A green goose is a young goose, no more than about three months old, reared on pasture and traditionally eaten at Michaelmas — 29 September — as the autumn’s first goose. Unlike the mature Christmas goose, fattened for winter, the green goose is smaller, leaner, and more delicately flavoured, having fed on fresh grass rather than grain. The name refers to its grass-fed youth, not its colour. In old English cookery it was a seasonal delicacy, roasted simply to show off its tender meat. The tradition has largely faded with industrial poultry production, but it survives in heritage farming and food-history writing as a marker of the agricultural year — eating with the seasons before refrigeration made seasons irrelevant.