Hello Everyone, I haven’t written for a while just because I have been too tired! Despite rain and mud and puddles, we are charging through like little troopers trying to get things done. The last time I wrote, we had about 10 days of glorious, dry weather. Straight after that, we had heavy rains. As soon as the first night rain started Gnome exclaimed (in his sleep): “…the peanuts…the peanuts…we must harvest the peanuts…”
And so we did…the next day of course…not in the middle of the night! The following day happened to be a dryish, sunny day so we had the weather on our side. Panda helped out too and we managed to collect the peanut in about 4 hours. The peanuts were washed and laid out to dry in a sheltered area. Well, thank goodness we did the harvesting because after that we had torrential rain for days…we would have lost the crop if we waited! Here are some pictures:
Oooh Peanuts:
In the last week or so, we have had heavy evening rains and dry days. Because our coconut area is on higher ground, we have managed to clear up the place; I went through and collected fallen coconuts(400!!). I have placed them in a shaded area to allow them to sprout. Panda (he’s been a very helpful trooper) cut and removed dead fronds and laid them in mulch piles. Then Gnome went through and bush-hogged the place. With all this co-ordinated work, we cleaned up the coconut area in about 2 1/2 days which is a record time for us!!
Anyway, we are on a roll here and the next place to clean up is the back space with the sapodilla trees. This may prove difficult because the area is really wet and boggy; we will probably start by cleaning the fence line because the bush is encroaching on the territory. We are trying to get the sapodillas back on track since they have been neglected for about two years due to machinery failure. They used to look like this:
Oh, and we have had more machinery problems which have held a few projects back…this time it is the chainsaw which is giving the headaches. We took it to the Farmstore in town to get it fixed and got the usual palava:
“..not sure which part needs to be replaced…will order part but can’t find part in Belize…maybe try to get part in Guatemala?? Or States??? Anyway… might take until December to get part from States…do you want to Belize rig it?? “
Anyway, these were the conversations that we were having for the last 2 weeks. Don’t get me wrong…this is not a complaint…this is what happens in Belize and these are the things that we have to live with. Anyway, we have the chainsaw back (not fixed) and Gnome says he will take it apart and see what he can do. No guarantees of course. Arrrrgh….we have so many trees to cut down!!
Okay, so we will keep on going… 🙂 Here’s another picture of our peanuts. 🙂
