Hello! It is a lovely, sunny day and there have been no night rains for two days. We are crossing our fingers and hoping that we get another run of dry days. If we do, Gnome will be digging…digging holes for fence posts to fence the geese out of our house area; the geese are getting messy, rowdy and noisy and our previous unfinished walls (tyres and concrete blocks) have not worked since they can jump. There will also be more digging for grey water ponds to the back for a banana and plantain area. Once the ground is dry, we will have to mow again with the brush-mower; however, we do have a slight problem because the v-belt has broken. I am sure if we lived anywhere else, this would not be an issue but finding a 50 inch belt in Toledo is proving difficult…we went to the Farmstore last week…they had v-belts sizes in 62″ or 67″ or 102″ AND there was the usual palava!! This time, there were no lengths written on the v-belt packaging and we had to try measuring loops with a straight ruler. Needless to say, we never found the right size and Gnome walked out of store muttering something about “Belize-Rigging again.”
Oh and I have to tell you about Saturday morning!! It was our town day so we had a leisurely morning at home and didn’t think anything at all about the continuous rains the night before. Well, it does rain most of the time! When we got to the Jacinto junction which joins onto the Highway to Punta Gorda, there was a parked truck, lots of people and the dory was out!! Yes, we were flooded at the junction once again! The water looked deep so we decided to wait. After a while, a young guy drove down in a Missionary bus and offered to drive in front of us and as he said, “…part the waters…” We thought that it sounded like a good idea so we followed…
There were a few issues….arghhh!! Firstly, the bus went as slow as a snail across the water and instead of “parting the water” it was pushing water towards our truck causing a lot of resistance. Usually, Gnome can control the acceleration to get out of the water quickly but this time, we were forced to go at a sluggish pace. There were some crazy moments with deep forward and sidey-way dippy movements. It was sooo Scary!! I was praying all the way through but I still felt confident because Gnome looked like he was handling it in his usual cool, debonair manner.
It was a bit of “touch and go” at moments but we managed to pull through. I think there was a lesson in that…never go behind a bus in a flood!! I said to Gnome…
“…wow, you were sooo cool!!”
Gnome replied,
“…what??? My leg was shaking all the way!!!”
(Well, I guess I was looking at his face…not his leg!! Ha-Ha 🙂 )
I feel a tad stupid writing this post because it seems like a very obvious solution to a very obvious problem. However, it has taken me eight years to come to this realisation.
From my knowledge of The New World, cats were introduced from the Old World by Post Columbian Contact (1490’s). Back in the good old days, cats existed to do a job ie. keep rat populations down and that is why you had a ship’s cat or a larder cat. As far as I know, cats did not exist at that time, exclusively for cuteness and cuddling.
Well, nowadays, cats do exist for cuteness and cuddling and we (and they) have forgotten their ancestral days of work, struggle and rat chasing! Indeed, we have a Millennial Cat!
Okay, so I have a cat on the farm for eight years and he does whatever he wants, whenever he wants. Sometimes, I feel that he has trained us to exist only to feed and cuddle him…I scratch my head and wonder… at what point did the tables turn on us…
(There is a rat running amok in my kitchen eating teabags…why is the cat not doing his job??)
Since it has been raining non-stop, the cat has taken to sleeping in the same spot, at the back of the house, for 23.5 hours of the day. For the 30 minutes of awake time, he is performing cat toilet duties or persuading me to feed him. He sleeps on a black executive chair with an extra layer of cloth for comfort:
Comfortable Cat.
Okay, so what do I do? I can’t shout at him and I can’t talk to him…Catch the rat, you stupid lazy good-for-nothing cat!! And besides, he looks too cute to reprimand!
This is what we have done. We have surrounded his executive chair with food that needs protecting. The sack of corn and the dog food is beside him. Any vegetables or fruit, of significance, are placed in his sleeping space. Look, we have our vegetables protected by the cat!
Cat Guarding Taro.
It’s working. No rat dares to come near any of the sacks with a fat cat guarding them. Gnome says that if we need extra security in the kitchen, we can always wheel the executive chair in to that area. So there you go, we now have a pantry cat!
Since I have been stuck indoors with the rains, I decided to take some time to tidy up the kitchen/pantry. The kitchen always looks like a bomb has hit it…well, that is because I am always in the middle of cooking! Gnome however, would (beg to differ) and say that I was just plain messy and then I would shout back at him and demand a bigger kitchen. He would argue back and say,
“…oh, so you want a bigger mess!!”
Cheeky Bugger!! All of this is said in jest of course and this is Munchkin and Gnome friendly banter whilst cooped inside a house on rainy days!
Anyway, the other day, while cleaning my kitchen shelves, I come across a whole trail of gnawed teabags and I followed the tea leaf trail to this…
Rat Eating Through Plastic.
I was flabbergasted when I saw this…a rat (I think) had systematically gnawed around the plastic container, like a can-opener, and stopped half-way. It didn’t even get to the food inside! I showed this to Gnome and he said,
“…the rat must have stopped mid-way when it ran out of caffeine!”
I pictured a caffeine-high rat running amok in the kitchen. What a funny picture! Anyway, after seeing the razor-sharp capabilities of an intrepid rat, I promptly put all food away in glass or metal containers. No plastic. I also put away the teabags. In the evening, I had an after-thought and said to Gnome,
“…maybe I should leave one teabag out for the poor rat…he might go into withdrawal…”
It is full on rainy season and it is absolutely pouring down. Every morning we have been waking up to thunderstorms and torrential rain. Water is flowing in tiny little streams on our farm and we haven’t been able to get out to work for a full week. This morning, Gnome said, “…oh that’s interesting…the weather report said it was going to be bright and sunny with a 1% chance of rain.” Well, looks like we got the 1% or the weather report is totally, wildly inaccurate…I suspect the second. 😉
Anyway, this is the best time for pumpkins, gourds and all manner of curcubits. The water allows the them to swell up into humongous fruit…and, I think this is the best part…those beetles that like to drill holes into all my tasty, delectable vegetables can’t get out to burrow holes because of the rains! Ahhh, of course that is the silver-lining cloudy thing that Hallmark people like to point out to me. 😉
These are some bottle gourds harvested from our farm. We eat most of them young but I have left three of them to mature to use as vessels to store some of our home-made wine.
Bottle Gourd Harvest.
We had our first breadfruit harvest this year; it has taken three years for the trees to start baring. We probably have harvested about 100 from three young trees.
Breadfruit TreeBreadfruit
We are eating the fruit as a potato substitute; of course, as all Belizeans will testify, breadfruit is best fried in oil:
We like to cut them into “chip” shapes (easier to eat with chopsticks!) but most people around here have them as half or quarter wedges.
Fried Breadfruit Chips.
Gnome cooked a breadfruit stew with his usual home-made wine, tomato sauce Italian thing. It was very good:
Chopped Breadfruit.Breadfruit Stew.
Oh, and Gnome has been sticking coke bottles around coconut trees…what is he up to?
It’s about time to write again. The goosies are calling me through space and time…they’ve been squeaking and squawking at me in their usual relentless way. Oh, and the grass keeps on growing! So I must keep on writing my exciting posts about geese and grass! Lately, we have had massive rains punctuated by one or two days of sun; we are still running around the farm doing whatever is possible in this wet weather when the opportunity presents itself.
We have been very fortunate with farm harvests during this rainy season and we are very thankful for them. Plenty of akee:
Akee Harvest.
We really enjoy the texture and taste of akee; it has a unique fatty, buttery taste. I would even venture to say that I prefer them to avocadoes. We also had the fortune of wild paddy straw mushrooms coming up on one of our vegetable beds.
Paddy Straw Mushrroms.
Here is a dish of paddy straw mushrooms cooked in olive oil, Gnome pasta stuff (yay! he is still cooking) and akee. Yes, we are still eating really well off the farm:
Paddy Straw Mushrooms and Akee.
Oh and look at this…in between this huge abundance of food, Gnome still dug up beetle larvae, brought it into the house and asked me rather politely if I would like to share some food with him,
“…eh, Munchkin….would you be willing to eat some grubs…”
Beetle Grubs.
He wasn’t joking. This comes from his old bush tucker days in the Northern Territory, Australia when he used to forage around and eat witchity grubs and berries (as Gnomes do). I was a bit scared about eating these wiggly things live so I said that I could coat them in egg and breadcrumbs and fry them in oil. At this point, I started looking very closely at the writhing grubs and felt (would you believe it!) sorry for them. I exclaimed,
“…it’s a bit cruel to chuck these poor things in boiling hot oil, though!”
Next thing I know, Gnome is having a conversation with me about how to practically approach this apparent mental stumbling block:
“…well, I suppose you could parboil them first…or, you could chop their heads off first…”
I bailed out at this point and said,
“…look Gnome, I would eat these in a survival situation but the truth of the matter is that we have plenty of food on the farm right now. Why don’t I give them to Duckie? “
He didn’t really have a choice because I was out of the house before he could say anything. Sure enough, Duckie had a real gourmet treat of beetle larvae…she gobbled them up like there was no tomorrow.
Of course, as always, when I have some story to tell you, I don’t have any pictures to go with it. Such is life…when it is actually happening, you usually don’t have a camera on hand! Anyway, this story started with torrential rains last night at about 9pm; there was thunder and then the occasional yelp from a scared goosie. But, then there was one incredible clap of thunder…one big goosie yelp…one quick buzzy electrical noise…and then the power went out.
When we woke up this morning, we still had no electricity so Gnome went out to look at the transformer. He reported back,
“…the transformer is making a crrcrrrcrrr noise…”
Yes, very technical; I think he was trying to mimic a crackling noise.
Okay, so then we phoned the electricity company to tell them that we had no power and probably the transformer was hit by lightning. There was a bit of confusion over San Felipe, Toledo and San Felipe, Orange Walk (which is the opposite end of the country) and the colour of my house and the colour of my gate. At the end of the phone conversation, Gnome said that he was scared that the correct information didn’t get through and that they might be sending out an emergency team in Orange Walk looking for a green gate. So, at 8am, we decided to drive into town to report the fault directly to the Punta Gorda office.
When we got to the junction (Jacinto) to get onto the main road, there were a couple of parked cars and a whole load of people with bicycles. The river went up with the over-night rain and had flooded the junction road. As we approached, there was a guy blowing up an inflatable dinghy and numerous little children running about with multi-coloured rubber boots…but none dared to traverse the flooded road yet so we couldn’t tell how deep it was.
After about 15 minutes, a neighbour from San Felipe, driving a similar truck to ours, pitched up and parked behind us. He had a chat with us and he decided to wait too. Meanwhile, a few very brave motorists traversed the road but you could see that the water was still high up against the car bumpers. Gnome looked at me a few times and told me that he wasn’t going to risk it (and by the way…we will wait until our neighbour goes so that we can see if his truck makes it first…). Meanwhile, our neighbour was, I think, thinking the same thing and waiting for us to go first!!
Okay, after about an hour we ended up going first! And our neighbour followed with a chuckle and shouted, “let’s go!!”
The water was probably about 2 feet high and we tried to keep straight…it was actually quite scary because the water swayed our two tonne truck from side to side. I prayed to God to help us traverse safely and we finally reached the end of the road after about 100 yards (metres). Thank the Lord! We were both catching our breath…Phew…Made It!!…and at the end of the road, there was a woman waving us to get out of the way so that she could take a selfie at the flooded road! First time I have seen a selfie stick in this neck of the woods…sorry to say, they look really silly!! 😉
First stop in town was the office and there was a nice, helpful young man at the desk. He told me that my phone call did get through and that a team of guys had been dispatched to our residence. He said,
“…they should be there by now…let me just check…”
He came back to me and said with a smile,
“Oh, they are stuck at the junction right now with the flood and waiting for the water to go down…”
When I heard this, I started fretting over whether his guys could get across the flooded road. He looked at me and smiled again,
“…don’t worry about our guys!! you should be worried about whether you can get back home…”
He did have a point. I thanked him for his assistance and left worrying about whether we could get back home as it was starting to rain heavily again.
We did a few town things, stopped off for a quickie breakfast (not sure when we would eat again if we got stuck midway) and then headed back home quick smart. It was still raining!! On reaching the junction, it was surprisingly okay and the water was down to about a foot. From that we surmised that the electricity guys got through and had sorted out our electricity problem already.
On arriving home, the transformer was not making a funny noise any more and it appeared that the meter was back on. However, there was still no electricity! Gnome reckoned that since we assumed that the electricity guys had come already, all that was left was for us to replace the fuses in the fuse box. The only fuses we had were these ones…that had beeswax and honey smothered all over them…
Fuse Box.
Gnome proceeded to mess around and poke about in the fuse box. Meanwhile he told me to phone the electrician…I couldn’t find his phone number so I phoned a neighbour hoping to get the phone number; they said that they didn’t have it but would phone a friend to get the phone number of the brother of the electrician! I know…What Shenanigans!! Anyway, I had forgotten that this particular neighbour was a retired electrician (could have asked him for help) and he decided to drive by to see if we needed any help. He came by and spied Gnome poking about in the fuse box and reprimanded him immediately…soooo glad he did that! He said,
“…you can’t just poke about with live fuses…anyway, you don’t just take the fuses out with your hands…there are devices designed for that!!”
Gnome said “Sorry!!” immediately and said that he was ignorant to such devices existing.
At the same time, the electricity guys turned up and informed us that they didn’t come first thing because of the flood and did another job instead. They effortlessly replaced a fuse on the transformer and off they went…very, very quickly…it was nearly lunch-time (10 minutes to noon).
Alls well that ends well!! We have electricity again…but what a palaver!! Thanks every-one for helping out and making it into a funny story to tell!!
A couple of weeks ago, Gnome gave me the mission to find a J Roller in Belize. My first question was,
“What’s a J Roller when it’s at home?”
So he told me to look up pictures in Amazon and read the descriptions. I am not sure how he came up with the tool name because he had never mentioned it before…he probably read instructions somewhere…he is the only person that I know that reads instruction manuals with great interest and enjoyment.
A J Roller is a “J” shaped roller made of rubber. It is used to aid the adhesion of surfaces with a sticky underside…you basically roll it back and forth on a surface to make it stick down smoothly. They can be used for adhesive tiles which is what we had for a new project. Aha…he read the back of the box! 😉
The task of looking for an uncommonly used tool in Belize can be quite a challenge. I started my mission in the hardware stores in Punta Gorda.
Farm Store.
When I said,
“I am looking for a J Roller.”
I would usually get a perplexed look and,
“…what’s that??”
So, then I had to modify my first question and say,
“Do you have a J Roller? It looks like a paint roller but it is made of rubber.”
(This did not work because the shop assistant would automatically turn the conversation to paint rollers being made of foam in Belize).
Okay, so I had to further change my method of questioning and point to their formica counter tops and say:
“…what do you use to stick that (formica) onto the countertop.”
These were the answers that I got from a few hardware stores (I feel like I was conducting some sort of survey on how to ask silly questions and how to get silly answers back!!):
“…errh…you just smooth it out with your hands…”
and:
“…you get a big old smooth stick…”
and:
“…what???”
Hmmmm…needless to say, I wasn’t getting anyway. So, I asked for Panda’s assistance since he was driving out to the big city. He said that he even printed out a picture of the J Roller and showed it to a few hardware stores. No luck…at least they knew of the existence of the tool but did not think that it was of much use hence the reason they did not stock said tool.
Okay…Okay…so, we had to do it the Munchkin and Gnome way. Get a marble rolling pin and use that instead. No shortage of rolling pins in Belize!! When I presented the rolling pin to Gnome he said with a smile,
“…well, if it doesn’t work, we can always roll out some nice pasta noodles with it…”
Well, it does the job!! So, if you are looking for a J Roller in Belize, try the kitchen section for a heavy rolling pin instead!!
I am writing this post to remind myself (again) that June is mosquito time. Well at least that is when it starts…but when does it finish? Does it finish? Anyway, all I know right now is that is pretty horrible and we are forever being chased by swarms of mosquitoes. Arrrghhh…moan of the day done!
Anyway, on the upside, we have had a few days straight of good weather (of the non-rain type) so we have been out on the farm doing our stuff. So, what stuff have we done?
We have starting laying down the cardboard between our peanuts to soak up all the excess water from the rain (plus it stops the weeds coming up so it is a double bonus).
Ooooh…..another picture for Joyce:
Peanuts and Cardboard.
Don’t they look healthy and green….and the okra are coming up nicely in between the first two rows of peanut.
It is jackfruit time again. All of these fruits are beautiful and are about 50lbs in weight each. Thank-you, thank-you…what a lovely, generous tree. Our sun-drying (what sun??) of the seeds did not work and they turned into a funny, fuzzy orangey moldy monster so we stopped doing that. We have now decided to make miso made from jackfruit seed.
Giant Jackfruit.
Anything else. Yes, I washed and waxed the truck. Most people would be asking me why I am bothering to put this piece of insignificant detail down. Well, it is because we are known as the people who drive the dirty white truck (just a statement of fact and here in Toledo, everyone is recognised by the vehicle that they drive). Twice a year, I wash and wax the car and the rest of the time we don’t wash it. And you are probably scratching your head and wondering if this is an environmental issue (save water??) or something. Well actually it is to maintain and preserve the metal body work of the car. This of course is a quirky Gnome observation…he says that if your car is caked in mud for most of the year (with generous wax coating), it actually preserves the metal body and it is protected from rusting. Mind you, I haven’t seen any copy-cats so our innovative idea isn’t catching on…Ha-Ha!!
What do you think? This is a 12 year old truck now…looking good twice a year!!
Freshly Waxed Car.
Random piece of information: you can now buy Italian biscuits (cookies) in Punta Gorda. You know, once a long time ago, you couldn’t get anything down here. Sign of the times:
Italian Biscuits.
We have been doing more clearing…there was a very dangerous looking tree too close to our veranda. Gnome said:
“…we need to get rid of that. It is a horrible accident waiting to happen…”
Dangerous tree.
Okay so that lanky, long looking tree has been taken down so one less thing to worry about.
Oh look…dandelions do grow in Belize…
Dandelions in Belize.
Have a great evening and stay away from those pesky mosquitoes. I hear that there is a great insect repellent made from lemongrass… 😉
Okay, so when we got up this morning, the sun was out but then the dark clouds moved in and then the sun peaked again and then, alas, there were clouds piling up from the east…oh, but then there was a bit of sun coming out again. We checked the weather report and it said there was a 50% chance of rain and 50% chance of no rain. When Panda came at 9am to help out on the farm, we sent him home since it started drizzling , the black clouds were gathering and there was a lot of thunder. As soon as he left, the sun came out again. The weather went back and forth and back and forth and back and forth until I could stand it no more. Gnome realised I was turning into Crazy Munchkin so said,
“Okay, let’s stay indoors and make it a jackfruit day.”
(Thank God for sensible, no nonsense and practical Gnomes).
Well, you might have seen our jackfruits already…they are huge. Gnome cut them in half and I separated the seeds from the flesh.
Cutting Jackfruit.
Prepared Fruit:
Cleaned Jackfruit.
We cleaned two huge jackfruit which took about 1 and 1/2 hours. It is really hard work, by the way, but I shouldn’t complain because it is a tonne of food.
I haven’t enjoyed eating the seeds in the past…we found them rather mealy and disappointing. This time however, our harvest was from a different tree; the boiled seeds were surprisingly good and did actually taste of chestnuts. There must have been about 10lbs of jackfruit seeds.
Jackfruit Seeds.
Once you boil the seed, there is an outer covering which you need to take off. Here is a close up picture of a cooked jackfruit seed cut in half:
Boiled Jackfruit Seed.
Our plan is to dry the boiled seeds in the sun (what sun??!!) and once they have dried, we will ground them into flour. That’s the plan anyway…
So today, we stuffed ourselves full of jackfruit and the boiled seeds. I think we over-ate a wee bit because we both have sore stomachs right now. We are trying to settle our symptoms down with some peppermint tea. 😉
The rest of the fruit is being boiled up, as we speak, for wine; it is a murky mess right now but hopefully in a year, it will look like this:
Vernaccia in Glasses.
So what’s it going to be tomorrow?? Sunny or Rainy. 🙂
Oh I might make marron glacé with the jackfruit nuts if I am in a good mood tomorrow….
I know, I know, when you live this lifestyle, it is all about the weather. Your days on the farm are dictated by whether you can get out or not. The last six days, we have had grey skies and a whole tonne of rain. Great for the plants…but, at some point there was so much of it we were worried that our peanut field would get washed away. But alas, today we saw the first signs of peanut germination…we are pleased to see hope in our efforts to grow our own food.
The sun is out today with lovely rippling blue skies. We ventured out today to fill up tyres with seaweed to plant an assortment of roots.
Seaweed Tyres.
We felt better for moving about. The last week we have been stuck indoors trying to do indoor activities in a tiny space. We made serious attempts to not drive each other potty!! We have become used to a certain amount of daily physical work…(Gnome says this is what keeps us young plus plenty of sleep)…so that we get really crabby cooped up indoors. Well thank goodness, the sun came out today.
Gnome planted two rows of okra between the peanuts:
Gnome Planting.
The month of June is very fickle and unpredictable; you don’t know whether to plan outside or inside activities because you never know what is going to happen. Gnome reminded me:
“…don’t get your hopes up too much for a work schedule in June…June is as fickle as a Wo….”
Munchkin: “What?????”
Gnome: “…Wombat…that is what I said…”
Munchkin: “Hmmmm.”
This month drives us crazy because of this but hey, we can’t complain when all our water tanks are full again and the pond is half full from just six days of rain. Needless to say, the goosies are having a wonderful time splashing about in puddles and have started trooping out to the pond again. That’s good because they can get out from under my feet…they are like a bunch of school children…
