“Yes,” to Geese If You Please

Guest blog by Jody Vrieze

When we lived in Plymouth, Iowa, my husband and I realized there is more to a home than just a house. We embraced our love of nature and animals by creating a retreat in our yard featuring natural diversity and beauty. Our outdoor spaces incorporated annual and perennial flowers, bird feeders, chickens, and Sebastopol geese.

Stay-cations vs. Vacations

A backyard pond featured aquatic plants, and different fish like koi, shubunkin, and goldfish. Raised bed gardens and beekeeping gave us additional duties and joy to enhance our little piece of heaven. Every season brought new activities and treasures. We found that we much prefer quiet stay-cations over vacations!

Perhaps the Sebastopol geese were among my favorites. I would call them by simply saying, “Hi peep peeps!”. They’d be running and following me everywhere. Even as I kayaked! Amazing creatures.❤️

Finding Our Inner Geese Love

Their names are Winston, Willow, and Aspen.  When you watch the videos, Winston is always in the lead and Aspen is the smooth-feathered goose.  At a poultry swap, we dickered with a man over a pair of Sebastopol geese. We walked away and returned.  By then the goose had laid an egg.  My husband asked if we could buy that egg and the seller replied, “No, but you can have it.”.  The man asked if we wanted the pair of geese we’d dickered about to which my husband replied, “Nope, we have an egg!”  We bought pizza, and while eating I cradled the egg to keep it warm. We went right out and bought an incubator. After many adventures of incubator lessons – the right temperature, unplugged or not, and against all odds – on Mother’s Day Lucy hatched.

Winston, Lucy, and Aspen

Winston was added to keep Lucy company.  After losing Lucy, a lady brought an egg from a gal in Nebraska to add to the “family”.   Even more adventures awaited us with geese. One goose broke her leg and I used our koi pond for rehabilitation.

Winston, the goose, tragically lost several mates and lived to be five or so years old before meeting his demise.

Moving On and Planning Ahead

We have since moved and I’m looking forward to a new coop and some new chickens.

After I was asked to share our adventures for the Winding Pathways blogs, I found that I loved going back through the photos and videos and watching the fun we had.

Now in our new location, we recently had a pair of swans and their cygnet land in our field. They came one morning but are gone now. They must have been planning to hunker down for an impending January snowstorm.