I have been starting to look a bit more into my Chinese heritage since my father passed away recently. To be honest, I never really thought that much about it and usually, if anyone asked, I would say I was Cantonese for easiness sake. Actually, I am not Cantonese and I don’t even speak Cantonese. I am Hakka….well, you are probably thinking that you are none the wiser being told this information…anyway, it is significant because Hakka people were traditionally farmers and within their social structure, it was the women that worked the fields (subsistence farming) whilst the men worked in the urban areas (for money). Interesting that the Hakka were the only Chinese that did not practice foot binding…probably because the women had to work outside.
Anyway…my convoluted introduction was just to add another layer of interest…maybe Munchkin is going full circle and getting in touch with her ancestral roots?!! 😉
Okay, more pictures:
More and More Charcoal.
Gnome has been pruning trees (probably about 3 to 4 times a week) and gathering the wood to make charcoal. The previous charcoal container was over-flowing so he had to make it larger and sloping to allow better access.
The tyre garden is working out well especially when the ground is so boggy right now. We are stashing taro in between the tyres in the hope that the geese overlook them…so far, so good. The geese have a very healthy appetite when it comes to roots like taro and we are careful to hide them from their plain sight.
Tyre Garden.
We are also developing a grove of pitahaya (dragon fruit) on tyres. The cactus is trained to grow up the posts and once they reach the top and start dangling…which usually takes about 9 months…will produce fruit. So far, we have about twelve of these and I am aiming for about 20 or more plants.
Planted Pitahaya.
The tyres are filled with seaweed (courtesy of Panda…thanks!). Right now, with full on rainy season, it takes about a week for the salt to wash out of the seaweed…once washed out, the cactus is planted and attached to the post with bindweed vine.
Yeah! We have managed to keep the grass down this year which is definitely progress for us! This helps because we can actually look around to make plans for the farm. Despite the weather being on/off or sunny/rainy ie. can’t make up its mind, we are in good spirits because everything is proceeding at a reasonable pace. We have had a whole week cooped up inside the teeny house because of wet, boggy ground and coalescing ponds and I finally managed to get out today to take a few pictures.
Here is a giant toad that resides in the duck coop; seems to be quite happy to jump around with the ducks and sit in the dinner bowl.
Fat Toad.
We had a good harvest of Malabar Chestnut…the cultivated Chinese variety which tastes like chestnuts. Don’t get this one confused with the wild variety here in Belize, also known as provision fruit, that gives “edible” seeds; yes, edible in that it isn’t poisonous but inedible because it tastes like cardboard. Believe me, I’ve tried and I would definitely categorise the wild chestnuts as survival food! Anyway, I digress…I wanted to show you pictures of our harvest:
Malabar Chestnut Pods.
I think that you may only recognise these if you are Asian and you are used to buying packets of Chinese soup ingredients that only have Chinese writing on them. I am used to seeing these seeds in the dried form; the fresh form is very nutty and succulent. We like them so much that we have decided to plant another forty trees; they are especially good for growing in wet, swampy areas so they are perfect for many areas of our farm.
Malabar Chestnut.
Oh and look! The peanuts are still going. This is Day 93; another 27 days to go. We have had a few occasions when we thought that the whole field would get flooded or washed away with the rains but it has managed to battle through. We are very pleased with the peanuts; the straw like stuff in between the rows are cut vetivir.
Peanuts Day 93.
Last but not least, it is bamboo shoot time. I did not harvest last year because we were too busy. I said to Gnome this year that I was happy to harvest about five of them; that will make about 5 gallons which will last the whole year. For the first time, we are proceeding at a pace that allows us to catch the cycles on the farm. Usually, we are behind schedule and trying to catch up. Phew, it has taken 14 years to get to this stage…Ha-Ha!!
It is full on rainy season and it is absolutely pouring down. Every morning we have been waking up to thunderstorms and torrential rain. Water is flowing in tiny little streams on our farm and we haven’t been able to get out to work for a full week. This morning, Gnome said, “…oh that’s interesting…the weather report said it was going to be bright and sunny with a 1% chance of rain.” Well, looks like we got the 1% or the weather report is totally, wildly inaccurate…I suspect the second. 😉
Anyway, this is the best time for pumpkins, gourds and all manner of curcubits. The water allows the them to swell up into humongous fruit…and, I think this is the best part…those beetles that like to drill holes into all my tasty, delectable vegetables can’t get out to burrow holes because of the rains! Ahhh, of course that is the silver-lining cloudy thing that Hallmark people like to point out to me. 😉
These are some bottle gourds harvested from our farm. We eat most of them young but I have left three of them to mature to use as vessels to store some of our home-made wine.
Bottle Gourd Harvest.
We had our first breadfruit harvest this year; it has taken three years for the trees to start baring. We probably have harvested about 100 from three young trees.
Breadfruit TreeBreadfruit
We are eating the fruit as a potato substitute; of course, as all Belizeans will testify, breadfruit is best fried in oil:
We like to cut them into “chip” shapes (easier to eat with chopsticks!) but most people around here have them as half or quarter wedges.
Fried Breadfruit Chips.
Gnome cooked a breadfruit stew with his usual home-made wine, tomato sauce Italian thing. It was very good:
Chopped Breadfruit.Breadfruit Stew.
Oh, and Gnome has been sticking coke bottles around coconut trees…what is he up to?
It’s about time to write again. The goosies are calling me through space and time…they’ve been squeaking and squawking at me in their usual relentless way. Oh, and the grass keeps on growing! So I must keep on writing my exciting posts about geese and grass! Lately, we have had massive rains punctuated by one or two days of sun; we are still running around the farm doing whatever is possible in this wet weather when the opportunity presents itself.
We have been very fortunate with farm harvests during this rainy season and we are very thankful for them. Plenty of akee:
Akee Harvest.
We really enjoy the texture and taste of akee; it has a unique fatty, buttery taste. I would even venture to say that I prefer them to avocadoes. We also had the fortune of wild paddy straw mushrooms coming up on one of our vegetable beds.
Paddy Straw Mushrroms.
Here is a dish of paddy straw mushrooms cooked in olive oil, Gnome pasta stuff (yay! he is still cooking) and akee. Yes, we are still eating really well off the farm:
Paddy Straw Mushrooms and Akee.
Oh and look at this…in between this huge abundance of food, Gnome still dug up beetle larvae, brought it into the house and asked me rather politely if I would like to share some food with him,
“…eh, Munchkin….would you be willing to eat some grubs…”
Beetle Grubs.
He wasn’t joking. This comes from his old bush tucker days in the Northern Territory, Australia when he used to forage around and eat witchity grubs and berries (as Gnomes do). I was a bit scared about eating these wiggly things live so I said that I could coat them in egg and breadcrumbs and fry them in oil. At this point, I started looking very closely at the writhing grubs and felt (would you believe it!) sorry for them. I exclaimed,
“…it’s a bit cruel to chuck these poor things in boiling hot oil, though!”
Next thing I know, Gnome is having a conversation with me about how to practically approach this apparent mental stumbling block:
“…well, I suppose you could parboil them first…or, you could chop their heads off first…”
I bailed out at this point and said,
“…look Gnome, I would eat these in a survival situation but the truth of the matter is that we have plenty of food on the farm right now. Why don’t I give them to Duckie? “
He didn’t really have a choice because I was out of the house before he could say anything. Sure enough, Duckie had a real gourmet treat of beetle larvae…she gobbled them up like there was no tomorrow.
It’s been a while since I have written. I thought of quoting from the Bible or writing some poem about a weary traveller resting at long last after a long journey or even quoting a wry Mark Twain quote. I can’t find anything. I think that grief has no words and they are best left unspoken…because no-one knows your heart except yourself. A post left blank with no words would be more appropriate…silence to represent love and respect… but alas, I should speak a few words. My dear father passed away recently and I have been in mourning. May he Rest in Peace.
Hello there, just a little update to let you know that we are still around. I had a right hand injury so I have not been able to type (and do much for that matter…it’s driving me crazy). I was drying a glass and it broke and cut into the base of my thumb. Luckily Gnome was ready with his suture kit and did a perfect little stitching job. I have to say that I put on a brave face and didn’t flinch at all. I got 6 stitches!! I should have got a lollipop as a reward!!
Anyway, my hand is getting better and I am starting to get more function to it. Gnome has been wonderful and has been doing all the cooking and washing. It’s actually nice to have some home-cooked Italian food! I’ll write more when my hand is less swollen!! We are both doing fine and we have had some fine weather lately (it starting clearing up after the huge rain last week) so Gnome has been out and about cleaning up the farm.
Of course, as always, when I have some story to tell you, I don’t have any pictures to go with it. Such is life…when it is actually happening, you usually don’t have a camera on hand! Anyway, this story started with torrential rains last night at about 9pm; there was thunder and then the occasional yelp from a scared goosie. But, then there was one incredible clap of thunder…one big goosie yelp…one quick buzzy electrical noise…and then the power went out.
When we woke up this morning, we still had no electricity so Gnome went out to look at the transformer. He reported back,
“…the transformer is making a crrcrrrcrrr noise…”
Yes, very technical; I think he was trying to mimic a crackling noise.
Okay, so then we phoned the electricity company to tell them that we had no power and probably the transformer was hit by lightning. There was a bit of confusion over San Felipe, Toledo and San Felipe, Orange Walk (which is the opposite end of the country) and the colour of my house and the colour of my gate. At the end of the phone conversation, Gnome said that he was scared that the correct information didn’t get through and that they might be sending out an emergency team in Orange Walk looking for a green gate. So, at 8am, we decided to drive into town to report the fault directly to the Punta Gorda office.
When we got to the junction (Jacinto) to get onto the main road, there were a couple of parked cars and a whole load of people with bicycles. The river went up with the over-night rain and had flooded the junction road. As we approached, there was a guy blowing up an inflatable dinghy and numerous little children running about with multi-coloured rubber boots…but none dared to traverse the flooded road yet so we couldn’t tell how deep it was.
After about 15 minutes, a neighbour from San Felipe, driving a similar truck to ours, pitched up and parked behind us. He had a chat with us and he decided to wait too. Meanwhile, a few very brave motorists traversed the road but you could see that the water was still high up against the car bumpers. Gnome looked at me a few times and told me that he wasn’t going to risk it (and by the way…we will wait until our neighbour goes so that we can see if his truck makes it first…). Meanwhile, our neighbour was, I think, thinking the same thing and waiting for us to go first!!
Okay, after about an hour we ended up going first! And our neighbour followed with a chuckle and shouted, “let’s go!!”
The water was probably about 2 feet high and we tried to keep straight…it was actually quite scary because the water swayed our two tonne truck from side to side. I prayed to God to help us traverse safely and we finally reached the end of the road after about 100 yards (metres). Thank the Lord! We were both catching our breath…Phew…Made It!!…and at the end of the road, there was a woman waving us to get out of the way so that she could take a selfie at the flooded road! First time I have seen a selfie stick in this neck of the woods…sorry to say, they look really silly!! 😉
First stop in town was the office and there was a nice, helpful young man at the desk. He told me that my phone call did get through and that a team of guys had been dispatched to our residence. He said,
“…they should be there by now…let me just check…”
He came back to me and said with a smile,
“Oh, they are stuck at the junction right now with the flood and waiting for the water to go down…”
When I heard this, I started fretting over whether his guys could get across the flooded road. He looked at me and smiled again,
“…don’t worry about our guys!! you should be worried about whether you can get back home…”
He did have a point. I thanked him for his assistance and left worrying about whether we could get back home as it was starting to rain heavily again.
We did a few town things, stopped off for a quickie breakfast (not sure when we would eat again if we got stuck midway) and then headed back home quick smart. It was still raining!! On reaching the junction, it was surprisingly okay and the water was down to about a foot. From that we surmised that the electricity guys got through and had sorted out our electricity problem already.
On arriving home, the transformer was not making a funny noise any more and it appeared that the meter was back on. However, there was still no electricity! Gnome reckoned that since we assumed that the electricity guys had come already, all that was left was for us to replace the fuses in the fuse box. The only fuses we had were these ones…that had beeswax and honey smothered all over them…
Fuse Box.
Gnome proceeded to mess around and poke about in the fuse box. Meanwhile he told me to phone the electrician…I couldn’t find his phone number so I phoned a neighbour hoping to get the phone number; they said that they didn’t have it but would phone a friend to get the phone number of the brother of the electrician! I know…What Shenanigans!! Anyway, I had forgotten that this particular neighbour was a retired electrician (could have asked him for help) and he decided to drive by to see if we needed any help. He came by and spied Gnome poking about in the fuse box and reprimanded him immediately…soooo glad he did that! He said,
“…you can’t just poke about with live fuses…anyway, you don’t just take the fuses out with your hands…there are devices designed for that!!”
Gnome said “Sorry!!” immediately and said that he was ignorant to such devices existing.
At the same time, the electricity guys turned up and informed us that they didn’t come first thing because of the flood and did another job instead. They effortlessly replaced a fuse on the transformer and off they went…very, very quickly…it was nearly lunch-time (10 minutes to noon).
Alls well that ends well!! We have electricity again…but what a palaver!! Thanks every-one for helping out and making it into a funny story to tell!!
The weather has been back and forth for the last month or so. We had sunny-ish weather for the last 5 days so we went out and cleared up a bit more on the farm. Gnome has been clearing trees at the pond area and I have been wheel-barrowing the wood back to the charcoal area. It’s hard work for both of us but it keep us both fit and healthy. Oh, and yes, we have filled up our charcoal store so we are going to build another concrete block storage…
Making Charcoal.
Anyway, we have just done a run of work and today it started raining early morning and has kept on going. This seems like the typical July weather when you can’t get out at all! We had planned to go into town but decided to cancel because the rain is coming down in buckets! We both went outside to have a look and there are pools of water forming everywhere and the water is flowing.
Water Everywhere!!
Gnome saw a goose sitting in a big puddle fast asleep; when he called out to tell me, the goose woke up so I couldn’t get a picture of it…well, here is the goose just waking up from a nap:
Goosie Swimming in Puddle.
This is just after a morning of rain:
There is water everywhere:
Anyway, I know I haven’t been writing so this is a post to let you know that we are still here and we are doing our Munchkin and Gnome stuff as usual!
Hello!! We had about two weeks of really good weather (blue skies and sunshine) and now we are back to rainy weather. Today, it looks like an all day rain so we can’t go out. It is definitely getting very wet from three days of rain; puddles (ponds) forming and geese splashing about. Lots of froggies too and frog spawn in all our buckets.
Here are a few pictures from the farm. Not really much to say except that we will probably be doing inside activities for the month of July.
I had written before that we were trying to grow a big patch of mint at the water tank area which gets really wet. The mint has taken well and is spreading with the rains:
Patch of Mint.
Some birds nest cup fungus. It looks very pretty but unfortunately you can’t eat it or make birds nest soup soup out of it!
Bird Nest Cup Fungus.Birds Nest Cup Fungus.
The “Brain” is flowering; just in case you don’t remember the “Brain,” here is a picture; it is also called elephant foot yam.
Elephant Foot Yam.
The flowers are very interesting; they look like mushrooms:
Trouble with jackfruit or rather should it be Trouble with Munchkin? We have been getting so much jackfruit, I have been needing to process about 4 of them at a time every 2 to 3 days. You will only understand how I feel if you have ever needed to clean a jackfruit yourself. I don’t really want to complain because it is food but boy, is it a lot of work!! The other day, I went a bit mad on Gnome because it was so maddening and that’s how mad I was because I had done two and I had two more to go and I couldn’t take it anymore!!
Fifty Pound Jackfruit
Anyway, he tried to be diplomatic and told me to leave the last two jackfruit alone and do them the next day. He has his own work to do too and it isn’t like he is just sitting around doing nothing so it’s hard to get maddening mad!!
The next day, I tried it again with an all-new, well-behaved “thank the lord for our daily bread” Munchkin attitude. I am leading you into a cloudy story with a silver-lining if you haven’t noticed already….
So far, the jackfruit that I have been preparing are all the firm variety so they hard to cut through with a knife (blisters on the hands), the core is difficult to cut and each single piece of fruit requires to be pried off with the stubby fingers of a Munchkin. Arrrgh!!!!
Oh and don’t forget the boiling of the seeds and peeling each seed one by one! Oh and don’t forget the wine-making! It is a whole day affair.
Who said farm life was about rainbows and unicorns (what unicorns??). 😉
Cleaned Jackfruit.
Okay, so I am so far in a good mood, thanking the lord…keeping the good mood going…and onto the fourth jackfruit.
And guess what? It is the biggest one…it is humongous and I am expecting a two hour job. It cuts like butter, flops open, the spine pops out and the fruit pop out too. What an amazing revelation…this last jackfruit (from the same tree??) is completely different and has a soft, cotton-like texture. It is sooooo easy to prepare and I did it in half the time. Afterwards, I told Gnome about it and we realised that when we planted the jackfruit “tree” we stuck five seeds into into the ground. Two of them germinated, grew up and intertwined giving the appearance of one tree hence the reason for two different varieties seeming to appear on a single tree.
This is the other type of jackfruit which is soft in texture. If you like it, you would describe it as buttery; if you don’t like it, you would say it was snotty. Nonetheless, easier to clean and if you are making wine, the texture is not an issue. On the whole, it was easy peasy compared to preparing the other type.
Soft Jackfruit.
Cotton-like, soft variety:
Jackfruit.
Okay moral of the story. Stay in a good mood and something good (donum bonum/ good gift) can happen. Well, that’s Munchkin and Gnome philosophy and it works if you do it. It makes sense but harder to stay in a good mood (all the time) in reality. Got to persist though….
