Monthly Archives: December 2014

Belize, Construction, Farming, Pets

Piggies Have a New Home!

Gnome.Straight.Smile

I’m playing catch-up today…the Internet connection failed for twenty-four hours (this is not that unusual where we are) but it is back again this morning (aaaah, couldn’t check Stats for a whole day…this is way too addictive!!!).

Managed to finish the Guinea Pig Cage after five days of work.  The finished cage picture is going to go under this paragraph but I couldn’t get a good picture this morning since the sun is in the way right now, so I’m going to plug it in later when I can get a better one.  It shows all the welded wire in place, the piggies themselves and the two sheets of roofing; one metal for shade and one out of plastic to let some sunlight in (so they don’t become Vitamin D deficient!).

The Famous Turtle-Blancanoux-Bel-Campo-Wild-Orchid Hotel/Spa/Resort for the Discerning Piggie in its full glory ($2000 per night!).
The Famous Turtle-Blancanoux-Bel-Campo-Wild-Orchid-Eco-Agro-Tourist-Rainforest-Canopy Hotel/Spa/Resort for the Discerning Piggie in its full glory ($2000 per night!).

The piggies seem happy but they haven’t figured out how to use the “stairway/ramp” yet, so they are staying on the second floor, and consequently eating the huge amount of grass we have to keep on collecting.  I’m going to see how long it is going to take them to figure out that they have forty square feet of delicious, high-protein perennial peanut (Arachis pintoi) twelve inches under them.

Satisfied Customers at our New Resort, enjoying the organic, farm fresh produce for dinner.
Satisfied Customers at our New Resort, enjoying the organic, farm fresh produce for dinner.

This little project that has kept me out of trouble for the best part of a week is going to go into our Bored-In-Belize-Projects under the Taj-Ma-Piggie Page.

Oh yeah, I’ve reorganized some of the pages in the Library so that they are easier to see and find:  Mushrooms have their own heading and Philosophy, About our Handmade Products and Acknowledgements are all under our Product Descriptions now.

Until later…

Belize, Farming, Plants

Tobacco Harvest.

Munchkin.Face.Dark

It was a lovely, bright and sunny morning today so I took the opportunity to harvest tobacco on the farm.

Tobacco Plant.
Tobacco Plant.

This is a picture of a young tobacco plant; when they are ready for harvest, they get to about 180cm (6ft) tall.  They have lovely smelling pink flowers which are used in the perfume industry.

Tobacco Harvest.
Tobacco Harvest.

The tobacco leaves are stored in a cardboard box and everyday, the leaves have to be aired and moved around to prevent mould.  This will have to be done for a few weeks until the leaves become brown, soft and velvety.

Gnome likes to make cigars flavoured with chocolate essential oil.

I will post more on the curing process of tobacco as we get to it.  Do you want to know more about tobacco?  Read my Tobacco Article.

Amusing, Belize

Waiting in Belize.

Upsidedown

Belize can really put the breaks on you if you live here.  Today was a “waiting day” as are most days!  I am not sure if it is something about Belize, or just something about life.  Here in this teeny weeny town of Punta Gorda, people can have the habit of  just stopping in the middle of a road to jump into a shop to buy something oblivious of the car that they are blocking behind.   I was behind such a car today…and, I just had to wait!

You see this mostly at the market in Punta Gorda where there is a procession of cars and somebody just stops to buy a pound of onions or a papaya.  If you are the unfortunate person caught behind that car, you have no choice but to wait.  And you have to be patient whilst the person is haggling for the best price with the market lady!

Whenever you queue up to pay a bill, the rule of thumb is to count to number of people in front of you and multiply this by 15 minutes and this will give you the average waiting time.  So, if there are 4 people in front of you, expect to wait one hour.  That’s just the way it is here.  I was in a couple of these queues today with eight people in front of me!  It can be a whole social event in a queue when you start talking to Mrs. W. in front of you complaining about the waiting time and you then turn to talk to the lady behind to talk about the weather.  Everybody else seems to have a jolly good time!

Punta Gorda makes you wait for everything.  Belize makes you wait!Sometimes it gets to me.  But, then I have to remind myself that I came here to Belize so that I didn’t need to rush head-long through life in a mad panic.