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.
Peanut Area.Bamboo Fence.
The bamboo has been erected to grow air potatoes:
Air Potato Vine.
We will plant tomorrow…we are so excited. I think the peanuts are Spanish Red Variety.
Seed Peanut.
Thank-you once again to Graham and Joyce for the peanuts!!
After I got up this morning and after I had my buzz of Yorkshire tea, Gnome said to me very pointedly,
“….we are going to have a nice quiet day together. We might not achieve anything, we might not get anything done but that’s okay.”
He said this slowly and precisely so that I would not gloss over it and start doing my usual Hurricane Munchkin from kitchen to farm. Hence, I am sitting down in a Zen sort of way to try achieve balance. In my head, I am thinking:
(did he have to wait until after I had the tea??)
“…ooooh, I have ten jackfruit, or more to clean up…oh, and I have to feed my little goosies and I need to to do this and that and oh, I need to get that done before Tuesday because Wednesday will be busy…oh, and there is the Cacao Fest on Saturday too…oooh, busy busy!!”
Jackfruit.Another Goosie.
Oh so much jackfruit this year…
Opened Jackfruit.
And there I go again, the whole week is planned… 🙂
Anyway, it is all good and we can take a rest. Change of plan…
“…I am going to cook a Sunday roast and then…oops, I am starting the planning ahead again…”
Hee-Hee!! I will stop at the roast and take it from there.
Oh, what did you say, Gnome?? He just said something. He is going to make jackfruit wine today…Ha-Ha, he is still doing something…
Anyway, we are doing okay and are charging ahead to clean up the farm…onto the coconut area; we have so many sprouted coconuts (hundreds) that I will have to pick up (some of them rooted to the ground) so quite a lot of heavy work for the week. That is partly why Gnome has forced a break.
Coconuts.
Okay, the tea is wearing off so I can probably sit down for a bit and watch some silly films with Gnome…
and perhaps make some wine together. Have a great restful Sunday!!
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!!
Dry Season Pond.
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:
Tilapia Fry.
The water was getting quite murky so Gnome had made a swirl filter with a bucket and bits:
Swirl Filter Top.
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…:)
Swirl Filter Front.
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!!
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.
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)…
Mark Goosie (I am with-holding his real name since people might think that I named him after some-one real) was one (of a pair) of geese that we first introduced into our farm back in the good old days.
Mark Goosie.
Unbeknown to us, at the time, we were ruthlessly sold two boys. So, we had asked for a breeding pair but did not get what we asked for! Anyway, the two of them paired up (as geese do) and seemed quite happy together. We tried to introduce female geese later on in the game but the two remained inseparable. One female goose was found un-expectantly dead (there’s been a murder!!) under the house and we decided to put it down to a crime of passion. The two original geese would not let anything get in the way of their relationship.
After a while, Mark’s partner went to Great Goosie Heaven and we observed Mark Goosie mourning for a long time. At that time we couldn’t find a new companion goosie so we introduced a white duck in the hope that he would accept him as a friend. And he did; for a long time they walked through the farm together side by side like old buddies. White duck died a few years later and again, Mark was left all by himself. Five more years went by and he wondered around the farm alone occasionally honking in unison with passing honking trucks.
Goosie and Duckie.
Last year, we managed to procure some female geese and finally Mark accepted a “she” goose companion into his life. They were really lovely together and it was as if Mark had found a new lease of life. During breeding season, he located a nice nesting spot for his companion and filled it with his own feather down. He stood guard by her side, day and night, whilst she was setting. They always walked proudly together and did not appear to mingle with the other goosie groups.
Well, a few weeks ago, we found his female companion dead in amongst a pile of rocks behind the duck coop. We weren’t sure what had happened (a snake perhaps??). He was so distraught…honking madly and flapping his wings. He was in such an emotional state that we had to place him in the confinement of the duck coop; he wouldn’t leave the spot where he lost his girl. Whilst in the coop, he continued to place feather down on the ground to make a nesting spot. When we saw this, we felt such sadness for his loss. Awwwhhhh!!!
Anyway, what to do with Mark Goosie??
Well I never!! We thought that he would not recover from this last bereavement. But, he has re-emerged like a phoenix from the ashes- and has become head bossie (sensei) for the young’uns (the five brand new geese from last year). He acts as their sentinel, guard and teaches them “the way of the goosie.” Every morning, we see him proudly leading his troop to the pond in an orderly straight line. What a Champion…we love a happy ending, don’t you!! Go Goosie Go!!
Here’s a picture of Mark Goosie leading his team of youngsters:
Oh I haven’t been writing…it’s the usual dry season time when I just feel too hot and too tired! We are out by 6ish every morning and it is hot by 9am. The geese hide under the shade of the house and run off to the pond when they get the chance; I kind of get the feeling that they think we are just being plain silly for our insistence in working in this heat. Anyway, Gnome has been clearing more of the back area; when we first arrived here, we planted a whole lot of samwood trees for timber.
Cutting up trees.
They are all bunched up and too close to the house (we were once very silly and planted willy-nilly). Gnome is systematically removing one tree at a time, chopping the wood to dry for later charcoal making. This is craboo wood from a wild tree that has grown into a monster…we had to take this one down too; the colour is very pretty:
Craboo Wood
The charcoal area has been moved…sort of to the side…so that it is not right in front of the house! Of course, Gnome did not re-locate for aesthetic reasons…he simply ran out of room and needed more space.
Charcoal Area
Another reason for moving the charcoal place is because Gnome wants to build an outside kitchen bunker next to all this. He is going to make it out of used tyres…how romantic..recycled furnishings for Munchkin. Anyway, it will be very helpful to have another food station as my present kitchen is crammed so full of food, I can hardly get into it.
Oh and Gnome is putting these everywhere as sitting stools; they are every-where…under the house, under the rosewood trees and a couple under the bread-fruit. His reasoning behind all this is that the common habitat for munchkins and gnomes are under trees sitting on stumps (when it is too hot). 😉
Tree Stumps.
I will leave you with a nice picture of mushrooms growing on our samwood. This is Ganoderma lucidum; you can grate it and make a tea out of it. It’s one of those immune booster type things that the Chinese use in Traditional Chinese Medicine.
