I was harvesting bird chilli peppers today to dry out in the sun. It is hot and dry again. These come up as voluntary plants everywhere because the birds eat them and poop the seeds out. I like these chilli peppers so I usually let these plants come up opportunistically; these plants can grow into considerable bushes and I have at least a dozen of them scattered around the yard.
Well, the running joke, on the farm, is that the birds get them all because I never actually get round to harvesting any of them. Gnome says that one day when we finally have our 4 and 20 blackbird pie, they will be very hot and spicy!
In order to put an end to the joke (it is after all at my expense) I took the time to pick some of the peppers; I probably picked close to 1000 and that wasn’t even half of them!
Whilst I was picking them, I realised that all the Munchkin jobs involved food in some way or another. On the farm, I am in charge of food harvesting, preservation, preparation and cooking. It is quite a job because it is ongoing and if you slack off, fruit and vegetables get wasted and fall to the ground.
Yesterday, I prepared another jackfruit “baby”…believe me, this is no mean feat when you have to wrestle with such a heavy fruit with all the latex and goo sticking onto the knife and hands! The jackfruit dried beautifully into very sweet, aromatic chips.
More Munchkin jobs coming up:
Picking of Chinese Jujube; these are green fruit about the size of small plums. When they turn yellow-green, they are ready to pick and at this point, have the consistency and crispness of Granny Smith apples. When they are fully mature, they actually turn red and shrivel up like prunes. This is a version of the Chinese red date, which can be purchased at Chinese supermarkets. This year I will have my own to cook in savoury and sweet soups.
Oh, and yes we have bamboo shoots coming up. These will be ready in about a week. It sounds like fun when you are reading it off my blog but in actual fact, it is a whole sweaty morning of cutting, slicing and boiling. You really have to be dedicated to food to do all of this!
It is all indeed a labour of love. If I didn’t love cooking and eating so much, I honestly would not do all of this. For any people out there who dream of a self-sustainable farming existence, they need to first of all, ask themselves if they are prepared to spend at least 50% of their day planting, weeding, harvesting, preserving and preparing food. Because that is all it is about. When I first moved to Belize, there were a number of couples who also bought farms and wanted to grow their own food to some extent. One couple, who had more resources than us, even got a digger to mound up 5 feet high garden rows to grow vegetables. Their idea worked wonders and they had tonnes of vegetables…the only problem was that neither of them were willing to pick or cook any of them. At the time, one of them had remarked,
“…do you know what this place (Punta Gorda) really needs? Yes, we need a “Drive Through” so that we can just pick up our meals…in and out…without having to wait around…”
This was a serious comment but nevertheless, I found it hilarious and I still to this very day, it makes me chuckle. For me, the fact that there was no “Drive Through” was one of the reasons why I came to Belize!
In the end, they gave up on the garden idea and now mostly buy all the food in, despite having all the space and resources to plant their own food.
The lesson to be learned here is to realise your own real motivations and predilections because that is your real push to do things. Also, subsistence farming does not make you rich so if you are chasing the bucks, don’t even consider this type of living. If you are looking for food security and independence, then you might think about this as a worthwhile option.