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:
The work is never done and there isn’t enough time in the day. There isn’t enough time to write blog posts either! Okay, so what’s happening…well, I will start off with my usual joviality. Since we have been so busy on the farm, I haven’t kept up with harvesting fruits and so the place is teeming with blackbirds and jays. They’ve been stealing all the starfruit and peach palm. They are not leaving a single one for us:
Munchkin: “This is daylight robbery. The blackbirds are robbing us blind!”
Gnome:
“Sing a song of sixpence
A pocket full of rye.
FOUR AND TWENTY BLACKBIRDS,
BAKED IN A PIE!”
Oh yes, we were willing to eat iguana curry because we were losing our vegetable garden to them. Well, now we have declared war again…this time, it is the blackbirds!
Bird.
The cat does his job…now and then…catching birds (I mean)…but not consistently enough…
Cat eating Bird.
Okay, so we are painting the veranda and putting railings up. Also, there has been so much erosion, from rains, around the house that the ground is getting washed away! Gnome has come up with a great plan to make partially raised beds, about 1/2 foot in height, and filling them up with our usual sawdust and seaweed. Since water pools in these areas around the house, we have decided to grow peppermint and taro (or any other aquatic plants that we can think of) in these beds so that they can soak up all the water. That sounds lovely…imagine the aroma of beds of mint around the house!
Fresh Mint.
Next on the list, is fixing up the gate because it is falling over. The list is endless! Anyway, we still try to add a nice touch to things so today we are going to go shopping in Punta Gorda (this is a rare event for Munchkin and Gnome…the shopping, I mean) and buy some Christmas lights for our new veranda.
With so many funny animal stories coming from our blog, I have neglected to talk about other stuff that we do. We have a new Chocolate-Mint soap. It’s chocolatey and has the zing of mint!! (As I am writing this, Gnome is murmuring under his breath…Munchkin, is this your idea of marketing??).
Ha-Ha…
We just dropped some off at the Chocolate Factory (Cotton Tree Chocolate) in Punta Gorda today:
Cotton Tree Chocolate.
Lovely soap made by Munchkin and Gnome; made from coconut oil and chocolate. Picture Munchkin and Gnome stirring a metal cauldron in the middle of the bush…
Chocolate Soap Making.
We make this stuff on the farm:
Chocolate Artisan Soaps.
If you are not in Punta Gorda, Belize…check out our Chocolate Artisan Soaps in The Apothecary.
We have a range of Chocolate Artisan Soaps and four scented chocolate soaps: chocolate-vanilla, chocolate-mango, chocolate-orange and chocolate-mint.
As an interesting aside, we have noticed that having a website does not actually decrease the administrative work involved in running a business. There are still a gazillion back and forth emails to write. What we have come to realise is that even although everything can be ordered on a website with the minimum of communication, everyone still wants the personal touch. So, we are happy to receive email orders and have a personal relationship with you, if you prefer.
Ooooh…look at that…stacks of Chocolate Artisan Soaps. We are getting ready for the new season with our lovely soaps made from Toledo Cacao and coconut oil. Here is a gallery of some of our chocolate offerings made by Gnome, the budding artist!
The Artist Known as Gnome.
These are brand new for the season: White Chocolate Mint Soap….smells delicious…you’d think you could eat them!!
White Chocolate Mint Soaps.
Artisan Chocolate Soaps…these are the swirly ones….
Chocolate Artisan Soaps.Chocolate Artisan Soaps.
Oh…and of course….100% Doggy Approval…this one tries to grab and eat them!!
We started making soap because we were both fed up with the quality of shop-bought soap. The bars that we bought were a funny pink colour with an artificial rose scent. We didn’t think much of the well-known brands either because they all smelled of unnatural fragrances and dried out the skin. And so we decided to embark on the making of our own soap…at that time we did not have Internet on the farm and had to conduct our research at the Internet Cafe in town.
Our purpose was to make a good soap for us to use instead of having the buy the poor quality supermarket stuff. The properties that we sought for in our home-made soap was a good lather and a moisturising bar with natural scent.
Generally speaking, soap is made from oil/fat and lye. The oil/fat lends the qualities and properties to a soap bar and so we started off by experimenting with anything that we could find off the supermarket shelf. We tried everything from shortening, to lard and a whole plethora of vegetable oils.
These attempts were a great learning experience: shortening was actually okay but the lard soap actually smelled quite piggy!! We came out of the shower smelling like we had smothered ourselves in bacon!! The vegetable oil made a soft moisturising bar but disintegrated very quickly into bits.
At the time, we were also making coconut oil and selling it to the lady at Punta Gorda market. It was a slow, laborious process of grating, boiling and stirring. We spent many full days setting up a fire (with coconut husks) and stirring our pot of coconut oil together under the shade of the coconut palms. It was a very significant time, when we tried to seek meaning in our lives, after extricating ourselves from the rushing urgency and pressures of our previous lives as medical doctors.
I remember making a test batch of coconut oil soaps and eagerly waiting for the results. When soap is made in this way ie. not commercially, the soap needs time to “cure” and this can take anything from 3 months or longer. The longer you wait, the better…it is like a fine wine. Anyway, after waiting 3 months, we tried this soap and discovered that it had all the properties that we were looking far. It lathered well, did not dry out the skin and the natural scent was lovely. The skin felt so clean and smooth.
This was the perfect recipe and we were using our own coconuts from the farm!
Our Lovely Coconuts.
Our soaps are still made from this original coconut oil recipe. In addition to this, we have created Medicinal Soaps and Chocolate Soaps.
