We prepared our area for planting peanut about 2 weeks ago, eagerly looking for seed peanut to plant. We were quite surprised that we couldn’t find any down here in Toledo . So we searched further afield, and asked our friends Graham and Joyce if they could find some in the Cayo region. Thank-you so much!! We got the seeds today and are ready to plant!!
We have a fifth of an acre all tilled up and mixed with lovely seaweed (courtesy of Panda) and lime. The area is protected from the geese with metal fencing right now. However, we have set up a bamboo fence and planted air potatoes at the base and once the plants get bushy, we will take away the metal fence.
Peanut Area.Bamboo Fence.
The bamboo has been erected to grow air potatoes:
Air Potato Vine.
We will plant tomorrow…we are so excited. I think the peanuts are Spanish Red Variety.
Seed Peanut.
Thank-you once again to Graham and Joyce for the peanuts!!
More stuff and photographs for a Sunday perusal if you are bored and/or doing your FB/ Blog Sunday thing!! Yes we have been busy little bees and Gnome has been storing up his charcoal for leaner days. He is doing one barrel a week so it is piling up. Well good for him, I am pleased with his continued hard work…sometimes he needs a bit of encouragement because he never thinks he does enough. He does!! I need to remind him that he is doing great…when there is no boss, we have to nudge each other along and remind each other that it is all okay and everything is okay!
Lots of Charcoal.
Oh what else is happening…oh yes, the price of butane has gone up by 20%!! Nobody else seems to have noticed but we have because we hate spending money on consumables. We are cooking with charcoal everyday…steamboat, soups and even grilling with the hibachi (not sure how to spell that but hopefully you know what I am talking about). This is a picture of Gnome grilling steaks and making suriname cherry wine…all on charcoal. Yes, we are living the farm dream!!
Cooking steak.
I’ll leave you with some more farm pictures because that is what it is all about (well, for us it is).
The wax apples are starting and growing in abundance…ooooh, look at these…
Wax Apple Flower.
They will turn into these:
Wax Apples.
We do grow some flowers…a little…not much. Here is one; frangipani/plumeria.
Plumeria.
Huckleberries grow like weeds here….definitely an easy food to grow; totally recommend this one…you hardly need to do anything!!
I was just about to write Happy Sunday until I realised it was Monday today. There is no traffic on the road and it is so quiet. I realise that it is a Holiday Monday so probably that’s why there is a “Sunday feeling.”
We are having a “funny” dry season this year; actually, every year is a “funny” dry season because they are never exactly the same. We’ve been getting early morning showers (which ruins our Munchkin and Gnome farm schedule plans). It’s hot like dry season but there is a wetness to it too; this helps because we have managed to keep some vegetables and greens going despite the season.
The rocket is great and we have been able to eat this everyday:
Rocket.
This is miracle fruit; I have written about it before; in short, it contains a glycoprotein molecule that which makes sour food taste sweet. It is a great party trick if you can’t think of anything else to talk about. 🙂
Miracle Fruit
The huckleberries are growing really well; we have saved seeds and we are going to plant a patch of this on the farm.
Huckleberries
Ooooh and look at these cute birdie nest with blue eggs. The nest was tiny…about 3 inches across.
We are still going but slowly right now. Gnome seems to have caught too much of the sun so is not feeling as feisty and fit to face the challenges of the farm (or the world). We seem to take turns to get sick…last week, I had really bad headaches!! Anyway, life still goes on and last night we had a huge rain that came all of a sudden; the sky turned a grey/black hue, the rain hawk went off and the geese went crazy. So another Rain Sign is geese going off/ honking and making lots of noise…and oh yes, coming back home (from the pond) in a hurry, practically running. They are quite funny, they are like a bunch of naughty school kids coming back home from school!
Anyway, must keep the Blog going…some pictures:
There is a Chiney in Punta Gorda that grows this on their fence. I asked them for seeds from their Chinese winter melon and here it is. We saw an iguana suspiciously eyeing up the winter melon and I warned him…you know, with that scary Munchkin look:
Winter Melon.
I have never seen a bath tub for sale in Belize. Being from the UK, we grew up with baths…the showers came later. We thought that this would make a great bath tub…especially in cool water over dry season…
Bath Tub.
Plant Pictures:
It’s getting dry so back to eating chaya again. It’s actually quite palatable blended and mixed into soup.
Chaya Plant.
The giant granadilla has done nothing for years (remained alive but not produced fruit). This year, we actually got fruit..
Giant Granadilla Flowers.
Flowering at the pond right now but having a tough time with the geese because its roots are edible. Keep going…we will move you somewhere else, goosie-free.
I think that I have mentioned before that we don’t bother with the weather reports any-more since we have never found them accurate. For a time, we relied on the fruit-monger but we haven’t seen her in ages. Today, is it going to rain or not? So, Gnome pointed out all the the rain signs; we have observed these signs, over and over again associated with rains. Honestly, we do use the scientific method. 😉
“…well, the rain hawk was going off like crazy and…you (Munchkin) have a splitting headache…the road just got graded and there was a sudden build up of grey clouds over half an hour.”
“…Hmmm…are four signs enough for a rain…”
Well, let’s just wait and see if our Munchkin and Gnome Rain Signs work!! 🙂 Or, do we need to add more Rain Signs to the criteria?
Anyway, I ‘ll will leave you with a few pictures of vegetables from the farm (oho, the excitement of being a Munchkin and Gnome knows no limits!!). This year, we have kept the plants to a minimum so that we do not need to use up too much water over the dry season. These plants are being irrigated with grey water (washing machine/ shower and dish-washing water).
The Chinese winter melon is growing up the one side of our duck coop. So funny, I couldn’t get one for Chinese New Year but now the plant is producing lots of fruit. The Chinese usually eat them (in soup) when they get really big. I have started harvesting them young because we can’t possibly get through the sheer volume of eating mature fruit. They taste like cho cho (chayote) and other types of curcubit plants.
Winter Melon.Another Winter Melon.
The rocket (arrugola…is that how you spell it? That’s the Sicilian word for it by the way) is dong really well despite the drought:
Rocket.
Asparagus is doing great:
Asparagus.
This eggplant looks like an egg; not much taste though…it’s a bit rubbery but great to look at (if anyone is interested in looking at eggplants that resemble eggs). 😉
White Eggplant.
This is an unusual striped orangey egg-plant. They don’t get very big but I like them since they are sweet tasting and (God-Forbid!!) they make a nice ornamental. Munchkin philosophy: You really should just eat it and not just have something for pretty.
Stripey Eggplant.
Just as I finish writing this post, the rain is starting (a little)…
I just realised that I have not written for ages!! Okay, so what’s happening? We have had rain and lots more rain. The last few days, the sun has come out a bit (hooray) but still more rain. It is all quite splashy and puddly right now. Still can’t get out there!! If you recall in a New Year’s post I thought that the new year truly started according to the Lunar Calendar (ie. Chinese New Year)…well, it certainly looks that way. We are heading towards Chinese New Year (next week, 16th of February) so we have to see if the new moon will allow us to get out on the farm and start (and finish) projects.
Not much to report except that I am planning the Chinese New Year celebration food which will include camp-fire gibnut…
Finished Cantonese Gibnut.
Pictures from the farm:
Drying tobacco; we have all-sorts including Burley, Virginia and Turkish.
Drying tobacco.
Gnome is still making charcoal; we have had some wild winds blowing down tree branches around the farm. We are piling them all up to start another barrel of charcoal:
Fresh Charcoal.
The bucket garden fell down over Christmas but is now back up again. We are not adding too many extra plants at this point because dry season is approaching:
Bucket Garden.
More plants up here too on the veranda. The plants are taking over:
Tomatillo Plants.
Tomatillo:
Tomatillo.
Plants on the veranda; two types of eggplant (aubergine); one is a white round egg and the other is an oval orangey one with green stripes. I will have pictures once they have formed:
Exotic Eggplant.
The goosie barricade around the house is slowly being formed. Goosies be warned; you are a bunch of noisy trouble-makers and you need to be further away from us for our emotional and spiritual well-being.
Gnome’s Hadrian’s Wall.
Ooooh…lovely colour….sorrel elixir (tincture) in the making:
Can you believe it! Our stats went through the roof with New Sexy Gnome. Too funny. Anyway, back to the fruit and vegetables on the farm. This one is interesting because I’ve written a bit on it here, so click if you want to read more:
I am re-discovering this plant again (since it is fruiting season right now) and it is fascinating. I now recall years ago (it could have been about 8 years ago) when we first saw this plant in Spice Farms in Toledo and Gnome’s eagle eyes chanced upon a single fruit that had dried on the bush. When we both tasted this we were absolutely amazed that it had such an intense flavour of apricot. Anyway, we saved the single seed that was in it. Gnome planted this seed, babied it and it has turned into the huge monster that it is now.
The main point was that I forgot about the apricot taste because I subsequently pigeon-holed it as a “gooseberry” because of its name. When it is picked fresh, it does have the texture and acidity of a gooseberry. In the past, I have mixed it with other fruits to make jams and preserves and not really thought that the flavour was anything exciting or different.
However, this time I tried to make a “jam” out of the fruit by itself. This is what I did:
I picked 2lbs of the fruit and washed them removing any spiky bits.
The fruits contain black seeds that are edible. I felt that sifting the seeds out was too labour intensive so I opted to buzz the whole lot fruit in a blender. The crushed seeds blend into the fruit.
I added equal parts sugar to the fruit and placed all of this in a stainless steel stock-pot and proceeded to make jam.
This is what happened:
The jam did not set. That means that the fruit does not have natural pectin. I didn’t have any pectin so I couldn’t do anything about it so it ended up being a syrup (sauce) type of thing.
When I tasted the cooked fruit with sugar, it tasted of nothing. Quite disappointing…a great looking orangey fruit cooked with sugar.
When cooked, the fruit takes on a gloopy (slimy) texture. It’s not as bad as it sounds.
I thought that the flavour was so bland that I chucked in about 4 Tbsp of ground black pepper.
I canned the “sauce” in glass jars and had some on the same day to try it out. I didn’t think much of it so I planned to re-dump the the sauce into the stainless steel pot and add some kick-ass habanero peepers to it.
Time passed (a week) and I didn’t do anything with the sauce. We were having oatmeal (we ran out of honey) and decided to put some of this sauce on top. Wow was it good!! It just needed time to work the magic…synergise…what-ever but it now tastes like apricots. The black pepper compliments the sauce very well. I am very pleased with it!! I now have 6 jars of Barbados Gooseberry and Black pepper sauce sitting proudly in my pantry. This one is so good I will save it for special occasions.
Wow…Munchkin is really balancing on the precipice of excitement with her innovative titles. 🙂
This is a red spinach called orach (Atriplex hortensis). It has a mildly bitter taste which makes a good salad leaf. When cooked, it still preserves its lovely red colour (compare with red okra that unfortunately turns green with heat). According to Wiki, it has a “salty taste” which I don’t taste at all (warning: not everything that you read on the Internet is for real!!). It is a member of the amaranth family so you can some resemblance to callaloo which is a well-known green leafy vegetable here in Belize.
Orach.
This is called Wonderberry (Solanum retroflexum) and produces tiny purple berries (like a huckleberry). The berries are good for making jam and preserves. We have a whole bunch of these growing on our beds and we can’t get a single berry because the early bird gets them. We are considering re-location of these plants to a more secluded area…not going to say where in case a little birdie is reading this!
Wonderberry.
The other day when we were walking together hand in hand through our messy, shrubby overgrown garden (aaarrrrghhh…need a brush-mower, a cow or sheep or somethin’), Gnome suddenly stopped in his tracks and looked upwards saying’ “…thank-you, thank-you, thank-you!!” I thought that he was in the throes of rapture but then I looked up too and saw these flowers peaking out at us; our first kola nut (bizzy nut) flowers. I have written about this tree here if interested in reading more.
Kola Nut Flowering.
This is lantana; it is a plant that comes up as a weed everywhere here. It is a honey plant for butterflies. We have decided that we rather like looking at butterflies and are leaving these flowers around our yard.
What happened to January? We are more than half way through already!! Despite this, we are still doing our New Year’s greetings…maybe it is just us because we don’t see people that often. Anyway, there is always work to be done and there is never enough time to do it all. I have been catching up with harvesting; what we both hate is leaving stuff on trees and watching them drop to the ground. Today, I harvested the sorrel (roselle). I have to admit that I feel very lazy when I think about these because you have to sit and take off every single sepal. My problem is that I don’t like sitting down and this task forces me to be sedentary.
Sorrel Plant with Flowers.
You have to remove the sepals from the pods:
Seed Pods Separated From the Sorrel Fruit.
These are the sepals all nicely cleaned up:
Fresh Sorrel.
It is however very satisfying once it is all done. This year, I am making Sorrel Elixir (liqueur); I am making two versions: one has very little sugar and they other is more syrupy. I think that the sugary one will do very well poured over ice-cream and desserts. The colour is really amazing when you see the sorrel infusions. It looks better than this in real life.
Roselle Elixir.
But then it gets very dark as it matures:
Mature Sorrel Elixir.
Once it is mature, it tastes a bit like a sherry.
Here is the sepal picture again just because it is rather beautiful!
It is still really cold at about 20C/68F; you know when it gets to this temperature because the coconut oil in the bottles solidify! Anyway, still hats, woolly scarves and home-made charcoal burner at our feet in the morning and at night. So glad Gnome is making charcoal!
Making Charcoal.
We are still taming the chaos…does not happen over-night and I suspect it might take us a while to get back on top of things. The other thing is that the geese are getting badder (I like baaad english!! Pushing passed the barriers of expression) and I got a huge bruise on my thigh from a full throttle head-on attack. I had to sumo wrestle the head goosie and boy, did he have fun! When I let him win, he was honking like crazy and puffing out his chest as he weaved in and out of his goosie crowd, doing the goosie dance (a bit like a chicken dancing but with no head bobbing…head up in the air in the splendour of victory). I let him win, of course, since I have the unfair advantage of being bigger and cleverer and being human. 🙂
Head Goosie Richard II
Anyway, back to the serious Munchkin and Gnome stuff. Growing vegetables, ogling at our vegetables, eating them and (taking pictures when we remember). We don’t grow vegetables or do our lifestyle in order to Blog about it!! Somebody asked us if we chose our lifestyle in order to talk (Blog) about it…what a very weird way of looking at things!!
To clarify: we grow vegetables to eat them because they taste good.
Vegetable and Fruit Gallery:
Endives grow very well; they are quite drought resistant so we might be able to take them through the dry season.
Endive.
The fennel looks spectacular right now:
Fennel.
Kale grows well here too:
Kale.
Spring onions:
Spring Onions.
Oh had to sneak in last New Year yum-yum picture. Smoked salmon (my favourite), prosciutto, salami and parmesan.
