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, Plants

We Have Rain!

February 19, 2020 Munchkin

The day after I wrote my last blog post, complaining about the lack of rain, it started raining! It’s just raining bits…not that much but it is still something…we are all relieved including the animals and plants. Anyway I promised you some new pictures…

This is the new goosie area…they have a nice view of the mountains:

Since the goosies are fenced in we are enjoying the freedom of planting a new garden without worrying about them tearing up all the plants. Gnome has tilled a little garden next to the house for vegetables:

This is actually an old picture because the seedlings have been planted.

We planted green beans, okra and bitter gourd…we have a very nice variety of round bitter gourd:

We have planted tobacco in between the vegetables:

The plants are all looking great with the rains so I will post a more recent picture of the garden next time. Oh, we also have another little tomato and aubergine garden too!! Aaaahhhh….the freedom of open gardens and fenced in geese!!

One last picture…Gnome seems to like growing corn. This is a good picture…not looking so good right now after the drought but still hoping for a harvest.

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, Plants

Happy 2020!!

January 4, 2020 Munchkin

What? Another year has passed by and gone? I say this every time but I mean it every year. Time passes so quickly, it is scary. Wishing all of you All the Best for the New Year. We have resumed the farm work again after a 2 week hiatus. The grass keeps on growing, the weeds need to b removed, the goosies need to be fed and watered and life goes on. This is just a quickie to start the new year since we finally got our Internet antenna replaced yesterday (it was never quite right after it fell off the roof with the storm months ago).

I will leave you with a few lovely pictures of sorrel (roselle); it is harvest time right now and this year, I picked them all and it is blooming again. We are drying them for tea and wine-making.

Seed Pods Separated From the Sorrel Fruit.

Belize

Merry Christmas Miracle!!

December 25, 2019 Munchkin

Good Morning and Merry Christmas to y’all!! You won’t believe what happened yesterday…the back of the truck caught fire while we were driving!!

We did some last minute Christmas shopping yesterday and were driving back home. At one point, I looked in the wing mirror and saw flames coming out of the back pan of the truck. I can’t believe this but I didn’t scream, swear or exclaim…I rather nonchalantly said to Gnome in a steady voice,

“Darling, the back of the truck is on fire.”

Of course Gnome slammed on the brakes and we both ran outside to see what was happening. The fire seemed to have started inside one of the boxes and was spreading quickly to other items on the truck. Gnome poured all the water that we had on the flaming box which wasn’t enough to douse it out….what to do?? The only fluid left was a big bottle of coke which I bought as a Christmas treat (Santa drinks Coke at Christmas too!!). Hah, the coke did the trick and stopped the fire….saved by a bottle of coke!!

After the fire went out, we realised the enormity of the situation…if we didn’t have the bottle of coke, the back of the car would have been up in flames with no hope of saving it. Instead, we have a melted plastic hole in our truck pan…we can live with that!! The other thing was that we had cans of diesel in the back of the truck and luckily they were on the opposite side of the fire!

Anyway, we are puzzled over how the fire started in the box. There was a book, a packet of metal spoons and loose leaf tea in the box. Next to the box, there was a bottle of coffee creamer which thoroughly melted. Was it the tea or the coffee creamer…huh??? This really means that we have no idea what happened and have concluded that it was a freak incident.

Well, that is our Christmas Miracle and we are grateful that it all ended well! We have to Thank our Christmas Fairy Gnome…

Belize, Farming

The Spirit of Spirulina.

November 7, 2019 Munchkin

The Spirit of spirulina has at last descended upon us. We (or rather Gnome the neophile) has been trying for some time to grow spirulina. Spirulina is a cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) that is edible and used as a dietary supplement or source of food. Spirulina has a very high protein content (about 50%) and was once used as a food by the Aztecs in the 16th Century. Furthermore, it has been documented that spirulina was once harvested from lake Chad and made into protein blocks for soups and stews.

For our purposes, we wanted to grow this algae because it had such a high protein content: first of all, I wanted to put it into our food and secondly, it is an excellent food source for our domesticated animals. Here are some pictures to show you what we have been doing with the algae:

Gnome initially started growing it in plastic tanks and once it had expanded, he used a Kiddie’s swimming pool.

When you look close up at spirulina, it is actually made of spiral filaments. I tried to capture this in a picture:

This is harvested spirulina:

It actually smells and tastes like very fresh eggs:

This is what we have done with it so far…

It turns pasta a nice green colour and as it ages, the pasta actually becomes blue-green. It does not have a strong taste so it does not impart any significant smell or flavour to the pasta.

We also made spirulina ice-cream; it was okay but the blue colour made it “feel” less palatable!

We will be doing more experiments and will keep you posted!

Amusing, Belize, Farming

Back With a Banger!!

October 31, 2019 Munchkin

Hello, Hello, Hello!!! We are right here! I haven’t been writing because we are back down to sharing one computer and it’s a bit difficult sometimes to get into the mood. Gnome said,

“…just write something…my mother just needs to know that we are alive and kicking.”

Okay, yes we are alive and well. The usual news is that the brush-mower is giving us nothing but trouble, pain and suffering. The belts keep on breaking and we can never find the perfect replacement for a 50 inch belt…we have all the sizes from 47 to 54 inches and a 50 inch cannot be found in the whole of Punta Gorda. Oh what else…the starter pulley keeps on breaking and there’s more but I won’t bore you with details. We are starting to feel that there is a gremlin living inside the mower that is intent on destroying it…that’s our theory anyway. The other day, Gnome exclaimed:

“…oooooh!!! I can’t believe that my happiness is dependant upon the mower working!! Woe is me!!”

Anyway, he will get over it…well, he will have to!! Let’s move swiftly onto the subject of bangers or sausages. As a relief from the silly mower business, we decided to make sausages. We haven’t done this for a long time…in fact, when I got out the sausage casing out, it was dated 2015! This lot of sausages were made from pork, beef, a bit of goat I found at the bottom of the freezer and shredded coconut. Seasoning included, salt, black pepper, ground bird chilli pepper, dried garlic, ground clove and ground cinnamon. We made 15 lbs of sausage in all and had a lot of fun doing it together. We must remember that this is what it is all about!! Here are some sausage making pictures:

More Sausage Pictures:

With a bit of experimentation, we found that the easier way of making the links was to form a spiral first. You then make single sausages by nipping both ends at once and twisting the whole sausage with one hand.

Ooooh…look at this…our own yummy sausages….

I am making a concerted effort not to fill the freezer full of food…the freezer doesn’t work well when it is stuffed right to the top!! We canned this lot; half were put straight into the jar and the other half were fried in oil first. Both were canned “dry” without broth to retain maximal flavour:

Oh, and the tasting was magnificent!!

Eating sausages sure beats mowing the lawn!! We better go out to work to burn off the calories!!

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

We’re Back!!

August 24, 2019 Munchkin

Hello!! Again, I have to apologise for not writing; this is the continuation of the Internet antenna saga. About two months ago, the antenna fell down off the roof of the house with a great gust of wind. After two weeks of no Internet, Gnome valiantly climbed up to the roof of the house and attached the antenna back on. At first the Internet was running okay…a bit slower but good enough. Then we had another windy night and the antenna swivelled out of reception. For the last 4 weeks or so, Internet has been on and off, emails are eventually received and Internet access practically non-existent. Today, it was a bright and clear with no rain for days so Gnome decided that he would climb up once again. The antenna originally pointed towards Big Falls so Gnome brought up his compass to make sure that it was pointing North. Here we are again…back on-line.

This is also a message to Gnome’s mother….we should be able to contact this weekend!!

What has been happening? You will be pleased to hear that machinery is working once again and we are in the process of cleaning up the farm.

Other news…we have a goosie story to tell you…

Last week, I was doing my usual goosie evening feed which involves a massive goosie stampede, lots of jostling and squawking and a Munchkin with a bucket of corn. Every evening we have goosie time and all goosie factions return from the pond or foraging to congregate for the big event. This gives me a chance to do a quick head count and I immediately noticed that my five baby geese were missing. After feeding time, Gnome and I wandered through the farm (about 20 acres) scouring the area for the missing geese. There was no trace of them and we arrived back to the house upset and distraught over the disappearance. At night, we couldn’t sleep for worry…what if a jaguar or a snake took them out…or, maybe it was a snatch and grab….arrrghhh!!! The next morning, we walked down the main road towards the nearby village. Still no trace and we kept on looking up in the sky for signs of buzzards swirling. We informed somebody in the village that we had lost 5 geese and headed back home with dismay.

Every evening, I hoped that my five goosies would suddenly turn up and join the corn eating mayhem. There was still no sign of them but I still remained quietly hopeful.

One week after the geese went missing, a boy from the village hailed me at the gate. He told me that he had seen “five big ducks” behind the fence on the opposite farm. In the middle of night, he was cycling pass and stopped to hear the “five ducks” squawking at our geese on the farm. He said that in the din of the ruckus, he realised that the five geese were trying to move towards the noise of our geese. When he shone his flash-light in their direction, they quickly ran away. The boy’s account of the “five ducks” gave me renewed hope…

Gnome and I were very excited and by the turn of events. Yesterday afternoon, we attempted search and rescue ; we obtained permission from the owner of the farm and went traipsing all over the cacao fields. Gnome called “Goosie!!” and I called “Goosie, Goosie!!” as we searched high and low with no luck. After an hour, I started to feel the exhaustion from the afternoon heat…I met back with Gnome and sat down by the shade of a tree. I was ready to give up…

Tears rolled down my face and I was about to tell Gnome that I was ready to go home. I felt dizzy, tired and discouraged. At this point, we both stopped talking and heard a, “qwack!”

It was a very soft “qwack!” but nonetheless it was a “qwack!”

We stilled ourselves to listen again and then heard the crashing noise of heavy webbed feet on bush and then we saw five little heads peak out from the long grass behind us…

More tears rolled down my eyes, “My goosies!!”

The geese were panting and exhausted as if they had walked a long way from the back of the land to our position at the front. They were too confused and delirious to be driven or led so we ended up carrying all five geese. Just picture us walking with geese stuffed under our arms…I had three of them and Gnome had two. We could hardly get the farm gate open with our burden!

The geese are back home and safe. What a nice ending!

Casa Mascia Apothecary