Category Archives: Farming

Some More Farm Pictures.

September 3, 2018 Munchkin

I have been starting to look a bit more into my Chinese heritage since my father passed away recently. To be honest, I never really thought that much about it and usually, if anyone asked, I would say I was Cantonese for easiness sake. Actually, I am not Cantonese and I don’t even speak Cantonese. I am Hakka….well, you are probably thinking that you are none the wiser being told this information…anyway, it is significant because Hakka people were traditionally farmers and within their social structure, it was the women that worked the fields (subsistence farming) whilst the men worked in the urban areas (for money). Interesting that the Hakka were the only Chinese that did not practice foot binding…probably because the women had to work outside.

Anyway…my convoluted introduction was just to add another layer of interest…maybe Munchkin is going full circle and getting in touch with her ancestral roots?!! 😉

Okay, more pictures:

Gnome has been pruning trees (probably about 3 to 4 times a week) and gathering the wood to make charcoal. The previous charcoal container was over-flowing so he had to make it larger and sloping to allow better access.

The tyre garden is working out well especially when the ground is so boggy right now. We are stashing taro in between the tyres in the hope that the geese overlook them…so far, so good. The geese have a very healthy appetite when it comes to roots like taro and we are careful to hide them from their plain sight.

We are also developing a grove of pitahaya (dragon fruit) on tyres. The cactus is trained to grow up the posts and once they reach the top and start dangling…which usually takes about 9 months…will produce fruit. So far, we have about twelve of these and I am aiming for about 20 or more plants.

The tyres are filled with seaweed (courtesy of Panda…thanks!). Right now, with full on rainy season, it takes about a week for the salt to wash out of the seaweed…once washed out, the cactus is planted and attached to the post with bindweed vine.

Belize, Farming, Plants

Progress on the Farm.

September 1, 2018 Munchkin

Yeah! We have managed to keep the grass down this year which is definitely progress for us! This helps because we can actually look around to make plans for the farm. Despite the weather being on/off or sunny/rainy ie. can’t make up its mind, we are in good spirits because everything is proceeding at a reasonable pace. We have had a whole week cooped up inside the teeny house because of wet, boggy ground and coalescing ponds and I finally managed to get out today to take a few pictures.

Here is a giant toad that resides in the duck coop; seems to be quite happy to jump around with the ducks and sit in the dinner bowl.

We had a good harvest of Malabar Chestnut…the cultivated Chinese variety which tastes like chestnuts. Don’t get this one confused with the wild variety here in Belize, also known as provision fruit, that gives “edible” seeds; yes, edible in that it isn’t poisonous but inedible because it tastes like cardboard. Believe me, I’ve tried and I would definitely categorise the wild chestnuts as survival food! Anyway, I digress…I wanted to show you pictures of our harvest:

I think that you may only recognise these if you are Asian and you are used to buying packets of Chinese soup ingredients that only have Chinese writing on them. I am used to seeing these seeds in the dried form; the fresh form is very nutty and succulent. We like them so much that we have decided to plant another forty trees; they are especially good for growing in wet, swampy areas so they are perfect for many areas of our farm.

Oh and look! The peanuts are still going. This is Day 93; another 27 days to go. We have had a few occasions when we thought that the whole field would get flooded or washed away with the rains but it has managed to battle through. We are very pleased with the peanuts; the straw like stuff in between the rows are cut vetivir.

Last but not least, it is bamboo shoot time. I did not harvest last year because we were too busy. I said to Gnome this year that I was happy to harvest about five of them; that will make about 5 gallons which will last the whole year. For the first time, we are proceeding at a pace that allows us to catch the cycles on the farm. Usually, we are behind schedule and trying to catch up. Phew, it has taken 14 years to get to this stage…Ha-Ha!!

Another picture:

Looks like more rains are coming!!

Amusing, Belize, Farming, Food, Plants

It’s Horrible Outside!

August 28, 2018 Munchkin

It is full on rainy season and it is absolutely pouring down. Every morning we have been waking up to thunderstorms and torrential rain. Water is flowing in tiny little streams on our farm and we haven’t been able to get out to work for a full week. This morning, Gnome said, “…oh that’s interesting…the weather report said it was going to be bright and sunny with a 1% chance of rain.” Well, looks like we got the 1% or the weather report is totally, wildly inaccurate…I suspect the second. 😉

Anyway, this is the best time for pumpkins, gourds and all manner of curcubits. The water allows the them to swell up into humongous fruit…and, I think this is the best part…those beetles that like to drill holes into all my tasty, delectable vegetables can’t get out to burrow holes because of the rains! Ahhh, of course that is the silver-lining cloudy thing that Hallmark people like to point out to me. 😉

These are some bottle gourds harvested from our farm. We eat most of them young but I have left three of them to mature to use as vessels to store some of our home-made wine.

We had our first breadfruit harvest this year; it has taken three years for the trees to start baring. We probably have harvested about 100 from three young trees.

We are eating the fruit as a potato substitute; of course, as all Belizeans will testify, breadfruit is best fried in oil:

We like to cut them into “chip” shapes (easier to eat with chopsticks!) but most people around here have them as half or quarter wedges.

Gnome cooked a breadfruit stew with his usual home-made wine, tomato sauce Italian thing. It was very good:

Oh, and Gnome has been sticking coke bottles around coconut trees…what is he up to?

Amusing, Belize, Farming, Food, Mushrooms, Plants

It’s About Time…

August 25, 2018 Munchkin

It’s about time to write again. The goosies are calling me through space and time…they’ve been squeaking and squawking at me in their usual relentless way. Oh, and the grass keeps on growing! So I must keep on writing my exciting posts about geese and grass! Lately, we have had massive rains punctuated by one or two days of sun; we are still running around the farm doing whatever is possible in this wet weather when the opportunity presents itself.

We have been very fortunate with farm harvests during this rainy season and we are very thankful for them. Plenty of akee:

We really enjoy the texture and taste of akee; it has a unique fatty, buttery taste. I would even venture to say that I prefer them to avocadoes. We also had the fortune of wild paddy straw mushrooms coming up on one of our vegetable beds.

Here is a dish of paddy straw mushrooms cooked in olive oil, Gnome pasta stuff (yay! he is still cooking) and akee. Yes, we are still eating really well off the farm:

Oh and look at this…in between this huge abundance of food, Gnome still dug up beetle larvae, brought it into the house and asked me rather politely if I would like to share some food with him,

“…eh, Munchkin….would you be willing to eat some grubs…”

He wasn’t joking. This comes from his old bush tucker days in the Northern Territory, Australia when he used to forage around and eat witchity grubs and berries (as Gnomes do). I was a bit scared about eating these wiggly things live so I said that I could coat them in egg and breadcrumbs and fry them in oil. At this point, I started looking very closely at the writhing grubs and felt (would you believe it!) sorry for them. I exclaimed,

“…it’s a bit cruel to chuck these poor things in boiling hot oil, though!”

Next thing I know, Gnome is having a conversation with me about how to practically approach this apparent mental stumbling block:

“…well, I suppose you could parboil them first…or, you could chop their heads off first…”

I bailed out at this point and said,

“…look Gnome, I would eat these in a survival situation but the truth of the matter is that we have plenty of food on the farm right now. Why don’t I give them to Duckie? “

He didn’t really have a choice because I was out of the house before he could say anything. Sure enough, Duckie had a real gourmet treat of beetle larvae…she gobbled them up like there was no tomorrow.

Belize, Farming

Back and Forth…

July 6, 2018 Munchkin

The weather has been back and forth for the last month or so. We had sunny-ish weather for the last 5 days so we went out and cleared up a bit more on the farm. Gnome has been clearing trees at the pond area and I have been wheel-barrowing the wood back to the charcoal area. It’s hard work for both of us but it keep us both fit and healthy. Oh, and yes, we have filled up our charcoal store so we are going to build another concrete block storage…

Anyway, we have just done a run of work and today it started raining early morning and has kept on going. This seems like the typical July weather when you can’t get out at all! We had planned to go into town but decided to cancel because the rain is coming down in buckets! We both went outside to have a look and there are pools of water forming everywhere and the water is flowing.

Gnome saw a goose sitting in a big puddle fast asleep; when he called out to tell me, the goose woke up so I couldn’t get a picture of it…well, here is the goose just waking up from a nap:

This is just after a morning of rain:

There is water everywhere:

Anyway, I know I haven’t been writing so this is a post to let you know that we are still here and we are doing our Munchkin and Gnome stuff as usual!

Belize, Farming

Lessons With Goosies.

June 22, 2018 Munchkin

If anyone has been following our posts, they will know that we unfortunately lost all our guinea pigs to a pesky possum (that we subsequently made into curry possum) and as a result of this, we lost our crèche for the goslings.

So, this year I ended up with the task of rearing the goosies from Day 0 to adolescence (3 to 6 months). Note that Goosie Mothers are usually not the best of mothers and they can be quite haphazard in their approach. That’s why I volunteered to raise the geese.

I thought that it was useful to note the differences in rearing the goslings personally and the lessons that I have learned from these last 6 months. Yes, goosie breeding/hatching season has come to a close and the reign of wrathful, goosie terror has ended. 🙂

Goosie Lessons.

The goslings, this year, were raised on high protein (combo dog food and cooked black beans). Their food dish was continuously topped up so that they had access to food continuously for the first 3 weeks. I had to teach each one to eat the food initially by sticking its beak in the food and tapping on the food dish with my finger (to mimic the beak of a mother goose). There was one batch of goslings that refused to “take” to the food and I had to end up giving them milk. That was a horrible experience because they splashed and sploshed about in milk covering themselves from head to tail; it got quite disgusting and smelly and I am not sure if they even got to drink any of it!

At day 7 (later when they got too horribly noisy and smelly it was shifted to day 3) they were moved from the fish tank in the house to a welded wire cage outside. At this point, as-well as the usual food, they were introduced to all manner of greens so that they could get used to eating the variety of weeds around the house. I noticed that although well protected, the cage afforded the little geese the opportunity to observe their environment (ie. lots of rowdy, trouble-making adult geese) without feeling threatened. This is actually a significant point to make because the guinea-pig raised geese were kept in shallow concrete houses and when they were set free around the farm, they were very easily upset and frightened; so much so that it took them six months to find the confidence to graze away from the house area.

After day 21, they were big enough to be transferred into a metal movable cage. They were allowed to roam free during the day and were herded into the cage in the evening with a big bowl of high protein food.

After about day 35, they were allowed to roam free without needing to go into the cage at night. By this time, they were about the size of a chicken (4 to 5lbs) and could fend for themselves…even get nasty with the drake. Their weights were consistently increasing with continuous grazing. I still gave them protein titbits in the morning and evening to get them into a routine of friendly, rumbustious behaviour.

I kept a diary with food weights and goosie weekly weights. With each batch, I was actually able to improve on weight gain and towards the end, I was able to double weight gain every 7 days. Thanks to Gnome for encouraging me to be more scientific and methodical; this has allowed me to improve, tweak and make adjustments to turn my geese into healthy, happy birds.

Conclusion:

The new Munchkin Mum method has been positive and yielded better results than the previous guinea pig rearing. This year’s geese are a lot bigger, friendlier and happier. A happy goose goes a long way! The energy and time that I put into the goslings was definitely worth it and I gained a lot of enjoyment and satisfaction from the whole experience. So much so, that I am ready to do it again next year.

Amusing, Belize, Farming

Mosquito Time!

June 15, 2018 Munchkin

I am writing this post to remind myself (again) that June is mosquito time. Well at least that is when it starts…but when does it finish? Does it finish? Anyway, all I know right now is that is pretty horrible and we are forever being chased by swarms of mosquitoes. Arrrghhh…moan of the day done!

Anyway, on the upside, we have had a few days straight of good weather (of the non-rain type) so we have been out on the farm doing our stuff. So, what stuff have we done?

We have starting laying down the cardboard between our peanuts to soak up all the excess water from the rain (plus it stops the weeds coming up so it is a double bonus).

Ooooh…..another picture for Joyce:

Don’t they look healthy and green….and the okra are coming up nicely in between the first two rows of peanut.

It is jackfruit time again. All of these fruits are beautiful and are about 50lbs in weight each. Thank-you, thank-you…what a lovely, generous tree. Our sun-drying (what sun??) of the seeds did not work and they turned into a funny, fuzzy orangey moldy monster so we stopped doing that. We have now decided to make miso made from jackfruit seed.

Anything else. Yes, I washed and waxed the truck. Most people would be asking me why I am bothering to put this piece of insignificant detail down. Well, it is because we are known as the people who drive the dirty white truck (just a statement of fact and here in Toledo, everyone is recognised by the vehicle that they drive). Twice a year, I wash and wax the car and the rest of the time we don’t wash it. And you are probably scratching your head and wondering if this is an environmental issue (save water??) or something. Well actually it is to maintain and preserve the metal body work of the car. This of course is a quirky Gnome observation…he says that if your car is caked in mud for most of the year (with generous wax coating), it actually preserves the metal body and it is protected from rusting. Mind you, I haven’t seen any copy-cats so our innovative idea isn’t catching on…Ha-Ha!!

What do you think? This is a 12 year old truck now…looking good twice a year!!

Random piece of information: you can now buy Italian biscuits (cookies) in Punta Gorda. You know, once a long time ago, you couldn’t get anything down here. Sign of the times:

We have been doing more clearing…there was a very dangerous looking tree too close to our veranda. Gnome said:

“…we need to get rid of that. It is a horrible accident waiting to happen…”

Okay so that lanky, long looking tree has been taken down so one less thing to worry about.

Oh look…dandelions do grow in Belize…

Have a great evening and stay away from those pesky mosquitoes. I hear that there is a great insect repellent made from lemongrass… 😉

Amusing, Belize, Farming, Food

Jackfruit Day.

June 7, 2018 Munchkin

Okay, so when we got up this morning, the sun was out but then the dark clouds moved in and then the sun peaked again and then, alas, there were clouds piling up from the east…oh, but then there was a bit of sun coming out again. We checked the weather report and it said there was a 50% chance of rain and 50% chance of no rain. When Panda came at 9am to help out on the farm, we sent him home since it started drizzling , the black clouds were gathering and there was a lot of thunder. As soon as he left, the sun came out again. The weather went back and forth and back and forth and back and forth until I could stand it no more. Gnome realised I was turning into Crazy Munchkin so said,

“Okay, let’s stay indoors and make it a jackfruit day.”

(Thank God for sensible, no nonsense and practical Gnomes).

Well, you might have seen our jackfruits already…they are huge. Gnome cut them in half and I separated the seeds from the flesh.

Prepared Fruit:

We cleaned two huge jackfruit which took about 1 and 1/2 hours. It is really hard work, by the way, but I shouldn’t complain because it is a tonne of food.

I haven’t enjoyed eating the seeds in the past…we found them rather mealy and disappointing. This time however, our harvest was from a different tree; the boiled seeds were surprisingly good and did actually taste of chestnuts. There must have been about 10lbs of jackfruit seeds.

Once you boil the seed, there is an outer covering which you need to take off. Here is a close up picture of a cooked jackfruit seed cut in half:

Our plan is to dry the boiled seeds in the sun (what sun??!!) and once they have dried, we will ground them into flour. That’s the plan anyway…

So today, we stuffed ourselves full of jackfruit and the boiled seeds. I think we over-ate a wee bit because we both have sore stomachs right now. We are trying to settle our symptoms down with some peppermint tea. 😉

The rest of the fruit is being boiled up, as we speak, for wine; it is a murky mess right now but hopefully in a year, it will look like this:

So what’s it going to be tomorrow?? Sunny or Rainy. 🙂

Oh I might make marron glacé with the jackfruit nuts if I am in a good mood tomorrow….

Amusing, Belize, Farming

The Sun is Out!!

June 6, 2018 Munchkin

I know, I know, when you live this lifestyle, it is all about the weather. Your days on the farm are dictated by whether you can get out or not. The last six days, we have had grey skies and a whole tonne of rain. Great for the plants…but, at some point there was so much of it we were worried that our peanut field would get washed away. But alas, today we saw the first signs of peanut germination…we are pleased to see hope in our efforts to grow our own food.

The sun is out today with lovely rippling blue skies. We ventured out today to fill up tyres with seaweed to plant an assortment of roots.

We felt better for moving about. The last week we have been stuck indoors trying to do indoor activities in a tiny space. We made serious attempts to not drive each other potty!! We have become used to a certain amount of daily physical work…(Gnome says this is what keeps us young plus plenty of sleep)…so that we get really crabby cooped up indoors. Well thank goodness, the sun came out today.

Gnome planted two rows of okra between the peanuts:

The month of June is very fickle and unpredictable; you don’t know whether to plan outside or inside activities because you never know what is going to happen. Gnome reminded me:

“…don’t get your hopes up too much for a work schedule in June…June is as fickle as a Wo….”

Munchkin: “What?????”

Gnome: “…Wombat…that is what I said…”

Munchkin: “Hmmmm.”

This month drives us crazy because of this but hey, we can’t complain when all our water tanks are full again and the pond is half full from just six days of rain. Needless to say, the goosies are having a wonderful time splashing about in puddles and have started trooping out to the pond again. That’s good because they can get out from under my feet…they are like a bunch of school children…

Amusing, Belize, Farming

Cool Weather!

June 2, 2018 Munchkin

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!!

Casa Mascia Apothecary

Category Archives: Farming

Some More Farm Pictures.

Progress on the Farm.

It’s Horrible Outside!

It’s About Time…

Back and Forth…

Lessons With Goosies.

Mosquito Time!

Jackfruit Day.

The Sun is Out!!

Cool Weather!

Everything Handmade in Belize.