Category Archives: Farming

Belize, Farming, Food, Plants

Gnome Says That I Should Write Something…

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Hello Everyone.  Just is to give you an update on what’s happening.  First of all, it has been raining for about two weeks now so our “let’s get crepuscular” thing fell flat on its face.  There are heavy clouds looming over our farm so it looks like it is going to rain this weekend.  Having said that, we are glad for the rains because everything was getting quite dry.  And, Panda is very, very glad because his 660 gallon tank is nearly full so he is all set for the dry season.

We’ve been starting up seedlings for our nursery:

Tobacco: these are actually a lot bigger now than these teeny-weeny pictures.

Tobacco Seedlings.

All sorts of peppers including habaneros, jalapeños and cayenne peppers.

Pepper Seedlings.

Oh, the tomatoes are looking very good.  These are Gnome’s pride and joy.  Growing tomatoes is a very difficult endeavour down here in Toledo because the plants are susceptible to all manner of diseases including mildews and molds.  Plus the heavy rains cause stems to rot easily.  We tried growing tomatoes years ago but gave up after a long struggle with disease and water-logging.  We have decided to re-visit the tomato growing because we actually do like to eat them and the tomatoes that you buy here are truly tasteless.

Tomato Flower.

We are growing them in buckets this time.  And, Gnome is observing them every hour…he really loves his plants!!

Tomatoes.
Growing Tomatoes.

Right now, our tray of parsley is quite a treat.  Great with mashed potatoes:

Parsley.

You can grow herbs down here but they have to be in trays and buckets.  In the rainy season, they can get damaged so you need some sort of cover.  We’ve started rosemary and sage seeds too…these grow down here but also need a bit of care and attention.

Amusing, Belize, Farming, Pets

Duckie-zilla!!!

There’s been a lot of commotion and general prolonged weeeeeeeeeee-weeeeeeee-weeeeeeeee!!! coming from the Guinea Pig cage (formerly known as Paradise Pastures; now renamed Zazen Temple of Piggies…ZTOP for short).  If you want to know the Piggie Story, click here.

Shock!!  Horror!!  There’s a Gigantic Yellow Monster in ZTOP terrorizing the be-Jesus out of the innocent temple dwellers.

The Zazen piggies are quivering in terror:

Cowering Frightened Piggies!!

“Help!!  Mayor Gnome!!!”

On Guard!!

Mayor Gnome: “Did the Piggies call for help!!  I must save my Piggies!!  What…a yellow monster??  In the Temple of Doom??!!”

Duckie-zilla!!

Mayor Gnome: “Hey Piggies! That’s not a yellow monster!  That’s Duckie!!”

Zazen Piggies: “Poppycock!!  You mean that  fine little blighter that you used to play with us?  Can’t be….”

Duckie and Piggies.

Mayor Gnome: “My dear piggies, that huge lumbering Duckie-zilla is your friend, the Duckie.”

Duckie.

Zazen Piggies: “Mayor Gnome, we would like to formerly dispute the identity of this yellow creature in an emergency meeting today!!”

Amusing, Belize, Farming, Food, Pets, Plants

Whilst Waiting…

Whilst waiting for my freezer (one of those huge bottomless pit kind of freezers that you can get lost in) to de-frost, I will write my blog post.  I have a whole load of pictures so I will try to thread a reasonable coherent story together for you of what we are doing right now.  By the way, whenever I de-frost my freezer, I come across so many lost and forgotten goodies!!  Will probably have a feast this weekend!!

Found these; Chinese Sausage!!  Ooooh, you have to be Chinese to get excited about this stuff!! Ha-Ha.

Chinese Sausage.

Anyway, do you remember that at Chinese New Year, our darling little duckies gave us a gift of 8 eggs?  It turns out to be even more special because on asking other local people, their ducks aren’t laying at all and don’t lay until March when the number of hours of day light increase.  Anyway, so far there has been success with the incubator ie. the cat hasn’t sat on it this time round.  This is because I deftly used Secret Invisibility Technique by sticking a vacuum cleaner in front of the incubator.  Aha, I fooled the cat!!

Hidden Incubator Technique.

The eggs were candled on day 3 to check if the embryos were forming; 6 out of the 8 eggs at that time appeared viable.  Right now, two eggs have pipped and we are waiting to see how many actually hatch.  Should be some fun, excitement and peep-peeping at the weekend!!  With regards to our other darling little baby duckie (the lone duckie that hatched by itself despite the cat sitting on the incubator) he/she (we think “she” actually but have not properly sexed her) thinks she is a guinea pig now…sometimes a human being and definitely not one of those loud quacky things that quack around the yard.  Yip, he/ she duckie is spending too much time with the piggies and loves to fall asleep to the dulcet tones of cavy noises.

Oor Duckie!!

I would also like to take this time to apologise for neglecting my food posts; I am either too busy or too lazy and can’t find the “in-between” state to re-start the food parades.  We are still eating really well…I just haven’t written about them.  With the dry season, there should be new harvests so I will endeavour to start again.  I also want to post up my sorghum recipes…we eat it almost everyday now and is proving to be a very interesting, versatile and tasty grain.  Look still eating great food:

Sorghum with Bamboo Shoots and Sweet Potato Greens.
Venison, Sorghum with Parsley.

It’s the usual stuff on the farm…always something to harvest…seeds to plant…and it comes round in cycles.  You have to really like doing this to do it!!

Seeds and Potatoes for Planting.
Belize, Farming, Food, Saving Money

Ten Coconuts and Security.

One of the main reasons why I write posts on self-sustainable farming is to encourage others to do the same.  I would like people to realise that yes, it is hard work (you can’t just sit around and talk all day) but also, you can use your brains to be innovative.

Spending the time doing things on the farm cuts down the need for money to buy things. Basically you are exchanging your physical labour in order to be less of a consumer.

Oh by the way, just in case you haven’t realised, we do all our own work on the farm.  We do not hire anyone to do our work, in any aspect of our lives, because part of our philosophy is independence and healthy living.

The way that we process ten coconuts at a time is a perfect example of time well spent on the farm.  Ideally, we would like to this every morning but life does get in the way, as it always does, and we are thwarted by weather, other pressing farm jobs, general maintenance, machinery that needs fixing, Apothecary orders and of course, medical call-outs.

If you sell 10 coconuts at the market, you will get $10 Belize Dollars.  We have chosen not to do that because you can get so much more out from each coconut.

The husks and shells can be used for mulch on the farm:

Coconut Husks and Shells.

Shells can be used as vessels to hold food for poultry:

Coconut Shells.

When you crack open the coconuts, there is coconut water.  You still get water from oil coconuts…of course, you get more from water coconuts.  This can be consumed or it can actually be used as a highly nutritional plant irrigation water (contains sodium, potassium, calcium and magnesium).

Coconut Water.

The coconuts are grated by hand by Gnome:

Grated Coconut.

Coconut milk and coconut cream can be squeezed from this; Munchkin’s job:

Coconut Milk.

Coconut milk has a high protein content; it can be added to stews, breads and anything really to boost protein content and flavour.  In addition, coconut milk (and cream) can be used to make very nice desserts.

Coconut Haupia:

Coconut Haupia.

We bag the coconut cream to use in cooking; it can be used in stews, curries, desserts, anything really!  At this point, the cream can be further processed into coconut oil to make our soaps and stuff.  If we have excess, we sell these in Supaul’s in Punta Gorda.

Coconut Cream.

Okay, still not done yet!!  After squeezing out the cream and milk, you get the left over coconut meal.  Once the fat has been extracted, it now becomes a very high protein product(12 to 14%…compare to corn which is between 9 to 11%).  This can be sun-dried and then milled to make coconut flour:

Coconut Flour.

Or, it also makes great animal feed. All manner of poultry like it and even our guinea pigs are quite partial to it too:

Coconut Meal.

Go on then…plant a few coconuts in your back yard for food security…it’s great stuff!!

Coconut Palm.
Belize, Farming, Food

Crepuscular Time Again!

Yes, time to get Crepuscular.  This means that you get up at the crack of dawn, have a cup of tea and run out to do farm chores and then run back into the cool of the house before noon-time.  Resting time is until it cools down again…about 4pm…then you run out again to do the end-of-the-day chores.  This is the rhythm that we get into as dry season approaches.  Gnome has got the brush-mower out and is cleaning up:

Filling up the Bush-Hog.

The Bush:

Bush!!

Of course, Munchkin work involves less heavy stuff but still keeps me fit and healthy.  I am making use of my new wheel-barrow to collect soil for the garden.  We are starting fennel today…the bulbs and the wild type.  Yum…can’t wait…they are a favourite!

Munchkin’s Wheelbarrow.

More harvests on the farm…we have Barbados Gooseberry…time to make more jam!!

Barbados Gooseberry.
Amusing, Belize, Farming, Plants

Munchkin and Gnome’s Cesspool.

Hello Everyone and it feels like the start of dry season again.  That means (for us, anyway) that it is very, very hot and the plants need to be watered.  The secret of Gnome and Munchkin’s success, this year, in keeping a little vegetable garden going at this time of the year is because of our  little cesspool.

Nice vegetables growing healthily and happily:

Mini Garden.

Because of our little cesspool:

Grey Water Pond.

Gnome has fixed things in such a way (with an uncomplicated system of drainage pipes and siphons) to drain all our grey water into this pool.  Right now, this includes mostly washing-up and laundry water.  He will be working on a new shower location in the dry season which will drain water directly into this pool.   The duckies also swim about poop in it adding further wonderful nutrients to the bubbling chaos.  In other words, this is our very own home-made “plant food”; this provides  all the plant nutrient requirements to make our vegetables grow with vigour and lushness.

When I asked Gnome to read this blog post, he said it was “okay.”  I asked him why he thought it was just “okay.”  He replied by saying that the title of my post did not evoke thoughts of Munchkin and Gnome being “cool and exciting.”

Well, I asked him, “what should I say instead?” 

Gnome said, cheekily, “howz about ‘M & G’s Organic Electrolyte Balanced Maximum Velocity Irrigation Water??!!!”

I said, “yes of course, darling.”

…stared blankly at the computer screen, blinked once, didn’t even think twice about changing the title, and pressed the “publish” button.

Amusing, Belize, Farming, Saving Money

Good-Bye Yellow Wellies!!

Alas, I had to scrap my pair of yellow wellies.  These were a spanking pair of wellies that I picked up in Brodies a couple of years ago.  I loved them so much that I wore them all the time…even with my street gear and my prim and proper doctor’s attire.

Yellow Rubber Boots.

Anyway, it is soooo wet in Toledo you have to wear boots…well, that is what I think after living here for 13 years.  I distinctly hate wearing open toed shoes here because I don’t like getting mud in between my toes (just a personal preference).  Anyway the boots have a history and we (Gnome and I) have romantically dug dirt, planted trees and done the farm chores together with these boots.  So much so that they got into a real state.  They became a rather manky yellow:

Manky Yellow Boots.

Duckie even imprinted on us because we both had “yellow feet.”

Yellow Wellies.

Anyway, they started getting too many holes and cracks so there was no point in wearing them as they had lost their purpose of protection.  Of course, Gnome got a hold of the throw-away before I cast them into the fire.

“Oh, they are made of a very good material…you can make rather good gaskets  with that….I’ll take them thank-you very much!”

And so my dear yellow wellie boots will live on as gaskets…I had to ask him: What’s a Gasket??!!  He demonstrated by making the first one for the blender so that the liquid would stop leaking out:

Rubber Boot Turned into Gasket.

Ahhhh…that’s what a gasket is…it forms a seal between two things to stop leakage.  Munchkin learned something!!

Pretty handy and it works well so I can’t complain.  Long live the yellow wellies in Gnome’s transformation magic.

Belize, Farming, Pets

Friday’s Child.

We are nearly done with the Guinea Pig Parade!!  So, Friday’s Child is Loving and Giving.

Just to mix things up a bit, we have a non-piggie as Friday’s Child.

This little duckie has given us a lot of joy over the last few weeks.  Yes, he has imprinted on us since we ended up raising him from day 1.  However, he still a very well adapted duckie, passing all duckie milestones perfectly.  He is starting to feather, dabble in mud and quack like a duck (instead of the peep-peeping noise).   As Gnome says,

“There’s nothing wrong with being multi-cutural…”

Our Duckie.
Belize, Farming, Pets

Thursday’s Child.

Thursday’s Child has Far to Go.  This is our little runty of the litter; below 3rd centile for head circumference, body weight and length.  For babies it is vital to get the first feed within the first 24 hours to get the colostrum.  Once they get this, they are usually bouncing around by 48 hours, eating grass, grains and anything it can get its mitts on.  Getting the first feed can actually be a problem with multiple pregnancies (which is common amongst the cavies) especially when female piggies only have one set of teats. The smaller, less aggressive babies can get ignored and fall by the wayside.  When we see this happening, we sometimes give them a boost by hand-feeding them with cow’s milk on the first day.  It is important to note that baby guinea pigs do not have a good swallow reflex so you can’t actually syringe feed them; rather, you have to hold a teaspoon in front of them so that they can lick up the milk.

This one has managed with a little bit of help from us.  She was one of four and wasn’t getting enough milk.  See…she’s fit and healthy now…looks like a little white rat with no tail!

Thursday Piggie!