Thanksgiving
You may not associate goats with Thanksgiving, but in most of the world, when people gather around the table for festive meals and celebrations, they gather to eat goat meat.
As Americans gear up to celebrate Thanksgiving, the new Americans hailing from Nepal have just celebrated their biggest national holiday of the year, Dashain, which involves a huge feast with freshly slaughtered goat meat, enough to eat heartily and fill your chest freezer with the remainder for curried soups and stews through the winter.
Goat meat is the most widely eaten meat in the world, and this is the time of year when animals are slaughtered to fill people’s freezers for the winter. (As someone who was a vegetarian for a long time and ate vegetables with the seasons, it was an epiphany to realize that sustainably raised animals, too, follow a seasonal cycle.)
When I worked with the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program recently to invite a Nepali family to show us how they cook goat meat, I was touched by how deeply they care about goat meat, and also by the limited options they have for procuring it.
Bimala Bista, Draupada Luitel, and Chandra Luitel
Draupada Luitel was born in Nepal and was living and farming across the border in Bhutan. When the Nepalese were persecuted and expelled from Bhutan, she fled with her family back to Nepal and lived in a refugee camp before they all moved to Winooski two years ago. Her stepdaughter Chandra and friend Bimala, both 17-year olds at Winooski High School, helped demonstrate how to prepare the stew fragrant with chilies, ginger, garlic, and turmeric as they talked about fleeing Bhutan, arriving in America, and their excitement over the upcoming Dashain festival.
While we were not able to procure local goat meat through our usual relationships in the Meat & Seafood Department for the cooking class, after calling several halal markets, I was able to get local goat meat from Global Markets a few blocks north. The stew was amazingly delicious, redolent with spices and tender chunks of meat.
About 3,000 frozen goats are imported into the greater Burlington area each year. Most of it is sold through the halal markets, which order the frozen goat meat from Australia and New Zealand and butcher it themselves for the burgeoning refugee market. And while Vermont is a dairy state known for its fine chevre, local goat meat has not managed to find its market yet. Two initiatives have recently sprung up that might change that:
Vermont Chevon Meats is a new project based in the Northeast Kingdom that connects local goat meat producers with a growing market for their meat. The premium goat meat is processed at the Mad River Food Hub, and sold to almost a dozen area restaurants, including Claire’s Restaurant in Hardwick, Frita’s Tacqueria in Stowe, and 3 Square Café in Vergennes.
The Vermont Goat Collaborative is trying "to meet the demand of New American, mostly refugee, consumers in a state that prides itself on promoting local foods and a working landscape." They hope to put goats in the care of refugee farmers to produce goats for the greater Burlington ethnic market and replace the 3,000 currently imported from abroad.
I’m not sure how long it will take the market to grow, but a wave of people signed up for the class who were interested in goat meat. Goats, which can live in many climates and terrains and eat a wide-ranging diet, are the perfect animal to help diversify the offerings for sustainably-raised local meat. As it so happened, a prospective farmer was at the class who was looking for land and hoping to raise goats himself.
Chandra Luitel told us that her father had just returned, weary but happy, from a trip to Massachusetts the night before to get their half goat for the festival and for the freezer. They were ready to clean and decorate their house for Dashain.
So as we celebrate Thanksgiving this year, may we feel a kinship with all the families all over the world and in our midst who gather around many different kinds of meat and meals and look for opportunities to support and encourage local and sustainably-produced food for all.