It has been very, very hot and unbearable lately. We just had a brief rain yesterday which managed to fill up our basins again. Oh, we must thank the Goddess of Goosies for her generosity again this year! Even with the incubator shut-down, we have more goosies to enjoy. I had been checking the double goose nest everyday and still there was nothing; on Wednesday, we were out of the farm for the whole day and we got home late. I was exhausted and convinced myself that there was no need to peak under Mama Goosie. However, Gnome insisted so I stomped outside and had a quick look and it was a good thing he insisted. There were two little fluffed up goosies twittering away…hungry and thirsty…these Mamas seem to be so broody that they don’t snap out of setting even with the sound of a gosling. So, here they are! We have two more and we are very pleased!
Hello, I thought I would take a break from talking about my goosies to show you some pictures of the vegetables that we grew this dry season. Dry season is always a problem because of the need to conserve water so irrigation can be an issue. This time, we had a line of basins placed behind our back veranda to catch rain water; the water was for the geese and the plants.
Water Basins.
We placed tyres around the perimeter of the house…you can’t see them in the picture but they are just underneath the house. A wire trellis was stretched from the tyres all the way up to the veranda to allow climbing vegetables to grow up them. So, here are a few of our favourites: Cherokee tomatoes; these are so good we eat them raw with salt.
Cherokee Tomatoes.
Our all time favourite vegetable is the bitter gourd; we found a nice, fat round variety to grow; these are huge and weigh about a pound each:
Big Bitter Gourd.
They are great for stuffing; look at the size of these!!
Stuffed Bitter Gourd.
Stuffing Bitter Gourd.
This Easter, Gnome stuffed bitter gourd with minced beef and cooked it “Italian-Style.” We also had stuffed Cherokee tomatoes and our own adzuki beans. It was a feast from our own garden!
Stuffed Bitter Gourd Meal.
We were really stuffed after eating this huge meal. It is truly a pleasure to eat our own vegetables…there is nothing like home-cooked food!
Hope everyone had a good Easter weekend. We took it easy and took the new kids out to the pond area. They are getting bigger and the oldest one which is about 17 days old is 500g (1lb).
Some pictures of the kids (especially for Mama Gnome):
Awwwhhh!! My Goosies!!Lovely Goosies 2019
So far, they had been kept in the sink with regular cleaning every few hours; even with that, they are messy and stinky. Alas, I must allow them into the big world out there. In the daytime, they have been placed in a wire cage surrounded by an outer perimeter. They have plenty of water, greens and food:
Little Goosies in Cage.
The inner cage is closed up to stop predators like hawks from swooping down and stealing the babies. The outer perimeter is to stop the adult goosies from stealing them. This is what happened last year: the adult geese would sit with the babies all day and every day 24/7 until the the goslings got used their presence and adopted all of them as their guardians. Once the cage was removed, the several adults that the goslings had imprinted upon would pounce and fight over ownership of the babies. What follows is a lot of goosie fighting and shenanigans possibly with incidental casualties as snatched babies get caught in the crossfire. I know…it can be like a war zone out here…
The goosies are doing well:
Plenty of fresh air and food!
I will try to update you more over the next few days. I have some computer screen problems…I mentioned it before…now I am missing a third of the right screen. We brought down an old monitor and on connecting it up, found that it had the same problem but the bottom third of the screen was missing! I suppose that between the two of them, I could use the computer. Anyway, I think Gnome is giving me his monitor so he won’t have one now! The humidity of the Tropics wreaks havoc on all electronic equipment…
Good Morning and a Good Friday to you all. Yes, we have four lovely goosies now. The incubator eggs that were placed under our auspicious double broody goosie nest has proven to be a success. Gnome remarked on the fact that we didn’t need an incubator since all our mother goosies are extremely broody. Yes, but we read on the Internet that female geese were bad setters!
Here are G1, G2, G3 and G4 (The collective group called G-Force)…hmmm…not very imaginative names Munchkin!
Four Goosies in a Tank.
I can’t put them all in my apron pockets so I have them two at a time. The oldest one is growing rapidly and at day 12 it is 250g (about 1/2lb). They alternate between the fish tank, the sink and I will start taking them for supervised walks outside…yes that’s right…I will adopt the mamma goosie role. In the last two days, I have separated the two older ones and the two younger ones because the first two were hogging all the food.
Hello!! This morning we woke up at our usual time and had goosie bouncing about on the table as we had a cup of tea. We are having a lovely time with Goosie…
First goosie of the year:
Goosie Side Profile.
Goosie in Pouch.
Morning time is usually a peaceful time for us but not today! There was a huge racket going on outside with goosie honks, screams and shrieks. Gnome turned to me and said that they were even noisier today…what was going on? And then in between all this noise we heard…peep, peep, peep!! Oh, another goosie?? Gnome looked outside from the veranda and sure enough there was a little yellow fluffy thing terrified out of its wits surrounded by a rabble of crazy goosies. Gnome quickly ran down and grabbed the goosie before any damage could be done. And so we have Goosie No.2:
Double Goosie!
As you may recall, Gnome placed the incubator eggs under a goosie mama on Sunday because we had a power-cut. We then neglected to check on hatchlings because we were busy with other things. We now think that this second goose probably hatched about three days ago because we have been hearing peeping on and off…I thought that it was peeping from a wild birdie so did not think anything of it. Anyway, we now have two cute geese to play with!
I don’t have any more pouches in my apron so I don’t know what to do if we get a third one! Gnome says that I should have an apron with six pockets so that I can take care of six at a time!
We are bang in the middle of the insufferable heat of the dry season. Arrrghhhh!!! The relentlessness of the heat!! There was no rain for two weeks (yes, even the Thursday rain stopped) and the pond dried up early this year. On Monday evening, we had a storm….black, black clouds, thunder and lotta rain…what a relief. Yesterday, according to the weather forecast, there was supposed to be five hours of rain and we waited eagerly for the relief…not a drop of rain until about 9pm when we got 5 drops of rain! This time Gnome said:
“….there is nothing wrong with the weather report…the weather got it wrong!!”
Today is going to be hot and sunny, “good day for lawn-mowing” and we just want to find a cool place to go back to sleep! The resolve of Munchkin and Gnome is crumbling with the pressure of the heat!!
Anyway, we had an eight hour power cut on Sunday so we basically had to stay still and out of trouble for the whole time. I will tell you the good news first…we have our first goosie!!
Goosie 2019
We were not expecting it at all because the first two eggs did not hatch. On Sunday, Gnome realised the the power cut would spoil all the eggs in the incubator (that was the bad news) so in attempt to save the goosies he removed all the eggs (found the surprise goosie) and placed the eggs under two broody geese sitting on the same nest.
Broody Geese.
Now we have the pleasure of the company of our first gosling of the year. This one is noisy, naughty, attention-seeking, cute and very, very goosie in nature.
Goosie Goosie!!
Goosie (gender unknown) is all on his lonesome so I take it for walks outside and he sits with us at the table…actually does not sit…sort of runs, leaps and bounds about like a boinging goosie on springs…eek, watch out for the cat underneath the table! Generally, I am giving it a lot of time and I place it in the pouch of my apron when I am in the kitchen or doing housework. I feel like a possum mamma with a little head peaking out of my front pocket!
Hi, I haven’t written because I had trouble with my computer…the monitor screen kept on fading. It worked for short lengths of time when I pressed around the edges of the screen but it still got very temperamental. The plan was to connect a monitor to the laptop but we didn’t have the right cable and we couldn’t find this cable anywhere in Punta Gorda. Yesterday, Gnome had a good look at my screen and wedged a plastic thing against the screen edge which has actually solved the problem of the fading screen! Okay, so I am back on-line now!
We have been busy. Gnome still can’t get the pipe that is stuck at the bottom of the well. Last time, he tried fishing it out with a great big length of bamboo; I think he’s going to try a wire this time round. We have to keep on trying because if we can’t get the pipe out, we won’t be able to use the well. Luckily, we have had plenty of water this dry season and funnily enough, we seem to get a torrential rain every week which always happens to be a Thursday.
The geese are up to their usual shenanigans. There was a cycle of laying and right now, we are not finding any eggs. Are they hiding them? This is a picture of a “goosie pile-up”…three very broody geese sitting on one nest with rocks:
Triple Goosie Pile-up.
They are very aggressive…they peck and hiss at me whenever I get close to them.
Anyway, that’s all for now. I will get my camera out and take some pictures for next time. Have a good evening!
