May | 2019 | Casa Mascia Apothecary

We ave been starting super early with farm work since it has been very hot. We are out by 6am and back in at 10am. Sunday was supposed to be a relaxing and “let’s do a few odd jobs outside” day. Gnome started a fire on a pile of palm leaves and it burnt without a problem. The fire went out and I added some new palm fronds hoping to get this lot cleared up too…well, it started…a tiny spark of fire came out from my new pile and jumped onto the front fence line. Before my very eyes, the fence line was up in roaring flames about 18 foot high and touching the electricity lines. It was scary to see such an enormous wall of fire. Gnome came to the rescue and we ended up pouring a thick line of water on both sides of the fire to stop the fire from proceeding either way. One side was going towards the front gate so Gnome doused the wood in water and the other side was heading all the way to San Felipe Village. Luckily this strategy worked and we only needed about 5 pigtail buckets of water to get everything under control. Phew…it was touch and go for a bit and thank God, there was no damage. By the time we finished, we were hot and exhausted…it was still only 9.30am! The ironic thing was that my frond pile didn’t catch fire at all!

I don’t have any pictures of the fire because I was too busy carrying buckets of water! Anyway, we are not lighting any more fires…at this late point in the dry season, it can get too dry and there is serious danger of bush catching fire very quickly. We have learnt our lesson!

We have been clearing behind the house. Gnome felled an enormous tree which will give us a full week’s work of moving wood and piling. This tree is a legume so we are collecting the leaves to use as mulch for the vegetable beds. Just as an aside, Gnome strained his back again using the chain-saw so he is only on light duty right now. Oh, the life of a Gnome! 😉

Look, you can see the mountains behind:

Big tree; I have included a bit of the truck in the photo so that you can get an idea of the size of the tree:

That’s it for now. Stay Cool!!

Another Blog post to let you know that we are still here and that this is indeed Goosie time. We have ten now which is a wonderful surprise since we thought that our eggs had been spoiled by a power-cut that stopped our incubator for the whole day. Well, here are the first four that are now 4 weeks old…they are at the ugly stage when they are just starting to feather. They have their own enclosed area to walk about and I take them for supervised foraging walks every day. These ones have black beaks (mostly) so they are probably the Chinese Goosie type.

We have another two Chinese Goosies that are two weeks old. I don’t seem to have a picture of them. They have been moved to a cage outside…these two are stupid and daft and can’t work out what to eat and what not to eat despite Munchkin teaching them. Gnome says that not all geese can be geniuses. 😉

Okay, so I need to show-case the last four; they are fat, fluffy, golden-yellow with short necks so we reckon that this lot are the German type of goosie. They are a lot noisier, more clingy and are constantly chattering amongst each other, at you and to anything (even the cat?) that might care to listen.