It’s that time of the year again to reflect on the year and start on a new one. Wishing every-one a Wonderful Start to 2019…I know, where did all the time go…I remember when it was 1999!!
Monthly Archives: December 2018
What We Ate On Christmas Day…
I sometimes find it entertaining to post pictures of my food up because I do realise that probably nobody really cares!! Ha-Ha!! We had a lovely Christmas together…just the two of us. This year, we gave gifts to each other (we don’t always do this because it can become a habit rather than acting out of spontaneity) . We buy the gifts together on-line and then present them to each other on Christmas Day. We both got fountain pens to write our diaries; we have started writing on a daily basis and I found that a ubiquitous ball-point pen was lasting me two weeks and I was storing up a massive collection of empty Bic pens under the bed. Okay, no more plastic things to throw away…I am now using a fountain pen which seems to be more ecological. We also got leather tool bags (for putting around our waists) which are fantastic for holding all our tools on the farm. I am very pleased with mine because I have been carrying all my stuff in a Reimer’s corn burlap bag. I feel like a fashion Munchkin!
We had our main Christmas meal at lunch time since I was brought up in Scotland but that is as far as my Scottish Christmas tradition goes as you will see from our unconventional festive dishes:
This is the main course: beef heart medallions with caramelised onions, shiitake mushrooms, water chestnuts, Barbados gooseberry and Chinese red dates. Potatoes were baked in charcoal. Fennel and sorrel as garnish. Ta-da…
Salad consisted of greens from Munchkin’s garden which included rocket, sorrel (roselle) calyces, Malabar spinach and edible calamondin peel.
Dessert was a chocolate-spice cake and Munchkin’s lemon ice-cream with Chocolate Velvet (see Apothecary) drizzled on top:
There you go…after all this and the left-overs, we are going onto vegetable soups for a while…
We are going on Walkabout for a while so see you in a while!!
Merry Christmas!
A Few More Pictures…
I thought that I would sneak in a few more pictures from the farm just before Christmas Day. Here are pictures of our peanut; look at the size of the leaves on the black peanut. These will be ready to harvest in February.
These are ripe fruit of the peanut butter plant. When left to ripen on the tree, the birdies usually get them. You can actually pick the fruit at an orange stage and then allow them to soften by themselves. They have the consistency of lotus paste (if you know what I mean).
Peanut Butter Fruit on tree:
Oh, and sorry I don’t have the pictures in sequence but this a picture of the leaves of jumbo peanut…still not as big as the black peanut!
I have started the last lot of seedlings before dry season: Gnome’s Mum will be pleased to see that the pomegranate seeds are still viable after a year; pomegranates in the middle, tobacco to the front and water cress to the back:
The water cress are ready to be planted out in our new grey water pond. We are planting them in a shaded area where the water flows from the veranda to the pond. Water cress likes constantly moving water:
The black peppers transplanted well; here is one showing new growth:
I will leave you with a festive picture. It is sorrel time again:
Quiet Time.
This is our quiet period of the year; Christmas and New Year…it’s the time in-between time when we try to stop our crazy, goal-orientated farm projects and reflect upon the year. Today we will try to “potter” around and look for likely goosie laying spots to put nests. They are usually over-grown areas with shade or bang right in front of the house whenever the mood takes them.
The geese have been especially feisty, noisy and aggressive. Bossie goosie has been chasing me around so I have been thwarting his attempts by shaking buckets in front of him…there is now a special broom in front of the house…designated “Goosie Broom” just in case things get a bit hairy and out of hand. So far, we are getting through goosie wars…
Okay, goosies! Time to lay eggs! This year we have decided to eat the first lot of eggs because they are usually not viable. Gnome says that he can’t wait to have a fried goosie egg with toast…mmmm…what a treat!
Okay, we will have a quiet day today pondering the meaning of our lives in a background of goosie shrieking and haranguing! It’s actually cold write now…both wearing our Christmas hats…
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What’s Happening On The Farm?
Well, I think I need to cram in a few posts before Christmas especially when our website was down for a wee while. Some people may need an extra dose of Munchkin and Gnome…Ha-Ha!
Anyway, the first grey water pond is dug and is receiving washing machine, dish-washing and bathing water. It’s not completely full because of our conservative use of water (still hauling buckets due to pressure tank giving out) and it has been dry and sunny. Here is a picture of Gnome digging…I cannot emphasize how hard it was to move this heavy dirt with a spade and muscle power…
Moving quickly on, we are constructing more concrete beds to plant cassava, sweet potato varieties (we have the Belizean yellow, the orangey one and a purple!!) and any other root we can get our hands on. In our efforts to plant roots and tubers, we have found that the raised bed works the best since the soil is loose and it allows ease of digging. Also, with the torrential rains here, the beds are good for water drainage.
Panda and I have been clearing at the pond area. Mostly we are using machete and muscle power. Gnome says that I should take snap shot pictures every week so that we can see the work coming along; it is a shame that I didn’t take the pictures from the beginning because this place was just bush! Anyway, I am pleased with our efforts and I am happy that I can wield a machete and chop things up; I use it as a cardiovascular workout!
You can see the bamboo in the picture; before the place was cleared, you could only see the high tufts. The plan is to plant bamboo all down the east side of the area.
This used to be all bush!! Look at the work of Panda and Munchkin!! Look at that!!
And this is the west side:
This is the line cleared on the west side. So, there you go…this is how we all keep fit on the farm. No need for exercise bikes and jogging…
I will leave you with a sunset picture from our farm; you can see the silhouette of the palms underneath and the swirls in the sky are amazing to look at:
Okay, I think I got the hang of WordPress 5…
Blog Back On-Line!
The Blog is back on-line! I don’t think anyone actually noticed and we didn’t realise until Gnome’s Mum told us that our website was down and what’s happening?
So, for about a week the website has just been a blank page and there was no text to be seen. We really thought that we had lost it all. My first thoughts were: “…oh…all my zillions of recipes!!” and, “…oh, Gnome, how are you going to remember the Pet Lime-Sulphur recipe??” I wasn’t devastated about it and was prepared to email (do people email anymore?) a few (maybe six)) of the people who follow our Blog regularly with updates. Gnome didn’t show any signs of emotion; he was neither happy nor sad.
Anyway, we asked Panda to sort it out and came back to us today to tell us that it was something to with a plug-in. So, we are back on-line and a special thanks to Panda for assisting in the continuation of our chronicles. Anyway, I need to get the hang of WordPress 5.0 which is a lot more visual and requires more clicking on icons. I was happy with the good old-fashioned way! Why do they keep on changing old stuff around when it was all perfectly fine? I will write more soon with a picture of the completed pond and our new vegetable beds. Yes, still working like little troopers…
Hot and Sunny!
The weather is hot and sunny right now. This is probably a good thing because Gnome is in the middle of pond digging. The first pond is almost done…just needs to go a foot deeper. The first part that I showed you last week has been lined with construction plastic, the sides have been weighed down with heavy rocks and taro and peanut have been planted. I am not going to show you a picture yet because it still looks like a messy construction site. We had to also fence off the whole area because the goosies thought that the new pond was a new swimming and socialising area. I had to chase them off with a broom when they started tearing up the planted peanut. Yes, those dastardly goosies are getting all feisty for breeding season and they are spoiling for a fight!
This is a picture of “Silly Goosie”; she is a bit of a loner and makes a weird “whir…whir…whir” noise as opposed to the more familiar “ghwaa! ghwaaa!” You may only appreciate my goosie communication observations if you are being surrounded 24 hours a a day by a gaggle of geese! Usually she walks about in the yard all the day talking to herself while the rest of them go off swimming. She seems happy enough.
Aside from digging in the dirt, Gnome has been air-layering to get more fruit trees for our newly organised orchard.
I have been planting black pepper cuttings:
The plan is to plant 10 to 20 vines behind the house to harvest enough pepper to use for the year. I have neglected the pepper in recent years and have resorted to buying white pepper…I know…that’s not like me at all!! The bought white pepper is bad quality and I just can’t get that lovely, Chinesy peppery flavour and aroma into my food. Time and time again, I am finding that money can’t buy everything and if I want something good, I have to do it myself! So back to looking after my plants and harvesting and processing…
