I was just about to write Happy Sunday until I realised it was Monday today. There is no traffic on the road and it is so quiet. I realise that it is a Holiday Monday so probably that’s why there is a “Sunday feeling.”
We are having a “funny” dry season this year; actually, every year is a “funny” dry season because they are never exactly the same. We’ve been getting early morning showers (which ruins our Munchkin and Gnome farm schedule plans). It’s hot like dry season but there is a wetness to it too; this helps because we have managed to keep some vegetables and greens going despite the season.
The rocket is great and we have been able to eat this everyday:
Rocket.
This is miracle fruit; I have written about it before; in short, it contains a glycoprotein molecule that which makes sour food taste sweet. It is a great party trick if you can’t think of anything else to talk about. 🙂
Miracle Fruit
The huckleberries are growing really well; we have saved seeds and we are going to plant a patch of this on the farm.
Huckleberries
Ooooh and look at these cute birdie nest with blue eggs. The nest was tiny…about 3 inches across.
Gnome’s been trying to get those stingless bees in the Gnome boxes (TM) for ages. But of course, we’ve noticed that nothing on this farm listens to us or reads the same manuals. This lot of bees decided that our electricity disconnect box was just the thing for building a nest. The BEL guys came round to inspect our meter last week and discovered the sticky bee nest. Of course, we were told that we had to replace the box.
Bees in the Switch Box.
On the upside, we managed to get a litre of honey out of the box. 😉
So we ended up having to replace the meter base too because the door was broken…two expenses!! Of course Munchkin was none too pleased…these silly metal boxes actually do cost a bit of money. Then we had to arrange for the electrician and the BEL (Belize Electricity Ltd) guys to come at the same time because the power had to be switched off for the boxes to be replaced. Gnome:
“…how in Belize can you co-ordinate two different sets of people to come to your place at the same time…the mind boggles…”
(usually you can’t even organise an appointment with one person!)
Anyway, the conjunction of stars must have been absolutely bang-on perfect and they all turned up. They were all actually really helpful because we had a lot of spiky pandanus growing around the electricity meter and pole; they assisted in chopping down the over-grown (they are about 10 metres tall!!) obstructive plants. Luckily here in Toledo, everyone carries their own machete just in case there is grass or a plant to chop down. The BEL guys even got up on their cherry picker and cut some of the plant down for us. Thank-you, thank-you we really appreciated the extra help!! Every-one left with bananas from the farm and our hand-made soap.
We are glad that it all turned out well in the end. Look at the sticky mess the bees made:
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!!
Clearing up.
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:
Mashed Potatoes.
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…
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!!
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.
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.
Picnic Site.
Of course we used our new gasifier stove and made some coffee:
Making Coffee.
This time we used African oil palm nuts as our burning source since the tree was handily located at the picnic site:
African Oil Palm Kernels for Stove.
We did indeed have a lovely time. We should do this more often!
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 gasifierson 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?
Gnome Magic.
“…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:
Gasifier Stove.
Garbage:
Filling Stove with Twigs.
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.
Plastic Garbage.
This is the filled stove: twigs, plastic, bit of corn cob. Panda’s fire-starter in the middle.
Filled Stove.
After you light stove, you can supplement with charcoal if you want:
Light Stove.
See: the flame is clean and the whitish vapour is the gas which is produced by the gasifier which is being burned as fuel.
Burning Stove.
Eventually the stove gets hot and more flames spill through the holes from the inside tin:
Heating up.
Heating up potatoes:
Boiling 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! 😉
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:
Winter Melon.
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…
Bath Tub.
Plant Pictures:
It’s getting dry so back to eating chaya again. It’s actually quite palatable blended and mixed into soup.
Chaya Plant.
The giant granadilla has done nothing for years (remained alive but not produced fruit). This year, we actually got fruit..
Giant Granadilla Flowers.
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.
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).
Growing Goosie.
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…
Double Goosie.
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. 🙂
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.
Winter Melon.Another Winter Melon.
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:
Rocket.
Asparagus is doing great:
Asparagus.
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). 😉
White Eggplant.
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.
Stripey Eggplant.
Just as I finish writing this post, the rain is starting (a little)…
