Gnome wished for two fairies to help us out with the unenviable task of tidying up the house. I think we need an army of fairies! But anyway, Gnome’s wishes have come semi-true because we have two fat cats that are licking up the kitchen floor every time we are cooking or processing food. Every bit counts! Gnome has got back into the routine of grating coconuts everyday:
Grated Coconut.
It is a messy job with coconut grated bits flying everywhere. The cats have got into the habit of waiting for Gnome and then scrabbling about like mad under his feet. Yes, so we have two fat fairies to clean up the floor after us. This is a picture of them resting, after feasting on coconut:
Two Fat Fairies Lounging.
These two cats are bestest buddies…they lick and groom each other but, yes they will still fight over food! Just a short and sweet post for today!
We have had black pepper (Piper nigrum) plants for about ten years…even though I have written a few articles on this plant, it has not produced a consistent harvest until now. When we first started the farm, we thought that plants could be stuck anywhere and they would sort themselves out(!) The wonders of innocent and inexperienced youth!! And so we planted our black pepper plants beside palm trees hoping for a bountiful crop. This method proved quite haphazard as some years we would gather black pepper and other years, there was nothing at all.
Black Pepper Cuttings.
From my observation, the pepper plants did not grow well in these conditions because the palm frond shaded them out too much. And also, a lot of the blackbirds (and other birds) hung around the shaded palm areas to get the ripe pickings even before we noticed. When we did get harvests, it was great:
Black Pepper.
I even made white pepper which is pretty labour intensive:
White Peppercorn
Wonderful:
Harvested Green Peppercorn.
Anyway, the years passed by so quickly and it was only two years ago that we finally had the time to re-address the black pepper crop which we found meagre and inconsistent. This time we decided to erect posts and plant cuttings beside them; this is a picture taken in 2018.
Growing Pepper.
As you can see the black pepper has been planted in full sun on the south-side. They have been planted in tyres to give them some protection from heavy rains. This was a success and the plants grew up the posts very quickly and started producing within about a year. Presently, we are in year 2 and the vines are producing all year round! I am so pleased because I can use fresh black pepper everyday…what a lovely luxury!!
Black Pepper Plant Year 2
We have six plants that provide all the black pepper that we need for the kitchen. Everyone should have a couple of these in their backyard…they don’t take up much space and produce continuously! See the second picture below…they don’t need to be planted so far apart…we had put chicken wire in-between the posts thinking that the vine would preferentially spread out. However, they seem to be quite happy just growing up wooden posts like this:
I can’t think of a Catchy Title and I can’t think of a Catchy first sentence to you reel you into my new post…Ha-Ha!! Anyway, I wanted to show you some pictures of plants and vegetables around the farm…oops, that’s not going to get you going, is it?? This week, we are cleaning up the farm again and re-planting. With all the rains from the hurricanes, we lost most of our crops which included the pumpkins, melons and corn. That is life but it sucks sometimes!!
Gnome, we have lost our melon and corn crop!!
These are pictures of plants that made it through the terrible rains…well done, my little (or big) plants!!
These are the beans that are growing up the side of our house and now over our roof. This is the Gnome and The Giant Beanstalk story.
Winged Bean.
These are winged beans (Psophocarpus tetragonolobus), a long variety that grows to about 1 to 2 feet long. Although it grows very well in this climate, it is not commonly known about or grown in Belize. I have seen a few people growing it and they are usually Asian people. This is a plant originally from Papua New Guinea (according to good old Wiki) and is grown mostly in South East Asia as a vegetable crop. The thing that I like about this plant is that all parts are edible including the leaves, beans, shoots (like tiny asparagus),flowers and roots. We eat the green pods either uncooked in salads or cooked in stir fry or stews. The mature beans are supposed to be like soya beans…but we haven’t tried eating it that way yet. We also haven’t tried the roots either…maybe that can be a later post when we experiment more with this vegetable. This plant is annual hence the reason why we are allowing it to cover our house (!)…the plant will die in mid March and that is when we will harvest seed to sow for the following year.
The next survivor is a flattish looking sweet habanero:
Sweet Habanero
They have that familiar habanero taste but they are sweet rather than hot. They add a mild pepper taste to salads and stews. Very easy to grow in 5 gallon pig tail buckets and withstands bad, tropical storms!
Gnome is pleased that the tobacco made it. They were grown on raised beds (but still, a lot of other crops didn’t even make it despite being planted in a similar manner). We are growing a different variety each time; this one is called ‘Mammoth’…I am not sure why…they are the same size as our usual tobacco plants. Anyway, they are a nice plant to grow…if you don’t use the leaf to make cigars, you can also use them as an organic insecticide (more about that in a later post).
Tobacco Crop
The flowers are beautiful and its essence can be distilled into a perfume:
Tobacco Flowers
Okay, let’s have one more:
Rosemary Plants
For once, the rosemary plants are actually doing very well. They usually grow to a small plant and then all of a sudden, they just die. This year, someone gave us cuttings of a rosemary known to grow well in Belize…look at them…they look great!! We used to grow our rosemary from seed packets bought from the States or Italy…I think perhaps those varieties were not acclimatized to the Tropics and that was why we failed to grow this herb successfully in the past.
I have more pictures but I will save them for another post. Here is a random picture of a nice spider web because I don’t know what to do with it and I wanted to show it to you anyway!
What is Gnome doing? He is always trying his hand at something new. This time, he is working on breeding black soldier flies (Hermetia illucens, if you are into Latin naming) for their grubs in order to feed the ducks. In our experience, ducks seem like to eat high protein foods including bugs, larvae, small frogs, frog spawn and small fish. They will preferentially eat these over vegetable scraps, grains and plant material. Since we have them fenced in now and they can’t go ranging far and wide, Gnome has decided to try breeding black soldier flies.
Duckies!
Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of these flies…basically they are long and black with big, beady black eyes (Yes I know, what a terrible description…if you are interested, please go look it up!!). The females like to lay around composting areas (this is perfect for getting rid of kitchen scraps and plant material);they can lay around 200 to 600 eggs at one time. Once hatched, the larvae drop into the compost and start to eat it up. Within about a week, there are fresh larvae and pupae to be harvested for food. The larvae are the ones still wriggling around and the pupae are the cocoons…technically it doesn’t matter to the ducks…they are happy to eat both. I suppose the pupa are bigger so you might want to wait longer to collect these big, fat juicy grubs. This was Gnome’s first attempt at a black soldier fly breeding area. It was made out of an old plastic container:
Soldier Fly Container
The container was designed so that the pupae and larvae would crawl towards the pointy end and fall into a harvesting bucket. Here are some pictures of the juicy duckie tit-bits:
Sifted Black Soldier Fly Grubs.
This first design was a bit too small to hold all our compost, so he made a new container out of wood:
Black Soldier Fly Breeding Bin.
The compost is placed in the middle. When the grubs are ready, they start crawling towards the sides…this container allowed them to move to either end…and then drop into a bucket.
Black Soldier Fly Bin.
The sand is placed in the bin to allow the grubs to have a good grip as they move to the end holes. Without the sand, they are prone to slipping back down into the middle area and then have to start the slow crawl back to the ends…believe me, it was quite tedious watching them slide back down and start again!! This size of breeding bin gives you about 1lb of grubs when it is working well. It works optimally in dry weather. Despite it having a protective roof, when it rains heavily, water can get into it and drown the grubs. Approximately 1lb of these grubs can feed about 3 to 4 ducks adequately. We have 10 ducks so Gnome is looking to build two more of these to supply all the protein that our ducks need. So, still no rest for Gnome…two more containers to build!
The ducks love these grubs and like to pick through them in a container of sand:
It’s just a short one today because we are both really tired. Shock…horror…it hasn’t rained for three days and it is actually drying up. Gnome ran out today to try to chop the brush, that has grown up with the rains, in the goosie coup. I am trying scrub the walls inside the house…with the non-stop rains for two months straight…there is mould everywhere.
Alas, there is so much work to do!! And you know what…this year, we never finished a whole round of mowing…and, not because of the usual machinery failure but because we have had so much rain. I can’t remember the number of times we have had to stop halfway and start all over again.
Anyway, this is a quick catch up on farm activities. Here are a few pictures from the farm. This is our giant loofah; we have been eating the young fruit as vegetables.
Giant Loofah.
We have a found a different type of sorrel which produces early; it flowered in September and we are harvesting right now; we are drinking sorrel tea every morning. It is high in Vitamin C and apparently good for hypertension.
Sorrel Pods.
This is our usual Belizean sorrel which is harvested at Christmas time…see how different they look…
Sorrel Plant with Flowers.
This is a snake that we saw eating a frog. It was so intent on digesting that he allowed me to do a photo shoot:
Snake Eating Frog.Snake Eating Frog 2.
Oh, and one last picture…what’s that…another one!! Could not resist it…another boy!! More about this crazy scamp next time…
If you happen to have a pasta maker lying around in the kitchen during this new COVID 5am to 9pm curfew and you are stuck indoors with bad weather, you might want try your hand at making colourful pasta with the ingredients in Belize. I thought we could have a lively discussion about pasta colours today since were just talking about pasta yesterday…if you can think of anything better…I am all ears!! Yes, this is another Bored in Belize project!
The green colour in pasta is originally made with spinach greens. Here in Belize, there is a popular green called calaloo which is from the amaranth family. On our farm, it comes up everywhere as a voluntary vegetable.
I collected a whole bunch of calaloo and boiled it until it turned to mush…then I added this to flour to make the dough for pasta. The resulting colour was very nice and Gnome said that it looked like authentic spinach pasta…if you look carefully, there is a mottled green colour.
Calaloo Pasta.
I was very pleased with this colour as we had previously tried spirulina, a high protein algae that Gnome grows for the animals. When it is freshly harvested, it is a very intense green colour:
Spirulina Harvest.
Splat!! Spirulina looks like a big green glob and we thought it would be perfect as a colour additive in pasta. This is what we got:
Spirulina Pasta.
It doesn’t look so bad but as it ages, it actually acquires a blue tinge to it which looks less appetizing. I don’t have a picture of the aged pasta but I have one of spirulina ice-cream; it is a funny cyan colour:
Spirulina Ice-cream.
Anyway, the calaloo experiment was so much better. Another colourful ingredient that you can use is cacao powder which imparts a rich colour and chocolatey taste:
Chocolate Mafaldine.
To get a vibrant yellow colour in pasta, turmeric works very well:
Turmeric Pasta.
Alas, we have not finished our colour experiment yet because if you read our last post, you will know that our pasta machine has stopped working. We still need to find a nice red colour…I don’t want to use tomatoes because that would be too straight forward…what about ground annatto? Hopefully this will be a later blog if we ever find another pasta machine!!
I am, of course, referring to the demise of our third pasta maker. These pasta makers…you know one of those ubiquitous $50.00 to $100.00 ones that claim they are Italian-made…can’t withstand the rigours of a Gnome pasta marathon. We got twenty-five hours out of then it started groaning and creaking and before we knew it, it carked it good and proper. We reckon that these pasta machine only have a 20 to 25 hour working life…
Aawwh…we were only on day 3 of 7 and had just done the lasagna sheets and linguini…we were just about to start the angel hair…
Gnome took the machine apart to try to fix it. He noted that the gears were made of a soft alloy and had completely worn out and lost shape. He has seen this problem with all our former machines and it seems that no matter what brand of pasta machine (this third one was a slightly more expensive, top of the range) they are designed with a short length of usage in mind.
Hmmm…these pasta makers should just be labelled with: Ornamental Pasta Maker: For Countertop Presentation Only with a special message for Gnomes: Warning: On no account should you be fooled into thinking that this is a fully operational pasta maker!
Anyway, we are mourning the loss and feeling a bit put out. Between Hurricane Eta, Iota and the usual high rainfall here in Toledo, we have been stuck indoors for over a month. It is either flooded or very wet outside so no farm work can be done. We were hoping to get our 2020 Pasta run accomplished. Here are some pictures of what Gnome managed to crank up:
Cheese Roll.
This is a ‘cheese roll’ that Gnome made; there is a central length of cheese which is then rolled in layers of thin dough (made with the pasta maker). Before the dough is rolled, grated cheese and chilli flakes are sprinkled onto the flat sheet. In all, this cheese roll was made with about 6 feet of flattened sheet dough. You get a nice patterned effect like this:
Cheese Roll.
Ohhh and Ahhh…it is crunchy in texture and tastes delicious!!
Gnome also made pastry for beef pie:
Beef Pie.
We made this food in between pasta runs so that when we had a break, we could eat something yummy. We did also make pasta:
Worked Cacao Pasta.Chocolate Mafaldine.
Oh, and this time, we made green pasta from calaloo greens; more about colouring pasta in a later post. The colour turned out very well:
Calaloo Pasta.
Do you like the picture?? This was my attempt at a fancy ‘coffee table’ picture!!
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Hello there!! Did I get your attention? Did I get my ‘foot through the door’ to get you to click on this blog post! I thought the explosive love would get you!! Okay, now that you are here…I have a few pictures on the farm for you to ‘ooooh’ and ‘aaahhh!’ over.
Jujube.
This is jujube (Ziziphus jujuba) which is also known as Chinese red date. Here in Belize, they call it Chiney plum. I have seen a few trees in people’s yards but it isn’t commonly grown. You definitely won’t find this kind of stuff in Punta Gorda market. We have four trees in total and this year, they are blooming like there is no tomorrow. When eaten green, they have the texture and taste of crunchy apples; when ripe (soft and yellow), they taste like pears. We also have a round variety:
Jujube, round variety.
This second variety is actually more acidic tasting and remind me of tiny pocket-sized crab apples. Since it was such a bountiful harvest (and were flooded in from Hurricane Eta), we did a canning marathon. Gnome peeled and I pared; as we processed, we dunked the cut fruit into water mixed with lemon juice (3.33oz lemon juice per gallon of water). This was for preservation purposes whilst preparing in a humid, tropical environment and it helped prevent oxidation of the fruit. After two days of sweating profusely over buckets of jujube in the jungle (is this the romantic, epic part??!!) we ended up with 48 of these jars in all.
Canned Jujube.
And, Yes! We were surprised with the peachy colour too! We are not sure why… Gnome reckons that it might be a ph indicator for the lemon juice (???not sure). Anyway, once canned, they taste like canned pears rather than apples. We have made pie and eaten some with vanilla ice-cream. Oh, and we made a simple boozy dessert by drizzling our cacao elixir over it. Overall, it is a winner and definitely worth the time and energy in these isolating COVID times. After all, money can’t buy this kind of love and passion!
Oh we are so tired but very satisfied with all the work that we have done this year; I think we actually did start on the 1st of January and we have worked like busy little bees during this COVID-19 quarantine. The curfew has really made us stay in, stop doing any frivolous activities and get down to the business of working. No distractions and nothing to procrastinate over!
I have always and forever had a big bag of seeds in the freezer (you know the one…seeds for planting next year or when we are ready…or when it is time!!). Well, in the last two months I have planted every single seed…yeah, even the weird and unusual ones. Because our “dry season garden” worked really well to keep us going with fresh greens and vegetables, we have decided to make more gardens. So this is the first garden which has green beans, bitter gourd (serosi) and okra. Gnome has re-tilled it and started another round of okra.
First Garden
We had a second garden planted about two months ago for tomatoes and aubergines. Unfortunately, all my tomatoes died (fungus and rotting stems). My tomatoes are sometimes a hit and miss. The aubergines are still alive…I have baby purple striated, little orange bobble ones and some other mystery from Italy. This is the second garden; you can also see the trellises in the background which will be for climbing fruits and vegetables…so far, we have loofah and sweet granadilla.
Solanum Garden
Gnome has just finished tilling and digging a third garden. This is for pumpkins, melons, spinach greens, a bit of peanut and onions.
Third Garden
In the last few days, I have started the following seedlings: dandelion, amaranth, fennel, another three different types of aubergine and I can’t remember what else. When I excitedly told Gnome that I had started 24 new vegetable seedlings…he looked at me and said,
“…oh, will have to start digging a fourth garden…”
Actually, he looked more like this:
Another Garden to Dig!!
Okay, the rains have started early this year…what a relief! Will try to write again soon with more planting pictures.
A Happy Easter to y’al! Oh my goodness…so much has happened in Belize (and Worldwide) in the space of only a month with regards to the coronavirus. The whole of Belize has been placed under lock-down in the last few days; we are in strict quarantine for 14 days to limit movement and traffic. It is very quiet all around; quiet in Punta Gorda:
Punta Gorda
Anyway, life on the farm is the usual since the animals and plants have no knowledge of the coronavirus. I am very grateful for the following things that has helped us through these changing times: the first thing is the definitely the water situation…I am so glad that our well is up and running. With the extra water over dry season, we have been able to provide water for the animals and to keep our vegetable garden growing. Normally during the dry season, we have no water for plant irrigation and we have very few greens to eat. This year we set up a drip irrigation system and we have had wonderful harvests. Yes you have guessed it: I am very grateful for the vegetable garden!!
Mini Vegetable Garden.
We have had a great harvest of bitter gourd (serosi). This is actually our favourite vegetable! The Belizeans eat it in a specific way (after thinking about it, I have never seen a Belizean dish with serosi so I have no idea how they prepare this vegetable…they do however talk a lot about eating it!) and apparently it lowers blood sugar naturally.
Bitter Gourd or Serosi
We eat it “Munchkin Way.” I have been stuffing them lately since we have so many; two each for lunch and two again for dinner! When you have limited ingredients, you have to get creative!
Bitter Gourd stuffed with Minced Beef and Shiitake Mushrooms.
Yesterday, I stuffed them with rice and ham ; rice was cooked in coconut milk first:
Bitter Gourd stuffed with Rice and Ham
I feel that since we put so much energy into growing our own food, I can only honour the food by cooking yummy, yummy stuff. More stuffing…this time tomatoes:
Stuffed Tomatoes
Oh, and Goosie for Easter. This is our own rosemary which is growing very well in a bucket.
Roast Goose with Orange
Goosie roasted in coals:
Roasting Goosie
I hope you enjoyed our food pictures. Keep Well Everyone!!
