All posts by Munchkin

Mashed Potatoes…

April 22, 2018 Munchkin

Hello Every-one!! The weather has been really funny….back and forth like a yo-yo…one day it is hot and blistering and the next day it is windy and rainy. Even the days are a bit weird with scattered showers…it is supposed to be dry season!! So when the weather can’t make up its mind it wreaks havoc on our farm schedule….such is life and we kinda have to just deal with each day as it comes. Not so easy in real life. 😉

We have had a few incidents on the farm. A few days ago, Gnome lit up a few fires to burn a couple of isolated fallen trees. I t was hot but the wind got rather gusty and feisty and spread the fire through-out the entire farm. Arrrgghhh!!!! We didn’t lose anything but we ended up having to stay out in the sun minding the fire. The last time we had an uncontrollable farm fire was about 12 years ago and it spread all the way down to the neighbouring village….that one was pretty hairy and scary. Luckily, this time, it was confined and there was no damage and we managed to “under-brush” the entire farm!!

Anyway, this post is about mashed potatoes. Every-time I tell Gnome, I am going to make mashed potatoes, he just laughs at me. Well I know why because it’s kinda mashed with lots of lumps in it. Anyway, I have managed to get hold of a potato ricer and hey, it actually makes great mashed potatoes. So, here is a picture:

Gnome said that he has waited 15 years for real mashed potatoes. Gosh, how sheepish do I feel???!!! Anyway, he can stuff himself full with as much as he wants now…what a great masher…

Oooh I can make potato croquettes….

Have a great Sunday!!

Belize

Cheers Enrico!!

April 11, 2018 Munchkin

This is a special Thank-you blog post for Enrico. Thank-you for the wonderful Good-Bye gift (we loved it too). We wish you all the best in your new adventures; may you find joy and passion in everything that you do. Cheers…here’s a toast to you!!

Belize, Farming

A Lesson.

April 9, 2018 Munchkin 2 Comments

It is soooo hot and extremely uncomfortable; yip, it’s dry season, and it is really awful. That was a complaint and it still doesn’t make me feel better to say it. I want to be sealed in a cool bubble during this season! 😉

Anyway, this post is about geese again; about a week ago, an egg pipped and we awaited the hatching of a brand new gosling. From past experience, it takes between 24 to 48 hours for a goosie to peck through the entire circumference of the shell in order to emerge. We waited a fair bit…probably about 36 hours and we observed that it had only pecked through about a quarter of the whole round. He was stuck in the shell because the gelatin had congealed and dried out (from the hot weather) preventing him from breaking out of the shell. He was exhausted and could not move at all.

Well what did we do? We performed an emergency goosie shell evacuation (late at night no less!! Emergencies are always late night!!). Gnome performed the calculated incision into the shell and removed the stuck goosie; we then had to bathe it in a 40C bath to try to rub all the stuck gelatin that was all over its eyes, wings and feet. The goose was an Embden…this is our first white feathered goosie so all the more reason to save the baby!!

For five days, we attended to this little one hoping that it will stay alive. It caught pneumonia and I had to hand feed it the last few days. It was so weak that it couldn’t stand but we persisted because he continuously tried to stand up and mobilise which showed he possessed the will to live. Anyway, the last few days, he started going downhill and was no longer able to swallow. Alas, the poor thing passed away yesterday.

Well, what is the lesson? In the books and the Internet, the writers usually state that the independent emergence of a hatchling out of a shell should be the first test of a healthy, strong individual. The in-ability of a goosie (or any other bird) to get out of its shell is an indication of physical weakness and possibly ongoing health problems into adult-hood. That’s not a good start! So, we had a philosophical talk about it afterwards and decided that we are not going to do any-more emergency hatching manoeuvres. We should be practical and our time is better spent raising healthy, strong birds. 🙂 Anyway, Rest in Peace little one.

Belize

Picnicking on the Farm!

April 8, 2018 Munchkin

Munchkin and Gnome spend every single waking and un-waking moment together (because we actually like each other). Anyway, Gnome tells me the other day that we don’t spend enough “quality time” together. He says that we are always doing stuff like cleaning up the farm and sorting the animals out and we are always running an agenda. Okay, I had to stop for a moment and realise that everyday was becoming samey-samey and we were just operating a routine action plan. We do get into a militant rut sometimes and it is good to just stop to relax and enjoy.

So we changed things around a bit. We stopped and had a picnic at the rosewood stand.

Of course we used our new gasifier stove and made some coffee:

This time we used African oil palm nuts as our burning source since the tree was handily located at the picnic site:

We did indeed have a lovely time. We should do this more often!

Belize, Farming, Saving Money

Gnome’s Garbage Stove.

April 7, 2018 Munchkin

What have we been up to: boiling potatoes with garbage!! Gnome’s Garbage Stove (TM 🙂 ) is a stove that runs on garbage including twigs, plastic, leaf litter, organic material and generally all your bits of rubbish that you throw out. Oh you can also use charcoal. Anyway, this is Gnome’s copy of a gasifier stove; Gnome says,

“…a gasifier stove takes solid fuel made up of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and turns it into natural gas which you can burn for heat and energy.”

Gnome says that if you need more information: just look up gasifiers on your favourite search engine. Okay, Gnome!! But not every-one can make something out of reading just a Wiki entry…

(Munchkin: here, try woodgasifierplans.com)

…the advantages of this is that it is a smokeless stove and it doesn’t produce soot. And of course, the fuel is completely free because it runs on garbage.

How does it work, Gnome?

“…the heat vaporises the solids and the gas produced is ignited by the metal of the hot stove which keeps the tin hot which then creates more gas…and runs the stove.”

So we did a run with the stove yesterday. We did something simple: boiled potatoes.

Here are the pictures with some running commentary:

Gasifier stove with inside tin which has to be filled up with garbage to burn:

Garbage:

Oh, and bits of plastic too; can get rid of bottle tops and plastic bottles. Don’t use too much of this, needs to be balanced with other organic material.

This is the filled stove: twigs, plastic, bit of corn cob. Panda’s fire-starter in the middle.

After you light stove, you can supplement with charcoal if you want:

See: the flame is clean and the whitish vapour is the gas which is produced by the gasifier which is being burned as fuel.

Eventually the stove gets hot and more flames spill through the holes from the inside tin:

Heating up potatoes:

The potatoes took 15 minutes to get to a rolling boil and then 8 minutes to cook. Once cooked, most of the garbage turned to charcoal and a little bit of heat was left ie. not enough to cook anything else or boil water.

Overall, I told Gnome that I was pleased with his innovation and that I was willing to try “steamboat” with the stove for dinner. We had a lovely dinner last night: dipping slivers of beef with Chinese veggies and finally eating the soup with rice noodles. The stove stayed warm enough for the whole dinner event which took about an hour. Gnome says that he will continue modifying and he is now looking for larger tins/ metal pots and vessels to make larger size models. That’s because I promised him another steamboat dinner tonight! 😉

Belize, Farming, Food, Plants

Plant Pictures.

April 5, 2018 Munchkin

We are still going but slowly right now. Gnome seems to have caught too much of the sun so is not feeling as feisty and fit to face the challenges of the farm (or the world). We seem to take turns to get sick…last week, I had really bad headaches!! Anyway, life still goes on and last night we had a huge rain that came all of a sudden; the sky turned a grey/black hue, the rain hawk went off and the geese went crazy. So another Rain Sign is geese going off/ honking and making lots of noise…and oh yes, coming back home (from the pond) in a hurry, practically running. They are quite funny, they are like a bunch of naughty school kids coming back home from school!

Anyway, must keep the Blog going…some pictures:

There is a Chiney in Punta Gorda that grows this on their fence. I asked them for seeds from their Chinese winter melon and here it is. We saw an iguana suspiciously eyeing up the winter melon and I warned him…you know, with that scary Munchkin look:

I have never seen a bath tub for sale in Belize. Being from the UK, we grew up with baths…the showers came later. We thought that this would make a great bath tub…especially in cool water over dry season…

Plant Pictures:

It’s getting dry so back to eating chaya again. It’s actually quite palatable blended and mixed into soup.

The giant granadilla has done nothing for years (remained alive but not produced fruit). This year, we actually got fruit..

Flowering at the pond right now but having a tough time with the geese because its roots are edible. Keep going…we will move you somewhere else, goosie-free.

Okay, let’s keep on going….

Amusing, Belize, Farming, Food

Goosie News & Misc.

March 29, 2018 Munchkin

Our two month old goosie has reached adolescence and is starting to feather. She has stopped calling for Mama Munchkin and is starting to make new twittering noises with the occasional Chinese goose Qwack (not quite quack, there are finer nuances to goosie language). She is out during the day and she is back in her cage at night.

She’s bigger than this now; about 4lbs (2kg).

I thought that she would be “lonely” but now I think that this is perhaps a human concept; she is perfectly content to sit by herself, twitter and preen…sleep…look for water, wander around at her leisure and eat grass whenever it takes her fancy. Animals are rather resilient little things and can face the world with such braveness and independence. It has been a great pleasure to see my goosie grow up into an adult…more so because of the short length of time! 🙂

Oh, and look at these two!! Two more to fulfil my mothering instincts. Double Easter Goosies…Very Auspicious…

The miscellaneous subject of today is suriname cherries. Last year, we had an awful time with the thieving black-birds and brown jays. Despite putting up all sorts of silvery, glittery things; the usual Internet silliness…you know…when they say, “…here’s another great idea for old CDs and aluminium cans…recycle your garbage to scare birdies away…”

Oh, and the big eyes drawn on pieces of card-board didn’t work either…it just ended up being an arts and crafts afternoon for Munchkin and Gnome…much to Gnome’s chagrin. A word of caution: Gnomes do not do Arts and Crafts!! They only want to tinker around with useful things that can make life better in some way.

Anyway(s), I am collecting a pound in weight of suriname cherries each day right now. I have started harvesting them un-ripe (yellow-reddish) EARLY morning (before the early bird) and I place the un-ripe cherries in dry season room temperature (40C/104F) during the day. Viola…they all turn plump red and ripen up very nicely by the end of the day. By the way, I didn’t get this information on the Internet…I just experimented since I was soooo mad at the birdies for eating up all my cherries. 🙂

Amusing, Belize, Farming, Plants

Rain Signs.

March 25, 2018 Munchkin

I think that I have mentioned before that we don’t bother with the weather reports any-more since we have never found them accurate. For a time, we relied on the fruit-monger but we haven’t seen her in ages. Today, is it going to rain or not? So, Gnome pointed out all the the rain signs; we have observed these signs, over and over again associated with rains. Honestly, we do use the scientific method. 😉

“…well, the rain hawk was going off like crazy and…you (Munchkin) have a splitting headache…the road just got graded and there was a sudden build up of grey clouds over half an hour.”

“…Hmmm…are four signs enough for a rain…”

Well, let’s just wait and see if our Munchkin and Gnome Rain Signs work!! 🙂 Or, do we need to add more Rain Signs to the criteria?

Anyway, I ‘ll will leave you with a few pictures of vegetables from the farm (oho, the excitement of being a Munchkin and Gnome knows no limits!!). This year, we have kept the plants to a minimum so that we do not need to use up too much water over the dry season. These plants are being irrigated with grey water (washing machine/ shower and dish-washing water).

The Chinese winter melon is growing up the one side of our duck coop. So funny, I couldn’t get one for Chinese New Year but now the plant is producing lots of fruit. The Chinese usually eat them (in soup) when they get really big. I have started harvesting them young because we can’t possibly get through the sheer volume of eating mature fruit. They taste like cho cho (chayote) and other types of curcubit plants.

The rocket (arrugola…is that how you spell it? That’s the Sicilian word for it by the way) is dong really well despite the drought:

Asparagus is doing great:

This eggplant looks like an egg; not much taste though…it’s a bit rubbery but great to look at (if anyone is interested in looking at eggplants that resemble eggs). 😉

This is an unusual striped orangey egg-plant. They don’t get very big but I like them since they are sweet tasting and (God-Forbid!!) they make a nice ornamental. Munchkin philosophy: You really should just eat it and not just have something for pretty.

Just as I finish writing this post, the rain is starting (a little)…

Amusing, Belize, Farming

The Life and Trials of Mark Goosie.

March 22, 2018 Munchkin

Mark Goosie (I am with-holding his real name since people might think that I named him after some-one real) was one (of a pair) of geese that we first introduced into our farm back in the good old days.

Unbeknown to us, at the time, we were ruthlessly sold two boys. So, we had asked for a breeding pair but did not get what we asked for! Anyway, the two of them paired up (as geese do) and seemed quite happy together. We tried to introduce female geese later on in the game but the two remained inseparable. One female goose was found un-expectantly dead (there’s been a murder!!) under the house and we decided to put it down to a crime of passion. The two original geese would not let anything get in the way of their relationship.

After a while, Mark’s partner went to Great Goosie Heaven and we observed Mark Goosie mourning for a long time. At that time we couldn’t find a new companion goosie so we introduced a white duck in the hope that he would accept him as a friend. And he did; for a long time they walked through the farm together side by side like old buddies. White duck died a few years later and again, Mark was left all by himself. Five more years went by and he wondered around the farm alone occasionally honking in unison with passing honking trucks.

Last year, we managed to procure some female geese and finally Mark accepted a “she” goose companion into his life. They were really lovely together and it was as if Mark had found a new lease of life. During breeding season, he located a nice nesting spot for his companion and filled it with his own feather down. He stood guard by her side, day and night, whilst she was setting. They always walked proudly together and did not appear to mingle with the other goosie groups.

Well, a few weeks ago, we found his female companion dead in amongst a pile of rocks behind the duck coop. We weren’t sure what had happened (a snake perhaps??). He was so distraught…honking madly and flapping his wings. He was in such an emotional state that we had to place him in the confinement of the duck coop; he wouldn’t leave the spot where he lost his girl. Whilst in the coop, he continued to place feather down on the ground to make a nesting spot. When we saw this, we felt such sadness for his loss. Awwwhhhh!!!

Anyway, what to do with Mark Goosie??

Well I never!! We thought that he would not recover from this last bereavement. But, he has re-emerged like a phoenix from the ashes- and has become head bossie (sensei) for the young’uns (the five brand new geese from last year). He acts as their sentinel, guard and teaches them “the way of the goosie.” Every morning, we see him proudly leading his troop to the pond in an orderly straight line. What a Champion…we love a happy ending, don’t you!! Go Goosie Go!!

Here’s a picture of Mark Goosie leading his team of youngsters:

Belize, Farming

Dry Season Days.

March 21, 2018 Munchkin

Oh I haven’t been writing…it’s the usual dry season time when I just feel too hot and too tired! We are out by 6ish every morning and it is hot by 9am. The geese hide under the shade of the house and run off to the pond when they get the chance; I kind of get the feeling that they think we are just being plain silly for our insistence in working in this heat. Anyway, Gnome has been clearing more of the back area; when we first arrived here, we planted a whole lot of samwood trees for timber.

They are all bunched up and too close to the house (we were once very silly and planted willy-nilly). Gnome is systematically removing one tree at a time, chopping the wood to dry for later charcoal making. This is craboo wood from a wild tree that has grown into a monster…we had to take this one down too; the colour is very pretty:

The charcoal area has been moved…sort of to the side…so that it is not right in front of the house! Of course, Gnome did not re-locate for aesthetic reasons…he simply ran out of room and needed more space.

Another reason for moving the charcoal place is because Gnome wants to build an outside kitchen bunker next to all this. He is going to make it out of used tyres…how romantic..recycled furnishings for Munchkin. Anyway, it will be very helpful to have another food station as my present kitchen is crammed so full of food, I can hardly get into it.

Oh and Gnome is putting these everywhere as sitting stools; they are every-where…under the house, under the rosewood trees and a couple under the bread-fruit. His reasoning behind all this is that the common habitat for munchkins and gnomes are under trees sitting on stumps (when it is too hot). 😉

I will leave you with a nice picture of mushrooms growing on our samwood. This is Ganoderma lucidum; you can grate it and make a tea out of it. It’s one of those immune booster type things that the Chinese use in Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Casa Mascia Apothecary