter I was not in a fit state to think about anything roasted, crispy or otherwise.

I think I may have mentioned this. In fact I think I said something about going the whole hog and roasting a wild boar on a spit. Anyway there was a hurt frosty silence and she said she was only in the first stages of planning and had just wanted my opinion.

So I had to apologise and say yes I would love roast goose because after all geese are so expensive here now that you can use up your whole Christmas budget just buying one. In fact geese are the golden egg for those who sell them. In Germany they are at least half the price and the supermarket is laden with them for three weeks running up to Christmas.

A goose is, of course, the traditional British festive bird, or so books on food history tell us. We can actually blame the Americans for introducing us to that other Christmas bird, the turkey.

Since the Pilgrim Fathers landed on Plymouth Rock, and promptly starved because they ignored advice from the local native population on what to eat and grow, the turkey has been revered. The settlers finally gave in and caught a few of the scrawny local birds, cooked them with some of the only food available and for ever after gave thanks for being so clever and saving themselves from starvation, albeit about a year too late for some of their number.

When running round the forest chasing the main ingredient for Thanksgiving dinner became a bit of a bind, someone had the bright idea of raising the birds under cover. Before long the idea spread, eventually to Britain, and turkeys replaced geese. By the time Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, most people who could afford a festive feast were going home with a turkey the size of a pony.

But a goose is still special for Christmas, even though it doesn't go far and you need a big one for even a modest number of guests. And the prices rise every year.

Profit

The price, and the possibility of profit, was the reason one year that I decided to raise my own birds. We would have one for ourselves and sell the rest, which would in turn pay for the rest of Christmas. Sounds simple? In those 'living off the land' books it does. Reality is, as in all things I have ever touched, a different story.

Firstly, where to get baby geese? I asked around and got some 'phone numbers. After several calls I found someone in Devon who had some left and ordered six. The woman said she would deliver in time to raise them for Christmas and gave me a date.

A piece of cake. I got a book out of the library, which told me that geese initially eat only grass and we had plenty of that, and bullied my husband into making an enclosure. I was already counting the money.

A week before the delivery the enclosure was nearly ready and we had lugged home bales of straw for their bed. It was a Saturday afternoon and I was just relaxing over a cup of tea when the bell rang. A woman I didn't know stood there, holding a large plastic crate which was chirping. I knew what was in it before she said she was 'just passing' and thought she'd drop them off.

Too stunned to do more than pay her I asked what I should do with them. 'Keep them warm and dry', she said, and was off.

To cut a long story short there was nowhere outside which was warm and dry and very little choice indoors. The only safe place I could think of which would keep them safe, cosy and enclosed as a temporary measure was the bath. So I filled it with straw and popped them in. Explaining this decision to the family when they came home was a little traumatic. The children shrieked in horror and wailed that their social standing in the village would be zilch if anyone discovered their mother kept geese in the bath and my husband got all pursed lipped and muttered something about mad women as he went to get his tools to hurry along the outside goose apartment.

Unfortunately, and there's always an unfortunately isn't there?, we were in the process of selling our property and I had forgotten buyers were inspecting the next day. In fact I didn't remember until they rang the bell the next morning and despite trying to manoeuvre them past the bathroom as I extolled the virtues of the view and the spacious accommodation elsewhere the female of the party became suspicious and before I could explain elbowed me out of the way and walked in. Attempts to light heartedly laugh off the presence of six noisy and somewhat smelly birds waddling up and down the bath did not go down well.

Eventually they were installed in their all mod cons outdoor home and things were better. But not much. I discovered they were incredibly noisy to start with. Then there was the matter of what goes in must come out. Geese eat grass, lots of it. And consequently their droppings are green, and there's lots of it. And most of it outside the back door where they used to congregate instead of tramping round the nice one and a half acre field. Soon the area by the door resembled a green ski run, and just as slippery.

Patio

Then there was the little known fact, or not known to me, that unlike hens geese don't come home to roost. Chickens, at the first sign of dusk, rush right on home, get themselves to bed and are very little trouble.

A goose just keeps going and I had the Houdinis of the goose world to contend with. I would get calls from people telling me my geese had just passed their door. We would drive frantically down the road and there they would be, in single file, making for the hills. Worse, they took a liking to a neighbour's new patio, which before long took on the look of an old Roman mosaic floor, only it wasn't little bits of green stone which decorated it. Then there was their pecking order, all of it aimed at my legs firstly and then anyone in the vicinity.

They did, however, grow fat. As Christmas drew near I realised I hadn't even contemplated how we were going to get them from field to table. I had conveniently forgotten that they weren't going to throw themselves lemming like from the roof of their shed and miraculously become oven ready in little plastic bags.

So I took the only way out I could think of. Temporarily shelving any thoughts of being a feminist, I told my husband it was a man's job, and went out for the day.

When I came back the deed was done and the birds were in the fridge.

My husband presented me with a large brown sack.

'What's that?' I said. 'It's the feathers and down', he said, 'I thought you could make some pillows with it.'

'Don't push it sunshine', I said.