Category Archives: Farming

Belize, Farming, Food, Plants

Waiting…

We are waiting for the tropical storm Nate to pass over so we are trying to stay out of trouble by having a quiet day.  Right now, looking outside, you wouldn’t think that there was a weather alert…there’s a little gusty wind and no rain at all.  So what have we been up to?  We went through a dry spell and managed to clear a chunk of bush behind the house; we even managed to burn a few wood piles because it was so hot and sunny.  This clearing up is in preparation for rotational goosie pastures which we should hopefully have ready by laying season early next year.  The last week has been very, very wet with overnight downpours; the whole place has turned to mud so we had to stop the clearing this week.

Yes, that’s why we wear wellies all the time!

Anyway, I would like to show pictures of the new vegetable garden.  If you have been following our Blog, you’ll know that we have been rotating our guinea pig houses and planting vegetables in the unoccupied houses which are  full of lovely piggy mulch.  I am very pleased with results!  We have okra, endives, rocket and aubergine.

Piggie Houses:

Piggie Rotational Homes.

The Vegetable Garden:

Red Okra.
Aubergines.

Not For Eating…tobacco…

Tobacco.
Endives and Rocket.

Keep safe everyone!!

Amusing, Belize, Farming

Catching Up!

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With the equinox, Goosie Wars have begun; the shorter day lengths have caused an immediate switch in temperament.  Goose breeding season is starting and they will lay sometime in February.  This is what happened a few days ago: Gnome went out into the yard and was immediately pecked at by big bossie goosie on the big toe!  Then another male goose lunged at him side-ways.  It was a close call and Gnome was rather taken aback by the fray.

Gnome shouted out to me,

“Watch out Munchkin!!  Goosie wars have started!”

This means six months of goosie bullying, severe hooliganism and general chaos on the farm.  When I go down to the yard every morning, I will have to be armed with a broom.  Watch out Panda too…goosies are really brutal with him!!

Mean and Tough!!

As a follow-up to the “mechanical failure” of the weed-wacker, the carburetor needed adjustment; Gnome’s comment:

“I messed around with the screws that the manual said that shouldn’t be messed around with…”

So, we are clearing bush right now…sorry, I wish I had more exciting “catching up” news for you but it can be a bit mundane at times!

Amusing, Belize, Farming

No Rest!!

Happy Independence Day Everyone!!  The celebrations started last night about 5pm in Punta Gorda…will run through the whole day today and I am not sure when it will finish (might run onto the weekend  if it’s at all possible).  Friday morning should be fun since it is still a normal working day!  Well, no rest for Munchkin and Gnome today…we are still charging ahead on the farm.

Only one problem.  Gnome says,

“Mechanical failure!”

Oh!!  No!!  Not again!!  This time it’s the weed-wacker.  it hasn’t been running that well lately and Gnome thought it was the air filter so off we went to the Farm-store yesterday to buy the filter.  It turned out to be a tiny piece of foam with two holes punched in it and it cost $4.  I guffawed (remember I am Chinese) at the till attendant and said to the boy,

“…it’s just a piece of foam…”

He was actually very sympathetic and he said,

“I know! I wouldn’t buy that for $4 either!”

Good, I am glad that we were all in agreement but I still had to buy it anyway.

Despite the change in air filter, the weed-wacker is still acting up so Gnome is back to this:

Gnome Keeping Out of Trouble.

We may take day off after all and join in with the celebrations!  We have Panda coming round later for Birthday waffles so we will have a wee bit of a “knees-up.”

Belize, Farming

Munchkin and Gnome on The Farm.

Hello Everyone!!  I hope you are having a pleasant Sunday.  We’ve been up and about on the farm trying to clear the encroaching jungle since we are experiencing dry weather.  I asked Gnome to crank up the brush-mower on Wednesday.

He has been clearing the yard with the weed-wacker with a circular saw blade (according to Gnome this is better than using the “string” because it saves on consumables and  the usual horizontal blade tends to scatter rocks around which can be potentially dangerous).  I am going into a lengthy conversation about this blade attachment because I had to go into every hardware store in Punta Gorda looking for a circular saw blade to fit the end of the weed-wacker and I had to repeat the above explanation so many times…

“…yes I’m looking for a circular saw blade…no, it’s to fit a weed-wacker….”

Apparently, nobody does this and were very interested in this innovative idea.  Maybe this is another wacky Gnome idea that requires trademarking (Ha-Ha!!).

Anyway, back to the brush-mower.  In a nutshell…Rest in Peace!!  The brush-mower has always given us trouble from day 1 and we have never (ever!) successfully cleared the farm in an entire run.  Something usually breaks down or the battery goes dead or something (it’s not in the mood or something!).  The parts have to be shipped from the States and the machine is put away awaiting parts that can take anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months to get to us.  Once we get the part, it runs for a bit and then something else goes wrong and then we have to order another part.  And round and round the merry-go-round we go.  I think we’ve been doing this for 5 years and Gnome is sick of it!

Poor Gnome!

This time round, I am not sure what happened but it wasn’t working again.  Gnome was so fed up and threw a big hissy fit!  No wonder!!

When it works, it’s Great!

The brush-mower wasn’t in a working condition when we first got it so I’m surprised it lasted this long with us.  It was Belize-rigged…look at this!!

Back Of Brush-Mower.

Anyway, Gnome has nothing but this:

Manual Mower.

Ha-Ha…not sure if he can do anything with this but he will try his best as usual.  But, for now,  I think it’s going to be weed-wacker (that’s all we have) to clear 12 acres. Wow…that’s going to be a lot of work since some of the bush is really high.

Belize, Farming, Food

Where Does The Time Go?

We are soooo busy we haven’t had time to write.  I am either doing something (so can’t be at the computer) or doing nothing (so can’t be bothered because I’m too tired).  It’s either 1 or 0 at the moment!  Gnome is getting better from his shoulder injury so I’ve got him on “light duties” right now.  This still entails moving wheel-barrows of dirt and filling up new vegetable beds.  We are dismantling the current piggie beds which are full of wonderful mulch and building new temporary homes for them.  It in other words, we have rotational concrete “pastures” for the piggies;  the piggies are fed grass and all things nice, they  poop and do their thing for 3 months, we then move them along to another home and grow vegetables in the old home.  So on and so forth….the piggies are doing their job on the farm!  Piggie  mulch is fantastic; the earth is black, black, black and there are fat worms wiggling about everywhere!

Piggie Rotational Homes.

My lovely Piggies:

So, I’ve got a whole load of seedlings ready including tomatoes, peppers, aubergines, kale, endives and fennel.

Tomato Seedlings.
Pepper Seedlings.

I’ll try and write more this week!!

Belize, Farming

What’s Happenin’?

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Hello Everyone!!  As a follow up from the frustrating iguana story, I thank you all for your advice to eat them.  We were actually going to do this but not mention it in our blog as we thought that it would sound politically incorrect.  Anyway(s), watch this space for iguana curry!

Well what’s been happenin’?  Gnome is temporarily out of action…again!  He was lifting and pushing zinc roofing into place yesterday and he has accidentally torn a ligament…in the left scapula region.  He said,

“My shoulder blade feels so unstable, it feels like it’s popped out of place!”

I examined him thoroughly and reassured him that the injury was not too severe but he did need about two weeks rest with no heavy lifting.  He wasn’t happy to hear about that!

So, no weed-wacking, no construction, no nothin’ for Gnome right now.  He’s going to drive me crazy…Ha-Ha!!

Anyway, I haven’t been writing so much but we’ve been doing our usual squirrelling around the farm.  Both can’t keep still!!  We’ve been doing regular canning lately and have amassed a respectable amount of jars in our pantry.  We have another 38 jars of lentils and 34 jars of beef stew.  Oh, and some beef broth too.  More food hoarding!!  Yippee!!

Preserved Foods.

The duckies have been laying but we haven’t been able to keep up with eating the eggs so I’ve started salting the eggs (Chinese style).  You might know the salted duck egg yolks from Chinese  mooncake.  We’ll going to have about 50 of them!

Salted Duck Eggs.

Since I am talking about food preservation, I will end with a big jar of craboo that we have pickled in vinegar with jalapeños.

Pickled Craboo.

Yes, it’s craboo season again and the only people who love this stuff are the Belizeans, Gnome and Munchkin.  Anyone born outside of Belize, refuse to touch this stuff because they think it’s tastes cheesy, in a bad way.   We think it tastes cheesy in a good way…it is after all, best eaten after fermenting in a plastic bag for a few days.  According to local tradition, the best method to get the craboo to ripen  is to place in a car for a few days to bake in the heat of the sun.

How to ferment craboo.

Enjoy craboo season while it lasts!!

Belize, Farming, Plants

The Trouble With Iguanas.

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I used to think that iguanas were cute and all things nice.  Not any more!!  They have eaten every single vegetable in my garden..  I am soooo mad.  The pumpkin patch that we planted on a bed produced so much this year and we didn’t get a single vegetable.  I tried putting gloves over the young fruit to disguise them but lo and behold, they crawled into the gloves and munched away.

Pumpkin Patch.

All the young fruits are disappearing on my aubergines.

Aubergine Plant.

Yesterday I spotted a baby iguana sitting at my Indian cucumber vine, all bloated and sleepy from feasting on my vegetables.  Hey, that’s not fair!!

Yesterday, I declared war on the iguanas,

“Munchkin is going to war against the iguanas.”

No more nice Munchkin; I am very, very upset.  My first course of action is repellent sprays.  I read on the Internet that you can spray on your prized vegetables a concoction of habanero peppers and garlic.  Gnome also mentioned that I should try spraying sulphur….he said that generally speaking, most creatures don’t like sulphur sprayed thickly on their vegetables!

This is war!!  Dear Mr/Mrs Iguana, please would you kindly re-locate.  You are not welcome here!!  This is a very polite warning…

Iguana
Amusing, Belize, Farming

Houdini Duckie!!

Phew…what a sweat fest it has been for the last week.  I have been walking about with a sore head from all the heat.  Today is a blessing with morning rains and marked coolness.  Oh lovely!!  So, the headache was definitely due to the heat.

Another silly Duckie Tale!!  About 6 months ago, we bought a new lot of fowl from a neighbour; this included a pair of geese and a pair of turkeys (The Overlord and the Duchess).  The neighbour was trying to off load her fowl because her dogs were attacking them and she felt sad that they had to kept in a protected coop all the time.  She threw in a duckie as a freebie since it was all alone and she had lost her drake partner to the dog.

At that point, when this new duckie joined us we had 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 duckies.  After about 2 to 3 weeks, I kept on counting 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 duckies.  This was back when the ducks had total free range of the entire farm and could come and go as they pleased.  They were herded into the coop at night.   Some days I would count 8 ducks as they trooped into the coop for their daily corn ration.  Other days there would be 6 ducks so I reckoned that some of them wanted to stay out and I felt that having independant ducks was okay at that time.  During the last 6 months our duckie rearing practices have changed because they were laying eggs haphazardly all over the farm.  Most of the time the dogs were getting them.  We decided to keep them for a short while in the guinea pig houses.  When we made this change, we had 7 duckies and I could not find number 8 (the new recruit).  We looked everywhere and gave her up as lost.

So, we had 7 ducks definitely for a while.  Four months ago, we let them all out in the confines of the duck coop (aka zen garden).  After a while, there were 6 ducks.  No idea what happened to that one.  Then there were 5 ducks (snake?)…then, definitely 4 by the end of the boa incident.  So, I’ve been counting 4 for about 6 weeks now.  I need to remind you  at this point that the coop is now sealed so the ducks can’t get in or out of it.

Last night I counted 1-2-3-4…5!!

Where did the fifth one come from???  It just appeared from nowhere and joined the usual food fight in the evening like she had always been there.  She is really skinny and she looks like the new duckie that we gave up for lost about 6 months ago.

We have no idea where she came from and what she has been doing all this time.  Gnome reckons that she has been hiding inside the cardamom bush in the coop all this time (setting with no eggs!) and she has been so perfectly camouflaged that we haven’t spotted her.  What…for 6 months!!!  Hmmmm….maybe…or she’s a magician duckie and walks through walls and coops!!

So, where have you been all this time??

Where have you been?

(Not Telling!)

Amusing, Belize, Construction, Farming

The Usual…

So, what’s the usual for us?  Gnome put it quite succinctly today,

“I spend most of my time just fixing things and nothing gets done!”

So, the freezer is on its last legs and we are systematically going through all the food to preserve them.  So far, we have canned the fruit and we have made miso out of the canistel (it’s bright orange, by the way).  Next are the chicken feet (I know, you are probably wondering what I am doing with 50lbs of chicken feet…I’m not quite sure either).  No, that was a joke…I know exactly what to use chicken feet for…they actually make the best soup.

Gnome is still working on his construction and yesterday it nearly all ground to a standstill again.  The circular saw stopped working!  Luckily it started working again once the brushes were cleaned out.

Oh, and the washing machine…that stopped too last week and I had to hand wash a whole load.  I was really annoyed because I had chucked in a load of towels and sheets!  Anyway, Gnome had a good look at it and it appears that the water sensor for medium wash is broken.  Well that’s actually okay because I just need to set it to a small wash instead and it works.  So, we managed to bypass that problem.  Gnome says that washing machines should last forever…you just need all the replacement parts for the sensors and the capacitor.  We are going to keep our washing machine going no matter what!!

Washing Machine.

Just as an aside, Gnome took the outer cover:

Washing Machine Cover.

and gave it to a goose as cover around a nest (a while back).  The goose actually snubbed the gift and moved all her eggs to a different area.  Talk about being difficult!!

“No I don’t want the washing machine cover around my nest!!”

Sitting Goose.

I want to end with something nice.  So here it is: this is a huge 4 lb (2kg) mango given to us by the Taiwanese.  The seed is really thin and tiny so most of the weight is the flesh.  Oh, and the best thing about it is that it tastes so sweet and divine.  We are definitely planting the seed!

Big Mango.
Amusing, Belize, Farming, Food

Adventures in Eating…

Hello There!!  It’s a bright and shiny day today so I feel a bit brighter and shinier.  How interesting that the weather has a lot to with your mood.  Anyway(s), we are doing okay although our never-ending construction has come to a temporary stand-still due to massive pond formations around the house.  Nevertheless, we have braved the days with our usual creativity and Munchkin & Gnome interesting ideas.  Since, we were both stuck inside the house together (with rains), we decided to have some adventures with food.  So, here’s some of the stuff that we got up up to in the kitchen, messing around.

Lotsa aubergines from the farm:

Our Aubergines.

These are very nice cooked on a cast iron grill and served  with a little bit of olive oil drizzled on top.  Yum!!

Grilled Aubergine.

Ahhhh….this one is for the Chinese or the very adventurous; these are stinkhorn mushrooms (aka bamboo pith).  These come out with the rains especially near bamboo patches but generally speaking, they do come up fairly commonly everywhere on our farm in Toledo.

This is a very pretty specimen with a lacy veil.

Bamboo Pith Mushroom.

These mushrooms can also be picked at their young stage (aka known as Witches’ Eggs).

Stink-horn Eggs.

Clean them up, chop them up and put them in soups and stews.  This mushroom imparts a slimey texture kinda like eating fish eyes (ooooh…that’s the Chinese coming out in me…I’m trying to tell it tastes really good….but, you probably think that sounds really awful).  On the other hand, you could also describe them as “land oysters”…there, does that sound more enticing??

Chopped up Bamboo Pith.

We are still going with the gelato; this one is made from canistel which is in season right now.

Canistel.

Canistel kinda tastes like cooked sweet potato.  There is a lot of carbohydrate content in the fruit and this provides a firm texture to ice-cream.  Oh, and we made this on with ground fresh jalapeño.  By the way, I just noticed that the picture looks a bit like a pair of breasts(!).  It wasn’t my intention but there you go!!

Canistel Ice-Cream.

We still have more messing around in the kitchen.  Our 27 cubic feet freezer is in its last death throes.  It’s moaning and groaning and making awful gurgling noises all the time.  Plus, it’s sucking up a whole lot of electricity.  So, the plan is to to can (in ball jars) everything in the freezer until there is nothing left.  Switch it off and let the old freezer rest in peace.  That’s no mean feat if you can guess how much food a Munchkin is capable of hoarding!!