Category Archives: Farming

Belize, Farming

Even More Goosies!

Another Blog post to let you know that we are still here and that this is indeed Goosie time. We have ten now which is a wonderful surprise since we thought that our eggs had been spoiled by a power-cut that stopped our incubator for the whole day. Well, here are the first four that are now 4 weeks old…they are at the ugly stage when they are just starting to feather. They have their own enclosed area to walk about and I take them for supervised foraging walks every day. These ones have black beaks (mostly) so they are probably the Chinese Goosie type.

Four Week Old Goosies.

We have another two Chinese Goosies that are two weeks old. I don’t seem to have a picture of them. They have been moved to a cage outside…these two are stupid and daft and can’t work out what to eat and what not to eat despite Munchkin teaching them. Gnome says that not all geese can be geniuses. 😉

Okay, so I need to show-case the last four; they are fat, fluffy, golden-yellow with short necks so we reckon that this lot are the German type of goosie. They are a lot noisier, more clingy and are constantly chattering amongst each other, at you and to anything (even the cat?) that might care to listen.

New Goosies.

More pictures of the new babies:

Even More Goosies.

They are very cute and fun at this age:

Sleeping Goosie.

And another picture:

Double Goosies.

I will write soon again to give you an update of the farm activities. Until then, have a lovely weekend.

Belize, Farming

Two More!

It has been very, very hot and unbearable lately. We just had a brief rain yesterday which managed to fill up our basins again. Oh, we must thank the Goddess of Goosies for her generosity again this year! Even with the incubator shut-down, we have more goosies to enjoy. I had been checking the double goose nest everyday and still there was nothing; on Wednesday, we were out of the farm for the whole day and we got home late. I was exhausted and convinced myself that there was no need to peak under Mama Goosie. However, Gnome insisted so I stomped outside and had a quick look and it was a good thing he insisted. There were two little fluffed up goosies twittering away…hungry and thirsty…these Mamas seem to be so broody that they don’t snap out of setting even with the sound of a gosling. So, here they are! We have two more and we are very pleased!

New Goosies!!

That’s all for today! Try to keep cool!!

Belize, Farming, Food

Dry Season Vegetables.

Hello, I thought I would take a break from talking about my goosies to show you some pictures of the vegetables that we grew this dry season. Dry season is always a problem because of the need to conserve water so irrigation can be an issue. This time, we had a line of basins placed behind our back veranda to catch rain water; the water was for the geese and the plants.

Water Basins.

We placed tyres around the perimeter of the house…you can’t see them in the picture but they are just underneath the house. A wire trellis was stretched from the tyres all the way up to the veranda to allow climbing vegetables to grow up them. So, here are a few of our favourites: Cherokee tomatoes; these are so good we eat them raw with salt.

Cherokee Tomatoes.

Our all time favourite vegetable is the bitter gourd; we found a nice, fat round variety to grow; these are huge and weigh about a pound each:

Big Bitter Gourd.

They are great for stuffing; look at the size of these!!

Stuffed Bitter Gourd.
Stuffing Bitter Gourd.

This Easter, Gnome stuffed bitter gourd with minced beef and cooked it “Italian-Style.” We also had stuffed Cherokee tomatoes and our own adzuki beans. It was a feast from our own garden!

Stuffed Bitter Gourd Meal.

We were really stuffed after eating this huge meal. It is truly a pleasure to eat our own vegetables…there is nothing like home-cooked food!

Belize, Farming

Easter Update.

Hope everyone had a good Easter weekend. We took it easy and took the new kids out to the pond area. They are getting bigger and the oldest one which is about 17 days old is 500g (1lb).

Some pictures of the kids (especially for Mama Gnome):

Awwwhhh!! My Goosies!!
Lovely Goosies 2019

So far, they had been kept in the sink with regular cleaning every few hours; even with that, they are messy and stinky. Alas, I must allow them into the big world out there. In the daytime, they have been placed in a wire cage surrounded by an outer perimeter. They have plenty of water, greens and food:

Little Goosies in Cage.

The inner cage is closed up to stop predators like hawks from swooping down and stealing the babies. The outer perimeter is to stop the adult goosies from stealing them. This is what happened last year: the adult geese would sit with the babies all day and every day 24/7 until the the goslings got used their presence and adopted all of them as their guardians. Once the cage was removed, the several adults that the goslings had imprinted upon would pounce and fight over ownership of the babies. What follows is a lot of goosie fighting and shenanigans possibly with incidental casualties as snatched babies get caught in the crossfire. I know…it can be like a war zone out here…

The goosies are doing well:

Plenty of fresh air and food!

I will try to update you more over the next few days. I have some computer screen problems…I mentioned it before…now I am missing a third of the right screen. We brought down an old monitor and on connecting it up, found that it had the same problem but the bottom third of the screen was missing! I suppose that between the two of them, I could use the computer. Anyway, I think Gnome is giving me his monitor so he won’t have one now! The humidity of the Tropics wreaks havoc on all electronic equipment…

Belize, Farming

We Have Four!

Good Morning and a Good Friday to you all. Yes, we have four lovely goosies now. The incubator eggs that were placed under our auspicious double broody goosie nest has proven to be a success. Gnome remarked on the fact that we didn’t need an incubator since all our mother goosies are extremely broody. Yes, but we read on the Internet that female geese were bad setters!

Here are G1, G2, G3 and G4 (The collective group called G-Force)…hmmm…not very imaginative names Munchkin!

Four Goosies in a Tank.

I can’t put them all in my apron pockets so I have them two at a time. The oldest one is growing rapidly and at day 12 it is 250g (about 1/2lb). They alternate between the fish tank, the sink and I will start taking them for supervised walks outside…yes that’s right…I will adopt the mamma goosie role. In the last two days, I have separated the two older ones and the two younger ones because the first two were hogging all the food.

Here are the baby pictures:

The Goosies!

Goosies sleeping:

G-Force.

Wishing you all a Good Day!!

Amusing, Belize, Farming

Another Surprise Goosie!

Hello!! This morning we woke up at our usual time and had goosie bouncing about on the table as we had a cup of tea. We are having a lovely time with Goosie…

First goosie of the year:

Goosie Side Profile.


Goosie in Pouch.

Morning time is usually a peaceful time for us but not today! There was a huge racket going on outside with goosie honks, screams and shrieks. Gnome turned to me and said that they were even noisier today…what was going on? And then in between all this noise we heard…peep, peep, peep!! Oh, another goosie?? Gnome looked outside from the veranda and sure enough there was a little yellow fluffy thing terrified out of its wits surrounded by a rabble of crazy goosies. Gnome quickly ran down and grabbed the goosie before any damage could be done. And so we have Goosie No.2:

Double Goosie!

As you may recall, Gnome placed the incubator eggs under a goosie mama on Sunday because we had a power-cut. We then neglected to check on hatchlings because we were busy with other things. We now think that this second goose probably hatched about three days ago because we have been hearing peeping on and off…I thought that it was peeping from a wild birdie so did not think anything of it. Anyway, we now have two cute geese to play with!

I don’t have any more pouches in my apron so I don’t know what to do if we get a third one! Gnome says that I should have an apron with six pockets so that I can take care of six at a time!

Amusing, Belize, Farming

Very Hot!

We are bang in the middle of the insufferable heat of the dry season. Arrrghhhh!!! The relentlessness of the heat!! There was no rain for two weeks (yes, even the Thursday rain stopped) and the pond dried up early this year. On Monday evening, we had a storm….black, black clouds, thunder and lotta rain…what a relief. Yesterday, according to the weather forecast, there was supposed to be five hours of rain and we waited eagerly for the relief…not a drop of rain until about 9pm when we got 5 drops of rain! This time Gnome said:

“….there is nothing wrong with the weather report…the weather got it wrong!!”

Today is going to be hot and sunny, “good day for lawn-mowing” and we just want to find a cool place to go back to sleep! The resolve of Munchkin and Gnome is crumbling with the pressure of the heat!!

Anyway, we had an eight hour power cut on Sunday so we basically had to stay still and out of trouble for the whole time. I will tell you the good news first…we have our first goosie!!

Goosie 2019

We were not expecting it at all because the first two eggs did not hatch. On Sunday, Gnome realised the the power cut would spoil all the eggs in the incubator (that was the bad news) so in attempt to save the goosies he removed all the eggs (found the surprise goosie) and placed the eggs under two broody geese sitting on the same nest.

Broody Geese.

Now we have the pleasure of the company of our first gosling of the year. This one is noisy, naughty, attention-seeking, cute and very, very goosie in nature.

Goosie Goosie!!

Goosie (gender unknown) is all on his lonesome so I take it for walks outside and he sits with us at the table…actually does not sit…sort of runs, leaps and bounds about like a boinging goosie on springs…eek, watch out for the cat underneath the table! Generally, I am giving it a lot of time and I place it in the pouch of my apron when I am in the kitchen or doing housework. I feel like a possum mamma with a little head peaking out of my front pocket!

Another Goosie Picture.

What a cutey. Enjoy him while he is small!

Belize, Farming

Still Here!

Hi, I haven’t written because I had trouble with my computer…the monitor screen kept on fading. It worked for short lengths of time when I pressed around the edges of the screen but it still got very temperamental. The plan was to connect a monitor to the laptop but we didn’t have the right cable and we couldn’t find this cable anywhere in Punta Gorda. Yesterday, Gnome had a good look at my screen and wedged a plastic thing against the screen edge which has actually solved the problem of the fading screen! Okay, so I am back on-line now!

We have been busy. Gnome still can’t get the pipe that is stuck at the bottom of the well. Last time, he tried fishing it out with a great big length of bamboo; I think he’s going to try a wire this time round. We have to keep on trying because if we can’t get the pipe out, we won’t be able to use the well. Luckily, we have had plenty of water this dry season and funnily enough, we seem to get a torrential rain every week which always happens to be a Thursday.

The geese are up to their usual shenanigans. There was a cycle of laying and right now, we are not finding any eggs. Are they hiding them? This is a picture of a “goosie pile-up”…three very broody geese sitting on one nest with rocks:

Triple Goosie Pile-up.

They are very aggressive…they peck and hiss at me whenever I get close to them.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I will get my camera out and take some pictures for next time. Have a good evening!

Belize, Farming

Duckie Time Again!

It is that time of the year again. Duckie and Goosie time…this time, the first one out is a duckie! There won’t be any more eggs hatching for about a week so I have this one to feed and entertain until some more company comes along. This one is very quiet and well behaved.

Breakfast with Duckie:

First Duckie of 2019

What else? Oh yes…we re-visited the wormery project; about six weeks ago, Gnome asked me to revive the worm colony…it was sadly one of many projects that had fallen by the wayside. When I looked in the box, there wasn’t much at all…maybe about 10 survivors. Anyway, I placed all manner of chopped up food wastes in the bin and kept this going for four weeks. The other day, we went through the box and sifted out the worms. I am happy to say that there were probably about 200 to 300 baby worms. This encouraged us to persevere! We cleaned out the box and lined it with newspaper and cardboard. We them filled it up with peat moss soaked in water and placed our worms in it.

Making the Wormery.

They have been chomping through hair (Gnome had a hair-cut), leaf litter and scraps from the kitchen. It has been about two weeks now since we cleaned up their box and they look like they are re-producing faster. It looks like the wormery is becoming a reality after all! We plan to use the worms to feed the ducks and make delicious gourmet meals for ourselves. Also, the compost will be soil for plants so this project is definitely worth the time and effort.

Worms:

Worms.

That’s it for now. Gnome’s hand is better so we will be out and about on the farm today.

Belize, Farming

What’s New?

I have just realised that time has passed and I haven’t written for ages again! What’s Happening? Well, not much really…terrible way to start a post…that’s why I haven’t written!

We had another big Thursday rain this week and most importantly, Gnome has been out of action for a few days because he has hurt his hand. He had been digging holes for posts around the house and I think he got over-zealous in his efforts. I asked him if he wanted to go to Social Security to report the injury and he laughed saying:

“…if I had to report every injury, I would be a permanent feature in Social Security.”

Gnome’s hand is getting better…there was some soft tissue swelling which has now gone down. He had to make huge efforts not to use it…even simple things like opening buckets and jars…at one point we were going to put a sock over it to stop him from using it. All is well and he should be back to work on Monday.

What else? Oh, the fate of the possoms…..

Possum.

If you recall, we caught five possums in two nights because they had been stealing goosie eggs…we found the cracked shells of two eggs. We went through a moral dilemma with this one. First of all, they looked at us pitifully with those beady dark eyes and my heart went out to them,

“…awhhhh…they are kinda cute in a possumy way…”

Gnome said:

“….yes, cuteness goes a long way…”

Possum.

We also found that two of the captives had babies in their pouches so they were released. So, three left after that. Gnome then said:

“…hang on a minute, we have a freezer full of food…we don’t need any-more meat.”

He was right. It didn’t seem acceptable this time round to eat the possums. Last time, rogue possums had decimated our entire population of 30 guinea pigs and we had possum curry as a result of that incident. We released the last three into the bush. I shouted at them as they sped off into the rainforest,

“…don’t come back and steal any-more eggs!!”

I hope they heard me!

It is sunny and dry again today. We will probably have a rest today before starting the week afresh. I will leave you with a picture of the duckies staring curiously at a possum.

“Hello Mr Possum…we are the Duckies!! Pleased to meet you!!”

Ducks Looking at Possum.