Monthly Archives: August 2018

Amusing, Belize, Farming, Food, Plants

It’s Horrible Outside!

It is full on rainy season and it is absolutely pouring down.  Every morning we have been waking up to thunderstorms and torrential rain.  Water is flowing in tiny little streams on our farm and we haven’t been able to get out to work  for a full week.  This morning, Gnome said, “…oh that’s interesting…the weather report said it was going to be bright and sunny with a 1% chance of rain.”  Well, looks like we got the 1% or the weather report is totally, wildly inaccurate…I suspect the second.  😉

Anyway, this is the best time for pumpkins, gourds and all manner of curcubits.  The water allows the them to swell up into humongous fruit…and, I think this is the best part…those beetles that like to drill holes into all my tasty, delectable vegetables can’t get out to burrow holes because of the rains!  Ahhh, of course that is the silver-lining cloudy thing that Hallmark people like to point out to me.  😉

These are some bottle gourds harvested from our farm.  We eat most of them young but I have left three of them to mature to use as vessels to store some of our home-made wine.

Bottle Gourd Harvest.

We had our first breadfruit harvest this year; it has taken three years for the trees to start baring.  We probably have harvested about 100 from three young trees.

Breadfruit Tree
Breadfruit

We are eating the fruit as a potato substitute; of course, as all Belizeans will testify, breadfruit is best fried in oil:

We like to cut them into “chip” shapes (easier to eat with chopsticks!) but most people around here have them as half or quarter wedges.

Fried Breadfruit Chips.

Gnome cooked a breadfruit stew with his usual home-made wine, tomato sauce Italian thing.  It was very good:

Chopped Breadfruit.
Breadfruit Stew.

Oh, and Gnome has been sticking coke bottles around coconut trees…what is he up to?

Coke Bottle in Coconuts.
Amusing, Belize, Farming, Food, Mushrooms, Plants

It’s About Time…

It’s about time to write again.  The goosies are calling me through space and time…they’ve been squeaking and squawking at me in their usual relentless way.  Oh, and the grass keeps on growing!  So I must keep on writing my exciting posts about geese and grass! Lately, we have had massive rains punctuated by one or two days of sun; we are still running around the farm  doing whatever is possible in this wet weather when the opportunity presents itself.

We have been very fortunate with farm harvests during this rainy season and we are very thankful for them.  Plenty of akee:

Akee Harvest.

We really enjoy the texture and taste of akee; it has a unique fatty, buttery taste.  I would even venture to say that I prefer them to avocadoes.   We also had the fortune of wild paddy straw mushrooms coming up on one of our vegetable beds.

Paddy Straw Mushrroms.

Here is a dish of paddy straw mushrooms cooked in olive oil, Gnome pasta stuff (yay! he is still cooking) and akee.  Yes, we are still eating really well off the farm:

Paddy Straw Mushrooms and Akee.

Oh and look at this…in between this huge abundance of food, Gnome still dug up beetle larvae, brought it into the house and asked me rather politely if I would like to share some food with him,

“…eh, Munchkin….would you be willing to eat some grubs…”

Beetle Grubs.

He wasn’t joking.  This comes from his old bush tucker days in the Northern Territory, Australia when he used to forage around and eat witchity grubs and berries (as Gnomes do).  I was a bit scared about eating these wiggly things live so I said that I could coat them in egg and breadcrumbs and fry them in oil.  At this point, I started looking very closely at the writhing grubs and felt (would you believe it!) sorry for them.  I exclaimed,

“…it’s a bit cruel to chuck these poor things in boiling hot oil, though!”

Next thing I know, Gnome is having a conversation with me about how to practically approach this apparent mental stumbling block:

“…well, I suppose you could parboil them first…or, you could chop their heads off first…”

I bailed out at this point and said,

“…look Gnome, I would eat these in a survival situation but the truth of the matter is that we have plenty of food on the farm right now.  Why don’t I give them to Duckie? “

He didn’t really have a choice because I was out of the house before he could say anything.  Sure enough, Duckie had a real gourmet treat of beetle larvae…she gobbled them up like there was no tomorrow.

Belize

The Passage of Time.

4 Comments

It’s been a while since I have written.  I thought of quoting from the Bible or writing some poem about a weary traveller resting at long last after a long journey or even quoting a wry Mark Twain quote.  I can’t find anything.  I think that grief has no words and they are best left unspoken…because no-one knows your heart except yourself.  A post left blank with no words would be more appropriate…silence to represent love and respect… but alas, I should speak a few words.  My dear father passed away recently and I have been in mourning.  May he Rest in Peace.