Oooooh…Irn Bru…you can get it in Belize at British Belize Foods. Cheers to all my old Glasgow friends. Very Orangey and Very Scottish!! Hope you are having a great Sunday.
Category Archives: Belize
Cool Weather!
What a Relief…on Thursday we planted our peanut seeds and as soon as they were planted, the grey clouds starting gathering. It didn’t rain until the evening but it was lovely to get the drop in temperature. Since then, the weather has been cool and we have really enjoyed the weather change.
Look! There is a Gnome planting peanut:
We have been absolutely exhausted from the farm work coupled with the relentless heat but we are still going. That is because June is the last month to get our projects finished before it pours down in July and you can’t get out for all the sloshing and shwishing (onomatopoeia and neologism combined…ooohhhh da Munchkin is a fervent writer). I have our indoor activities already lined up for July…so Gnome, there is no need to get bored!!
Anyway, since it has been cool, I have been doing my nursery transplanting. I have twenty peach palms and a whole load of citrus which will be ready for the September planting. Plus I have started a whole lot of new stuff, courtesy of Mother of Gnome; this includes different types of aubergines, tomatillos and tomatoes. We have also started tobacco, giant granadilla and loofah.
Other things on the farm…our dandelions have come up very nicely. Thank-you so much Erin!! We have tasted the leaf already and they have a lovely bitter taste; we are growing these for seed and then we will plant a huge bed with them for green leaves and roots.
It is jackfruit time again and we just harvested a mega big baby; look at the size of this one. We put a broom (I was going to use my foot but Gnome exclaimed: no one can gauge the size of the fruit from your foot…who knows if you have little or big feet??!) next to these so that you can figure out the size; the biggest one is about 50lbs in weight (well, Gnome said it weighed like a sack of corn which is about 50lbs in weight). 😉
Have a great weekend everyone!!
Ready To Plant Peanut!
We prepared our area for planting peanut about 2 weeks ago, eagerly looking for seed peanut to plant. We were quite surprised that we couldn’t find any down here in Toledo . So we searched further afield, and asked our friends Graham and Joyce if they could find some in the Cayo region. Thank-you so much!! We got the seeds today and are ready to plant!!
We have a fifth of an acre all tilled up and mixed with lovely seaweed (courtesy of Panda) and lime. The area is protected from the geese with metal fencing right now. However, we have set up a bamboo fence and planted air potatoes at the base and once the plants get bushy, we will take away the metal fence.
The bamboo has been erected to grow air potatoes:
We will plant tomorrow…we are so excited. I think the peanuts are Spanish Red Variety.
Thank-you once again to Graham and Joyce for the peanuts!!
They’re Here!!
Flood Flies are here!! This year is was 27th of May. Gnome says we should have a lottery next year to guess the flood fly day correctly. We could have one for every district! Anyway, quickie oats (the anchovies finished a long time ago) and we are off to bed. Lights off, wash and go to sleep. Good Night!!
The usual pictures of the blighters (as Gnome has mentioned to me: do you realise you are putting up the same pictures of flood flies every time?). Yes, Gnome, I know!! How many different pictures do I need??? They kinda of just look like a mass of flying insects invading the house.
With any luck, the clean up will be minimal tomorrow morning!!
Stuck At Home!!
Hey Everyone!! We are stuck at home because a huge monster pandanus plant fell on our gate last night. There was a big blustery storm at 3pm last night…it was really scary because things were flapping about everywhere…the roof tops and any type of top. The tops of the little goosie cage whipped off and the charcoal top came off leaving all the charcoal exposed to the torrential rain. The rain came down in buckets and in the middle of all this, the gutter went all wonky so that the water (which we dearly needed) did not flow into the tanks. Gnome had to get out and do a quickie DIY. On top of all this, our little goosies got totally drenched and I had to go out in my rain-coat (no point really, I got soaked anyway) to rescue the 4 day old geese). In the midst of all this, I was worrying about my (big) geese…perhaps they would get swept away in the wind? I screwed up my eyes to try to see through the rain and this was what I saw: big fat white geese in single file heading towards the pond lumbering like gorilla geese in the mist! Gallivanting; the geese went off gallivanting in the storm!!
Anyway, we have spent the whole day fixing up the mess…otherwise, we are doing fine!! After all that, we were too knackered to clear up the big monster plant blocking the driveway. Apologies to Panda and Mum for not making it out to meet up for lunch!
See You At Choc Fest 2018!!
Hello Guys. There will be a rare sighting of Munchkin and Gnome in public (it’s a once a year thing) at the Choc Fest. They have no idea where they are located but will be selling their usual wares: Copal stuff, medicinal products and chocolate stuff of course! If it’s rainy, you might spot them with their wellies. Otherwise, Gnome looks like a well-dressed Gnome and Munchkin is usually more casually dressed with a hat. Is that enough to go on? Anyway, hope to see you there!!
Are They Coming or Not??
The last three nights we have been anticipating the flood flies; the nuptial flight of the termite queens (sounds very romantic, I know!) but to us it means messy wings and chaos and devastation!! A bit of sobbing too on my part because there is sooo much to clean up. Anyway, in order to overcome this awful time, we get into bed really quickly (say 6pm), close all windows and doors and switch off all lights. This minimises damage and a moaning-bad-mood- Munchkin the day after.
The last three nights, I’ve been making quickie dinners to get into bed early. When Gnome says,
“…what’s for dinner?”
The last three nights, he has been met with my 5 minute quickie dinner:
“…pasta and anchovies, darling.”
(They still haven’t come yet…but they will…it’s just a matter of time…)
Okay, right now the sky is grey and there is the distant rumble of thunder. It “feels” like it should rain which will stimulate the flight of the termites at about 5 to 6pm. Don’t get me wrong…I am not trying to tempt fate…I know they are coming sometime and I would rather be ready for them.
Okay, pasta and anchovies again tonight. We can’t really keep up with this strategy “Quick!! Run into bed” for too long because I only have two tins of anchovies left… 😉
All About The Goosie…
We have a (pet) goosie now that follows me everywhere I go (a bit like Mary and her lamb). She was the first egg of the year laid auspiciously on New Year’s Day all by itself, plonk just outside our house. We incubated the single egg and our little goosie hatched 28 days later. Since she was all by herself, I was designated “mother goosie” and I taught her how to eat and forage. Thinking about it now, I actually spent a substantial amount of time with her as she was growing up; an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening. She always had supervised walks and I would place her up on the vegetable bed whilst I was harvesting for the day. Aha…that is why she likes bitter greens like rocket.
Another interesting thing I noticed was that she always pecked at things that I was collecting; for instance, she always watched me harvesting from the suriname cherry and has now got into the habit of eating the leaves from this plant (not a normal leafy green that geese go for). The eggplant proved to a bit of a problem because she de-nuded the whole plant!
Here is my little goosie; she is a joy to have on the farm. She is about 4 months old and doing all the normal goosie things despite having a Munchkin Mama. 🙂
More Stuff…
More stuff and photographs for a Sunday perusal if you are bored and/or doing your FB/ Blog Sunday thing!! Yes we have been busy little bees and Gnome has been storing up his charcoal for leaner days. He is doing one barrel a week so it is piling up. Well good for him, I am pleased with his continued hard work…sometimes he needs a bit of encouragement because he never thinks he does enough. He does!! I need to remind him that he is doing great…when there is no boss, we have to nudge each other along and remind each other that it is all okay and everything is okay!
Oh what else is happening…oh yes, the price of butane has gone up by 20%!! Nobody else seems to have noticed but we have because we hate spending money on consumables. We are cooking with charcoal everyday…steamboat, soups and even grilling with the hibachi (not sure how to spell that but hopefully you know what I am talking about). This is a picture of Gnome grilling steaks and making suriname cherry wine…all on charcoal. Yes, we are living the farm dream!!
I’ll leave you with some more farm pictures because that is what it is all about (well, for us it is).
The wax apples are starting and growing in abundance…ooooh, look at these…
They will turn into these:
We do grow some flowers…a little…not much. Here is one; frangipani/plumeria.
Huckleberries grow like weeds here….definitely an easy food to grow; totally recommend this one…you hardly need to do anything!!
Okay have a Funday Sunday!! 🙂
Doing Stuff…
I haven’t written much at all…that usually means that we are out and about (on the farm) doing stuff. The pond is completely dry now; this usually happens every year except for one year which was an unusually wet-dry season. You would think that the geese would be up in arms with the loss of their swimming pond but they seem to have forgotten about it. These days, the different goosie factions are securing and taking over designated bucket areas like a bunch of mafia geese. It can be quite entertaining as each group guards their water stash jealously in the usual goosie-aggressive way…just don’t get caught in the cross-fire!!
We had to save our tilapia frys (I know…it sounds like fried fish but that’s the technical term for them according to size…just means that they are teeny weeny!!) ; we do this every year when the pond dries out. This time, we had a tonne of them…if you look at the above picture of the pond site, there is a smaller dug out pond on the right side…this was a Gnome idea and it works really well…when the pond dries up, the last bit of water ends up in this little pond with all the fish. When this happens, Gnome simply goes down and harvests the little fishes with a hand net. Initially, we had made all sorts of complicated traps but we have found that this is the best hassle-free method of collecting fish. The fish are in a big container right now being fed chopped greens:
The water was getting quite murky so Gnome had made a swirl filter with a bucket and bits:
The fish water is pumped up through the top pipe in the swirl filter; the middle pipe is the out-flow for the filtered water and there is a lower pipe (which you can’t see) which can be opened to release all the gunk. Yes….you’ve got it!! This is the start of our aqua-ponics project…:)
Anyway, Gnome says there are too many fishes in the container so we have to start harvesting them. I am thinking of making an anchovy type of thing with them…I don’t know how to do this so I will have read up on the preservation method. Have a great weekend every-one!!