5 Mar 2026
August 25, 2020 – Goose Dinners, Harsh Winters, And A Father’s Love For Animals
In this heartfelt episode, Lyn Goffaux reaches back into her childhood to share vivid memories from life on the ranch, beginning with her mother’s determination to raise geese and the unlikely hen who hatched and mothered them. Lyn describes the comic yet painful moments when the once-cuddly goslings grew up and started nipping the backs of her knees, teaching her an early lesson about how quickly animals can change as they grow. Her story then turns to her mother’s long-standing wish for a goose dinner, and the humorous misadventures of Paul, who keeps putting off the task of butchering a goose and instead returns home one day with guinea hens from a neighbor so the family ends up eating those instead. When her mother finally takes matters into her own hands, Lyn paints a striking picture of her mother hiding behind a post with a gun, the frantic flopping of the goose she shoots, and the heartbreaking sight of the remaining geese running to her for protection, signaling the last goose her parents would ever kill.
From there, Lyn moves into the story of a brutal winter around the time her sister was born, when deep snow and bitter cold made survival a daily struggle for both people and animals. She recalls how her father coped with starving cattle and horses by cutting down trees to strip the bark for feed, eventually supplementing with cotton cake made from cottonseed, which proved to be a lifesaver for the livestock. Lyn shares practical details of that season—like planting large, inedible beets just to chop and feed to the animals, and hanging one in the henhouse so the chickens had to fly up to peck it for much-needed exercise, resulting in eggs all winter long despite the terrible weather. She also remembers traveling through the range as a child, seeing dead cows and horses everywhere, a haunting image that captures the severity of that winter and the cost it exacted on the herd.
The episode also explores her father’s near-serious injury while cutting a ham, the doctor’s insistence that milking the cows actually preserved his hand, and what this reveals about the unrelenting demands of ranch life—there was no option to stop working, even in pain. Lyn highlights her father’s deep affection and respect for animals, especially his geese and horses, recounting how the geese would quietly conspire while he milked: one goose would sneak over to untie his shoelaces, prompting him to make a big show of retieing them while the geese honked and flapped with delight. She reflects on his careful ethics with old horses—preferring to send them as bear bait rather than risk selling them to someone who might overwork or mistreat them—because once a horse left his hands, he could no longer ensure its well-being.
In the closing portion of the recording, Lyn shifts from stories of animals to the complexities of family and motherhood, touching briefly on her daughter Francy’s stubborn nature as a child and how that spirit may have been necessary in a family where more children were not supposed to arrive. She candidly shares her own mixed feelings about having more children, describing a season when she felt like “nothing but a baby machine” and would have welcomed a rest rather than an absolute end to childbearing. Lyn then moves to the next generation, telling how her daughter Julie went on to have ten children, including a baby who died after just nine hours due to an undiagnosed blood issue. The story follows Julie’s journey through repeated medical challenges, the eventual discovery and treatment of her blood incompatibility with a full transfusion for another premature baby, and, later, the role of herbal remedies that seemed to resolve the problem so that the next child arrived a little late and completely healthy.
