Category Archives: Belize

Belize, Farming, Food, Plants

Growing Black Pepper

We have had black pepper (Piper nigrum) plants for about ten years…even though I have written a few articles on this plant, it has not produced a consistent harvest until now. When we first started the farm, we thought that plants could be stuck anywhere and they would sort themselves out(!) The wonders of innocent and inexperienced youth!! And so we planted our black pepper plants beside palm trees hoping for a bountiful crop. This method proved quite haphazard as some years we would gather black pepper and other years, there was nothing at all.

Black Pepper Cuttings.

From my observation, the pepper plants did not grow well in these conditions because the palm frond shaded them out too much. And also, a lot of the blackbirds (and other birds) hung around the shaded palm areas to get the ripe pickings even before we noticed. When we did get harvests, it was great:

Black Pepper.

I even made white pepper which is pretty labour intensive:

White Peppercorn

Wonderful:

Harvested Green Peppercorn.

Anyway, the years passed by so quickly and it was only two years ago that we finally had the time to re-address the black pepper crop which we found meagre and inconsistent. This time we decided to erect posts and plant cuttings beside them; this is a picture taken in 2018.

Growing Pepper.

As you can see the black pepper has been planted in full sun on the south-side. They have been planted in tyres to give them some protection from heavy rains. This was a success and the plants grew up the posts very quickly and started producing within about a year. Presently, we are in year 2 and the vines are producing all year round! I am so pleased because I can use fresh black pepper everyday…what a lovely luxury!!

Black Pepper Plant Year 2

We have six plants that provide all the black pepper that we need for the kitchen. Everyone should have a couple of these in their backyard…they don’t take up much space and produce continuously! See the second picture below…they don’t need to be planted so far apart…we had put chicken wire in-between the posts thinking that the vine would preferentially spread out. However, they seem to be quite happy just growing up wooden posts like this:

Black Pepper Plants

Okay, have a nice Friday night!!

Belize, Farming, Food, Plants

Can’t Think of a Catchy Title!

Brand New Picture!

I can’t think of a Catchy Title and I can’t think of a Catchy first sentence to you reel you into my new post…Ha-Ha!! Anyway, I wanted to show you some pictures of plants and vegetables around the farm…oops, that’s not going to get you going, is it?? This week, we are cleaning up the farm again and re-planting. With all the rains from the hurricanes, we lost most of our crops which included the pumpkins, melons and corn. That is life but it sucks sometimes!!

Gnome, we have lost our melon and corn crop!!

These are pictures of plants that made it through the terrible rains…well done, my little (or big) plants!!

These are the beans that are growing up the side of our house and now over our roof. This is the Gnome and The Giant Beanstalk story.

Winged Bean.

These are winged beans (Psophocarpus tetragonolobus), a long variety that grows to about 1 to 2 feet long. Although it grows very well in this climate, it is not commonly known about or grown in Belize. I have seen a few people growing it and they are usually Asian people. This is a plant originally from Papua New Guinea (according to good old Wiki) and is grown mostly in South East Asia as a vegetable crop. The thing that I like about this plant is that all parts are edible including the leaves, beans, shoots (like tiny asparagus),flowers and roots. We eat the green pods either uncooked in salads or cooked in stir fry or stews. The mature beans are supposed to be like soya beans…but we haven’t tried eating it that way yet. We also haven’t tried the roots either…maybe that can be a later post when we experiment more with this vegetable. This plant is annual hence the reason why we are allowing it to cover our house (!)…the plant will die in mid March and that is when we will harvest seed to sow for the following year.

The next survivor is a flattish looking sweet habanero:

Sweet Habanero

They have that familiar habanero taste but they are sweet rather than hot. They add a mild pepper taste to salads and stews. Very easy to grow in 5 gallon pig tail buckets and withstands bad, tropical storms!

Gnome is pleased that the tobacco made it. They were grown on raised beds (but still, a lot of other crops didn’t even make it despite being planted in a similar manner). We are growing a different variety each time; this one is called ‘Mammoth’…I am not sure why…they are the same size as our usual tobacco plants. Anyway, they are a nice plant to grow…if you don’t use the leaf to make cigars, you can also use them as an organic insecticide (more about that in a later post).

Tobacco Crop

The flowers are beautiful and its essence can be distilled into a perfume:

Tobacco Flowers

Okay, let’s have one more:

Rosemary Plants

For once, the rosemary plants are actually doing very well. They usually grow to a small plant and then all of a sudden, they just die. This year, someone gave us cuttings of a rosemary known to grow well in Belize…look at them…they look great!! We used to grow our rosemary from seed packets bought from the States or Italy…I think perhaps those varieties were not acclimatized to the Tropics and that was why we failed to grow this herb successfully in the past.

I have more pictures but I will save them for another post. Here is a random picture of a nice spider web because I don’t know what to do with it and I wanted to show it to you anyway!

Spider Web on Lamp
Amusing, Belize, Pets

How Silly!

We had a silly conversation last night that made me laugh out loud! We were talking about our ol’ farm cat that I have turned into quite a gourmand; his favourite foods are venison, smoked duck, beef jerky and vanilla ice-cream. It has got to the point that he won’t eat ‘cat food’ and God Forbid! we give him cat biscuits! He usually eats a mini size version of what we have for dinner.

Cat in Pantry.

He doesn’t touch any shop bought chicken or chicken gizzards/feet or any of those cheap cuts that people feed their pets…he will just lounge on the ground and have a staring competition with me. Guess who usually wins? Anyway, we were eating curry for dinner yesterday and when we were done (he has been trained to eat his meals after we have finished) he stood on his hind legs and pawed at Gnome’s empty bowl and attempted a sideways lick. He definitely knows that is not allowed to do that so we knew he was trying to communicate.

Gnome: ‘Oh yes, the cat loves curry and we haven’t had it for a long time.’

Munchkin: ‘Oh yeah he is trying to tell us that he likes curry.’

I went off to feed the cat in his normal feeding place.

Sure enough, the cat ate the curry delicately and slowly like it was a fine epicurean delight…he savoured each morsel slowly with calculated slowness. When he went back to Gnome to sit on his lap and lick his paws, I gave him some seconds as a surprise treat.

While the cat was on Gnome’s lap, the two new kittens came up scavenging and the first place they looked was the cat’s feeding bowl. To my surprise, they both didn’t touch the food at all…they just took a whiff and walked away.

This is the funny part, so please have a drum roll so that you can all laugh appropriately!

Munchkin: ‘Gnome, the little kittens didn’t eat the curry! I have to get them used to eating curry before they get too old…’

Gnome: ‘Hmmm, Munchkin…maybe you should teach the kittens to catch mice before you teach them to eat curry…’

Ha-Ha!!! That really made me Guffaw!! and laugh at our silly conversation!

Belize, Farming, Food

What’s Gnome Doing?

What is Gnome doing? He is always trying his hand at something new. This time, he is working on breeding black soldier flies (Hermetia illucens, if you are into Latin naming) for their grubs in order to feed the ducks. In our experience, ducks seem like to eat high protein foods including bugs, larvae, small frogs, frog spawn and small fish. They will preferentially eat these over vegetable scraps, grains and plant material. Since we have them fenced in now and they can’t go ranging far and wide, Gnome has decided to try breeding black soldier flies.

Duckies!

Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of these flies…basically they are long and black with big, beady black eyes (Yes I know, what a terrible description…if you are interested, please go look it up!!). The females like to lay around composting areas (this is perfect for getting rid of kitchen scraps and plant material);they can lay around 200 to 600 eggs at one time. Once hatched, the larvae drop into the compost and start to eat it up. Within about a week, there are fresh larvae and pupae to be harvested for food. The larvae are the ones still wriggling around and the pupae are the cocoons…technically it doesn’t matter to the ducks…they are happy to eat both. I suppose the pupa are bigger so you might want to wait longer to collect these big, fat juicy grubs. This was Gnome’s first attempt at a black soldier fly breeding area. It was made out of an old plastic container:

Soldier Fly Container

The container was designed so that the pupae and larvae would crawl towards the pointy end and fall into a harvesting bucket. Here are some pictures of the juicy duckie tit-bits:

Sifted Black Soldier Fly Grubs.

This first design was a bit too small to hold all our compost, so he made a new container out of wood:

Black Soldier Fly Breeding Bin.

The compost is placed in the middle. When the grubs are ready, they start crawling towards the sides…this container allowed them to move to either end…and then drop into a bucket.

Black Soldier Fly Bin.

The sand is placed in the bin to allow the grubs to have a good grip as they move to the end holes. Without the sand, they are prone to slipping back down into the middle area and then have to start the slow crawl back to the ends…believe me, it was quite tedious watching them slide back down and start again!! This size of breeding bin gives you about 1lb of grubs when it is working well. It works optimally in dry weather. Despite it having a protective roof, when it rains heavily, water can get into it and drown the grubs. Approximately 1lb of these grubs can feed about 3 to 4 ducks adequately. We have 10 ducks so Gnome is looking to build two more of these to supply all the protein that our ducks need. So, still no rest for Gnome…two more containers to build!

The ducks love these grubs and like to pick through them in a container of sand:

Food For Duckies.
Amusing, Belize, Pets

Crazy Cat!!

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Okay, I am ready to talk about the Crazy Cat on the farm. He has been a menace and a nuisance from day 1…oh, but cuteness goes a long way…so, I kinda still like him…how frustrating!! This is the story: Crazy Cat was given to us when he was 4 weeks old and now we have had him for 2 months. His Mother is a feral cat that lived in the woods and adopted a family (our friends who gave us the cat) when she was having her kittens. The family put her in a container to have her kittens (she had all four of them) and left food and water in the container for all of them. The mama and the kittens seemed to have minimal human contact during the time that she was nursing.

Crazy Cat!

Okay, so I did not know that kittens from feral parentage are very, very hard to train…in fact, you could say that they can’t be trained. This little one bounces about all over the place. We left him under the house with our other new farm cat. It is so interesting to see the differences between them…the other one is so tame and polite.

The one on the left is the nice one.

This one is younger (now 3 months) and the other cat is 6 months old. Crazy Cat actually figured out how to get into the house before the older one…he scales walls, he climbs trees, and flies like a bat, in the air and lands solidly on his feet in our house. He is an amazing, flying acrobatic crazy cat that can swing from ladder rungs and fly through our window like a bat out of hell! We have our very own circus cat right on the farm! You honestly have to see it to believe it…I get amused and angry at the same time:

Angry!!

Oh, and I haven’t finished my tirade. This cat can’t sit on your lap for one second before he tries to jump up onto your shoulders or head. And what’s more…there are scratch marks all over my legs…whenever I am in the kitchen preparing food, he uses my leg as a staircase to get to the kitchen table to steal scraps. I am using a water spray to reprimand him but he has a memory of a gnat…he forgets everyday and crawls up my leg to the kitchen counter top.

Anyway, I feel better now for letting off a bit of steam. Crazy Cat has some redeeming qualities! Trying to be positive now!! Whenever I am out on the farm, he follows me about like a faithful puppy and keeps me company under the shade of a tree or a plant. Sometimes, he still get a bit wily and the other day, he tried to climb up and down a whole bunch of corn stalks ruining all the plants as he scrambled up and down in his usual hectic, crazy way. Oh well, he is keeping us on our toes. Gnome thinks he is cute and has managed to get him sitting on his lap for a record 5 seconds. Big Ol’ farm cat doesn’t like him and will try to guard the entrances to the house religiously to stop him from getting in…he just doesn’t realize that this elusive little cat has no need for doors!!

Belize, Farming, Food, Pets, Plants

Just a Quickie!

It’s just a short one today because we are both really tired. Shock…horror…it hasn’t rained for three days and it is actually drying up. Gnome ran out today to try to chop the brush, that has grown up with the rains, in the goosie coup. I am trying scrub the walls inside the house…with the non-stop rains for two months straight…there is mould everywhere.

Alas, there is so much work to do!! And you know what…this year, we never finished a whole round of mowing…and, not because of the usual machinery failure but because we have had so much rain. I can’t remember the number of times we have had to stop halfway and start all over again.

Anyway, this is a quick catch up on farm activities. Here are a few pictures from the farm. This is our giant loofah; we have been eating the young fruit as vegetables.

Giant Loofah.

We have a found a different type of sorrel which produces early; it flowered in September and we are harvesting right now; we are drinking sorrel tea every morning. It is high in Vitamin C and apparently good for hypertension.

Sorrel Pods.

This is our usual Belizean sorrel which is harvested at Christmas time…see how different they look…

Sorrel Plant with Flowers.

This is a snake that we saw eating a frog. It was so intent on digesting that he allowed me to do a photo shoot:

Snake Eating Frog.
Snake Eating Frog 2.

Oh, and one last picture…what’s that…another one!! Could not resist it…another boy!! More about this crazy scamp next time…

Mad Crazy Kitten!!
Belize, Food, Plants, Saving Money

Pasta Colours in Belize.

If you happen to have a pasta maker lying around in the kitchen during this new COVID 5am to 9pm curfew and you are stuck indoors with bad weather, you might want try your hand at making colourful pasta with the ingredients in Belize. I thought we could have a lively discussion about pasta colours today since were just talking about pasta yesterday…if you can think of anything better…I am all ears!! Yes, this is another Bored in Belize project!

The green colour in pasta is originally made with spinach greens. Here in Belize, there is a popular green called calaloo which is from the amaranth family. On our farm, it comes up everywhere as a voluntary vegetable.

I collected a whole bunch of calaloo and boiled it until it turned to mush…then I added this to flour to make the dough for pasta. The resulting colour was very nice and Gnome said that it looked like authentic spinach pasta…if you look carefully, there is a mottled green colour.

Calaloo Pasta.

I was very pleased with this colour as we had previously tried spirulina, a high protein algae that Gnome grows for the animals. When it is freshly harvested, it is a very intense green colour:

Spirulina Harvest.

Splat!! Spirulina looks like a big green glob and we thought it would be perfect as a colour additive in pasta. This is what we got:

Spirulina Pasta.

It doesn’t look so bad but as it ages, it actually acquires a blue tinge to it which looks less appetizing. I don’t have a picture of the aged pasta but I have one of spirulina ice-cream; it is a funny cyan colour:

Spirulina Ice-cream.

Anyway, the calaloo experiment was so much better. Another colourful ingredient that you can use is cacao powder which imparts a rich colour and chocolatey taste:

Chocolate Mafaldine.

To get a vibrant yellow colour in pasta, turmeric works very well:

Turmeric Pasta.

Alas, we have not finished our colour experiment yet because if you read our last post, you will know that our pasta machine has stopped working. We still need to find a nice red colour…I don’t want to use tomatoes because that would be too straight forward…what about ground annatto? Hopefully this will be a later blog if we ever find another pasta machine!!

Belize, Food, Saving Money

Another One Bites the Dust!

I am, of course, referring to the demise of our third pasta maker. These pasta makers…you know one of those ubiquitous $50.00 to $100.00 ones that claim they are Italian-made…can’t withstand the rigours of a Gnome pasta marathon. We got twenty-five hours out of then it started groaning and creaking and before we knew it, it carked it good and proper. We reckon that these pasta machine only have a 20 to 25 hour working life…

Aawwh…we were only on day 3 of 7 and had just done the lasagna sheets and linguini…we were just about to start the angel hair…

Gnome took the machine apart to try to fix it. He noted that the gears were made of a soft alloy and had completely worn out and lost shape. He has seen this problem with all our former machines and it seems that no matter what brand of pasta machine (this third one was a slightly more expensive, top of the range) they are designed with a short length of usage in mind.

Hmmm…these pasta makers should just be labelled with: Ornamental Pasta Maker: For Countertop Presentation Only with a special message for Gnomes: Warning: On no account should you be fooled into thinking that this is a fully operational pasta maker!

Anyway, we are mourning the loss and feeling a bit put out. Between Hurricane Eta, Iota and the usual high rainfall here in Toledo, we have been stuck indoors for over a month. It is either flooded or very wet outside so no farm work can be done. We were hoping to get our 2020 Pasta run accomplished. Here are some pictures of what Gnome managed to crank up:

Cheese Roll.

This is a ‘cheese roll’ that Gnome made; there is a central length of cheese which is then rolled in layers of thin dough (made with the pasta maker). Before the dough is rolled, grated cheese and chilli flakes are sprinkled onto the flat sheet. In all, this cheese roll was made with about 6 feet of flattened sheet dough. You get a nice patterned effect like this:

Cheese Roll.

Ohhh and Ahhh…it is crunchy in texture and tastes delicious!!

Gnome also made pastry for beef pie:

Beef Pie.

We made this food in between pasta runs so that when we had a break, we could eat something yummy. We did also make pasta:

Worked Cacao Pasta.
Chocolate Mafaldine.

Oh, and this time, we made green pasta from calaloo greens; more about colouring pasta in a later post. The colour turned out very well:

Calaloo Pasta.

Do you like the picture?? This was my attempt at a fancy ‘coffee table’ picture!!

Amusing, Belize, Pets

It’s a Boy!!

We had said for a long time that one was enough and we would have no more. Well, every-one it is another boy…a boy cat…I mean! This year, our farm cat turned ten and I think he has retired unofficially…I say that it is not official because never had a meeting with us about it! This is what he does 23 hours a day:

Sleeping!

And more sleeping:

Sleeping!

For one hour of the day from 5pm to 6pm he suddenly becomes very active and animated; he paws at his bowl or nudges it with his head. There is no catching of mice or other vermin during any of his 24 hour day. Anyway, I wanted to get to the story of the new boy: several months ago, Gnome told me that he kept on seeing flashes of something with orange fur jumping about under the house…at first, I thought he might be hallucinating because when he mentioned it, our orange cat was quite happily sleeping upstairs like this:

This is when he is very relaxed!

After the first sighting, Gnome kept on getting glimpses of orange fur under the house. I was getting concerned about Gnome because I thought he wasn’t getting enough sleep or something…is your mental health okay, Gnome…is the isolation of living in the middle of nowhere getting to you??

After a few days, Gnome was convinced that there was something orange downstairs so he went scouting. After a while, he came back with this cute little kitten. We don’t have an early pictures but it was very skinny orangey-white kitten. These later pictures show that he is actually a bit of a chunk…well partly because Munchkin likes to feed him. Meet our new farm cat:

New Boy: Awake.
New Boy: Asleep.

He has a very gentle personality and likes to sit on our laps. This one has a very noisy purr and trills (like a tribble, if you know what I mean!). He is probably about 6 months now and we are enjoying his company since he isn’t sleeping all the time!!

Amusing, Belize, Blog

Seriously Funny!

I don’t want to write any-more!

This post is dedicated to Giselle (you know who you are). It is a Thank-you for getting me back on track to writing blog posts. I stopped writing in May because it just didn’t seem fun any-more; writing posts became part of a tick list and it ended up feeling like yet another chore. I forgot the reason why and neglected my blog for six months. At times, I would ask Gnome whether I should resume and he always said that it was up to me. I couldn’t bring myself to write anything because I didn’t know my reason for writing and I felt that there was nothing to write about(!). These things I knew: it certainly wasn’t for fame and glory. What for?

Anyway, along came Giselle. And, every time we spoke she told me that my blog posts were Hilarious, Funny and Humorous!

Yes, Yes, Yes to all three descriptions…that was what I was always trying to do!!

Just to write to get a laugh, a chuckle or even a guffaw!!

Nudge Nudge…I was trying to make you laugh!!

In these times of COVID, Fear and Anxiety, we certainly need to find something to make us smile and remember to be Seriously Funny sometimes.