We are going from dry to wet season right now and there seems to be a more apparent transition this time round. It’s raining at night and in the daytime it gets seriously hot when the water from the rain evaporates. It’s like wading about in a sauna!! Is this Paradise, by the way…
Anyway, do you remember that we had a lovely yellow duckie co-habiting with the guinea pigs because she was a one-duckie incubator hatch? She started off really small (of course ha-ha!!).
Duckie.
And the she got bigger and bigger in the guinea pig metropolis so we started calling her Duckie-zilla…the awkward teenage years…
Duckie-zilla!!
She is the first of a new generation of laying duckies and so we have dubbed her Dalai Duckie. Well now she has turned into a beautiful golden yellow duck so she is also called The Golden Maiden.
Here she is and she is out with the older generation of duckies. What a beauty:
Dalai Duckie.The Golden Maiden.
Ooooh and one more…
Dalai Duckie.
She has started laying already. Now we have 7 laying duckies so the plan is to start replacing the older 6 with a new generation. The old generation are still going strong despite being over 5 years old; apparently, ducks lay good numbers up until the age of 5. That’s according to information on the Internet…we have to see what real ducks actually do!!
Hello…still in the kitchen! It’s great to “boycott” the farm now and then and refuse to descend into the dirt and wetness (yes it has been raining so now time to swap the mantra over to “wet, wet, wet” instead of “dry, dry, dry.”
Gnome says,
“You can come back to the reality of the farm in your own time my dear…”
Ahhh…I think…that is so supportive of him. But then he says cheekily:
“The grass is getting longer as we speak. And little goosies are calling out for you. Oh and there’s a jackfruit dying a super squidgy death on the veranda….”
Hmmmm. I can ignore alll duties for one more day whilst I re-charge my batteries in the kitchen. Sort of like a re-boot…
Anyway, this is one of my most favourite things that I like to do. Gather lots of food on the farm and make something good to eat. I do this everyday anyway but I am making a concerted effort to ignore anything talking, quacking, wee-weeing, mee-owing, bow-wowing or honking demands at me! 🙂
Yummy Garden Food.
Today, I have made a meal out of everything from the farm. All except the onions. Ahhh the onions…that is going to be called “Munchkin & Gnome: Plant Acre of Onions Project” and will require ingenuity on our part since it is soooo wet (there we go again with the new mantra).
Thank-you my darling duckies for the eggs; I am rather fond of them…the duckies, I mean:
My Lovely Duckies!!
The Meal of the Day! This includes onions (not ours) and aubergines, tomatoes, jalapeño peppers and duckie eggs (all ours). Oh, and thanks to Panda for his Roma tomatoes which I nicked out of his bucket! This is a great way to poach eggs…which Gnome taught me a long time ago in a land down-under: cook your dish as usual on the stove (can be anything; beans, lentils, stew, anything really) and once cooked, crack eggs on top. Place lid on pot and cook eggs, on medium heat, to desired consistency. Hard-boiled yolks require about 8 minutes; so if you want anything in between, give yourself up to this measure of time.
Monday Meal.
Okay, back to farm work tomorrow with renewed energy and inspiration…
Munchkin has sequestered herself in the kitchen to invent new recipes.
I said to Gnome:
“I’m not budging an inch from the kitchen!!”
He replied with:
“It’s okay my dear. Nobody is moving you out of the kitchen.”
So everything is fine and I can go Munchkin Crazy in the kitchen spilling my creative juices and stuffing my face with fine yum-yums!! Yay!! The Joys of Being a Munchkin!
You’ll get the full recipe in the above link. This is a quick walk through with nice pictures of food.
Ooooh…first of all. Here’s a picture of my soup cauldron. It is one of my most favourite possessions…
Clay Pot.
Chaya is a spinach which grows in Belize. It is sometimes quite tough in texture but loaded with nutrients. Blending chaya is a great way to get the best out of this vegetable:
Chaya.
Blending Chaya:
Blending Chaya.
Making Chaya Onion Soup:
Add Chaya to Onions.
Oh and cassava croutons are amazing. Well, let’s face it…anything fried is rather good!! Cut into crouton like cubes to mimic croutons:
Our Lovely Cassava:
Peeled Cassava.
Cassava Croutons:
Cassava Croutons.
Et Viola…
Chaya Onion Soup with Cassava Croutons:
Chaya Onion Soup with Cassava Croutons.
Lovely in this cooler weather!! Have a Great Sunday!! 🙂
Ahhhh!!! It’s actually cool today…what a relief from the unrelenting hot, dry weather. When it’s blistering hot every day, you always feel that there is no end in sight. So today we had already decided not to have our 4am wake up alarm and wake up with the light. Waking up naturally is such a lovely thing and we had the added bonus of a cool weather change. Great stuff: we are both in better spirits with the cool weather; heat makes you hot-headed and tense all the time…it’s maddening!!
Anyway, I took the time to walk around the farm to take some pictures to give you an update on what’s happening.
Oh, the garden is getting very bushy; despite the dryness this year, we have managed to get plenty of greens from our bucket garden.
Container Garden.
The fennel is flowering. We can collect seeds and start a whole load of these:
Flowering Fennel.
Gnome’s tobacco: Not fi eat!! That’s flowering too:
Tobacco Flowering.
Jalapeño peppers are doing really well:
Jalapeno Peppers
The farm keeps on producing and we feel so fortunate that we have an abundance of food.
Jackfruit is loaded:
Lots of Jackfruit.
It’s been a good year for soursop:
Lots of Soursop.
(Hi Tanya!! I’ll let you know when some are ready!! 🙂 )
I think it always good to encourage everyone to be artistic; it is a form of expression. I have been trying to help Gnome make the time to relax and do more activities just for the sake of passion and fun. With some of the physical labour on the farm, he does sometimes feel that the work is never-ending…it just ends up being a to-do list. He actually does the farm work out of necessity (who else is going to do it?) and to keep himself very healthy and strong. Pulling out heavy logs and brush-mowing are not his primary goals in life.
His likes are very simple though. he loves growing vegetables especially tomatoes and aubergines. And one of the things that he does for sheer pleasure is just to walk about his garden, taking the time to look at the fruits of his labour.
Growing Tomatoes.
He enjoys the process of making things. He likes to make wine: the pressing of fruit, the fermentation and bubbling away and then waiting for something special. It’s all about time and love and I don’t mean it in a wishy-washy sort of way…it’s solid. It’s not for the end product anyway because he rarely drinks.
Wine-Making.
Another thing that I am encouraging him to do is to grow tobacco. This is again about making something good and proper. He enjoys the curing process which takes about a year: hanging it up inside the house (yes, we need a barn or we’ve ended up making our house into a barn!), the flavouring, curing and blending.
Hanging Up Tobacco.Sliced Tobacco.
This allows Gnome to express himself and these are his arts. Yes, he will have lovely, aromatic pipe tobacco and cigars in the end but its the artful journey that releases the joyful spirit.
Tobacco Plant.
Gnome has been making rope twists with his tobacco; it is a form of pressure curing. Once he’s done his work of art, he gives them to Munchkin to store away for a year or more.
Tobacco Twist.
I have written about the history of tobacco. Click on link if interested. Personally, I really enjoy the presence of the plant (not sure if you understand what I mean). You almost form an affinity towards certain plants and they draw you to them and you can sit for long lengths of time just staring at the beautiful velvety leaves or inhaling the spicy aromatic scent of the flowers. That’s what I mean.
These are the things that we should be doing in our lives. It’s a fine balance of labour properly done to meet your necessities (shelter/food/clothing/energy requirements) and after that, we should foster an attitude of relaxation and enjoyment without filling up our lives with only monetary orientated deeds. And we need each other to remind ourselves that we are supposed to be having fun on this journey of self-discovery.
Back to the grind for Munchkin & Gnome as we resume our farm activities…yes, we are disappearing into the woodwork again!! So, the Chocolate Festival was our chance to see everyone and it was good to see some “old faces.” Thank-you everyone for all your continued support and we are glad that we continue to survive (and thrive) in this environment. A special thanks to Alisa Atkinson and Tati for sharing a stall with us; it was a lot more fun this year with the jolly good company! See y’all again next year!!
See you today at Chocolate Festival 2017. Munchkin and Gnome (aka Casa Mascia Apothecary) will be found somewhere near the Cotton Tree Chocolate Factory selling their wares. We’ll have chocolate soaps, chocolate body scrub, copal products and lots of other goodies. Come and see us because we are taking this time to socialise and talk to people!! Otherwise you won’t see us for another year!! Come early-ish!!
There are some things that I miss about Scotland (The UK). In terms of food, I miss chocolate eclairs and salmon (smoked and fresh). Fish and Chips: just for the smell on fresh paper…although they probably don’t serve it on paper any_more…just like they stopped serving it on newspaper! Oooh maybe Irn Bru…oh, but you need to be Scottish to know about this very orangey beverage…
Anyway…just wanted to show you the inside of British Foods Belize in Cayo. It’s a lovely shop to go into because you can see the love and the care put into the displays. Thanks Joyce and Graham for a bit of British…
Shop is nice and cosy, like a “real” shop:
British Foods Belize.
Bird’s Eye:
British Food.
Oooh…tea cosy!! Look at these!!
Tea Cosy.More British Food.
So glad I have found a place that stocks Yorkshire Tea…
It’s Sunday and we’ve still working on a million and one things. Gnome asked, “…where’s the fun??”
Oops, these blog posts are supposed to inspire other people to live a farming lifestyle like us.
Gnome’s working on the veranda, pulling out posts and putting them into holes. I tended to the animals (goosies and guinea pigs mostly) this morning and watered the 40 or so buckets in our garden. After that I potted some sage and tobacco plants. I’ve just been clearing a big mess in the old plant nursery where the old posts were located. There are all sorts of crap: some of the stuff is destined for the dump but I have to pick through it all to save the useful stuff…like buckets and planting bags. I stopped to make lunch (shitake and bitter gourd soup with lentils….still have to eat well despite being busy). And Gnome’s still sweating away outside knocking things together.
And now I have to pack some soap and products and….oh, and then there is the Chocolate Festival to prepare for next weekend….
So, I think that it’s time for an afternoon break. I have to keep in mind that life on a farm comes in cycles of busy and quiet and there’s no in-between!! The important thing is to pull yourself out of it once in while and remember, we’re supposed to be having fun!!
Okay, goosie time!! Look, the yellow wellies work…the goosies think that we are one of them!!
There should a Farming 101 course or a Dummy’s Guide to Farming. We sure could do with this since neither of us grew up on farms. Now, this is a funny story that happened this week…which makes me wish that we had farming classes at school that taught you the basics…like how to pull a wooden post out of a 3 foot hole without doing your back in.
Gnome is currently working on building a back veranda and needs to erect 8 sturdy rose-wood posts, 10 feet tall, 3 feet into the ground. He’s dug the holes (oooh, that started the sore back) and now he has to re-locate posts into this new area. Now, these posts have been used for different things around the farm and need to be dug out of their holes. The posts are about 200kgs (400lbs) in weight so it’s no joke! I saw Gnome perform the heroics of removing one post (ooooooh…sore, sore back!!) and I promptly told him to stop before he did any silly damage to himself.
So we decided to take a break (cup of tea and a Kit-Kat) and do a Google search on “how to lift posts out of holes.”
Something called a “Farm Jack” came up. We both looked at the description and it suddenly dawned us that this was the exact piece of invention that we were looking for! Where had it been in all these 13 years of farming when we were painstakingly trying to dig posts out of holes…
And then we realised that there was a piece of equipment that looked exactly like a farm jack lying rotten and neglected, dying a horrible death under our house. It had been left as a “can you keep this I’ll be back in 2 weeks” piece of equipment which we have now kept for 10 years waiting for this guy to come back who will never come back.
We both looked at each other and said at the same time,
“Oh we have a farm jack!! Is that what it is! “
All those years of keeping that piece of equipment and having no idea what it was!! Too Funny, right? Or should we just feel very silly and sheepish…
Ancient Farm Jack
Anyway, Gnome took the hunk of metal junk out and with a pair of pliers, some diesel and a wire brush proceeded to clean it up. Upon closer scrutinisation, the original two pins had been replaced, in a haphazard way, with a nail at the top and a half broken screw at the bottom. Gnome attempted to “fix” the farm jack and with some magic and a piece of wire with a metal key-holder managed to get the thing working. It wasn’t perfect since the bottom pin was broken so he used a wire to lever the pin back and forth. It worked…it actually worked…well, we got a post an inch out of the hole before the make-shift lower pin gave way and broke. Arrrghhhh!!! It was looking so promising.
Farm Jack Quick Fix
Well, it’s not fixable now and the broken pin is stuck so can not be removed and replaced. It is such a shame because if it wasn’t for that, it would work!
Now to look for a farm jack in Belize. Not easy. We tried looking for one in Toledo, Belize and the likes of it has never been seen or heard of before in this district. We must search further afield…
Work has temporarily come to a standstill on our farm due to a sore back and difficulty procuring equipment. 🙂
