Category Archives: Belize

Belize, Farming, Food

Back To Writing!

Hello Again! My apologies for not writing for a long time but I went through a “I don’t feel like writing phase.” Anyway, I thought it was best to try to get back into the flow of things and besides I have lots of goosie pictures! Okay, what’s been happening on the farm? Firstly, we still haven’t got the brush-mower working (story of our lives!) ; we got a part shipped to us a few weeks ago and Gnome put it in place. No sooner had he gone 10 yards with the machine, a ball-bearing flew out and shattered into tiny little pieces. Yes…we are yet again waiting for another part so that we can do the big mow “before the first rains start.” Ha-Ha…the rains have started already but luckily this year, our wonderful gaggle of geese are keeping the grass down for us.

These are my three month old geese…not babies any-more. They are friendly and follow me everywhere. In this picture, all four of them were trying to get into a basin but alas, the fourth one couldn’t fit in!

Goosies in Basin.

The last three days have been muggy and hot so we decided to take a few days off from farm work. We got out the pasta making machine and started a pasta-making marathon.

Here are some pictures:

We made a whole bunch of vermicelli:

Vermicelli.

We made yellow pasta with tumeric:

Yellow Ginger Tagliatelle.

We have been storing them in jars; it is nice to admire the fruits of our labour! So far with have 12 jars filled up with assorted pasta shapes and colours.

Pasta Jars.

Oh, and we made chocolate pasta; Gnome rolls the sheets out first:

Cacao Pasta.
Worked Cacao Pasta.

The pasta is cut into shapes and laid out in trays. We put them out to dry in the sun and by the end of the day, they are dry enough to be stored in jars.

Chocolate Mafaldine.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures. I will write again with a goosie update!

Belize, Farming

A Fiery Sunday!

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:

Cleaning up.

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:

Felling Trees.

That’s it for now. Stay Cool!!

Belize, Farming

Even More Goosies!

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.

Four Week Old Goosies.

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.

New Goosies.

More pictures of the new babies:

Even More Goosies.

They are very cute and fun at this age:

Sleeping Goosie.

And another picture:

Double Goosies.

I will write soon again to give you an update of the farm activities. Until then, have a lovely weekend.

Belize, Farming

Two More!

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!

New Goosies!!

That’s all for today! Try to keep cool!!

Belize, Farming, Food

Dry Season Vegetables.

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!

Belize, Farming

Easter Update.

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…

Belize, Farming

We Have Four!

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.

Here are the baby pictures:

The Goosies!

Goosies sleeping:

G-Force.

Wishing you all a Good Day!!

Amusing, Belize, Farming

Another Surprise Goosie!

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!

Amusing, Belize, Farming

Very Hot!

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!

Another Goosie Picture.

What a cutey. Enjoy him while he is small!

Belize, Farming

Still Here!

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!