Catching Up!

With the equinox, Goosie Wars have begun; the shorter day lengths have caused an immediate switch in temperament.  Goose breeding season is starting and they will lay sometime in February.  This is what happened a few days ago: Gnome went out into the yard and was immediately pecked at by big bossie goosie on the big toe!  Then another male goose lunged at him side-ways.  It was a close call and Gnome was rather taken aback by the fray.

Gnome shouted out to me,

“Watch out Munchkin!!  Goosie wars have started!”

This means six months of goosie bullying, severe hooliganism and general chaos on the farm.  When I go down to the yard every morning, I will have to be armed with a broom.  Watch out Panda too…goosies are really brutal with him!!

Mean and Tough!!

As a follow-up to the “mechanical failure” of the weed-wacker, the carburetor needed adjustment; Gnome’s comment:

“I messed around with the screws that the manual said that shouldn’t be messed around with…”

So, we are clearing bush right now…sorry, I wish I had more exciting “catching up” news for you but it can be a bit mundane at times!

No Rest!!

Happy Independence Day Everyone!!  The celebrations started last night about 5pm in Punta Gorda…will run through the whole day today and I am not sure when it will finish (might run onto the weekend  if it’s at all possible).  Friday morning should be fun since it is still a normal working day!  Well, no rest for Munchkin and Gnome today…we are still charging ahead on the farm.

Only one problem.  Gnome says,

“Mechanical failure!”

Oh!!  No!!  Not again!!  This time it’s the weed-wacker.  it hasn’t been running that well lately and Gnome thought it was the air filter so off we went to the Farm-store yesterday to buy the filter.  It turned out to be a tiny piece of foam with two holes punched in it and it cost $4.  I guffawed (remember I am Chinese) at the till attendant and said to the boy,

“…it’s just a piece of foam…”

He was actually very sympathetic and he said,

“I know! I wouldn’t buy that for $4 either!”

Good, I am glad that we were all in agreement but I still had to buy it anyway.

Despite the change in air filter, the weed-wacker is still acting up so Gnome is back to this:

Gnome Keeping Out of Trouble.

We may take day off after all and join in with the celebrations!  We have Panda coming round later for Birthday waffles so we will have a wee bit of a “knees-up.”

Munchkin and Gnome on The Farm.

Hello Everyone!!  I hope you are having a pleasant Sunday.  We’ve been up and about on the farm trying to clear the encroaching jungle since we are experiencing dry weather.  I asked Gnome to crank up the brush-mower on Wednesday.

He has been clearing the yard with the weed-wacker with a circular saw blade (according to Gnome this is better than using the “string” because it saves on consumables and  the usual horizontal blade tends to scatter rocks around which can be potentially dangerous).  I am going into a lengthy conversation about this blade attachment because I had to go into every hardware store in Punta Gorda looking for a circular saw blade to fit the end of the weed-wacker and I had to repeat the above explanation so many times…

“…yes I’m looking for a circular saw blade…no, it’s to fit a weed-wacker….”

Apparently, nobody does this and were very interested in this innovative idea.  Maybe this is another wacky Gnome idea that requires trademarking (Ha-Ha!!).

Anyway, back to the brush-mower.  In a nutshell…Rest in Peace!!  The brush-mower has always given us trouble from day 1 and we have never (ever!) successfully cleared the farm in an entire run.  Something usually breaks down or the battery goes dead or something (it’s not in the mood or something!).  The parts have to be shipped from the States and the machine is put away awaiting parts that can take anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months to get to us.  Once we get the part, it runs for a bit and then something else goes wrong and then we have to order another part.  And round and round the merry-go-round we go.  I think we’ve been doing this for 5 years and Gnome is sick of it!

Poor Gnome!

This time round, I am not sure what happened but it wasn’t working again.  Gnome was so fed up and threw a big hissy fit!  No wonder!!

When it works, it’s Great!

The brush-mower wasn’t in a working condition when we first got it so I’m surprised it lasted this long with us.  It was Belize-rigged…look at this!!

Back Of Brush-Mower.

Anyway, Gnome has nothing but this:

Manual Mower.

Ha-Ha…not sure if he can do anything with this but he will try his best as usual.  But, for now,  I think it’s going to be weed-wacker (that’s all we have) to clear 12 acres. Wow…that’s going to be a lot of work since some of the bush is really high.

Sting-Done-Gone!!

I wanted to share this with you since it actually happened about 30 minutes ago.  I was on the veranda moving paper bricks and I got an almighty, awful sting from a scorpion.  It really caught me by surprise because I had just reached my hand out to grab a brick and it must have been hiding behind it.  I gave such an almighty scream that even my cat woke up from his dreamy Sunday nap.  He promptly fell asleep again once he saw me jumping about like a mad maniac…hmmm, he must think that this is a normal state for me…

Anyway, I didn’t want to be a woose and call Gnome (emergency doc) for a scorpion bite so I ran into the house to see what I could do myself.  Yesterday, I had been bottling our Itch Done Gone (insect bite relief) product and since it was readily available, I grabbed some of that.

This is what I did: I dumped a bottle (10mls) of Itch Done Gone, about a 1/4 cup of baking soda, filled the jug up to about 500mls (1/2 quart) with water and stuck my hand in it.

Ahhhh relief…the copal (a natural anti-inflammatory)  together with the camphor in the Itch Done Gone cooled down the inflammation and my hand stopped throbbing with the pain.  I left my hand in it for about 5 minutes…I would recommend longer (like half an hour to get the full benefits).

My personal thoughts on using this concoction as a scorpion sting remedy: this time round, the area that was stung, did not swell up as much as much as  previous times (when no remedy was used).    I felt subjectively that although it did not take away the pain entirely, that the pain was lessened in intensity and duration.

Interestingly enough, I have been told by other people that they have  used Itch Done Gone for scorpion bites with good results.  I’ve been told that they apply it directly onto the affected areas.  My use of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) was derived from the knowledge that it is used in allergic reactions such as poison ivy to help with itch relief.  According to Gnome’s logic, immunological responses tend to set up an acidic environment so the logic in using sodium bicarbonate is to alkalinize the environment; possibly if there are any acidic components to the venom, they might get neutralised.

My recommendations: I think that a bottle of Itch Done Gone should be an essential in everybody’s first aid kit.  Not only is it effective in relieving the itch and inflammation of insect bites, you can also use it in scorpion stings.  If you are interested in this product please click on this link: Itch Done Gone in Casa Mascia Apothecary.

Phew…Back On-Line!!

Hello…we have Internet back on after a week off-line  and nothing has changed.  Gnome said, “Nobody bothers writing emails anyway.”  And sure enough, I’ve checked the mail and there were 42 junk emails.  Anyway, it all started with a bad storm last Wednesday evening which resulted in our transformer blowing out.  By the time electricity was restored, it was Friday so it was near enough to the  weekend…and we all know nothing happens at the weekend here, so we called to get our Internet fixed on Monday.

Even before all of that happened, we have been experiencing computer woes.  The power cable for our computer crapped out (after a thunderstorm and a brief power-cut) and then the computer shut down before we even knew what had happened.  We did not get a chance to back up the hard-drive so I’ll need some time to retrieve my passwords for administrative websites.  Oh, and the printer doesn’t seen to recognise this temporary computer so we can’t print our business labels out.  Hmmm…somebody once told me that when you get electrical problems, it’s because Mercury is in retrograde (something like that).  Let’s all hope (cross our fingers) that Mercury is moving forward again!!