Hey Everyone!! We are stuck at home because a huge monster pandanus plant fell on our gate last night. There was a big blustery storm at 3pm last night…it was really scary because things were flapping about everywhere…the roof tops and any type of top. The tops of the little goosie cage whipped off and the charcoal top came off leaving all the charcoal exposed to the torrential rain. The rain came down in buckets and in the middle of all this, the gutter went all wonky so that the water (which we dearly needed) did not flow into the tanks. Gnome had to get out and do a quickie DIY. On top of all this, our little goosies got totally drenched and I had to go out in my rain-coat (no point really, I got soaked anyway) to rescue the 4 day old geese). In the midst of all this, I was worrying about my (big) geese…perhaps they would get swept away in the wind? I screwed up my eyes to try to see through the rain and this was what I saw: big fat white geese in single file heading towards the pond lumbering like gorilla geese in the mist! Gallivanting; the geese went off gallivanting in the storm!!
Anyway, we have spent the whole day fixing up the mess…otherwise, we are doing fine!! After all that, we were too knackered to clear up the big monster plant blocking the driveway. Apologies to Panda and Mum for not making it out to meet up for lunch!
Well, Hello there, here is another update from Munchkin and Gnome. You see, I feel a bit sheepish because I forgot my camera for the Choc Fest (well, you know…there was so much stuff to pack into boxes, packed lunch and icy water…the camera was the last thing on my mind). Firstly, thanks to Alisa Atkinson and Tati for sharing the booth with us this year. We had a great time stuffing ourselves with their croissants and muffins and enjoyed their company very much.
This year, the fair was set up a bit differently since the town council were organising it. The stalls were packed on both sides of Front Street . Most of the stalls were not designated and so in the morning, it was first come, first served. Luckily, we found a place with a breeze from the sea so that helped with the dry season heat. As Gnome has said in the past:
“…Cacao Fest is always the hottest day of the year!!”
The fair started at 9am and ran on until 5pm (Saturday). The Wine and Chocolate was Saturday night instead of Friday this year. Because of this timing difference, we thought that the morning crowd was smaller; it was mostly made up of incidental tourists and Punta Gorda locals.
One thing happened that was really quite funny (maybe not funny for the people involved!!). I hope that I can describe it well so that it makes up for the lack of photographs. Late in the morning, three young Belizean girls came up to our stall dolled up to the nines with cute little skirts and heels. They were ooohing and ahhhing…at first I thought that they were complimenting us on our chocolate soaps…but, then it actually sounded like whining. Their beautiful bare legs were covered in bug bites and all three of them in unison stared woefully down at their bitten legs and then looked at the glowing container of “Copal Ointment for rash and itch.”
They pointed at that tin and uttered in feeble tones:
“…we want that…”
As soon as they received the Copal Ointment, they whipped the top open and dug right into the container…each one of them desperate to calm the itch on their legs. Oh, the poor girls!! There was more oooohing and ahhhing in front of me but this time I sensed more of a relief in their tone. Crisis over, they thanked me and went on their way. Afterwards, Gnome said to me:
“…that was perfect advertising for us…a shame we couldn’t get a picture!!”
Copal Medicinal Ointment.
We left the fair early afternoon to go home for a rest before attending the Wine and Chocolate. Yes, we did go this year…
(Incidentally, we were both at the the Very First Cacao Fest 2005. I ended up the kitchen cooking all night and Gnome got roped into pouring wine. That’s another story for another day!! But, never again!!)
It was nice to get out and get dressed up. It is certainly quite a job to try to get out of the farm without covering your good clothes in sticky burrs and mud. Nonetheless, we managed with a few passing pecks from the geese of course!! Much wine was drunk and we had a good evening together socialising. Good to get out once in a while…
Hello Guys. There will be a rare sighting of Munchkin and Gnome in public (it’s a once a year thing) at the Choc Fest. They have no idea where they are located but will be selling their usual wares: Copal stuff, medicinal products and chocolate stuff of course! If it’s rainy, you might spot them with their wellies. Otherwise, Gnome looks like a well-dressed Gnome and Munchkin is usually more casually dressed with a hat. Is that enough to go on? Anyway, hope to see you there!!
The last three nights we have been anticipating the flood flies; the nuptial flight of the termite queens (sounds very romantic, I know!) but to us it means messy wings and chaos and devastation!! A bit of sobbing too on my part because there is sooo much to clean up. Anyway, in order to overcome this awful time, we get into bed really quickly (say 6pm), close all windows and doors and switch off all lights. This minimises damage and a moaning-bad-mood- Munchkin the day after.
The last three nights, I’ve been making quickie dinners to get into bed early. When Gnome says,
“…what’s for dinner?”
The last three nights, he has been met with my 5 minute quickie dinner:
“…pasta and anchovies, darling.”
(They still haven’t come yet…but they will…it’s just a matter of time…)
Okay, right now the sky is grey and there is the distant rumble of thunder. It “feels” like it should rain which will stimulate the flight of the termites at about 5 to 6pm. Don’t get me wrong…I am not trying to tempt fate…I know they are coming sometime and I would rather be ready for them.
Okay, pasta and anchovies again tonight. We can’t really keep up with this strategy “Quick!! Run into bed” for too long because I only have two tins of anchovies left… 😉
After I got up this morning and after I had my buzz of Yorkshire tea, Gnome said to me very pointedly,
“….we are going to have a nice quiet day together. We might not achieve anything, we might not get anything done but that’s okay.”
He said this slowly and precisely so that I would not gloss over it and start doing my usual Hurricane Munchkin from kitchen to farm. Hence, I am sitting down in a Zen sort of way to try achieve balance. In my head, I am thinking:
(did he have to wait until after I had the tea??)
“…ooooh, I have ten jackfruit, or more to clean up…oh, and I have to feed my little goosies and I need to to do this and that and oh, I need to get that done before Tuesday because Wednesday will be busy…oh, and there is the Cacao Fest on Saturday too…oooh, busy busy!!”
Jackfruit.Another Goosie.
Oh so much jackfruit this year…
Opened Jackfruit.
And there I go again, the whole week is planned… 🙂
Anyway, it is all good and we can take a rest. Change of plan…
“…I am going to cook a Sunday roast and then…oops, I am starting the planning ahead again…”
Hee-Hee!! I will stop at the roast and take it from there.
Oh, what did you say, Gnome?? He just said something. He is going to make jackfruit wine today…Ha-Ha, he is still doing something…
Anyway, we are doing okay and are charging ahead to clean up the farm…onto the coconut area; we have so many sprouted coconuts (hundreds) that I will have to pick up (some of them rooted to the ground) so quite a lot of heavy work for the week. That is partly why Gnome has forced a break.
Coconuts.
Okay, the tea is wearing off so I can probably sit down for a bit and watch some silly films with Gnome…
and perhaps make some wine together. Have a great restful Sunday!!
We have a (pet) goosie now that follows me everywhere I go (a bit like Mary and her lamb). She was the first egg of the year laid auspiciously on New Year’s Day all by itself, plonk just outside our house. We incubated the single egg and our little goosie hatched 28 days later. Since she was all by herself, I was designated “mother goosie” and I taught her how to eat and forage. Thinking about it now, I actually spent a substantial amount of time with her as she was growing up; an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening. She always had supervised walks and I would place her up on the vegetable bed whilst I was harvesting for the day. Aha…that is why she likes bitter greens like rocket.
Rocket.
Another interesting thing I noticed was that she always pecked at things that I was collecting; for instance, she always watched me harvesting from the suriname cherry and has now got into the habit of eating the leaves from this plant (not a normal leafy green that geese go for). The eggplant proved to a bit of a problem because she de-nuded the whole plant!
Here is my little goosie; she is a joy to have on the farm. She is about 4 months old and doing all the normal goosie things despite having a Munchkin Mama. 🙂
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 haven’t written much at all…that usually means that we are out and about (on the farm) doing stuff. The pond is completely dry now; this usually happens every year except for one year which was an unusually wet-dry season. You would think that the geese would be up in arms with the loss of their swimming pond but they seem to have forgotten about it. These days, the different goosie factions are securing and taking over designated bucket areas like a bunch of mafia geese. It can be quite entertaining as each group guards their water stash jealously in the usual goosie-aggressive way…just don’t get caught in the cross-fire!!
Dry Season Pond.
We had to save our tilapia frys (I know…it sounds like fried fish but that’s the technical term for them according to size…just means that they are teeny weeny!!) ; we do this every year when the pond dries out. This time, we had a tonne of them…if you look at the above picture of the pond site, there is a smaller dug out pond on the right side…this was a Gnome idea and it works really well…when the pond dries up, the last bit of water ends up in this little pond with all the fish. When this happens, Gnome simply goes down and harvests the little fishes with a hand net. Initially, we had made all sorts of complicated traps but we have found that this is the best hassle-free method of collecting fish. The fish are in a big container right now being fed chopped greens:
Tilapia Fry.
The water was getting quite murky so Gnome had made a swirl filter with a bucket and bits:
Swirl Filter Top.
The fish water is pumped up through the top pipe in the swirl filter; the middle pipe is the out-flow for the filtered water and there is a lower pipe (which you can’t see) which can be opened to release all the gunk. Yes….you’ve got it!! This is the start of our aqua-ponics project…:)
Swirl Filter Front.
Anyway, Gnome says there are too many fishes in the container so we have to start harvesting them. I am thinking of making an anchovy type of thing with them…I don’t know how to do this so I will have read up on the preservation method. Have a great weekend every-one!!
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.
Gnome’s been trying to get those stingless bees in the Gnome boxes (TM) for ages. But of course, we’ve noticed that nothing on this farm listens to us or reads the same manuals. This lot of bees decided that our electricity disconnect box was just the thing for building a nest. The BEL guys came round to inspect our meter last week and discovered the sticky bee nest. Of course, we were told that we had to replace the box.
Bees in the Switch Box.
On the upside, we managed to get a litre of honey out of the box. 😉
So we ended up having to replace the meter base too because the door was broken…two expenses!! Of course Munchkin was none too pleased…these silly metal boxes actually do cost a bit of money. Then we had to arrange for the electrician and the BEL (Belize Electricity Ltd) guys to come at the same time because the power had to be switched off for the boxes to be replaced. Gnome:
“…how in Belize can you co-ordinate two different sets of people to come to your place at the same time…the mind boggles…”
(usually you can’t even organise an appointment with one person!)
Anyway, the conjunction of stars must have been absolutely bang-on perfect and they all turned up. They were all actually really helpful because we had a lot of spiky pandanus growing around the electricity meter and pole; they assisted in chopping down the over-grown (they are about 10 metres tall!!) obstructive plants. Luckily here in Toledo, everyone carries their own machete just in case there is grass or a plant to chop down. The BEL guys even got up on their cherry picker and cut some of the plant down for us. Thank-you, thank-you we really appreciated the extra help!! Every-one left with bananas from the farm and our hand-made soap.
We are glad that it all turned out well in the end. Look at the sticky mess the bees made:
