Monthly Archives: August 2017

Belize, Farming, Food

Where Does The Time Go?

We are soooo busy we haven’t had time to write.  I am either doing something (so can’t be at the computer) or doing nothing (so can’t be bothered because I’m too tired).  It’s either 1 or 0 at the moment!  Gnome is getting better from his shoulder injury so I’ve got him on “light duties” right now.  This still entails moving wheel-barrows of dirt and filling up new vegetable beds.  We are dismantling the current piggie beds which are full of wonderful mulch and building new temporary homes for them.  It in other words, we have rotational concrete “pastures” for the piggies;  the piggies are fed grass and all things nice, they  poop and do their thing for 3 months, we then move them along to another home and grow vegetables in the old home.  So on and so forth….the piggies are doing their job on the farm!  Piggie  mulch is fantastic; the earth is black, black, black and there are fat worms wiggling about everywhere!

Piggie Rotational Homes.

My lovely Piggies:

So, I’ve got a whole load of seedlings ready including tomatoes, peppers, aubergines, kale, endives and fennel.

Tomato Seedlings.
Pepper Seedlings.

I’ll try and write more this week!!

Belize, Farming

What’s Happenin’?

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Hello Everyone!!  As a follow up from the frustrating iguana story, I thank you all for your advice to eat them.  We were actually going to do this but not mention it in our blog as we thought that it would sound politically incorrect.  Anyway(s), watch this space for iguana curry!

Well what’s been happenin’?  Gnome is temporarily out of action…again!  He was lifting and pushing zinc roofing into place yesterday and he has accidentally torn a ligament…in the left scapula region.  He said,

“My shoulder blade feels so unstable, it feels like it’s popped out of place!”

I examined him thoroughly and reassured him that the injury was not too severe but he did need about two weeks rest with no heavy lifting.  He wasn’t happy to hear about that!

So, no weed-wacking, no construction, no nothin’ for Gnome right now.  He’s going to drive me crazy…Ha-Ha!!

Anyway, I haven’t been writing so much but we’ve been doing our usual squirrelling around the farm.  Both can’t keep still!!  We’ve been doing regular canning lately and have amassed a respectable amount of jars in our pantry.  We have another 38 jars of lentils and 34 jars of beef stew.  Oh, and some beef broth too.  More food hoarding!!  Yippee!!

Preserved Foods.

The duckies have been laying but we haven’t been able to keep up with eating the eggs so I’ve started salting the eggs (Chinese style).  You might know the salted duck egg yolks from Chinese  mooncake.  We’ll going to have about 50 of them!

Salted Duck Eggs.

Since I am talking about food preservation, I will end with a big jar of craboo that we have pickled in vinegar with jalapeños.

Pickled Craboo.

Yes, it’s craboo season again and the only people who love this stuff are the Belizeans, Gnome and Munchkin.  Anyone born outside of Belize, refuse to touch this stuff because they think it’s tastes cheesy, in a bad way.   We think it tastes cheesy in a good way…it is after all, best eaten after fermenting in a plastic bag for a few days.  According to local tradition, the best method to get the craboo to ripen  is to place in a car for a few days to bake in the heat of the sun.

How to ferment craboo.

Enjoy craboo season while it lasts!!

Belize, Farming, Plants

The Trouble With Iguanas.

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I used to think that iguanas were cute and all things nice.  Not any more!!  They have eaten every single vegetable in my garden..  I am soooo mad.  The pumpkin patch that we planted on a bed produced so much this year and we didn’t get a single vegetable.  I tried putting gloves over the young fruit to disguise them but lo and behold, they crawled into the gloves and munched away.

Pumpkin Patch.

All the young fruits are disappearing on my aubergines.

Aubergine Plant.

Yesterday I spotted a baby iguana sitting at my Indian cucumber vine, all bloated and sleepy from feasting on my vegetables.  Hey, that’s not fair!!

Yesterday, I declared war on the iguanas,

“Munchkin is going to war against the iguanas.”

No more nice Munchkin; I am very, very upset.  My first course of action is repellent sprays.  I read on the Internet that you can spray on your prized vegetables a concoction of habanero peppers and garlic.  Gnome also mentioned that I should try spraying sulphur….he said that generally speaking, most creatures don’t like sulphur sprayed thickly on their vegetables!

This is war!!  Dear Mr/Mrs Iguana, please would you kindly re-locate.  You are not welcome here!!  This is a very polite warning…

Iguana
Amusing, Belize, Farming

Houdini Duckie!!

Phew…what a sweat fest it has been for the last week.  I have been walking about with a sore head from all the heat.  Today is a blessing with morning rains and marked coolness.  Oh lovely!!  So, the headache was definitely due to the heat.

Another silly Duckie Tale!!  About 6 months ago, we bought a new lot of fowl from a neighbour; this included a pair of geese and a pair of turkeys (The Overlord and the Duchess).  The neighbour was trying to off load her fowl because her dogs were attacking them and she felt sad that they had to kept in a protected coop all the time.  She threw in a duckie as a freebie since it was all alone and she had lost her drake partner to the dog.

At that point, when this new duckie joined us we had 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 duckies.  After about 2 to 3 weeks, I kept on counting 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 duckies.  This was back when the ducks had total free range of the entire farm and could come and go as they pleased.  They were herded into the coop at night.   Some days I would count 8 ducks as they trooped into the coop for their daily corn ration.  Other days there would be 6 ducks so I reckoned that some of them wanted to stay out and I felt that having independant ducks was okay at that time.  During the last 6 months our duckie rearing practices have changed because they were laying eggs haphazardly all over the farm.  Most of the time the dogs were getting them.  We decided to keep them for a short while in the guinea pig houses.  When we made this change, we had 7 duckies and I could not find number 8 (the new recruit).  We looked everywhere and gave her up as lost.

So, we had 7 ducks definitely for a while.  Four months ago, we let them all out in the confines of the duck coop (aka zen garden).  After a while, there were 6 ducks.  No idea what happened to that one.  Then there were 5 ducks (snake?)…then, definitely 4 by the end of the boa incident.  So, I’ve been counting 4 for about 6 weeks now.  I need to remind you  at this point that the coop is now sealed so the ducks can’t get in or out of it.

Last night I counted 1-2-3-4…5!!

Where did the fifth one come from???  It just appeared from nowhere and joined the usual food fight in the evening like she had always been there.  She is really skinny and she looks like the new duckie that we gave up for lost about 6 months ago.

We have no idea where she came from and what she has been doing all this time.  Gnome reckons that she has been hiding inside the cardamom bush in the coop all this time (setting with no eggs!) and she has been so perfectly camouflaged that we haven’t spotted her.  What…for 6 months!!!  Hmmmm….maybe…or she’s a magician duckie and walks through walls and coops!!

So, where have you been all this time??

Where have you been?

(Not Telling!)