See you today at Chocolate Festival 2017. Munchkin and Gnome (aka Casa Mascia Apothecary) will be found somewhere near the Cotton Tree Chocolate Factory selling their wares. We’ll have chocolate soaps, chocolate body scrub, copal products and lots of other goodies. Come and see us because we are taking this time to socialise and talk to people!! Otherwise you won’t see us for another year!! Come early-ish!!
There are some things that I miss about Scotland (The UK). In terms of food, I miss chocolate eclairs and salmon (smoked and fresh). Fish and Chips: just for the smell on fresh paper…although they probably don’t serve it on paper any_more…just like they stopped serving it on newspaper! Oooh maybe Irn Bru…oh, but you need to be Scottish to know about this very orangey beverage…
Anyway…just wanted to show you the inside of British Foods Belize in Cayo. It’s a lovely shop to go into because you can see the love and the care put into the displays. Thanks Joyce and Graham for a bit of British…
Shop is nice and cosy, like a “real” shop:
Bird’s Eye:
Oooh…tea cosy!! Look at these!!
So glad I have found a place that stocks Yorkshire Tea…
It’s Sunday and we’ve still working on a million and one things. Gnome asked, “…where’s the fun??”
Oops, these blog posts are supposed to inspire other people to live a farming lifestyle like us.
Gnome’s working on the veranda, pulling out posts and putting them into holes. I tended to the animals (goosies and guinea pigs mostly) this morning and watered the 40 or so buckets in our garden. After that I potted some sage and tobacco plants. I’ve just been clearing a big mess in the old plant nursery where the old posts were located. There are all sorts of crap: some of the stuff is destined for the dump but I have to pick through it all to save the useful stuff…like buckets and planting bags. I stopped to make lunch (shitake and bitter gourd soup with lentils….still have to eat well despite being busy). And Gnome’s still sweating away outside knocking things together.
And now I have to pack some soap and products and….oh, and then there is the Chocolate Festival to prepare for next weekend….
So, I think that it’s time for an afternoon break. I have to keep in mind that life on a farm comes in cycles of busy and quiet and there’s no in-between!! The important thing is to pull yourself out of it once in while and remember, we’re supposed to be having fun!!
Okay, goosie time!! Look, the yellow wellies work…the goosies think that we are one of them!!
Goosie Pile Up:
Hope y’all out there are having a lovely Sunday!!
There should a Farming 101 course or a Dummy’s Guide to Farming. We sure could do with this since neither of us grew up on farms. Now, this is a funny story that happened this week…which makes me wish that we had farming classes at school that taught you the basics…like how to pull a wooden post out of a 3 foot hole without doing your back in.
Gnome is currently working on building a back veranda and needs to erect 8 sturdy rose-wood posts, 10 feet tall, 3 feet into the ground. He’s dug the holes (oooh, that started the sore back) and now he has to re-locate posts into this new area. Now, these posts have been used for different things around the farm and need to be dug out of their holes. The posts are about 200kgs (400lbs) in weight so it’s no joke! I saw Gnome perform the heroics of removing one post (ooooooh…sore, sore back!!) and I promptly told him to stop before he did any silly damage to himself.
So we decided to take a break (cup of tea and a Kit-Kat) and do a Google search on “how to lift posts out of holes.”
Something called a “Farm Jack” came up. We both looked at the description and it suddenly dawned us that this was the exact piece of invention that we were looking for! Where had it been in all these 13 years of farming when we were painstakingly trying to dig posts out of holes…
And then we realised that there was a piece of equipment that looked exactly like a farm jack lying rotten and neglected, dying a horrible death under our house. It had been left as a “can you keep this I’ll be back in 2 weeks” piece of equipment which we have now kept for 10 years waiting for this guy to come back who will never come back.
We both looked at each other and said at the same time,
“Oh we have a farm jack!! Is that what it is! “
All those years of keeping that piece of equipment and having no idea what it was!! Too Funny, right? Or should we just feel very silly and sheepish…
Anyway, Gnome took the hunk of metal junk out and with a pair of pliers, some diesel and a wire brush proceeded to clean it up. Upon closer scrutinisation, the original two pins had been replaced, in a haphazard way, with a nail at the top and a half broken screw at the bottom. Gnome attempted to “fix” the farm jack and with some magic and a piece of wire with a metal key-holder managed to get the thing working. It wasn’t perfect since the bottom pin was broken so he used a wire to lever the pin back and forth. It worked…it actually worked…well, we got a post an inch out of the hole before the make-shift lower pin gave way and broke. Arrrghhhh!!! It was looking so promising.
Well, it’s not fixable now and the broken pin is stuck so can not be removed and replaced. It is such a shame because if it wasn’t for that, it would work!
Now to look for a farm jack in Belize. Not easy. We tried looking for one in Toledo, Belize and the likes of it has never been seen or heard of before in this district. We must search further afield…
Work has temporarily come to a standstill on our farm due to a sore back and difficulty procuring equipment. 🙂
We need to catch a healthy-choice rat that comes into our kitchen at night. He eats only organic, home-grown vegetables, fruit and grains. He can even sniff out this fine food through plastic wrap and munches through to get to my choice food. He turns his nose up at anything in a flashy package including ramen noodles, biscuits and sweets. What a discerning rat!
Okay, so I was getting fed up with the rat taking out all my sapodillas, tomatoes and other fruits in season. I was waking up to a gnawed piece of fruit in the basket every day. It was really frustrating because I was waiting for the fruit to ripen and the rat was getting them when they were perfect to eat. You can imagine how self-righteous I was feeling…all this hard work in the garden and the rat gets it!! That’s not right!!
I proceeded to store all my good food in closed baskets and then got the rat trap out for Gnome to set up. He asked me for some food for bait and I got out some cheese. He gave me a funny look because it came out of a packet. He looked like he wanted to say something but then felt that he better not.
I didn’t know what his problem was…don’t you catch rats with cheese?? I’ve seen it in cartoons.
Well the next morning, I found the traps empty still with the cheese bait. Gnome had accidentally left an extra piece of cheese on a plate (in plain sight) on the kitchen table…that had not been taken either. It was clear that the rat did not feel enticed by the cheese.
Gnome just looked at me…you know with that knowing look: I didn’t tell you so but you should no better look.
Hmmm…I really don’t want to bait the rat with my good stuff but it looks like I have no choice. Oh dear…the bait will have to come from my lovely garden harvest…
Oh what a relief! We had a really lovely heavy rain early this morning and a nice sleep in until 7am because it was so cool. The last few weeks we have been getting up at 4am to start at 6am which is the coolest time of the morning. It’s been really exhausting and the heat has been relentless.
Anyway, our goosie with the broken leg is recovering. It is actually able to weight bear and managing to limp around goosie hospital. It’s getting a bit lonely so I am allowing 1 to 2 hour visits from fellow goslings (one at a time). It gets a bit over-crowded with all of them twittering , messing around with food and pooping. Over-night stays are not allowed…way too much carrying on…Munchkin and Gnome don’t take kindly to interrupted sleep!
Operation: Get broody turkey sitting on goose eggs unfortunately failed. The Duchess (aka Female turkey) was a champion and sat the thirty days (and more) but none of the eggs hatched. We’ve read that goose eggs need to be turned on a daily basis (by the goose or by human) but once the duchess was sitting, there was no budging her. We thought that it was just best to let her do her Mama thing and wait it out. So in conclusion, it doesn’t look like turkeys can set goose eggs because they are too heavy for them to be turned. Oh well, we tried!
The other baby goslings are doing normal baby gosling things like twittering, pecking at each other, eating grass and pooping. We take them for supervised walks at the pond area and sit with them while they do their goosie thing. The other day, Gnome’s mum phoned us and said,
“How are my grand-children?”
The grand-kids are doing very well:
Home schooling has started because we want to make them into proper little scholars…unfortunately they keep on falling asleep every-time we open the book…perhaps we should review the goosie curriculum?
About a week ago we found one of our goslings, 3 days old at the time, sitting immobile and unable to stand. It was twittering away to itself and appeared unperturbed. On closer examination, it appeared to have broken its right leg. We are not sure what happened because he was fine before; maybe a guinea pig had accidentally trod on its leg or a clumsy gosling had sat on him…who knows?
Since it was unable to move, it was not eating or drinking.
Gnome, accident and emergency specialist said that it would probably take 4 to 6 weeks for the leg to completely heal. He further explained that this would mean that we had to open up a 24 hour hospital care unit for the little one. In other words, this meant one to one care, attention and feeding. He asked me:
“I know that we are both very busy right now. Munchkin, do you want to look after the goosie?”
I thought about it carefully because there are plenty of things to do on the farm and many other things that we do including seeing patients and making products. Do I really want to use up my time looking after one goosie when there are many healthy goosies to give the time and attention to?
Oh well, this one was too cute for me to say “No.”
As Gnome says,
“Cuteness goes a long way…”
Goosie Hospital is officially open; run by Matron Munchkin!!
How quickly we forget that we actually had a wet “dry season” this year and it is only in the last few days that it has been unbearably hot. I say this because, the wetter weather has given the opportunity for wild mushrooms to come up around us. Some of them are edible so that is an absolute delight to us.
Just to give you a bit of a background on the adventures of M & G:
We started foraging in Scotland about 2 decades ago; we had so much fun running into the woods to find chanterelles, boletes and all manner of yummy mushrooms. We even collected enoki in the local park for breakfast every day. We still remember the time that we would secretly go into parks at 4am in the morning to tap maple trees. Oh, and we also collected and made nettle soup, dandelion salad and lots of wild greens. Outside of work (hospital, accident and emergency and all that stuff), we started calling ourselves “Munchkin and Gnome” as a personal joke. It was a conscious way of “making light of ourselves” outside our serious medical doctor demeanour.
We think that it is important not to feel self important and that’s why we call ourselves Munchkin and Gnome. Plus we think it’s funny!!
Anyway, let’s go back to the present and show you some pictures of mushrooms that we have found on our farm.
This one started off promising and we had to wait for it to open up in order to identify it properly. It ended up being the green spored parasol Chlorophyllum molybdites. It is not edible because it causes gastro-intestinal upset although David Arora, well-known mycologist with very good books, does state that some people can eat it without any stomach upset. We haven’t tried it but occasionally, Gnome will see a whole load of these and say,
“…hmmm….should we try them…what do you think?”
I usually give him a funny look and say that I don’t want to:
“We’re not starving, my dear.”
It opens up to look like this; it has green spores which is the key to its proper identification.
This fungus looks like a type of mold. It doesn’t look edible but interesting to look at if you are into fungus and molds like us.
This one we found eating into an old tree stump. Honey mushroom, Armillariella mellea. Edible!! Very tasty. After proper identification (we examine, take spores and go through identification keys in an obsessive sort of way) we identified it and then took a test sample to eat. Whenever we find a new mushroom that we manage to identify as edible, I take only one mushroom and cook it up (usually just sautéd in oil). We both share this tiny little morsel and wait 24 hours. If we feel fine after that, we proceed to cooking up a larger portion. We are doctors after all and we so we still have to behave responsibly with foraging and all.
If you stumble across any mushrooms in Belize, Gnome would be happy to assist in identification. We would need the following information:
Note that our identification efforts are geared towards determining edibility. This is for eating and no profit. Be prepared to send us the spore print if the mushroom turns out to be edible.
The last few days, we’ve been having a bit of car trouble; we were driving back home and the fuel warning light came up. Of course, we didn’t know what that meant so Gnome had to phone up the Toyota dealership to ask them about the light. This is what he was told over the phone: get a new fuel filter, get a car mechanic to install the fuel filter and then get the mechanic to re-set the warning light. This is what Gnome did: get a fuel filter, do a Google search on “how to install a fuel filter” and “how to reset a warning light.”
There was enough information on the Internet for a Gnome, without any car mechanic skills whatsoever, to install the fuel filter. We would ordinarily have just paid to get it done but this time Gnome said to me,
“…wait a minute…between the messing around with a mechanic and paying for it, maybe it’s just easier if I have a go at doing it myself.”
And so he did. His conclusion was that generally car stuff is quite simple and straight forward and if you actually take the time to read up instructions on the Internet, you can generally get it done yourself. He did say as an after thought:
“…I’m talking about car stuff…not medical stuff…there are too many people who get on the Internet to make a self diagnosis and get it wrong.”
That for true, I can vouch for that!! Too many people using Dr Google!!
Anyway, with the car thing, I am really glad that Gnome works with the philosophy of self-reliance and he’s not afraid to learn new things all the time.
Okay, so what’s happening on the farm? Well, we have some new harvests. This is suriname cherry which has a lovely resinous taste. I have taken a picture of one pristine cherry because we seem to have something that is biting holes in all of them. I can’t spot what is causing it but I think that we have a problem with ants.
Some nice cayenne chilli peppers. Gnome has strung these on a string in the kitchen to dry.
Oh, and these are canistel. They taste like sweet potato; we actually eat this with our meals as a carbohydrate substitute. Our tree is loaded this year! Yay!!
Ooooh…it is really punishingly hot right now!! Try to keep cool everyone!!
It’s taken us a wee bit of time to recover from Sunday. You see we lost two out of three of our new goslings. This is what happened: On Saturday night, we performed Operation: Move Mama Goose from bush with goslings to safe house.
We did our usual kidnapping and bundling and moved them to a nice luxury nest in the Zen garden coop. We cleared everyone out of the place so that she would have the place to herself.
The new baby goosies:
Of course, Geese don’t take kindly to being moving about and the next morning she was making a racket. She had free reign of the entire coop with water, greens and grains but she wouldn’t have any of it. She kept on pushing against the fencing and incessantly complained the whole morning. The three little goosies were just following her about and were not perturbed by her fussing and complaining. Occasionally, I would cast an eye over to make sure that the babies were doing okay. The last time I looked was about midday and everything was in order. At about 1pm, it started raining so I decided to run outside to make sure that the baby goslings had found shelter. And lo and behold, mother was there with no goslings!! Arrrgh!!! Deep Shock…where were the babies??? I called Gnome and we searched the entire coop looking for the babies and couldn’t find any trace of them. Mama was so distressed and kept on crying out…
We eventually opened the coop and let her out because she was just going crazy. She ran back to her original nesting spot and plonked herself down, refusing to move.
We again scoured every inch of the coop…still nothing…
Was it a hawk? What could take away three baby goslings without leaving a trace? We did deduce that it wasn’t our cat because he had an alibi…he had been asleep inside the house all day.
We finally decided to get Mama goose back into the coop in the hope that she could call the babies and perhaps they would miraculously appear. Anyway, she did her calling and Gnome thought that he heard some peeping noise coming from the cardamom bush in the coop. He went over to investigate and meanwhile, I walked around the coop again and found the bodies of two of the dead babies. They both had similar injuries to the head like they had been grabbed by the head and shaken back and forth.
Gnome found the third one…luckily, still alive and uninjured. Thank Goodness!!
Anyway, we both agreed that the dead bodies of the goslings were not in the coop at the beginning of the search. How did they mysteriously appear in the coop midway through the search? After thinking about it a bit more, we realised that we had both left the coop to retrieve the mother and during this brief moment, the culprit must have snuck into the coop and performed the wicked deed.
So who was it Sherlock Gnome and Munchkin??
It was the dasdardly drake:
He was the only one who could get in and out out of the coop because he has discovered a secret weak spot…the rest are too fat to get through.. I recalled to Gnome that I saw the drake sitting next to the cardamom bush when I had run down to check on the babies. He quickly scarpered and I forgot about him in the ensuing confusion.
Oh dear, that means that the babies were probably still alive at the beginning of the search?? But we lost them when we both exited the coop.
The remaining baby gosling has been put in with the two older goslings in the safety of the guinea pig cage. Everything has quietened down and mama has already forgotten, thankfully.
Well, it’s up to these two to look after the new baby goosie!!
