In Belize, the ubiquitous flimsy black plastic bag is called a “shilling bag.” As-well as having its normal function as a bag to hold groceries (try to get back home before the hole at the bottom gets bigger!!), there are many novel uses which are employed in this country.
Here are a few examples:
Foot Protectors: wear on open-toed sandals to stop feet getting muddy in the wet season.
Foot Protector.
Shoe Protectors: when you are wearing pretty patent shoes and don’t want to get them mucky before the party.
Shoe Protectors.
A shower cap: when you can’t find a shower cap to buy in the whole of Punta Gorda.
Shower Cap.
A sleeping bag for the cat…was rather chilly the other night!! Other cats…don’t try this at home…there is danger of suffocation. We have a savvy farm cat.
Sleeping Bag.
Next time, Wet Season fashion with Construction Plastic Ponchos…one size fits all!!
There’s been a lot of commotion and general prolonged weeeeeeeeeee-weeeeeeee-weeeeeeeee!!! coming from the Guinea Pig cage (formerly known as Paradise Pastures; now renamed Zazen Temple of Piggies…ZTOP for short). If you want to know the Piggie Story, click here.
Shock!! Horror!! There’s a Gigantic Yellow Monster in ZTOP terrorizing the be-Jesus out of the innocent temple dwellers.
The Zazen piggies are quivering in terror:
Cowering Frightened Piggies!!
“Help!! Mayor Gnome!!!”
On Guard!!
Mayor Gnome: “Did the Piggies call for help!! I must save my Piggies!! What…a yellow monster?? In the Temple of Doom??!!”
Duckie-zilla!!
Mayor Gnome: “Hey Piggies! That’s not a yellow monster! That’s Duckie!!”
Zazen Piggies: “Poppycock!! You mean that fine little blighter that you used to play with us? Can’t be….”
Duckie and Piggies.
Mayor Gnome: “My dear piggies, that huge lumbering Duckie-zilla is your friend, the Duckie.”
Duckie.
Zazen Piggies: “Mayor Gnome, we would like to formerly dispute the identity of this yellow creature in an emergency meeting today!!”
Meet the New-Comers to Casa Mascia Manor: The Overlord and The Duchess of Toledo.
Overlord and Duchess.
The Overlord is of equivalent rank to The Gnome and acts as Guardian of the farm and general bossie of all fowl. His task at night is to sleep on a perch right in front of the house to guard Munchkin and Gnome. Morning duties include the wake up call at dawn with “Gobbble–Gobbble–Gobbble–Gobbble….” and to keep the duckies and goosies in line as they troop out of the coup in the morning. The rest of the day, he parades around the farm, puffing up his stomach every few seconds (with a loud POOF) to remind everybody of his rank and position on the farm.
The Overlord.
The Duchess of Toledo is dainty and nimble on her feet. She likes nibbling on delicate greens and tiny insects. If we gave her egg and cress sandwiches on doilies, I am sure she would not be adverse to the fine pleasures which are be-fitting to her fine breeding. The only requirements of this lady is to be by the Overlord’s side for public appearances.
Whilst waiting for my freezer (one of those huge bottomless pit kind of freezers that you can get lost in) to de-frost, I will write my blog post. I have a whole load of pictures so I will try to thread a reasonable coherent story together for you of what we are doing right now. By the way, whenever I de-frost my freezer, I come across so many lost and forgotten goodies!! Will probably have a feast this weekend!!
Found these; Chinese Sausage!! Ooooh, you have to be Chinese to get excited about this stuff!! Ha-Ha.
Chinese Sausage.
Anyway, do you remember that at Chinese New Year, our darling little duckies gave us a gift of 8 eggs? It turns out to be even more special because on asking other local people, their ducks aren’t laying at all and don’t lay until March when the number of hours of day light increase. Anyway, so far there has been success with the incubator ie. the cat hasn’t sat on it this time round. This is because I deftly used Secret Invisibility Technique by sticking a vacuum cleaner in front of the incubator. Aha, I fooled the cat!!
Hidden Incubator Technique.
The eggs were candled on day 3 to check if the embryos were forming; 6 out of the 8 eggs at that time appeared viable. Right now, two eggs have pipped and we are waiting to see how many actually hatch. Should be some fun, excitement and peep-peeping at the weekend!! With regards to our other darling little baby duckie (the lone duckie that hatched by itself despite the cat sitting on the incubator) he/she (we think “she” actually but have not properly sexed her) thinks she is a guinea pig now…sometimes a human being and definitely not one of those loud quacky things that quack around the yard. Yip, he/ she duckie is spending too much time with the piggies and loves to fall asleep to the dulcet tones of cavy noises.
Oor Duckie!!
I would also like to take this time to apologise for neglecting my food posts; I am either too busy or too lazy and can’t find the “in-between” state to re-start the food parades. We are still eating really well…I just haven’t written about them. With the dry season, there should be new harvests so I will endeavour to start again. I also want to post up my sorghum recipes…we eat it almost everyday now and is proving to be a very interesting, versatile and tasty grain. Look still eating great food:
Sorghum with Bamboo Shoots and Sweet Potato Greens.Venison, Sorghum with Parsley.
It’s the usual stuff on the farm…always something to harvest…seeds to plant…and it comes round in cycles. You have to really like doing this to do it!!
One of the main reasons why I write posts on self-sustainable farming is to encourage others to do the same. I would like people to realise that yes, it is hard work (you can’t just sit around and talk all day) but also, you can use your brains to be innovative.
Spending the time doing things on the farm cuts down the need for money to buy things. Basically you are exchanging your physical labour in order to be less of a consumer.
Oh by the way, just in case you haven’t realised, we do all our own work on the farm. We do not hire anyone to do our work, in any aspect of our lives, because part of our philosophy is independence and healthy living.
The way that we process ten coconuts at a time is a perfect example of time well spent on the farm. Ideally, we would like to this every morning but life does get in the way, as it always does, and we are thwarted by weather, other pressing farm jobs, general maintenance, machinery that needs fixing, Apothecary orders and of course, medical call-outs.
If you sell 10 coconuts at the market, you will get $10 Belize Dollars. We have chosen not to do that because you can get so much more out from each coconut.
The husks and shells can be used for mulch on the farm:
Coconut Husks and Shells.
Shells can be used as vessels to hold food for poultry:
Coconut Shells.
When you crack open the coconuts, there is coconut water. You still get water from oil coconuts…of course, you get more from water coconuts. This can be consumed or it can actually be used as a highly nutritional plant irrigation water (contains sodium, potassium, calcium and magnesium).
Coconut Water.
The coconuts are grated by hand by Gnome:
Grated Coconut.
Coconut milk and coconut cream can be squeezed from this; Munchkin’s job:
Coconut Milk.
Coconut milk has a high protein content; it can be added to stews, breads and anything really to boost protein content and flavour. In addition, coconut milk (and cream) can be used to make very nice desserts.
We bag the coconut cream to use in cooking; it can be used in stews, curries, desserts, anything really! At this point, the cream can be further processed into coconut oil to make our soaps and stuff. If we have excess, we sell these in Supaul’s in Punta Gorda.
Coconut Cream.
Okay, still not done yet!! After squeezing out the cream and milk, you get the left over coconut meal. Once the fat has been extracted, it now becomes a very high protein product(12 to 14%…compare to corn which is between 9 to 11%). This can be sun-dried and then milled to make coconut flour:
Coconut Flour.
Or, it also makes great animal feed. All manner of poultry like it and even our guinea pigs are quite partial to it too:
Coconut Meal.
Go on then…plant a few coconuts in your back yard for food security…it’s great stuff!!
Yes, time to get Crepuscular. This means that you get up at the crack of dawn, have a cup of tea and run out to do farm chores and then run back into the cool of the house before noon-time. Resting time is until it cools down again…about 4pm…then you run out again to do the end-of-the-day chores. This is the rhythm that we get into as dry season approaches. Gnome has got the brush-mower out and is cleaning up:
Filling up the Bush-Hog.
The Bush:
Bush!!
Of course, Munchkin work involves less heavy stuff but still keeps me fit and healthy. I am making use of my new wheel-barrow to collect soil for the garden. We are starting fennel today…the bulbs and the wild type. Yum…can’t wait…they are a favourite!
Munchkin’s Wheelbarrow.
More harvests on the farm…we have Barbados Gooseberry…time to make more jam!!
Hello Everyone and it feels like the start of dry season again. That means (for us, anyway) that it is very, very hot and the plants need to be watered. The secret of Gnome and Munchkin’s success, this year, in keeping a little vegetable garden going at this time of the year is because of our little cesspool.
Nice vegetables growing healthily and happily:
Mini Garden.
Because of our little cesspool:
Grey Water Pond.
Gnome has fixed things in such a way (with an uncomplicated system of drainage pipes and siphons) to drain all our grey water into this pool. Right now, this includes mostly washing-up and laundry water. He will be working on a new shower location in the dry season which will drain water directly into this pool. The duckies also swim about poop in it adding further wonderful nutrients to the bubbling chaos. In other words, this is our very own home-made “plant food”; this provides all the plant nutrient requirements to make our vegetables grow with vigour and lushness.
When I asked Gnome to read this blog post, he said it was “okay.” I asked him why he thought it was just “okay.” He replied by saying that the title of my post did not evoke thoughts of Munchkin and Gnome being “cool and exciting.”
Well, I asked him, “what should I say instead?”
Gnome said, cheekily, “howz about ‘M & G’s Organic Electrolyte Balanced Maximum Velocity Irrigation Water??!!!”
I said, “yes of course, darling.”
…stared blankly at the computer screen, blinked once, didn’t even think twice about changing the title, and pressed the “publish” button.
I thought I might share this interesting concept with you. Gnome had planted a “Kapok” tree right at our gate, when we first moved in, just as a marker. So we wouldn’t get lost??!! It is known for its seed pods which produce a cotton-like material which can be used to stuff pillows, mattresses and the like. Moreover, the material can be woven to make fibre. It sounded like a useful tree to have around. The tree was a fast grower and in about three years, it was really, really tall…sorry for not being very technical but it just appeared to stretch right up into the sky. Because it was so tall, it was definitely not hard to miss (we always found our gate…Ha-Ha) and so it was always one of the first things that Belizeans commented upon if they chanced upon seeing us at the farm.
We were then told that this tree was known locally as a “Ceiba” tree. That makes sense since the latin name is Ceiba petandra. Further enquiries reveal that this tree is actually sacred to the Mayas. It is known as a World Tree which embodies the four cardinal directions. According to Mayan Mythology, this tree also connects the centre of the earth to the sky; it is the gateway between these two worlds. This is indeed an esoteric concept that appeals to our imagination especially when it is planted right at the Gateway to our Farm.
Ceiba Tree.
Our Gateway:
The Gate.
It really does look quite magnificent in real life, like something out of a fairy tale. Every morning, we watch the toucans on the tree making their funny ribbbitting noise.
Alas, I had to scrap my pair of yellow wellies. These were a spanking pair of wellies that I picked up in Brodies a couple of years ago. I loved them so much that I wore them all the time…even with my street gear and my prim and proper doctor’s attire.
Yellow Rubber Boots.
Anyway, it is soooo wet in Toledo you have to wear boots…well, that is what I think after living here for 13 years. I distinctly hate wearing open toed shoes here because I don’t like getting mud in between my toes (just a personal preference). Anyway the boots have a history and we (Gnome and I) have romantically dug dirt, planted trees and done the farm chores together with these boots. So much so that they got into a real state. They became a rather manky yellow:
Manky Yellow Boots.
Duckie even imprinted on us because we both had “yellow feet.”
Yellow Wellies.
Anyway, they started getting too many holes and cracks so there was no point in wearing them as they had lost their purpose of protection. Of course, Gnome got a hold of the throw-away before I cast them into the fire.
“Oh, they are made of a very good material…you can make rather good gaskets with that….I’ll take them thank-you very much!”
And so my dear yellow wellie boots will live on as gaskets…I had to ask him: What’s a Gasket??!! He demonstrated by making the first one for the blender so that the liquid would stop leaking out:
Rubber Boot Turned into Gasket.
Ahhhh…that’s what a gasket is…it forms a seal between two things to stop leakage. Munchkin learned something!!
Pretty handy and it works well so I can’t complain. Long live the yellow wellies in Gnome’s transformation magic.
Yes indeed this concludes the Fortune Telling Guinea Pig Marathon! What a lovely lot of piggies…plus duckie of course. We’ve posted the last two together because Gnome said:
“They look so alike…everyone will think that you are posting the same picture again. Why don’t we put them together instead…”
It was also because we couldn’t separate them…these two are as thick as thieves…they’re conspiring to overthrow Munchkin and Gnome!
Two Piggies.
Saturday’s Child works hard for a living (I was a Saturday Child, by the way) and the one that is born on the Sabbath Day is Bonnie and Blithe! These two were a bit camera-shy.
