One That didn’t Make It…

December 14, 2020 Munchkin

Hiya Folks…I have been tidying up the house like there is no tomorrow. I was forced to do so today because it was pouring down! Gnome was stuck indoors too experiencing the fun of an even bigger mess…somehow it seems like the beginnings of tidying up start off worse than before because you end up with a pile of things that are useful (that you don’t want to throw away) but there is no designated space for them. Right now, I have a ‘rubbish pile’ and a very big ‘don’t know what to do with but it could come in useful’ pile. Arrrghh…help…it is actually really difficult!!

Anyway, enough of the lament. Guess what I found…on one of my mystery forays into one of the corners of the room:

Ahhh…brings back old memories from over a decade again. Once upon a time, when we thought that time was timeless, we engaged in mega brain-storming into how to convert everything(!) from the farm into products to sell. This was a Gnome idea since we used tongue scrapers and there was none to be found in the whole country of Belize at that time. Also, being Doctors, we viewed it as a great combo promotion of ecological and health (dental) awareness. We thought it was the best idea since sliced bread and it was an original thought…we didn’t have Internet or anything…at the time, we had no electricity, no computer, no phone and zero technology. To put the great brain fart into motion, Gnome cut down bamboo and painstakingly made long strips. Each single bamboo tongue scraper was made lovingly with our own hands in addition to all the blood, sweat and tears (Ha-Ha…going a bit overboard here but it was a laborious task).

You see…we even printed out a label…in those days, we would design and print our labels in the Internet shop in Punta Gorda and pay a $0.50 for each printed sheet. We tried out our new product at the first Cacao Fest in PG (2009, I think?) and we couldn’t sell any!! They started at $2 then we got desperate and slashed the price down to $0.50…still no takers. We explained the oral hygiene and that stuff but we didn’t get any interest…they couldn’t even see the novelty and excitement that we felt for them…we were heart-broken!! All that work and nobody could recognise it. We ended up taking a big bag of bamboo tongue scrapers back home unsold and there in the corner of the house they have sat dejected and unloved for all this time(awwwhh!!). That’s why I decided to write a post on our Bamboo Tongue Scrapers…to give them some acknowledgement and now that I have found them, we will have clean tongues for the rest of our lives!!

Let’s hear it for the Natural Bamboo Tongue Scraper. May it be remembered and I have given it a special place in this post.

Amusing, Belize

The Teapot Top Incident.

December 13, 2020 Munchkin

That was the icing on the cake…that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I can be funny about it now but believe me, we had one big hissy fit over this one. This is what happened:

Gnome: ‘Munchkin, oh dearest!! Where is the teapot top?’

(This isn’t exactly what he said but the for the purposes of wholesome family entertainment we will keep to this version).

I didn’t know where it was and I couldn’t find it for 5 days! This was rather disturbing because we used the teapot twice a day. How could the top go missing all of a sudden??

Well, I have some explaining to do…the days typically started with this type of conversation:

Gnome: ‘Munchkin, oh dearest!! Where is my…fill in the blank?’

Gnome: ‘Munchkin, oh dearest!! Have you seen my…fill in the blank?’

We have had some trouble finding things because the house is a mess. Arrrghhh!!! Picture a kitchen with a massive table top with every square inch filled up with an array of vegetables and fruit. Pots everywhere. Buckets of miso brewing in the corner. Oh and of course pig tail buckets of wine blubbling away happily in a corner. The floor under the table is crammed full of containers of home-made coconut oil. There is not an inch of space left to move in…

and what’s more…

in this tiny little house, there’s a place for making soaps, another place for pressing coconut oil, another place for drying herbs with jars crammed full of dried herbs. There is stuff everywhere!!

I have been neglecting the house-work because there is always so much farm work to do!!

Anyway, I think it is time for Munchkin to tidy up…can’t wait until Spring…it has now become a matter of great urgency…as soon as you can’t find the teapot top, then it is time for a great big tidy up.

So, this means that Gnome will have to do the farm work for the next week or so while I try to organise our house into some semblance of a house! Let’s hope I can get it done before Christmas!!

Belize, Farming, Food, Plants

Growing Black Pepper

December 11, 2020 Munchkin

We have had black pepper (Piper nigrum) plants for about ten years…even though I have written a few articles on this plant, it has not produced a consistent harvest until now. When we first started the farm, we thought that plants could be stuck anywhere and they would sort themselves out(!) The wonders of innocent and inexperienced youth!! And so we planted our black pepper plants beside palm trees hoping for a bountiful crop. This method proved quite haphazard as some years we would gather black pepper and other years, there was nothing at all.

From my observation, the pepper plants did not grow well in these conditions because the palm frond shaded them out too much. And also, a lot of the blackbirds (and other birds) hung around the shaded palm areas to get the ripe pickings even before we noticed. When we did get harvests, it was great:

I even made white pepper which is pretty labour intensive:

Wonderful:

Anyway, the years passed by so quickly and it was only two years ago that we finally had the time to re-address the black pepper crop which we found meagre and inconsistent. This time we decided to erect posts and plant cuttings beside them; this is a picture taken in 2018.

As you can see the black pepper has been planted in full sun on the south-side. They have been planted in tyres to give them some protection from heavy rains. This was a success and the plants grew up the posts very quickly and started producing within about a year. Presently, we are in year 2 and the vines are producing all year round! I am so pleased because I can use fresh black pepper everyday…what a lovely luxury!!

We have six plants that provide all the black pepper that we need for the kitchen. Everyone should have a couple of these in their backyard…they don’t take up much space and produce continuously! See the second picture below…they don’t need to be planted so far apart…we had put chicken wire in-between the posts thinking that the vine would preferentially spread out. However, they seem to be quite happy just growing up wooden posts like this:

Okay, have a nice Friday night!!

Belize, Farming, Food, Plants

Can’t Think of a Catchy Title!

December 10, 2020 Munchkin

I can’t think of a Catchy Title and I can’t think of a Catchy first sentence to you reel you into my new post…Ha-Ha!! Anyway, I wanted to show you some pictures of plants and vegetables around the farm…oops, that’s not going to get you going, is it?? This week, we are cleaning up the farm again and re-planting. With all the rains from the hurricanes, we lost most of our crops which included the pumpkins, melons and corn. That is life but it sucks sometimes!!

Gnome, we have lost our melon and corn crop!!

These are pictures of plants that made it through the terrible rains…well done, my little (or big) plants!!

These are the beans that are growing up the side of our house and now over our roof. This is the Gnome and The Giant Beanstalk story.

These are winged beans (Psophocarpus tetragonolobus), a long variety that grows to about 1 to 2 feet long. Although it grows very well in this climate, it is not commonly known about or grown in Belize. I have seen a few people growing it and they are usually Asian people. This is a plant originally from Papua New Guinea (according to good old Wiki) and is grown mostly in South East Asia as a vegetable crop. The thing that I like about this plant is that all parts are edible including the leaves, beans, shoots (like tiny asparagus),flowers and roots. We eat the green pods either uncooked in salads or cooked in stir fry or stews. The mature beans are supposed to be like soya beans…but we haven’t tried eating it that way yet. We also haven’t tried the roots either…maybe that can be a later post when we experiment more with this vegetable. This plant is annual hence the reason why we are allowing it to cover our house (!)…the plant will die in mid March and that is when we will harvest seed to sow for the following year.

The next survivor is a flattish looking sweet habanero:

They have that familiar habanero taste but they are sweet rather than hot. They add a mild pepper taste to salads and stews. Very easy to grow in 5 gallon pig tail buckets and withstands bad, tropical storms!

Gnome is pleased that the tobacco made it. They were grown on raised beds (but still, a lot of other crops didn’t even make it despite being planted in a similar manner). We are growing a different variety each time; this one is called ‘Mammoth’…I am not sure why…they are the same size as our usual tobacco plants. Anyway, they are a nice plant to grow…if you don’t use the leaf to make cigars, you can also use them as an organic insecticide (more about that in a later post).

The flowers are beautiful and its essence can be distilled into a perfume:

Okay, let’s have one more:

For once, the rosemary plants are actually doing very well. They usually grow to a small plant and then all of a sudden, they just die. This year, someone gave us cuttings of a rosemary known to grow well in Belize…look at them…they look great!! We used to grow our rosemary from seed packets bought from the States or Italy…I think perhaps those varieties were not acclimatized to the Tropics and that was why we failed to grow this herb successfully in the past.

I have more pictures but I will save them for another post. Here is a random picture of a nice spider web because I don’t know what to do with it and I wanted to show it to you anyway!

Amusing, Belize, Pets

How Silly!

December 7, 2020 Munchkin

We had a silly conversation last night that made me laugh out loud! We were talking about our ol’ farm cat that I have turned into quite a gourmand; his favourite foods are venison, smoked duck, beef jerky and vanilla ice-cream. It has got to the point that he won’t eat ‘cat food’ and God Forbid! we give him cat biscuits! He usually eats a mini size version of what we have for dinner.

He doesn’t touch any shop bought chicken or chicken gizzards/feet or any of those cheap cuts that people feed their pets…he will just lounge on the ground and have a staring competition with me. Guess who usually wins? Anyway, we were eating curry for dinner yesterday and when we were done (he has been trained to eat his meals after we have finished) he stood on his hind legs and pawed at Gnome’s empty bowl and attempted a sideways lick. He definitely knows that is not allowed to do that so we knew he was trying to communicate.

Gnome: ‘Oh yes, the cat loves curry and we haven’t had it for a long time.’

Munchkin: ‘Oh yeah he is trying to tell us that he likes curry.’

I went off to feed the cat in his normal feeding place.

Sure enough, the cat ate the curry delicately and slowly like it was a fine epicurean delight…he savoured each morsel slowly with calculated slowness. When he went back to Gnome to sit on his lap and lick his paws, I gave him some seconds as a surprise treat.

While the cat was on Gnome’s lap, the two new kittens came up scavenging and the first place they looked was the cat’s feeding bowl. To my surprise, they both didn’t touch the food at all…they just took a whiff and walked away.

This is the funny part, so please have a drum roll so that you can all laugh appropriately!

Munchkin: ‘Gnome, the little kittens didn’t eat the curry! I have to get them used to eating curry before they get too old…’

Gnome: ‘Hmmm, Munchkin…maybe you should teach the kittens to catch mice before you teach them to eat curry…’

Ha-Ha!!! That really made me Guffaw!! and laugh at our silly conversation!

Belize, Farming, Food

What’s Gnome Doing?

December 5, 2020 Munchkin

What is Gnome doing? He is always trying his hand at something new. This time, he is working on breeding black soldier flies (Hermetia illucens, if you are into Latin naming) for their grubs in order to feed the ducks. In our experience, ducks seem like to eat high protein foods including bugs, larvae, small frogs, frog spawn and small fish. They will preferentially eat these over vegetable scraps, grains and plant material. Since we have them fenced in now and they can’t go ranging far and wide, Gnome has decided to try breeding black soldier flies.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of these flies…basically they are long and black with big, beady black eyes (Yes I know, what a terrible description…if you are interested, please go look it up!!). The females like to lay around composting areas (this is perfect for getting rid of kitchen scraps and plant material);they can lay around 200 to 600 eggs at one time. Once hatched, the larvae drop into the compost and start to eat it up. Within about a week, there are fresh larvae and pupae to be harvested for food. The larvae are the ones still wriggling around and the pupae are the cocoons…technically it doesn’t matter to the ducks…they are happy to eat both. I suppose the pupa are bigger so you might want to wait longer to collect these big, fat juicy grubs. This was Gnome’s first attempt at a black soldier fly breeding area. It was made out of an old plastic container:

The container was designed so that the pupae and larvae would crawl towards the pointy end and fall into a harvesting bucket. Here are some pictures of the juicy duckie tit-bits:

This first design was a bit too small to hold all our compost, so he made a new container out of wood:

The compost is placed in the middle. When the grubs are ready, they start crawling towards the sides…this container allowed them to move to either end…and then drop into a bucket.

The sand is placed in the bin to allow the grubs to have a good grip as they move to the end holes. Without the sand, they are prone to slipping back down into the middle area and then have to start the slow crawl back to the ends…believe me, it was quite tedious watching them slide back down and start again!! This size of breeding bin gives you about 1lb of grubs when it is working well. It works optimally in dry weather. Despite it having a protective roof, when it rains heavily, water can get into it and drown the grubs. Approximately 1lb of these grubs can feed about 3 to 4 ducks adequately. We have 10 ducks so Gnome is looking to build two more of these to supply all the protein that our ducks need. So, still no rest for Gnome…two more containers to build!

The ducks love these grubs and like to pick through them in a container of sand:

Amusing, Belize, Pets

Crazy Cat!!

December 3, 2020 Munchkin 2 Comments

Okay, I am ready to talk about the Crazy Cat on the farm. He has been a menace and a nuisance from day 1…oh, but cuteness goes a long way…so, I kinda still like him…how frustrating!! This is the story: Crazy Cat was given to us when he was 4 weeks old and now we have had him for 2 months. His Mother is a feral cat that lived in the woods and adopted a family (our friends who gave us the cat) when she was having her kittens. The family put her in a container to have her kittens (she had all four of them) and left food and water in the container for all of them. The mama and the kittens seemed to have minimal human contact during the time that she was nursing.

Okay, so I did not know that kittens from feral parentage are very, very hard to train…in fact, you could say that they can’t be trained. This little one bounces about all over the place. We left him under the house with our other new farm cat. It is so interesting to see the differences between them…the other one is so tame and polite.

This one is younger (now 3 months) and the other cat is 6 months old. Crazy Cat actually figured out how to get into the house before the older one…he scales walls, he climbs trees, and flies like a bat, in the air and lands solidly on his feet in our house. He is an amazing, flying acrobatic crazy cat that can swing from ladder rungs and fly through our window like a bat out of hell! We have our very own circus cat right on the farm! You honestly have to see it to believe it…I get amused and angry at the same time:

Oh, and I haven’t finished my tirade. This cat can’t sit on your lap for one second before he tries to jump up onto your shoulders or head. And what’s more…there are scratch marks all over my legs…whenever I am in the kitchen preparing food, he uses my leg as a staircase to get to the kitchen table to steal scraps. I am using a water spray to reprimand him but he has a memory of a gnat…he forgets everyday and crawls up my leg to the kitchen counter top.

Anyway, I feel better now for letting off a bit of steam. Crazy Cat has some redeeming qualities! Trying to be positive now!! Whenever I am out on the farm, he follows me about like a faithful puppy and keeps me company under the shade of a tree or a plant. Sometimes, he still get a bit wily and the other day, he tried to climb up and down a whole bunch of corn stalks ruining all the plants as he scrambled up and down in his usual hectic, crazy way. Oh well, he is keeping us on our toes. Gnome thinks he is cute and has managed to get him sitting on his lap for a record 5 seconds. Big Ol’ farm cat doesn’t like him and will try to guard the entrances to the house religiously to stop him from getting in…he just doesn’t realize that this elusive little cat has no need for doors!!

Casa Mascia Apothecary

Monthly Archives: December 2020