Category Archives: Food

Belize, Farming, Food, Plants, Uncategorized

On The Farm

March 30, 2020 Munchkin

Hi Everyone! Yes we are at home on the farm staying out of trouble and heeding the quarantine recommendations for the Coronavirus pandemic. Belize has closed all its borders and the International Airport has been shut down. We only go into Punta Gorda once a week anyway and within the space of one week, there was so much difference. A couple of weeks ago, it was “business as usual” and village buses into town were packed full. When we drove in last Friday, it was like a ghost town; there were one or two cars and no buses (so we actually found parking!). A handful of restaurants were open but only offering take-out and supermarkets and banks were only allowing five people in at a time. People were wearing masks. It was such a stark contrast to the usual hustle and bustle of the town, that it felt eerie and surreal like a science fiction movie.

Anyway, back on the farm, it is definitely not eerie and surreal. Lots of things are happening and we are pleased with the progress. It is probably because our attentions are not divided by other things…business has ground to a halt and we are not seeing many routine patients or people. The garden is coming along very well…we started this at the beginning of the year. This is a before and after picture:

The “after” picture is still an old picture. Right now, we are harvesting lots of vegetables…I am very pleased with these green beans; they are really sweet and tender.

More vegetable harvests:

We are eating a lot of food harvested from the farm which is great since this is the reason why we do this. The duckies are happy and laying eggs. This is a picture of our fine-feathered duckies… they are gregarious and friendly:

Lovely Duckie Eggs:

Oh and guess what we have started feeding our duckies!! Yes, we have been busy bees. We have been breeding soldier flies and feeding the pupae to the duckies. This is the container that Gnome came up with; kitchen scraps and leaf litter are dumped at one end to feed the larvae; the pupae then climb up the clean end and drop into a container filled with soil and sand.

That is all for now. Keep safe everyone!!

Amusing, Belize, Farming, Food

All is Well!

March 8, 2020 Munchkin

It seems that I only write when it rains! It is raining and it has been raining all weekend. The last few weeks have been awful…hot, hot, hot and dry and insufferable…during these times, it is best to get out on the farm and work instead of complaining incessantly about the weather. I don’t seem to be writing so much because we are always busy (on the farm, processing food, seeing patients and making products) and there is not enough energy and inspiration left to write a blog post.

So, I will try to do some catch up this time. We have had a terrible drought this year and our November corn crop failed as a result of this dryness. We did however have some voluntary sorghum grow beautifully in this climate and we think that we might be switching over to sorghum during the dry times. Anyway, water has been a major issue because we need it for crop irrigation, animals and our personal consumption. We have been recycling all our grey water for plants and have been conserving water as much as possible. This still wasn’t enough because we were down to about 2 and a half full tanks of rain water to last us through dry season. Because of this, we decided to re-visit the well situation. Last year, we accidentally got a 20 foot piece of plastic pipe stuck down the bottom of our 50 foot well. Gnome tried all kinds of ingenious ways to get the pipe back up but to no avail. We finally abandoned the whole project because we just had too many other things to do on the farm. This year, it became a priority to find an extra water source because of the lack of rain. Guess what Gnome made…this funny grabbing contraption:

This weird looking thing took Gnome a few hours to make…he used sandpaper to slope the edge of the pipe and then he drove nails into it like so. You wouldn’t believe that this would work, would you??? Anyway, with hope and prayers, Gnome lowered the contraption down with about 40 feet of thin bamboo attached to it and…CLUNK…it worked!! He managed to grab and lock onto the lost pipe and hoisted everything up. I wasn’t there to witness but I heard a VERY LOUD YAY!!! Gnome had not asked me to come over because he was doing a test run, thinking to himself that it would need adjustment and modification…he was totally amazed when it worked first time round. Well done Gnome!!

Alls well that ends well!! We have a slow filling shallow well but it helps to have a secondary source of water. Anyway, that is the major thing that happened on our farm. The rest is the usual Munchkin and Gnome stuff. We had a good harvest of Habanero peppers which I have been drying in the sun:

We went through a sausage making frenzy for about three months. Here are a few pictures; below are sausages made of vegan friendly collagen (the rest of the sausage is not vegan friendly):

We found the collagen hard to manipulate and it was hard to twist the links:

Since the twisting didn’t work well, we also canned the sausage meat into cylinders…they can then be sliced and eaten..

Oh and last but not least, our lovely goosies are laying beautiful, yummy eggs!! Thank-you Goosies!!

Belize, Farming, Food

What’s Up?

February 14, 2020 Munchkin

Hi There!! It is about time to write with some kind of update! The last time I wrote, which was ages ago, was the last time it rained. So far, no rain!! This is a really, really early dry season for us; the animals are complaining like crazy, the plants are drying up and we are suffering too! Still no sign of rain. Our tanks are half full now and we are in conservation mode; all grey water is collected for plant irrigation. We are praying for this:

Anyway, these are the inevitable problems that we come up against while trying to run a farm. There are many lessons in practicality in the life that we have chosen! Right now…we are learning another lesson…how to sort out an unruly, disorganised gaggle of geese! Most of the problem is a consequence of our lack of decision-making because we didn’t want to slaughter any of them for meat. So what happened? The free foraging geese have eaten us out of house and home and reduced our beautiful grassy farm to shrub and wasteland.

We did eventually fence them in about 3 months ago and started feeding them with coconuts, grains and cut grass. Phew, it is a lot of hard work feeding a whole bunch of geese just for the sake of keeping them alive and off our grass. We finally did decide that we had to run the farm properly and that we had to make some practical decisions. Okay, so we finally looked at how many male geese (ganders) we actually had…it isn’t that easy to distinguish the sexes because we have a bunch of chunky hybrids (Chinese/German) and from our observation, it looks like a male reaches his full size in three years…younger males can look small and dainty like females. After close scrutinisation, it looked like half of them were males!!

We felt a bit sheepish when we realised that we had been keeping so many males around…you really should only have 1 male to about 6 females. And so we made the difficult decision to slaughter the some of the males…it is hard because you get so attached to them!! Anyway, we have been slaughtering one male a day and there are five in the freezer so far. Looks like there lots more to go…

I thought that the plucking would be terrible because the last time we plucked a goose, about 10 years, it took a very long time. This time round, we are managing to pluck a goose in about 30 minutes. It isn’t so bad because we realise that by reducing the population, the girls are getting to eat more food and it is a lot quieter because there are less males fighting amongst themselves. We have come to terms with it all because it is a more honest and truthful way of obtaining our own meat. We are using every part…I am saving the feet for some sort of yummy Chinese dish, the neck skins are being saved for sausage skins and we are even rendering the goose fat. I can’t believe it…these geese are not starving…they are sooo fat that they produce a cup of fat each!! Now I can rest assured that I have been feeding them well!

Right now we are getting up at the crack of dawn to pluck the goose in the cool of the morning. The rest of the morning, we are cleaning and maintaining the farm. I am still growing my own veggies despite the water shortage…next post I will have some pictures of my beautiful aubergines! I will write soon…promise!!

Belize, Farming, Food, Plants

The Weather.

January 9, 2020 Munchkin 2 Comments

We are always affected by the weather. The last two weeks of December was so hot that we thought that dry season had come early. We were getting quite worried because our water tanks were half full. The last few days, it has clouded over and it is drizzling a bit. C’mon…if it is going to be so dull and miserable, it should at least be pouring down. We made an attempt to go outside today but ran back in because the sogginess was no fun at all.

It is sapodilla time right now and our trees are loaded. We have been making a serious attempt to pick daily because we have competition from birds and gibnuts. Yes, those gibnuts are prancing around like they own the place! We are hoping to dry our harvest to make a date alternative for cakes.

We have been picking them green since the animals are stealing them all. It usually takes about a week for the fruit to ripen off the tree:

These are some dried sapodilla:

What else is happening? Well, we finally fenced our geese in a separate area. This is definitely a good thing because they had turned our 10 acres of lush grass and perennial peanut into dry, shrubby land. They had eaten up every single fresh blade of grass! The other annoying thing was their enormous piles of poop! Goosies…I love you but Honeymoon is over!! The downside to fencing the geese in is that we have to feed them on a daily basis. This is no mean feat because they eat a lot: we have to collect 4 big buckets of grass, chop banana trees and foliage and crack open twenty coconuts a day! Plus, they use up about 20 gallons of water daily…this is going to be a problem in dry season! Once we have done that, we don’t feel like doing any other farm work! The reality of the situation has set in and we are planning to fatten some of them up to eat. We dislike this part of farming but it seems like it is the only way to complete the cycle efficiently.

Anyway, on a lighter note, we are re-planting our perennial peanut; it will be very pretty when this stuff is covering the ground again:

Wishing you all a pleasant evening and hope that you all had a good start to the year!

Belize, Farming, Food, Plants

Overnight Rain

September 7, 2019 Munchkin

Hello! I haven’t been writing because the Internet hasn’t been up to speed ever since the antenna fell off the roof. It remains temperamental with mostly “bad days” and some good days with spurts of high speed for half an hour at a time. It seems okay right now so I am taking the opportunity to write.

The weather for the last 2 weeks has been relentlessly hot. Today, we finally got a break with a long overnight rain. It is overcast today and there is a comfortable coolness which we have not felt for ages. During this dry time, we have been mowing and cleaning up the farm…story of our lives! We are just about done and will be ready to plant our new seedlings out: new trees to plant include soursop, wax apple, jujube, malabar chestnut, pomegranate and Malay (Molly) apple:

We have found that September is the best time to get trees into the ground…there are enough rains to get them established. As the rains dwindle towards the end of the year heading towards dry season (Easter time), we find that it becomes harder for newly planted trees to survive. I think that this will end up being a planting weekend.

Other news: Our good Old Grandfather Goosie has taken over the rearing of our baby geese. A couple of months ago, we were very worried about his state of health because he had trouble foraging (maintaining body weight) because he was blind in one eye. We confined him under the house with “nursing-home care” thinking that he wasn’t going to make it. Anyway, after a four week period of regular nutrition, he started Honking!! and Honking!! and Honking!! like there was no tomorrow. The sound was driving us crazy because he was starting in the wee hours of the morning. We finally got the message and let him out. He has had a new lease of life since then: he’s been foraging fine, goes to the pond everyday for his daily ablutions and leads our baby geese around. It looks like he will grace us with his presence for a while longer!

Grandfather Goosie: Live Long and Prosper!

Okay that’s it for now. If I catch some another half an hour of high speed Internet, I will write again.

Belize, Farming, Food, Plants

What a Miserable Day!

July 20, 2019 Munchkin

Yes it is that month of the year again when its wet, it rains a lot and it gets really boring. July is just awful because it rains all month and we are virtually stuck indoors. This month we have kept ourselves out of trouble with indoor work. Gnome has been working on tiling the back veranda and I have been cleaning up the inside of the house. Because we are in the middle of everything, the place looks like a bomb has hit it. Our task is to move the indoor kitchen out onto the back veranda to give us more room to prepare and cook food. It appears that processing, preparing and eating well is central to our lives on the farm. What else is there to do!!

Today was a particularly miserable day with all day rains. There are puddles everywhere:

Oh well…since we have had copious amounts of indoor time, we have both been doing our share of creative cooking. Gnome tends to do more Italian-style slow cooking. Here are some pictures of food that we have been eating.

We are so thankful for this quiet time that we have together and extremely grateful for the delicious food that we have everyday. Thanks to the Farm for producing and nourishing us.

We had Gnome’s fresh pasta sauce with our home-made pasta:

A meal with our chocolate pasta…oooh, and our lovely ducky eggs:

The rains are really helping the vegetables grow in abundance…I can’t really complain, can I? 😉

This is one of my meals: osso buco, wild rice (sorry…not ours…but planning to grow a patch of rice in the future) and steamed greens.

Okay, I actually have lots more food pictures to show you. I will leave it at that right now. Hope that you are all have a relaxing weekend!

Belize, Food

Back Online

July 14, 2019 Munchkin

Hello Again! We haven’t had Internet for two weeks because the antenna fell down from the twenty foot pole. We had a very stormy night…we heard the rush of the wind through the walls, clattering and banging of things in the yard and then something “big” falling down and bouncing about to and fro. We didn’t go outside because it was the middle of the night and deferred to the morning to assess the damage. It wasn’t too bad; luckily the antenna was still intact and didn’t fall into the big tank of water!

Well, after that day we continued to have wet days. It was too slippery and wet for Gnome to climb up the ladder, climb onto the roof and attach the antenna back onto the pole. We waited until the first bright and sunny day to get the Internet antenna back. Hurray for Gnome for the bravery required in climbing on top of the house. I must say that we were both okay without Internet…no fits of rage or frustration! After two weeks, we down-loaded all 300+ emails and only two of them were semi-important. We realised that we hadn’t missed much at all. We do have Internet but the connection is slower because the antenna might not be pointing in exactly the right direction…downloading is slower so our communications are still not perfect!

Anyway, what has been happening. We did finally get the flood flies; ironically, we were ready for them up until the day they came and ironically enough, I had just spoken to Gnome’s Mother about “…not having flood flies this year.” My last picture was titled Flood Flies 2016 because for the last two years, we have managed to close up in time to avoid them. We got caught out this time…here is a picture of Flood Flies 2019:

We got caught out this time because dinner had not been “ready-made” on the stove as it had been for the two weeks waiting for the fateful day! I had decided to make yum-yums because we had harvested our first giant aubergine (they get to about 2lbs in weight). I was in the middle of making deep-fried aubergine sandwiches filled with mozzarella when the little buggers came winging their way towards our house. Ha-Ha!! We ate our yum-yums in the dark with flood flies flying and crawling around everywhere. Well, at least we ate something nice:

Other news: we have our mower part and we are ready to mow. One slight problem: wetness, rain and puddles. Again, we are waiting for a run of sunny days. Meanwhile, we have been cooking and baking lots of goodies. We even made a Christmas Stollen with our own home-made marzipan! I will write a dedicated Blog post on it but I will leave you with a few enticing pictures:

Stollen with vanilla ice-cream:

It took us days to make this but it was definitely worth it in the end. We polished off half of it and the other half is reserved for Christmas…meanwhile I am pouring generous amounts of our Cacao- fruit Elixir to make it extra special!

Belize, Farming, Food

A Very Wet Day!

June 15, 2019 Munchkin

We have had whole night rains for the last three days which has culminated in large ponds and pools forming on the farm. It is extremely wet; the goosies are loving the splishing and sploshing! We are stuck at home and the pasta maker done broke two days ago after a three day pasta marathon. Gnome said:

“…hmmm…things aren’t made to be used any-more…people just have these things as kitchen decoration or ‘one day I will make pasta with my pasta machine…'”

Oh dear…the poor machine did not survive the rigorous challenge of a Munchkin and Gnome marathon…we actually only got 12 hours out of it!

Anyway, Gnome has already taken the whole contraption apart and is in the process of fixing it. Meanwhile, I will sneak in a few more of our pasta pictures…

Another Picture:

This one was an experiment. We put yeasted dough, flavoured with cinnamon and sugar, through the pasta maker and made long mafaldine strips. They puffed up very nicely when fried in oil.

Gnome tells me that this type of fried dough is called chiacherre in Italy. His Mum says that it is called frappe’ in Rome. You can use vodka, dry martini or even white wine to make the dough. I had never considered using alcohol in dough (what a waste of a perfectly good beverage!) but it actually gives a distinctive flavour to it and is worth doing if you like good food! A definite thumbs up from Munchkin who has been experiencing the joys of Italian food making and eating for the last few days.

Have a Great Weekend. Oh, I nearly forgot to tell you…we think the Flood Flies are coming out tonight. There has been so much rain that we think that this will stimulate the flight of the termite queens. From our point of view, it just means that there will be a right old mess of wings to clean up the next day! Remember to switch all lights off, close all doors and windows! Early to bed tonight…

Belize, Farming, Food

Back To Writing!

June 13, 2019 Munchkin

Hello Again! My apologies for not writing for a long time but I went through a “I don’t feel like writing phase.” Anyway, I thought it was best to try to get back into the flow of things and besides I have lots of goosie pictures! Okay, what’s been happening on the farm? Firstly, we still haven’t got the brush-mower working (story of our lives!) ; we got a part shipped to us a few weeks ago and Gnome put it in place. No sooner had he gone 10 yards with the machine, a ball-bearing flew out and shattered into tiny little pieces. Yes…we are yet again waiting for another part so that we can do the big mow “before the first rains start.” Ha-Ha…the rains have started already but luckily this year, our wonderful gaggle of geese are keeping the grass down for us.

These are my three month old geese…not babies any-more. They are friendly and follow me everywhere. In this picture, all four of them were trying to get into a basin but alas, the fourth one couldn’t fit in!

The last three days have been muggy and hot so we decided to take a few days off from farm work. We got out the pasta making machine and started a pasta-making marathon.

Here are some pictures:

We made a whole bunch of vermicelli:

We made yellow pasta with tumeric:

We have been storing them in jars; it is nice to admire the fruits of our labour! So far with have 12 jars filled up with assorted pasta shapes and colours.

Oh, and we made chocolate pasta; Gnome rolls the sheets out first:

The pasta is cut into shapes and laid out in trays. We put them out to dry in the sun and by the end of the day, they are dry enough to be stored in jars.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures. I will write again with a goosie update!

Belize, Farming, Food

Dry Season Vegetables.

April 26, 2019 Munchkin

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.

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.

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:

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

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!

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!

Casa Mascia Apothecary

Category Archives: Food

On The Farm

All is Well!

What’s Up?

The Weather.

Overnight Rain

What a Miserable Day!

Back Online

A Very Wet Day!

Back To Writing!

Dry Season Vegetables.

Everything Handmade in Belize.