Not a lot of anything is really happening around here lately. Just a bunch of maintenance and tending to all of our plants and keeping the jungle trimmed back.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen toucans around our place, but now they seem to be back. We are starting to see or at least hear them just about every day now. The one in the picture above is a little wet after a big afternoon rainstorm.

We have heard howler monkeys fairly often off in the distance, in fact, they are one of the loudest animals and can be heard up to three miles away. The other night we had just gotten into bed and fell asleep when there was this very loud grunting, growling and howling right out our bedroom window that sounded like a soundtrack from a horror movie. It turns out there was a howler monkey in the trees directly above our back deck. Of course, we had to go outside and see if we could get a glimpse of him. So there we are standing out on our back deck with just a flashlight listening to a very loud scary sound in the dark jungle. We never did see him, but he was definitely right above our back patio.

Double-click on the sound bar below, turn your volume as loud as it will go, and listen to this monkey that woke us up.

A couple of nights later about 1:00am we were awakened again by very loud howling monkeys right out our bedroom window. The next morning I went out to see if any of them were still hanging around in the trees. The tree branches were moving like crazy and there were a bunch of animals moving around up there. I could only get glimpses of long tails and was pretty sure they were monkeys until I finally got a good view of one of them. Turns out there were about twenty coatimundis of all sizes roaming around the treetops. Then a few hours later Kelley heard a bunch of toucans in the same trees. There must have been fifteen toucans in the trees above the patio. We’re not sure what berries or fruits are in the trees right now, but it sure is attracting the animals.

This tiny frog jumped on our bar out back the other night while we were eating dinner. As close as I can find out, it’s a type of Glass Frog known for their see-through skin. This is a very tiny frog, as he is sitting on my finger. They must have some very powerful legs because when he jumped off my finger he must have gone six feet or so.

I’ve been making my clam chowder for close to 40 years now and everyone really seems to enjoy it. The problem is that for some reason we can no longer ship cans of clams into Belize and there are no fresh ones available here. So I’ve had to substitute clams for another seafood that is readily available here. That’s right, now I’m making lobster chowder. It’s a little different than clam chowder, and it might even be better, but I can’t decide. Since it usually makes a big pot, we almost always invite some friends over for a little “Chowdah” party. And of course, there was some sourdough bread to go along with it.

We ended up with a lot of dragon fruit this year and 90% of them were pink on the outside and a deep purple inside. The other 10% were yellow outside with white flesh inside. The purple ones have more of a berry flavor and the white ones remind us more of a kiwi. They are both very tasty, but the white ones are not as visually impressive when making them into a recipe. Just when we thought our dragon fruit was about done for the year, the plants are getting more blooms. So it looks like in a month or so we should get a few more.

For the past year or so our black peppercorn plants have only produced a couple of strings of peppercorns. It’s been just enough for us to try, but that was about it. This year, the plants are doing good and well on their way to producing a lot more in the years to come. At this point, it’s looking like we should have enough to maybe fill a few pepper grinders.

A while back I saw something called moss art (look it up). It’s where you take moss and make it into living art on walls and fences. I figured this was right up my alley, so I thought I’d give it a try. After finding a recipe online, I went to work to create a sample picture. First, you take some moss and wash all the dirt off of it. Then you put it in a blender with yogurt, beer, a little sugar and blend it up. I think the yeast from the yogurt and beer must help keep the moss growing. After that, you just paint it on something and keep it moist. I made a test picture of a toucan about a month ago and so far it’s doing well. If this works, who knows there might be an entire living moss mural on the side of the garage next year.

Yes, we have a lot of beautiful creatures down here in the jungle, but there are just as many others that will give some people the heeby jeebys. So if the the creepy crawly ones make you squirm you might want to stop reading right about now.

Here is some creepy crawly stuff just in time for Halloween.

Just in time for spooky October, the Golden Orb spiders have started showing up. They are a very wicked and colorful spider that grows to about three inches in length. The Golden Silk Orb Weavers are best known for their unique golden silk, which is not only visually appealing but also boasts incredible strength. They say that the strength of the web is comparable to steel and can stretch up to 140% of its original length. They are a non-aggressive spider, but they are venomous and their bite is somewhat like a bee sting. It seems that this time of year is about the only time we really see them and then they are gone.

Since Halloween is coming up, here is another picture and a little more info about the orb weaver. The male spider is considerably smaller than the female. Once they mate, in a split second the male spider catapults himself away from the female. If he does not do this immediately then he is captured by the female and eaten.

Just a little more stuff to make your skin crawl. We had a visit from the cleaner ants. Cleaner ants as they are called in Belize, usually show up every couple of years. They migrate through by the billions and clean up all the insects, webs, and mites.

When they start coming in and around your house about all you can do is leave for a couple of hours and then they will be gone when you get back. The other day when this happened we just left and went out and grabbed some lunch. When we got back there was no sign of them and most of the dead bugs were gone. Unlike other ants, these get in, get out quickly, and don’t get into your food, plus they clean up all your dead bugs.

We see a lot of big holes in the ground where tarantulas live. You can tell if a tarantula is home because he will put a web over the opening of the hole. If there is no web then he is out and about. Usually, they come out at night, but this one was out in the middle of the day. The Mexican red rump tarantulas can grow up to 6 1/2″ and live up to 40 years. This one really didn’t like his picture taken as he would raise up his rear end and then also put his front legs up at us.

The Huntsman spider is another large spider that we have down here. They are active hunters and will seek out insects, snails, frogs, and lizards. Even though they have eight eyes, they can not see anything at a distance. They are not aggressive unless provoked, and if you were to get injected by their venom it would just be a little localized pain and swelling. Still a little scary when you see a spider that big.

We are having a problem with too many geckos in the house. When we had a few that was fine because they ate a lot of the bugs, but now there are too many. They are laying eggs everywhere and shitting on everything. We have tried catching them and taking them away from the house and it was even suggested that we put eggshells around the house so they think there is a bigger predator around. Nothing has really worked until now. We decided to put snakes in the house to eat all the geckos. It did take some getting used to seeing snakes crawl around on the counters and across the TV when you are watching it, but it seems to be working. I assume once the snakes eat all the geckos they will leave the house, right? Just kidding there are “NO SNAKES IN THE HOUSE”. Don’t let this deter you from visiting us, as we rarely see most of these creepy creatures around here. October is just a good time of year to post some of these pictures, HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Forget pumpkin spice season…It’s dragon fruit season at our place. Currently we have 25-30 in the fridge, some of them are the size of baseballs and then some of the bigger ones weigh a pound and a half each. We can only eat so many for breakfast, so it was time to get a little creative with them.

Restaurants usually have some type of sweet and spicy chicken wings such as pineapple-habanero or mango-habanero, so why not dragon fruit-habanero. Kelley mixed up a dragon fruit-habanero sauce for some wings and we gave them a try. They had a good spice to them, but were not quite as sweet as if you used a different fruit. It really messed with your mind eating purple chicken wings and not your normal orange ones like everyone is use to. Overall they were very good, yet really messy.

Since we were playing with dragon fruit, why not make a dessert? Kelley made up a cheesecake where she put half of the filling in a graham cracker crust and then mixed in dragon fruit for the other half. After that, she reduced some dragon fruit on the stove and added sugar for a nice sweet purple topping. The color of our dragon fruit is just so intense, it’s really a lot of fun when you start thinking of all the different things you could do with it.

We are still making a lot of sausage and other types of meats. The one we have had a lot of requests for is a good Mexican style chorizo. For some reason it’s almost impossible to find any chorizo in Belize, they do sell a longanisa, but it’s not the same. Over the past few years, we have been trying to come up with a recipe that we think meets our standards. Every time we would make a batch it was good, but not quite what we were looking for. We finally got the recipe dialed into where we were satisfied with it, and now feel comfortable offering it to others.

Another sausage that we have been trying to perfect is a Texas style hot link sausage. After a lot of trial and error, we have finally got it to where we are satisfied with them. For the longest time the spices weren’t quite right, the smoking process wasn’t what we were looking for or they were too crumbly when you cut into them. Now we are happy with them and soon we will have mesquite smoked Texas style hot links added to our list of meats we offer.

We just picked up another five pounds of habaneros from our local produce stand. And talk about fresh, we told them that we were looking for big red ones and they said that they would pick some for us the next day. Within a few hours of them picking them we had a big bag full sitting on our front porch. Anyway, it was time for us to dehydrate them and start making some more of our habanero salt. Our habanero salt is way too spicy for the average person, but there is a whole lot of people who just can’t get enough of it.

I mentioned a while ago about our Butterfly Pea Vine flowers that turn hot water blue. Well, we finally had enough flowers to check it out. We poured some hot water over some of the dried flowers and instantly the water turned blue. Then we added a few drops of lemon juice and instantly the water changed from blue to purple. The flowers are used as a fabric dye and also natural food coloring to make blue-colored beverages, desserts and even rice. It would be interesting to make some blue or purple colored rice for some sushi rolls. I’m sure once our vine takes off and we have a lot of flowers, we’ll find something interesting to do with them.

When we were first putting in plants around the house, we bought four red cordylines to put near the front porch. When they would get too big we would cut them back and stick the cuttings in the ground. Now we have well over a hundred cordylines around the yard all from those first four plants. Like I’ve said before, everything just grows down here.

We just got back from another long weekend down at Hopkins Bay Resort. This was the last of our deals where earlier this year we paid for one night and got two more nights free. Besides it was going to expire at the end of the month, so we needed to use it. Amanda had also purchased one of those deals, so she tagged along with us. We had no plans for the weekend, just being at the beach, hanging out in the pool and enjoying a few cold ones.

We let Ron and Rhonda know that we were going to be in Hopkins, and they made the one hour drive up from Placencia to join us for the weekend. We spent a lot of time in the pools, getting a lot of sun, doing a little bar hopping and of course, catching a few NFL games on Sunday.

One morning we booked a river cruise up the Sittee River just to get out on the water and see what wildlife we could spot. Since we picked a late morning time there really wasn’t a whole lot of animals moving around. Still, there were birds, big orange iguanas, and turtles, but that was about it.

Ron & Rhonda and Amanda had never been on the Sittee River before, so it was great for them to see another section of Belize cruising along the river through all the mangroves. Our guide was very knowledgeable and we learned a bunch of interesting things we didn’t already know about. If you are in Hopkins and looking for something to do that doesn’t involve the beach, take a cruise up the Sittee River. If you go in the morning or evening there is a better chance of seeing crocodiles or manatees. This is also where the bioluminescence tours leave from during certain times of the year. Or if you like to fish, but get a little queasy out on the open water, they offer river fishing where it’s always calm.

Not too long ago we took some of our meats down to a friend in Hopkins. We let her know that we were coming back and to see if she needed anything. I guess she told some friends about us and set up a group chat. This trip down to Hopkins we ended up taking a big ice chest with well over 60 lbs. of bacon and other sausages. On Friday everyone met us at Mango’s Beach Bar and picked up their orders. By Sunday we were back at Mango’s and people who didn’t know about it were wondering how they could get on the list for next time. Over the next week, we had a lot of people reaching out to us to tell us how good everything was. So it looks like next trip to Hopkins we might be taking a couple of big ice chests full of meat, and that’s fine with us.

They say keeping busy keeps you young. I’d hate to see us if we weren’t so busy all the time.😁😁😁

The last couple of months we have been working hard around the yard and doing a lot of maintenance around here. At this point we think we’ve got every thing under control and looking good, so it was time to have some fun with food and drinks.

When we get pork bellies to make our bacon they always come with the ribs. The last bellies we got were huge and made some excellent bacon, plus we ended up with four big racks of baby back ribs. Usually, we would slow cook the ribs and serve them with BBQ sauce. This time to do something a little different, we decided to make them with a homemade teriyaki sauce and some others with a Korean rib sauce. Since we had so many ribs to cook we decided to have a bunch of friends over for an Oriental potluck.

Everyone we invited was excited about it and brought some excellent food. Let me see if I can remember everything. There was sushi, lettuce wraps, teriyaki ribs, Korean BBQ-style ribs, dumplings, fried rice, edamame, sweet and sour chicken with veggies, miso eggplant, and General Tso’s chicken. We gave everyone the option that if you were uncomfortable making an oriental dish you could just order something from a restaurant and bring it. That didn’t have to happen and everyone made something that was very, very tasty.

Besides all the great food, everyone had their adult beverages. There was beer, wine, rum, whisky, and even jello shots. The gal who brought the jello shots even made a sign to match the evening’s theme.

For the potluck, Kelley made fortune cookies for everyone with our own messages inside. Some of the messages were “Peaking duck saw you in shower” or “Your bill is $17.43. It could have been $14.43 if you had coupon” or “Fortunes not real. Get over it”. They were a lot of fun and everybody got a good laugh with them. We agreed that this was a lot of fun and that next time we should do a Mexican or an Italian themed potluck.

A friend of ours was even able to find a bottle of Japanese whisky. He told us that Japan is actually making some very good whisky these days. It was a very smooth whisky with a great taste to it. If you come to visit us and would like to give it a try, just let us know, we’ve still got a half bottle or so.

It’s been a while since we have made any liqueur so we thought it would be a good time to make some for the holidays. The last time we made chocolate liquor from our homegrown cacao it turned out great. This time we are also making some raspberry liqueur and some coffee liqueur since we have these growing in the garden as well. In a month or two once they are ready, I will strain them and then combine the chocolate and raspberry for what should be a great liqueur. I’ll probably save a little chocolate to go into the coffee as well.

If you haven’t seen these, they are pretty cool. Ice shot glasses. It’s a silicon mold that makes 4 glasses at a time. Just fill with water, throw them in the freezer overnight, and then pop them out of the mold. They will be perfect for that liqueur once it’s ready, and we already know that they work very well with tequila and Japanese whiskey. And the fun thing is that once you are done, just throw them on the ground.

We are usually not one for tropical fruity rum drinks, but every so often they can be good. Since we still had a few pineapples around and our dragon fruit is coming in, why not make a couple dragon fruit pina coladas? We threw the pineapple, dragon fruit, coconut milk, and some rum in the blender with some ice and let it go. Of course, we had to put an umbrella in it and also some dragon fruit balls on the bamboo straw just for looks. It was a very colorful refreshing tropical drink that I’m sure anyone would enjoy.

Kelley finally had time to make some more lobster ravioli. Amanda came over to give her a hand and they cranked out about fifty or so big fat raviolis. Kelley made the pasta and they got them all stuffed with lobster, spices, and ricotta cheese. These are always great with a light white wine sauce or deep-fried as an appetizer.

Ruben brought us down a bag of green chiles that he has been growing on our lot. This time he is letting them get bigger than last year like we suggested. I think these are still some of the seeds that I ordered for him from Hatch, New Mexico last year. Since we are no longer in Arizona, getting peppers like this is a real treat for us. I see some bacon green chile cheeseburgers and chile rellenos in our future.

Okay, it didn’t take long for us to decide to make some bacon green chile cheeseburgers. Our neighbor Chuck was down with his two brothers to do some finishing touches on his house. So we invited them and Amanda over for some burgers. Here’s how we do ours. We grind fresh beef, season it, and form it into patties. Then roast up some fresh green chiles, fry up some homemade bacon and grab some buns from our village bakery. Then we get the griddle on the bbq nice and hot, spread some bacon grease on it and toss the burgers on. Once the burgers are done with two types of melted cheese, we spread some bacon grease on the buns and put them on the griddle for a nice toasting. This is just how we do them and they always turn out great. I know in the Southwest U.S. you can always find a good bacon green chile cheeseburger somewhere, but not down here.

We are always up for trying something new to eat. This week we were at our little village produce stand and they had what looked like jars of olives. It turns out that they were sacpa (a Mayan word meaning white-pickled). The guy told us that they were a pickled fruit with a habanero in with them. He also told us that one of the resorts up here uses them in their bloody mary’s instead of olives. So we thought we would give them a try. They were good, sort of like a sour olive with a little heat to them. We could see where they would be good in a bloody mary. After a lot of digging around, I found out that it is a wild craboo, unlike the domesticated craboo we see in the markets around here. I guess these are seasonal and hard to find, so we were lucky we got the chance to give them a try.

Our citrus trees here around the house have been in now for about 5-6 years and are starting to produce. Nothing in volume yet, just a few at a time. One tree though is really loaded this year, but we’re not sure what they are. A lot of the trees we planted were grafted with two types of citrus. So the one that has all the fruit right now is either producing oranges or grapefruit or both. We won’t know until they start changing from green to either yellow or orange. Either way, we can’t wait because we love them both.

The trees we planted on our farm lot are doing quite well. Two years ago when we planted the trees they were all about 18-24 inches tall, and a lot of them now are all at least as tall as Kelley if not taller. Currently there are 7 different types of citrus, 11 mango trees, 3 avocado trees, 2 malay apple trees, 1 soursop tree, 6 coconut trees and close to 80 pineapples. Plus the other area that Ruben is farming with his different crops. Over where Ruben is farming there are also bananas, dragon fruit, Jamaican limes, and guava. And that’s not counting all the fruit trees we have around our place.

In a few more years all the trees should start producing and we might have to set up a fruit stand on the corner. Since Kelley’s maiden name was Kenney, it’s only obvious that we name it Letter Kenney’s fruit stand. 🤣

With everything we are doing around here sometimes I wonder how we have time to do anything else. But like the Belikin beer company motto says ” No working during drinking hours”.

Off for another long weekend of music and misbehaving on the island. We drove to Belize City where we caught a puddle jumper out to San Pedro along with Amanda. There is where we met up with Ron & Rhonda and a few other friends. After grabbing our golf cart, the first stop was to drop off some meats and see our friends Ed & Runi at the French Croissant Bakery. Then it was on to grab some tacos and a cold beer for lunch at Caliente. By then it was time for us to check into our condo and head over to Castaways to catch Jim Dalton and Amigos for the first evening of great music.

This year they were playing at Castaways, it’s a great new venue up by the Truck Stop right on the beach. The permanent stage at Castaways is in the shape of a giant pirate ship, which is pretty cool. If you’ve been to San Pedro and can’t quite place where it is, it use to be the old Ak-Bol Yoga Retreat north of the bridge.

Yes, that’s Jim Dalton in the middle, bare foot, no cowboy hat, jeans or boots. That night they were all in white for Jim’s whiteout show. For the other shows they were all in the island spirit, sporting shorts and very colorful tropical shirts.

Every year Jim has played in Belize he has had a whiteout party where he request that one night everyone wear something white. I think this is because of about five years ago when he was suppose to do his first show in Belize he got snowed-in in Colorado and couldn’t make it down here.

This was the third time that Jim Dalton & Nick Scropos of (RCPM) and The Jons had been to San Pedro to put on some shows. This year Aaron Beavers of Shurman also came along to join in on the fun. We attended the Friday and Saturday night shows and had a blast.

Their last day was The Boracho Sunday show in the afternoon with a beach barbeque after the sun went down. The staff hauled the BBQ grill down to the beach and went to work cooking up a bunch of beef, fish and lobsters along with all the fixins for some great tacos. We had a great time on the island with all our friends and we can’t wait till they come back next year. Hope to see more of our friends from the states make it down next year for some of these fun times on the island.

One morning in San Pedro we were looking off our balcony and there in the lagoon below us was a nice big crocodile just casually swimming away from the bushes. I’m glad that our room was on the second floor, because the first floor patio was only twenty feet or so from the bushes.

Then later that day, before the show, we decided to take a dip in the pool to cool off. There on the pool deck a few feet from us was a big bright green iguana eating a plant. There are a lot more iguanas in San Pedro than up by our place. I’ll bet you would have no problem seeing a hundred a day if you just looked around.

It’s great to get away for a few days, but we have a lot to do and maintain daily up at our place in the jungle. This year we had a great crop of pineapples and we have been eating them just about every day for breakfast since early June. There are still a few more on the plants, but for the most part they are finishing up. Now that they are winding down, breakfast will be dragon fruit and raspberries for the next couple of months. Currently there are no bananas on plants, but I assume they will all bloom at the same time and in a few months we will have more than we ever need. During the week, we usually just eat fruit for breakfast, but come the weekend we will break out some bacon or sausage and eggs. We get the fresh eggs from our neighbor and we actually know people who make great bacon and sausage.

Since pineapple plants only produce one pineapple per plant, it’s time to get more in the ground for next year. You can take the top of a pineapple and plant it and it will take a couple of years to produce a fruit. Or once the plant produces a pineapple, on the bottom of the pineapple there is usually 1-4 other shoots that start growing called slips. If you plant these they will usually produce a pineapple the next year. We have been planting the tops and the slips to sort of offset everything. Between our place and the farm lot we’ve got around 300 plants growing, in which maybe half should produce next year.

Ruben is still harvesting tomatoes and we finally had some time to get a bunch for us. So once we got back from the island he brought us down a couple hundred nice big Roma tomatoes. Kelley will get them canned and that should last us until the next planting’s harvest. Currently, he already has at least another thousand tomato seedlings going. They should go in the ground in a week or two and start producing in a couple of months.

Anything electronic just doesn’t last too long in this environment. After six year the winch on the truck decided that it was just going to give up. I’m good at fixing things and I tried just about everything I could think of to revive it. New cables, new relay, different battery and even pulling the whole thing apart and cleaning the brushes. It was time we had to give up and get a new one. We managed to get a killer deal on Amazon Prime day, so that worked out great.

For anyone thinking about visiting us down here in Belize and think it’s too far away, it’s really not. A lot of direct flights to Belize come out of Dallas or Houston, there are a few direct flights from other cities, it just depends on what airline and the time of year. From Dallas or Houston it’s just a little over two hour flight time till you land in Belize. From there it is only a 1hr and 45min drive to our place. Currently, the major airlines that fly here are Southwest, Delta, American, Alaska and United. If you shop around, watch the sales and are flexible on your flight days, you should be able to get a good deal on some flights. This past week Southwest had some one way flights from Phoenix to Belize in November for under $200, and you can’t beat that.

After staying up in the jungle and exploring things around our place, you might want to head over to check out some Caribbean beaches. From our place it’s a 1hr and 45min drive back to the airport where you can catch a 15minute flight on a hopper plane out to San Pedro. San Pedro offers the most in the way of shopping, water activities, food and bar choices, but it’s a bit crowded. Or if you prefer you could drive about 2 and a half hours from our place down to the quite little village of Hopkins. Hopkins still has choices for different water sports and some great restaurants, just not as many as San Pedro, as it’s a quiet village where you can just chill. Or another great choice is a 3 hour drive from our place down to Placencia. Placencia offers a lot more than Hopkins, but not nearly as crowed as San Pedro. All three of these destinations have beautiful beaches with things to do and great food and drinks, it just depends on what you want to do with your time here.

Or if you want something a little more special, there are a lot of private islands where you can spend a few days just getting away from it all. Belize is a beautiful country with so much to offer and it really is a lot closer and less expensive than other Caribbean destinations.

The deck out back needed a makeover after almost 5 years in the jungle environment. First, the spa was removed and we gave it a good scrubbing. Everything else was then taken off the deck and I went to work sanding and refinishing all the wood. The bar stools got refinished as did the tables. Even the back of the house got a new coat of varnish. Our old table umbrella was looking a little old so we ordered in a couple of new ones. Only one table had an umbrella before, but now each one has a nice big red umbrella. Plus we got a couple of LED lights for the two tables. Now we’re ready to have some company over for a BBQ.

To christen the backyard makeover we thought we would invite a few friends over and make some Sonoran style bacon-wrapped hotdogs. We had just finished smoking about 40lbs. of bacon earlier in the week so this was perfect timing. We sliced some of the bacon thinner than we normally do just like they would do in Mexico where we used to live. Then we wrapped those dogs up and got them on the griddle. Of course, we had the grilled onions, tomatoes, salsa, guacamole, mayo and everything else that you would put on them. No one here had ever had a hotdog like this before, but I think they enjoyed them. I know Kelley and I sure did.

We got the bamboo cleaned up and dried before I gave it a good protective coating. Then we got it all cut and set in place around the house to form some flower beds. We set the bamboo in place with some 8″ nails that were pounded into the ground to hold them so they won’t get washed away. We tried to get 9″ nails, but we couldn’t find them.  🤣

The guest casita also got a little bamboo to form the pathway to the steps and out around the front of it. We think it looks good and adds a little more of a tropical feel to the place. The best part of all was that the bamboo was being cleared and then burned from a friend’s property, so it was all free for the taking.

Ruben is just starting to harvest his Roma tomatoes from our farm lot. So far he has picked and sold about 3,500lbs. There are still a lot of tomatoes on plants and he should be harvesting them well into next month. He told us that he should end up with around 5,000lbs this time. The good thing is that he’s getting a premium price right now and that makes him very happy. As soon as we get time we will head over and pick a bucket or two for ourselves and Kelley can get some more canned.

There are still some other vegetables growing on our farm lot. Recently we got a yellow watermelon, some green chilies and some corn. We think it’s great that Ruben is farming on our lot and making some good money, plus we have access to different fresh veggies throughout the year.

Our dragon fruit cacti are loaded this year. There are at least 75 big flowers that are blooming and many more small buds appearing. This should be the best year so far for our dragon fruit. Our trellis for them is now 60′ long by 4′ wide. We are constantly cutting the cactus back and giving it to friends. The cuttings grow easily and very fast, and will usually produce within a year or two. If we planted all of the cuttings we have taken off, we could have an entire farm of nothing but dragon fruit within a few years.

A friend recently gave us a Butterfly Pea Vine (Clitoria Ternatea). It’s still in a garden bag waiting to get a little bigger before we put it in the ground, but it’s already starting to get some flowers. One of the most remarkable features of the Butterfly Pea flower is its ability to change color. When the flowers are made into a tea the water is blue, but can shift from bright blue to purple or even pink, depending on the pH level of the environment. This natural color-changing property has made it a popular ingredient in herbal teas and beverages. Bartenders will add the blue tea to a drink and then add lemon or lime juice to change the color from blue to a purple or pink right before your eyes. Once our vine gets going, we will have to make some blue or purple margaritas just for the fun of it.

Our Caladium plants are starting to come up again this year. Once the rains started it didn’t take long for them to poke their heads out of the ground. We planted these about 5 or 6 years ago and every year they come back bigger than the past year. This year so far the leaves are the biggest we’ve seen yet.

We have wild passion fruit vines growing around here that get the most beautiful flowers. It seems like we never see them bloom and then all of a sudden there they are. They only bloom for about a day which is why we really never see them, but when we do we try and get some pictures of them.

A few years ago we were walking along our creek and saw this plant that looked like a lily, so we dug it up and replanted it near the house. It turns out that it’s a white spider lily and blooms every year around this time. It just amazes us of all the beautiful plants that just grow wild around here. We know that there are so many more plants on the property that we haven’t discovered yet, as they might only bloom for a short period once a year.

Kelley recently made some homemade ice cream that was very rich and delicious. It was vanilla with chocolate chunk and a raspberry swirl. Of course, the raspberries were from the garden as well as the homemade chocolate and even some homegrown vanilla beans. With all of the things we are growing around here, the ice cream possibilities are endless.

We rarely see snakes, but this week we had a couple little Parrot snakes visit our porch. I mean little, the wood he is on in this picture is only an inch wide and he was only about two feet long. I put my hand near him like I was going to pick him up and he dove off the porch and disappeared.

Then about a week later there was another one about 3′ long on our front window. This one scurried off the porch, grabbed onto a plant and then took off into the jungle, but not before looking back at us and sticking his tongue out. Parrot snakes are beautiful, completely harmless, and usually run off as soon as they see you. Out of the snakes we’ve seen around here this is the only type we have ever seen on our porch. They eat lizards, frogs, and insects such as grasshoppers, and If they’re eating grasshoppers, then we definitely want them around here. Like I’ve said, we rarely see snakes around here. The chance of you actually seeing one if you come visit us is pretty slim.

We see a lot of critters around here, but we don’t always get a picture of them to share with you. For instance, the other day our dinger went off on our back trail which meant something of size was walking by. I jumped up and glanced out there and I saw two good size fat gray critters through the trees. From the looks of them, I think they were Peccaries, (Javelina for all our Southwestern friends). After talking to a neighbor she confirmed that there is a pack of them in the area. Then the other day I was walking up in the garden and I almost stepped on a 4′ long orange iguana, plus we have seen a few green iguanas around the house lately. And the other night Kelley and our neighbor next door Amanda were woken up by the Howler monkeys, that had to be on the property somewhere. Our other neighbor right next to us has posted pictures of a puma and an ocelot from her trail camera. There are a lot of animals around here that we never see, we are just lucky to see the ones we do and even luckier if we can get a few pictures of them.

It’s a great time to come visit us. Everything is very green, the animals are quite active, lots of fresh stuff from the garden and the temperatures have been around 90° during the day and down to mid 70°s at night. Hope to see you soon.

Another delicious melon from the farm lot. This time it’s a casaba melon. Ruben planted a few different types of melons recently and they are just starting to ripen. I think this was just a test run for him to see what types of melons would actually grow decently. So far he has had good luck with the cantaloupe, yellow watermelon, and casabas. Maybe the next round he will be able to plant rows of melons and get them to market.

This was our first time trying a casaba melon, not to be confused with a cassava, which is a root vegetable. It was very juicy with the texture of a honeydew or cantaloupe melon. Not a real sweet melon, I think if it ripened a little more the sweetness would come out because it was much sweeter near the yellow parts of the skin. Still, it made for a great breakfast for a couple of days.

This was the first time our tree started to set avocados. There were maybe 50 or so on there and we were very excited about that. Well, one by one, they all fell off before they were no bigger than a golf ball. We decided to cut one open and see what it looked like. It looked like a mature avocado, so we decided to give it a taste. Surprisingly enough it tasted like a good ripe avocado. There is still one hanging on the tree getting bigger, so we have high hopes for that one. We’re hoping that this was a test run for the tree and next year we will have more avocados than we will know what to do with. I know in a few years we should have a lot of avocados as we have at least 7 or 8 trees planted.

All of the cacao for our chocolate-making has come from just nine trees that we planted about five or so years ago. In fact, we just had to top a good 6-8′ off some of them as they were getting too tall to harvest. Anyway, we love to plant things, mostly just to see if they will grow. Some of the cacao pods that weren’t good enough for chocolate were separated and the seeds got planted. Last year we randomly planted 20 or so 2 ‘ tall cacao trees around the property. Currently, we have another fifty plus plants growing that will be ready to plant next year once they get bigger. At this point, we have no idea what we will do with them if they all start producing. Who knows maybe this will become a chocolate farm in the future, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Recently we were over near the garage and heard something hit the front of the house. We went over to check it out and there was a Red Crowned Tanager not moving on the patio chair. There was another one laying on the porch. I don’t know if they were fighting or doing some kind of mating ritual, but they both hit the house hard. The one on the ground was stunned, so Kelley picked him up and put him next to the one in the chair. He stayed there for 10 minutes or so before he flew away. As for the other one, he never recovered.

We took a short trip up to Arizona to visit the kids and grandkids. While we were there, we also jumped on a quick flight to Portland and then drove up to Washington to see my aunt who was getting married. While in Washington we also traveled over to Leavenworth to meet my sister and her husband for lunch one day. It was a quick two day trip up there to see some family, but very well worth it. Of course, being in the Pacific Northwest you know we had to get our fill of fresh seafood, and that we did.

Back in Arizona the kids had a happy hour/BBQ one night and invited a few friends over. We invited our friends Darren, and Craig & Monica from Washington who just happened to be in town that weekend. Between Craig, Monica, Darren, Kelley, and I, we are all neighbors and have houses within a few hundred yards of each other on our little road in Belize. It was like a little Belizean block party up in Arizona.

While in Arizona I bought a motorcycle. Back when I used to ride and race dirt bikes there was one bike that I always dreamed about owning. Well, one came up for sale (which they rarely do) and I just couldn’t resist. It’s a ’77 Yamaha TT500, one of the baddest 4-stroke dirt bikes of its day and still a very sought after bike. It needs some work, but it’s mostly cosmetic. Back in the day, I was a pretty good motorcycle mechanic, so this is just a project for me to tinker with when we are up in the States.

Back in my youth, I was on one of my bikes at least 4-5 days a week. I will never be able to relive my youth, but at least I can still work on them and maybe even take a little spin every so often.

At the grocery store in Arizona, we saw that they had some pink pineapples. I had read about these, Del Monte was growing them down in Costa Rica under the name PinkGlow. We thought we would give one a try and see how they stacked up to our fresh grown ones at home. Well, it blew us away, first of all, it was pink inside, and the flavor was not tangy like a yellow pineapple, but very sweet and delicious. The grandkids absolutely loved it and Kelley said that it tasted like cotton candy.

On our last day in Arizona before coming home we always have a lot of last minute running around to do. Well, our last day was cut short when we blew a tire on our truck and had to be towed back to the kid’s house. We couldn’t get the spare tire down on the side of the road. One, because we couldn’t get the crank to work, two because it was at least 108° outside, and three, who knows how hot that black pavement actually was to try and kneel down on. Once back at the kid’s house, we discovered that all the tires on the truck should be replaced even though they still had great tread on them. They all had some cracking on the side walls from being parked out in that hot Arizona sun.

Our yellow squash plants are doing pretty well this time. In the past, every time we’ve planted any kind of squash we have gotten bugs in the plants that kill them. This time we planted around 100 seeds in hopes that maybe we will get some. When we left for Arizona there were no blossoms on the plants, and 2 weeks later when we got back there were already some nice squash ready for picking. At this point, the plants are loaded with blossoms and it’s looking like we should get quite a few as long as we can keep the bugs away.

Ruben was cutting down and burning a bunch of bamboo from a friend’s lot and asked if we wanted any.  We ended up getting about 15 big lengths of it. It will be used to make a border around the plants that are in front of the house and as an entrance going to the casita. They hung out the back of the truck pretty far, but we had them strapped down good and Ruben rode on top of them the whole way back to our place.

The day we got back to Belize we unloaded the truck, sat down, had a cold beer, and reflected on what a great trip that was. While we were sitting there watching the parrots and other birds fly around, three agoutis walked in front of us. We usually see agoutis just about every day, but not with babies. The mom would walk a little and then squat. We assume she was marking a pathway that the babies could smell and then follow. It’s always great to get away, but like they say, there’s no place like home.

Hurricane Beryl swept through the Caribbean as a Cat 4 storm with winds of 145mph. For a short time, it did reach Cat 5 with winds that topped 160mph. It swept through Antigua, Grenada, St Vincent and the Grenadines and was on a path towards Belize. The storm took a slight northward turn and headed towards Jamaica and the Cayman Islands. By then it looked like it was going to miss Belize, but now it was on a path to the Yucatan Peninsula towards Cancun and Cozumel. At this point, once it hits Mexico it is supposed to cross over into the Gulf as a tropical storm and then possibly reform back to a hurricane and head towards Texas. This was the biggest Hurricane this early in the season on record and was very devastating to a lot of places. We got lucky this time, but it is early in the season of what they predict will be an above average hurricane season.

We are all very lucky and thankful that it did not impact Belize this time. There were no winds for us just some pretty good rains. Once we knew the threat had passed us we invited a few neighbors over for a post hurricane happy hour and BBQ. We are very relieved and I think we are better prepared if one was to actually hit us.

All this week we are preparing for the arrival of category 5 hurricane Beryl. Beryl is the strongest hurricane this early in the season on record with sustained winds of 160mph. It has already done extensive damage elsewhere in the Caribbean and it is headed towards Belize. We spent the past few days making sure we have the vehicles fueled up, extra gas for the generator, chainsaws in working order, everything charged up, lots of ice and of course, extra beer on hand just in case. Now it’s a waiting game to see what actually happens. Hopefully, it will take a turn north and we will end up with just a lot of rain. We’ll let everyone know an update by the end of the weekend.

After a long hot dry season, the rains have finally come and it didn’t take long for everything to green back up again. The weather is very nice with the temps ranging from around 90º down to 75º. For the most part, we have had cloud cover for the past few weeks with a rain shower every other day or so. The rains only last for less than an hour and that’s just perfect for all the plants and the garden. The rainy season (now until November) is a great time to visit Belize. Yes, there might be some rain, but everything is at its greenest. Usually the rains are overnight and will not slow you down or stop you from doing anything, unless of course there’s a big storm coming in.

With the first rains of the season come the annual floodfly invasion. After the first good rain when the dry season is over the termites take to the air looking to set up new colonies. They will usually start around dusk and gather towards a light source. There are millions of them and they leave wings behind everywhere. This year when they first started, we were sitting in the garage having a cold beer when they hit. We shut the garage and headed to the house to shut the doors and turn off any lights we had on. Kelley ended up making dinner with a flashlight that night and that really helped to slow them down from getting in the house. The next morning the porch and inside the garage were covered in wings. You just about have to use a vacuum or a water hose to clean them as a broom will just make the wings airborne. We will keep finding wings around here till the end of the year. Hopefully, this was the one big invasion and it won’t happen again till next year. Well, it happened again the next week, so lots more wings to clean up.

We recently planted some bush beans and yellow squash. Last time we planted beans the birds came and ate all the seedlings and I had to replant them three times. I saw Ruben had some old fertilizer bags on a stick down on our farm lot to help scare away the birds. So I thought I would give that a try. I put a bag on a stick and sliced the bottom into two inch strips so it could blow in the breeze, a little spray paint for a face and I had a very basic scarecrow. I assume it’s working because we have only lost a few seedlings and the rest are getting too big for the birds.

I have mentioned before about all the health benefits you get from moringa. Usually, we will dry the leaves from our tree and then they will get added to soups and other foods. We have eaten the seeds before after they were dried, but this time we tried them a little differently. We picked the seed pods when they were green, about 18″ long and then Kelley cut them into 4″ pieces. After that, she sautéed them in oil and seasoning. You eat them like you would an edamame, by scraping the seeds out in your mouth. They seem to have a flavor of asparagus or artichoke. There are a ton of health benefits you get from moringa, in fact, it is called the miracle tree. They sell moringa supplements everywhere, check them out, it might just be what you are looking for. Or you can come on down here and try some fresh for yourself.

With the rains we have been having the past few weeks everything is growing like crazy. Our star fruit tree is a shade of purple because of all the blossoms. The cocoa trees are blossomed out like never before and our dragonfruit is blooming like crazy. It should be a great year for dragonfruit and we can’t wait, because they are one of our favorite things from the garden.

Ruben brought down a small sampling of stuff that was ready from our farm lot. The green chilies didn’t do as well as they did last year, but there are still quite a few on the plants. The rest of the corn will be ready next week and there could be at least a thousand ears or more. He also had a few different types of melon plants that are doing well. The Roma tomatoes are definitely the star of the crop this year. All his plants are getting huge and are loaded with tomatoes. I know that we will be freezing a bunch of corn and canning tomatoes in the near future.

Not too long ago we planted some okra and they are producing well. In the past, we have planted rows and rows of okra and that was way too much, so this time we only planted a dozen or so plants. Every other day Kelley is picking a small handful which is just perfect for us. One of my favorite ways to eat it is breaded and fried. Kelley will coat them in cornmeal and some homemade cayenne pepper sauce, then individually freeze them on a cookie sheet. That way we can pull out just what we need and throw them in the fryer.

The other night we invited Amanda over and cooked up something a little different. Amanda brought over some bone marrow that we roasted on the grill and then spread it on some toasted sourdough bread. Kelley also fried up some okra and rocky mountain oysters to go along with it. This was the first time for Amanda having rocky mountain oysters and she was a little hesitant at first, but I think she really liked them. If you have never had roasted bone marrow spread on some toasted sourdough bread, you’re really missing out.

With the rains and cooler weather there are a lot more critters moving around. Kelley saw a bright green three foot long iguana next to the BBQ, but didn’t have a camera with her. Plus there are a lot of interesting insects around right now. The other day I saw this guy sitting on one of our plants. He caught my eye because he was about five inches long. He waited for me to go get a camera before he “Haha” buggered off.

Then this one here was on the garage and it looked like someone painted some yellow dots on him. We are constantly seeing insects that we have never seen before and some of them are really colorful and beautiful.

We finally got around to recoating the porch. After a lot of pressure washing and a couple days of sanding, it was as good as it was going to get. I managed to get two good coats on it in between the rain showers. The whole house needs it, but it isn’t as bad as the porch. They told us that the house would need to be recoated every 2-3 years. It has now been six years, where the hell did time go?

From now until October is a great time to visit Belize. Most of the tourists are gone, lobster season is open, the weather is mild and a lot of places offer off-season discounts. Sure you might encounter a little rain, but then again maybe not. Plus come this August, Jim Dalton, Nick Scropos and The Jons with other special guests will bring their great music down to Belize. Once again the shows will be in San Pedro out on Ambergris. This year there are three or four great shows including Jim’s legendary Baracho Sunday, which is always a great time. Picture yourself taking a morning swim in the warm Caribbean waters, eating lobster for lunch, hitting a few beach bars for happy hour and then finishing the day off with some great music. It doesn’t get any better than that, maybe we’ll see you there.

As soon as the last post went out, the fires in the mountains right behind our village got really bad. Besides burning up all the hillsides, the main water line to the village was threatened by the fire. They did all they could to protect it, but they couldn’t stop burning trees from falling on it. The village put out an urgent plea for anyone who could volunteer to help fight the fire. When the burning trees fell they either broke or melted the water line and that cutoff the supply for the entire village. Thanks to all the hard-working individuals, they hauled more pipe and equipment up the hill and had the water line repaired and back in operation again by the next day. Then two days later the fire took a turn and headed back towards the pipeline, but they managed to keep it contained and away from it this time.

We really wanted to help somehow, but we are getting too old to climb a mountain and fight a fire. So about 9:00 one evening we came up with this idea that we could make food to help feed the people who are actually fighting the fires. Burritos were the perfect choice because they are very portable and don’t really need to be warm. We called up a local restaurant that evening and asked if they could make us 100 or so flour tortillas. We told them what they were for and they had them ready for us first thing in the morning. So we talked to a few neighbors and all got together the next morning to form a burrito assembly line. We just happened to have a bunch of meat in the freezer, another friend made refried beans and another had loaves of banana bread. We also ran to town to pick up a bunch of bags of chips and a truckload of water bottles. We managed to get it to them just before noon and other volunteers hiked it up the hills to the guys fighting the fire. It was a small gesture but the village said that it was greatly appreciated.

After about two weeks of fighting the fire around our village day and night, they had won the battle. The fire was out and there was no more threat to the village. There were still a lot of other fires burning all over Belize, a big one in Pine Ridge just up the road from us has already burned 34,000 acres. Plus another big one down south that has destroyed a lot of cocoa farms and all the other smaller fires that seem to pop up every mile or so. They said that this is one of the worst fire seasons in Belize history. A lot of farmers lost their entire crops and orchards, plus all the damage done to the jungles and animals around Belize.

The sad part is that a lot of these fires were caused by farmers burning their fields and then letting it get out of control. Even though there are fires everywhere and you can hardly see through the smoke, we still see people burning leaves or garbage in their yards. It’s really sad to see all the burned landscape around the entire country. The rains have finally started to come and everything should green up pretty quickly, but it will still take years before all the trees to grow back.

Amongst all the wildfires and forest devastation throughout the country, there is still some beauty to be had. This picture was taken at a park in downtown San Ignacio across from Hodes restaurant. Usually, we will see only one color of tree bloom at a time. We have never seen four different colors of trees blooming all at once and right next to each other. Can you imagine if they were to plant a mile or so of trees like this along both sides of a road somewhere?

Once the smoke cleared and the sky turned blue we noticed this big orange tree right over the garage. We have never noticed it in the past years, so maybe this was the first time that it actually bloomed. We are not sure what kind of tree it is, but if we ask around I’m sure we will get an answer.

It’s pineapple season at our place! At this point, our pineapples are not as big as in years past because of the drought and very hot weather. But there are a lot of them and they are delicious. With all the rains we are starting to get, the ones still on plants should plump right up in the next few weeks. The animals have gotten to a lot of the ones that were not protected by our electric fence, but there are still plenty for us.

Like I said before, we have been picking a lot of cocoa. With the high temperatures and everything else going on, all we’re doing at this point is drying the beans and then sealing it up for later. So far we have at least 30 lbs. of dried cocoa beans ready to be processed. Once everything calms down, we will be able to get back to making delicious dark chocolate again.

Ruben has our farm lot planted right now and it’s looking good. He has corn, bush beans, chiles, and tomatoes. A lot of the farmers around here have been suffering because they depend on the rain to water their crops, and it’s been a very hot and long dry spell. Our farm lot has water running to it, so this is not a problem for Ruben to keep his crop looking good and healthy. In another month or so he will begin to start harvesting. He will keep some for his family, we will take a little, and the rest he will sell to the markets.

Darren came down to spend a week at his place before we headed over to Hopkins for a little beach time and to escape some of the smoke. Hopkins had Mango Fest going on the weekend we were there, which was just a big party to celebrate everything mango. Ron & Rhonda along with Patrick, who owns the Flying Pig Bar in Placencia came up for the day to join us.

Right now is peak mango season in Belize. Everywhere you looked around Hopkins there were trees just loaded with mangos. The sad part is that everyone has mango trees and most of them are just letting them drop on the ground and rot. I guess you can only eat so many mangos before you get tired of them.

This time in Hopkins we stayed at Hopkins Bay resort on the north end of town. Earlier this year we found a deal where you pay for one night and get two more free, and you can’t beat a deal like that. Anyway, one morning Kelley and I decided that we would go for a dip out in the calm Caribbean Sea. We were about ankle deep working our way out when we noticed a log floating about 50′ from us. We watched it for a while and then it disappeared under the water. We thought logs don’t just sink like that, could it be a crocodile right there near the beach where we were getting in the water?

Kelley went and got her big camera and sure enough it was a 7′ crocodile swimming just 50′ from us. We followed him down the beach for a while until he was far enough away from us and we thought it was safe to get back in the water. We were fine in the water, but every time a piece of seaweed or something would touch us it gave us the heebie-jeebies. So we decided it was best if we got out and sat in the pool and looked at the beach.

The last month and a half were not the best down here, but all is good now. The weather is better, some rains have started, the plants are looking good again and we are getting back to all the things we love about this place.

Happy Fathers Day to all you great dads and hope to see you soon!

April was a great month for us, but as for May, not so much.  It’s been VERY HOT! Our thermometer has read as high as 111° and a heat index of 136°. It has been 100°+ every day in May so far, with no relief in sight. Besides that, the country is having trouble keeping up with the power demands, so there have been rolling blackouts constantly. Which means that during the hottest parts of the day, there goes your fans, computer, fridge, etc. Or while you’re trying to make dinner it just goes off and it gets very hot and dark.

To top that off the entire country is on fire, and it’s really bad. There is a big fire up in Mountain Pine Ridge not far from us that is threating our village’s water supply. The skies everywhere are just filled with smoke and it’s really getting tough on our eyes and breathing. A few of our friends have had wildfires extremely close to their houses. The other day we went to help a friend put out some hot spots about fifty feet from their home. At this point the closest fire to us is about two miles away, but that changes daily. We just hope it stays away from us until maybe some rains come next month, but there is nothing forecast in the next two weeks. In the meantime, we are just keeping a very close eye on everything.

Being the dry season here, a lot of the trees have dropped their leaves and it’s looking very bare and dry around here. One advantage of having a lot of the trees drop their leaves is that it makes the birds easier to spot. Kelley has been able to get some good bird pictures without all the leaves in the way.

By next month the temps will go back down and we should start getting some rain to green everything back up again. In the meantime, we’re having to water our plants every day just to keep them alive.

Recently we have had a bunch of click beetles flying around. Once it gets dark you can see what looks like fireflies all around the yard and throughout the trees.  They are actually quite different than fireflies. Fireflies have glowing abdominal sections where as the click beetle has two bioluminescent light organs on the back of its head and one under its abdomen. Unlike fireflies, click beetles don’t flash. However, they do seem to be able to control the intensity of the light they emit. When touched by a possible predator, for example, they will become brighter. They are a very cool insect and fairly easy to catch.

Last week we finished off the last of our custard apples for breakfast. This week’s breakfast is going to be bananas. These are small sweet apple bananas and you can easily eat a few at a time. This is a good thing because once picked they seem to ripen rather quickly. In a few weeks, we should start picking some pineapples. And since they are in various stages of ripening, we should have pineapples for a couple of months. After that, we should have an abundance of dragon fruit this year. Seems like there is always something good and fresh for breakfast around here.

We just picked our first mangos and OMG are they delicious. A lot of people here don’t get this excited about mangos because their trees have been producing for years. But these are our first mangos off of a tree we planted when it was only two feet tall. Our mango tree is grafted so the first ones ready were a smaller yellow variety. There are other ones on the same tree that are bigger and just starting to turn a rose color. There are only a handful of mangos on the tree this first time, but hopefully, by next year it should be loaded.

We tried, but you can only eat so many bananas before they start to go bad. So it was time again for Kelley to make her delicious raspberry banana bread. This time she made 13 loaves that will go into the freezer. She only had enough butter on hand for half the loaves, so for the other half she substituted coconut oil for the butter. The ones made with coconut oil had a very distinctive coconut flavor. They were not quite as moist as the ones made with butter, but still very good.

We don’t usually eat much jam, but we needed to start using up some of our raspberries from last year before the plants start in again. I found a recipe for a somewhat healthy jam that just used raspberries, lemon juice, and honey instead of sugar. By using honey as the sweetener, it has a little tartness to it from the raspberries. I personally think it’s great and I’m sure it will be wonderful on some banana bread.

Because of this weather, our big coffee plants had to be stripped of all their beans, as they were starting to dry up on the plants. Since we stripped all the coffee and the plants hadn’t started flowering yet, it was time to top them off. The plants were getting so tall that we were having to get a ladder out there to pick the coffee. Now they are cut down to a more manageable size for the next time.

We had been picking quite a bit of coffee off these two big plants for a couple of months as they ripened. This time when we picked everything off the two plants, we ended up with 18lbs of coffee ready to be processed. I know some are a little green, but they all had to be picked.

We are currently picking quite a bit of cacao. So here’s a part of our chocolate-making that I might not have shared before. After we harvest the pods off the tree, they are cut open and all the seeds are removed. The seeds then go into two stacked plastic bins, one with holes in the bottom so that all the liquid can escape while they ferment. While they are fermenting, they will turn a shade of brown and emit a fruity, yeasty aroma. We will let these ferment for about a week before they are put out in the sun to dry. Once dried we are just storing the beans until the weather cools down a little before we can process them into chocolate. Over the past few weeks we have picked at least 130 cacao pods that usually have an average of 40 seeds in each one, and there is still a lot more on the trees.

It’s been a couple of months since we’ve made any of our meats and everyone keeps asking about them. So the other day we picked up about 150lbs of beef and pork that we will process over the next few weeks. Of course, we will be making our breakfast sausage, Italian sausage, bratwurst links, bacon, summer sausage, and this time we will also have some deli style sliced corned beef for anyone craving a Ruben sandwich.

Even though it’s hot as blazes here, there is still a lot of stuff around here that needs to get done every day. One good thing is that we have the hot tub (the heater has been off for a long time) to cool off in. And the other is that our bedroom has the AC cranked down to 72° overnight. Otherwise, during the days it has been a sweat-fest. Hopefully, this weather will break soon and we will get back to our normal nice temps.

Oh, and on the lighter side…..

Life is short and no doubt about it is getting shorter every day. Get out and travel, try something new, or move away from your comfort zone. There’s a whole world out there to explore and experience. You will only regret it if you never try.

Like I mentioned in the last blog, we were going to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary for the whole month of April. So the week after we got back from a great weekend in San Pedro, we hopped a flight up to Houston. From Houston, we headed over to the sunny shores of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for a few days.

We have been to a lot of different places in Mexico before, but this was our first time in Puerto Vallarta. The main town was a little too busy and congested for us, but we had a great resort about 20 minutes south of all the hustle and bustle of the main city.

We did venture into the main part of town one day to do some shopping and check out the Malecon. The Malecon in Puerto Vallarta is pedestrian only and stretches for twelve blocks. It was a great morning walking along the beachfront checking out all the different shops, restaurants, and watching the street performers. We did get to see the  Papantla Pole Flyers which was quite a sight watching them climb a huge pole and then slowly spin upside down towards the ground.

And once again, since we were at the coast, we had to get our fill of seafood. We enjoyed calamari, shrimp a few different ways, grilled octopus, scallops tostadas, almond-crusted mahi mahi, tuna & mahi sashimi, and a couple of other great dishes.

We drove about 30 minutes south of our resort to Boca de Tomatlan. It is a great little cove with a couple of beachfront restaurants, a lot of water taxis, and other boats taking people out on different tours. We spent a couple of days there with the waves hitting our feet as we enjoyed some cold beers, Yellow Fin Tuna sashimi and just kicking back on the beach.

The weather was just perfect, not too hot during the day, and a cool Pacific Ocean breeze at night. And yes, we did sit around the pool and even had mimosas for breakfast. I know you’re trying to imagine us doing that, but yes we actually did. Anyway, we met a lot of new people and there is a chance we would go back again sometime as long as we stayed away from the main part of Puerto Vallarta. There are a bunch of great-looking quiet little beach towns north of the city that we wouldn’t mind checking out next time.

After getting enough beach time in Mexico we hopped a flight up to Phoenix to see some friends and especially the grandkids. The grandkids are growing up and changing so fast that it’s mind-boggling.

While we were up in Phoenix we had the chance to see Roger Clyne and PH Naffah of the Peacemakers do a small show at a bar I used to go to some 40 years ago. They had a special guest Mark Zubia of the Pistolero’s performing some of his old stuff and some new songs. Halfway through Roger’s set, Nick Scropos (bass player for the Peacemakers) showed up and joined them on stage. It was one of those shows where they were just goofing around and having fun.

We got to see our good friend Armond and meet his new wife Pam. We haven’t seen him in about seven years or so, but they had just moved to Arizona so we should be seeing a lot more of them in the future. It was only fitting since 40 years ago Armond was the best man at our wedding.

Our son and his wife have some classic cars and I really love helping them work on them when I’m up there. This time it was putting the motor back in the 59 Cadillac. We got the motor dropped in and then I helped button it up during the week while they were at work. We got it fired up just before we left, but like with anything that is 60+ years old, there were a couple of little setbacks.

They also recently acquired a 1948 all-original International pickup. He got the fuel tank back after being cleaned and flushed, then got it back into the truck. It didn’t take long for that old flathead motor to come back to life. I believe they are going to leave the truck just the way it is, which is very cool in my opinion.

While we were gone I had Ruben cut down a couple of big Cohune Palms that were overtaking the back patio. He saved the heart of palm out of them and was going to make tamales. We have never tried heart of palm tamales, but he said that they are delicious. Maybe in a few months, I’ll have him cut another one down just so we can give them a try.

April was a great fun filled month, but here it is May already, and time to get back to what we do. As soon as we got home it was time to pick bananas, cacao, coffee, and a few other things. Besides picking everything it’s also time to get new stuff planted. Since April and May are the hot dry months down here, everything is going to need a lot of water. With all the tending to the yard and such we should stay very busy for a while until we decide it’s time for another getaway.

Happy Cinco de Mayo! It was thirty years ago on Cinco de Mayo that we bought our house “Bedrock” in Cholla Bay, Mexico. It was also six years ago on Cinco de Mayo that we sold Bedrock and got ready for the big move to Belize. So today we will raise a glass of tequila to all of our friends we made throughout Mexico. Salud!!!

Nowadays everyone seems to celebrate their whole birthday month. Well, this month is our 40th wedding anniversary, so we are going to celebrate as much as we can for the entire month.

We started this month off by catching a flight over to San Pedro out on Ambergris for a few days of misbehaving. This was a totally unplanned trip, but we had been working hard around here and thought we could use a break. Besides it’s only a two hour drive and a twenty minute flight from our place to the sunny shores of the Caribbean.

What prompted us to go was that Mike Nash was going to be on the island doing a few shows at some of our favorite beach bars. We found that out on a Monday. So by that Friday afternoon we got on a flight out to the island and grabbed us a coconut cart to putt around in. A short time later we were sitting on the beach with a cold beer in hand enjoying great music.

We’ve seen Mike quite a few times in the past and he always puts on a great show. The first time we saw him was about six years ago in San Pedro when he was playing with Kelly McGuire. His first show this time was Friday night at the Palapa Bar. The last concert we saw at the Palapa Bar was Jerry Jeff Walker just before he passed. Mike’s next show was on Sunday at the 303 bar where we have seen Jim Dalton, Nick Scropos, and the Jons play a couple of times. It’s great that some of these musicians are finally finding their way down to Belize. For all of our Phoenix and Mexico friends, Mike will be in Puerto Peñasco next month for his SOB Songwriters Festival. If you are down that way be sure to check him out, he’s got a lot of great music.

On Saturday, Mike invited us to tag along with him & Melissa, and Boyd & Keli for a day of bar hopping. Bar hopping for the day is always fun, especially in San Pedro where there seems to be endless beach bars over the water. What’s more fun, is when you get to do it with friends on a boat.

We got in the boat on the lagoon side of San Pedro where the water was less than a foot deep. It was a slow ride out to open water weaving our way through the mangroves. Some places were so narrow that the mangroves were touching the boat. It was awesome going through the mangroves and checking out all the fish and wildlife, we’re just lucky that Boyd knew where he was going.

Our first stop was this little bar/restaurant on the lagoon side where we got out for a few beers and some coconut shrimp. After that, it was out to open water on the Caribbean side to hit a few more of our favorite stops. We would just pick a bar, pull the boat up and go in for a couple of drinks, say hi to some friends, and then head off to the next one.

One of the days I had on my Wrecked at the Reef shirt from Cholla Bay, Mexico. Across the bar, this whole group noticed it and started screaming. It turns out that they were all from Phoenix and go down to Puerto Peñasco/Cholla Bay all the time. We found out that they knew a lot of the same people we know, and even sent pictures and texts to them while we were there. A couple of the gals we recognized from the past few years in Belize when they were there to see Jim Dalton, Nick Scropos, and the Jons. By the way, Jim, Nick, The Jons, and a VERY special guest will be back in Belize again in August for some more great shows. Anyone interested?

For the most part, it was a crazy fun filled weekend with a bunch of old and new friends. We did manage to find some quiet time for just Kelley and me to enjoy the views of the Caribbean and have a cold beer by ourselves. But they were far and few between.

You would think getting away from the jungle that we wouldn’t have to deal with any critters, well not us. We stopped into the Belikin store to check out any new merchandise they might have. As we were looking around, an iguana kept jumping at the glass door trying to get in. The gal inside was fairly scared and trying to call animal control because she couldn’t open the door and risk him coming into the store. I said that I could probably take care of it. So I opened the door while Kelley blocked the opening so he couldn’t get in. Once I was outside, I was able to grab him, take him down to an open lot, and let him go. You should have seen everyone driving by on their golf cart pointing at me carrying an iguana down the street. The gal at the store was so thankful that she gave us a couple of beers on the house.

While we were on the island you know we had to get our seafood fix. We had conch fritters, coconut shrimp, sushi and sashimi. One morning for breakfast a restaurant had a special that was stone crab eggs benedict. I just had to give it a try. It was nothing like traditional eggs-b, but still very good. It was an English muffin with pureed avocado, a huge amount of crab, an egg, cheese, and hollandaise sauce. It was nothing like I’d ever had before, but it was delicious.

Next Sunday will be our actual 40th wedding anniversary. Looking back on all the fun, adventures, and experiences we’ve had, we wouldn’t change it for the world.

Once again here’s a little more of our garden, foods, and jungle creatures.

Every year for the past few years we have been curing a ham for Easter weekend, and this year was no exception. So a couple of weeks ago we picked up a nice big pork leg from our butcher. After having him trim it to the size we wanted, we ended up with a beautiful 20lb leg that we would turn into a delicious smoked ham. After injecting a lot of cure and seasoning, it went into the cure bath for ten days or so, till it was ready to go into the smoker. I usually like to use apple wood chips when I smoke ham for a delicate smoky flavor. When we re-heated it on the grill to serve, Kelley made up a Jim Beam Peach whiskey glaze that was brushed all over it.  We have been curing and smoking our own hams for a while now and they always turn out great. We’ve had a lot of requests from people asking if we would make one for them. Hams just take up too much space in the fridge while they are curing, so this is just our special little treat.

We’ve got a log in our driveway that has been producing oyster mushrooms for a few weeks now. It only takes a couple of days from when we first see them until they dry up, so we have to check this log daily. These mushrooms are absolutely delicious and we are so excited when we find some. I think if we spent more time and actually looked for them around the property we would probably find a lot more.

Not everything always goes according to plan. Recently we purchased a candy coater attachment for our stand mixer. We were going to use it to coat our coffee beans with dark chocolate. It is supposed to tumble the beans around as you add chocolate and you end up with nice round individual candies. Well, the first attempt failed miserably. All the coffee was starting to coat fairly well until we added a little more chocolate. That’s when they all started to stick together and would not break apart. At that point we started laughing because there was nothing we could do, so we just let it run. We ended up with a giant ball of chocolate covered expresso beans. There has to be at least 150 or more dark roasted coffee beans in that ball of chocolate. We will try it again, but in the meantime, we went back to using our molds to make them.

Our custard apple tree has gotten a lot of fruit this year. The birds love them, so the ones we can reach we had to put mesh bags on to help protect them. I’m sure some of you have never heard of, or ever tried, a custard apple. In the States, they are not very common, but you can sometimes find them at specialty markets. Ours are about the size of grapefruits this year and they are delicious.

The flesh of the custard apple is creamy white with a similar consistency to custard (hence the name custard apple). It tastes like a sweet tropical ice cream, especially when chilled.  We eat them plain, usually for breakfast, but we thought we would try something a little different this time. We picked out all the seeds, put in some fresh raspberries, and then hit it with the immersion blender. After that, it went into the freezer. It did freeze a little too hard to eat as ice cream, but it would make a great popsicle on a hot day.

When we find time, we’ve been sitting out back with some cold beers and peeling coffee. We can only do this for about an hour at a time, as that’s all our fingers can handle. This is just the first process to turning these little things into that delicious coffee that most of us love. We’ll be doing this for the next few weeks until the trees are picked clean. I just hope we have enough beer around to get us through all this coffee peeling.

For the first time, our peach tree is really blossoming out. In the past, we have gotten only a handful of blossoms of which only 3-4 fruit had actually formed. And when they did get about the size of a marble the birds ate them. So far this year, I’ve estimated that at least a couple hundred flowers are blooming with more opening every day. Hopefully this year we will get some peaches. Peaches don’t seem to grow down here, I think because of the climate. Although, there is a variety of peach trees that will grow in tropical environments, and hopefully this is one of them.

We have a lot of different types of philodendrons growing around here. We have relocated most from elsewhere on our property, friends give us cuttings or sometimes we will even take some cuttings from our favorite restaurant. Either way, they always grow great when we give them a tree to climb up on. Did you know that most, if not all, philodendrons bloom a beautiful flower that looks sorta like a lily? Depending on the type of philodendron, they vary in color, but they all seem to have the same basic shape to them.

A small portion of our farm lot has gotten plowed and will be ready for planting later this month. Ruben has thousands of seedlings getting ready to go in on the next full moon. In just a few months we should have an abundance of tomatoes, peppers, beans, and whatever else he plants. We will usually just take what we can personally use and then he will sell the rest to the market in town.

This guy was in the tree directly above the casita. He sat up there for a good half hour, just calling and grooming himself. I assume he was calling for a possible mate. We watched him for a long time hoping another one would show up, but he finally flew off to look elsewhere.

Recently we were sitting out back with some friends and this bug that we’d never seen before crawled by. It was close to four inches long and really didn’t care if we were touching it. Kelley took some pictures of it and posted them on the Creatures of Belize Facebook page. It didn’t take long before it was identified. Turns out that it is a Prisopus and is a member of the stick bug family. I hoped he was harmless, as I picked him up and let him climb all over my arms.

Sometimes I think it was much easier being a “beach bum” in Mexico than being a “farmer” in Belize. But we would not change this experience for anything. The things that we have seen and learned, plus all of the adventures are priceless.

Here it is again… What’s on the porch drying or ripening? This time it’s tomatoes, ripening in the sun a little more before they get canned. Ruben came down to buy some Italian sausage from us the other day and said that he had just picked tomatoes and asked if we wanted some. He had about 12 buckets of Roma tomatoes, so it was a perfect trade, a bucket of tomatoes for sausage.  Kelley canned them whole to be used for pizza sauce, salsa or whatever else we decide to make. Since all the tomatoes got peeled before being canned, we dehydrated all the skins and ground them into a powder to be used in soups and such. It’s great being able to make trades like this with friends and neighbors.

The coffee plants are really producing this year. They are just starting to ripen, in the past week we have picked a good size bucket full. Most of them are coming off just two of the Arabica plants. Our Robusta plants got some type of fungus last year and we had to cut them way back. But they have recovered well and are now getting ready to flower. Our Arabica plants got so tall that we have to get a ladder out to pick the ones near the top. Once everything is picked we will have to top them down to a more manageable size. It takes a lot of time and effort to go from bean to cup with the coffee. Sometimes I question why we planted more than a dozen coffee plants, especially when Kelley can’t even stand the smell of roasted coffee.

Our raspberry plants have really taken off this year. For the past month we have been picking a quart baggie full of raspberries every few days. We have been eating them, giving some away, and putting some in the freezer. At this point, we have at least 10-12 pounds of raspberries stored in the freezer. When we get time we will decide if we will make jam, ice cream, or something else with all those raspberries. Of course, there will be more banana/raspberry bread once the bananas ripen.

Most of our fruit trees were put in at least five years ago and this year just about everything is producing. So far there are at least fifty pineapples on plants, five bunches of bananas going, lots of mangos, a lot of avocados, custard apples, cacao, coffee, raspberries, lemons, and oranges. That’s just the ones that have fruit on them currently. We are up in the garden at least three times a week with a bucket picking something. Sometimes I think it would just be easier to buy the stuff at the market, but it keeps us busy and we know it doesn’t get any fresher than this.

Okay, here’s round two of what’s on the porch this time. No, it’s not small cherry tomatoes, it’s coffee. After a couple of days in the sun, we will peel the fruit off the outside and then dry the beans before they get roasted. It’s tough and time consuming peeling them, but we just tried a new method that is working very well. We pour boiling water over them for about five minutes to soften the skin and then you can just squeeze them and the bean pops out. This batch we are going to roast a little darker than normal and make some chocolate covered expresso beans with our homegrown chocolate.

We just pulled another fifty pounds of bacon out of the smoker and it’s resting in the fridge before it gets sliced and packaged. Here is my favorite thing about leaving the freshly smoked bacon in the beer fridge for a couple of days. First of all, there are no other odors for it to absorb, and once it comes out, the fridge will smell like bacon for a couple of weeks. So every time we open the fridge to get a beer, it still smells like bacon, and there is nothing wrong with that.

The other day I was walking between the house and the garage and there was a big ruckus in the bushes. I looked in and saw a bunch of Coatimundis (quash as they are called in Belize) climbing up and down the trees. I called for Kelley to get the camera and she got some great pictures of them just before they all took off.

Right off the back patio, there is a big palm tree that has a huge strangler fig tree wrapped around it. In the past couple of years around this time, we have seen at least 20-25 coati around that tree. I think they may camp out in that tree for a few days while they are around here looking for food. There were definitely a couple of bigger coati, but the majority of them were small ones. I’m pretty sure that the parents are just showing the young ones where to get  pineapples in a few months.

There are a lot of interesting insects down here and we are always seeing ones we’ve never seen before. To us, the most interesting ones, and probably the most beautiful are the moths. Every morning there are a variety of moths on the front of the garage that were attracted to the light the night before. We usually try to get a picture of the more interesting ones. This one here was about a half inch long and very fuzzy, plus he had some good color going on.

It was time to invite a few friends over for another fish fry. My theory is that if we don’t have any more fish in the freezer, then it’s time to go fishing again. This time we didn’t invite the usual friends over, but instead some new friends that we met over the past few months. Everyone there is either getting ready to build or is in the process of building. No one really knew each other before this gathering and they were all happy to meet some new friends. There were a lot of questions being asked and everyone was sharing their thoughts and ideas. It was a good gathering, and the fish turned out great.

March is that time of year again for the La Ruta Maya River Challenge. This is a 4 day canoe marathon that starts in San Ignacio and ends in Belize City covering 170 miles. It’s considered the biggest sporting event in the country and the largest of its kind in Central America. This year there were 64 teams entered in all age and skill levels. There were stops along the way where the teams set up camp for the night and got their daily time recorded. These stops have turned into big parties with lots of food, spectators, and of course, Belikin beer which is their major sponsor. The winning team this year was Slim & Trim like Guava Limb, with a recorded time of 18 hours and 24 minutes to cover the whole 170 mile course down river. Now that’s moving!

There’s always something happening around here to keep us busy. The next two months will be hot and humid, but after that, it should be pretty nice for the rest of the year.

Hope to see you soon.

There was another cold front that came through, pushing our nighttime temps down to the low 50ºs up here in the jungle. I know a lot of you are thinking that’s not cold, but for us it is! So off to the coast for a few days to soak up some of that warm Caribbean sunshine. Our neighbor Amanda came along with us down to Placencia to meet up with Ron & Rhonda for a few days of misbehaving on the beach.

Since Ron & Rhonda are now living in Placencia, they had heard about a Lobsterfest out on a small private island and wanted to know if we were interested. Of course, we were interested in squeezing in one more chance to indulge in lobster before the season closed in a few days.

The event was on Ivan’s island, just a short 25 minute boat ride from Placencia. The weather could not have been more perfect. With the temps in the 80ºs, no wind, and the clear blue Caribbean water that you see on postcards. Ivan’s Lobsterfest was one set price of $125 USD for everything. That included the boat ride, all the lobster, chicken, and fish you wanted, plus unlimited beer and rum drinks. It was quite the party with Caribbean music from the DJ, dancing, hanging out in the water, great food, and lots of new friends. We have had a lot of great times here in Belize and this was definitely one of those times.

The whole weekend on the coast was spent pretty much misbehaving with friends, soaking up the sunshine, relaxing in the water, enjoying some great food & drinks, a little karaoke, plus just enjoying the end of Ron’s and my birthday month. This was our second trip over to the coast in February, but now it was time for us to get back to our jungle home.

Now that we are back from our little side trip to the beach, it was time to get the word out that we had corned beef briskets ready for Saint Patrick’s Day. In the past month, we have processed about 110 lbs of corned beef briskets. Once we got the word out that they were available, it took just over a day for us to be sold out. Now that the briskets are gone it’s time to get more bacon curing. Just like the corned beef, as soon as word gets out that we have bacon, it will all be spoken for before it’s even out of the smoker. In case you weren’t aware, we have a Facebook page Wicked Toucan where you can check out some of the different meats that we make and when they are available.

Our cacao is really starting to ripen, so we will be processing it quite frequently now. Recently, we finished up another batch of our chocolate, all that’s left for this batch is to temper it and get it into molds. It’s a long process from picking the pods off the tree to this point, but very well worth it in the end.

Recently a friend of ours gave us a few cinnamon trees that are around 16″ tall or so. Five years ago when we first planted all of our trees we did have a cinnamon tree, but for some reason after a year or so, it didn’t make it. Now is our chance to give it another try and hopefully, these will do better. Did you know that cinnamon actually comes from the bark of the tree. Yes, the cinnamon sticks you buy are just peeled bark from the tree that is rolled up and dried. Also, you can use the leaves to make a tea. I’m picturing homemade cinnamon rolls in our future with fresh cinnamon from our own trees.

Our friend also gave us a miracle berry plant. Okay, this one is going to take some explaining because I’m sure most of you have never heard of it, I know we hadn’t. It’s a plant that gets a small red berry on it about the size of a coffee bean. When the berry itself is eaten, the molecules bind to the tongue’s taste buds, causing sour foods to taste sweet. We tried it by eating a bilimbi fruit first, which is extremely sour (way more than a lime). After eating the miracle berry we took another bite of the bilimbi and the sourness was gone. It will affect anything you eat and will last anywhere from 30 minutes up to a couple of hours. It doesn’t make sweet things taste sweeter, it just makes things like mustard or vinegar taste sweet. A couple of hours after I ate one I had a Belikin beer and it was like I was drinking some sweet fruity beer. Very weird.

Check out the health benefits of these crazy berries. For example, if you have a sweet tooth, but are trying to cut down on your sugar intake, using miracle fruit in conjunction with sour food can give you the sweet burst you’re looking for. Miracle fruit is also used by some for medical purposes, such as changing the flavor of unpleasant medications or lessening the side effects of certain medical treatments. If you are curious about these miracle berries and would like to try them for yourself, you can find them on Amazon.

Over the past year or so, we have heard neighbors talking about Jaguars in the area. Some have seen tracks in their yard and others have reported actually seeing them. Then another neighbor said that they were attacking her sheep. We have yet to see any around our property or get any pictures on our trail cameras, but we assume they are here. I guess it’s official now as they put up a sign about a mile from us on the road saying Jaguar habitat. At least we don’t have any type of livestock on our property to worry about, but we do have a lot of small local game animals. It would be really exciting to get a picture of one, either on the trail camera or even better yet, with the regular camera.

We had an old wood pole with a flat piece of wood on top where we’d put fruit out for the birds. Recently it fell over, so I had to build a new one. The new one I made using a piece of 2″ pvc, built a new platform on top, and bolted on an old garden rake that the handle had broken off. The rake works great to stick different fruits on so the birds can’t carry them away. This worked out great until the possums found it. Now, every time we put fruit on the feeder the next morning it’s gone. We know it’s possums because I put a trail camera out to try and catch what was eating the fruit after dark. After looking around the internet for ideas to deter critters from climbing a feeder pole I found one I liked. My favorite was to put a slinky on the pole and then they couldn’t climb it. I have a couple ordered on Amazon, so by the next blog hopefully we’ll have some funny video to post.

I have a degree in electronics, but they never taught us about this situation. Our garage TV stopped working the other night, so of course I had to take it apart to see if there was anything obviously wrong with it. First thing I find is a dozen or so gecko eggs, and some were starting to hatch. I got that all cleaned up, but I didn’t think that would cause the TV not to work. So I decided to take a circuit board out and there it was. A fried gecko, stuck to the board and part of the board was burned beyond fixing. Hopefully I can find a replacement board on line tomorrow. All just part of the fun of living in the jungle.

That about closes out our February. Hope everyone is having a great year so far. Oh, and we saw this on a decal in a bar down in Key West and thought it would make a great shirt or something. It said “Live a Great Story”. I just thought that was a great saying and very inspirational.

Mike Nash was once again up in our neck of the Jungle playing a show at our favorite bar, The Bluff. This was week two of his four week tour through Central America on his Meeting of the Mayan tour, MeetingOfTheMayans.com. Check out this yearly tour he does, and maybe next year you could tag along. This is a good chance to have fun exploring Central America and listen to some great music along the way. For something a lot closer to home for a lot of you, he has an annual event in Puerto Peñasco, Mexico on May 6-11 called the S.O.B. Songwriters Festival, NashMike.com with a lot of your favorite artists. Mike plays country music, but over the past years, he has focused more on Trop-rock and plays a bunch of awesome beachy songs that would be great on anyone’s summer playlist.

About 9 months ago one of our vanilla orchids got its first set of flowers. We had read that every flower had to be hand-pollinated in order for a bean to form. Plus it had to be pollinated within 6 hours of blooming for that to happen. Out of all the flowers Kelley pollinated, there were only two that took and grew into a vanilla bean. Once they formed they had to stay on the plant for another 8-9 months before they could be picked. Once picked there is an involved process before they are ready to be used, which is why they are so expensive. We love learning about and growing all these exotic plants, but as for vanilla, I don’t think we will work too hard trying to harvest them.

When we first moved here we were given a couple of coconuts that were starting to sprout. The yard was just being established so the nuts got moved all around the yard for a couple of years before they finally got planted. Since we planted them they are growing quite well. Hopefully, in a year or so we should start getting our own fresh coconuts. Coconut palms grow in tropical climates that fall between the 25 north and the 25 south latitudes, with Belize being around 17 latitude, it’s a perfect place for them to grow. A coconut tree can produce for 80 years over its 100 year lifespan. These trees could actually produce for our great, great, great-grandchildren.

When we first planted our fruit trees we were told that it would be 4-5 years before they would start to produce. Some started bearing fruit last year and others  are still showing no signs yet. This year we are very excited as two of our trees that have never bloomed are full of blossoms. One of our mango trees is loaded from top to bottom with blossoms. Hopefully, some will take, and come summer we will be enjoying fresh mangos off our own trees for the first time.

Another tree that is loaded with blossoms for the first time is one of our avocados. Hopefully, some fruit will set and we will have plenty of avocados in a few months. Maybe in time for some fresh guacamole on Cinco de Mayo. We still have five or six different types of citrus, velvet apples, malay apples, and macadamia nuts that have yet to produce. Hopefully, as the weather warms up they will start to blossom later this year.

Who needs to go to the market when you can get gifts from the garden? Today’s harvest was cacao, green beans, oyster mushrooms, assorted peppers, lettuce, coffee and star fruit. We have been eating star fruit as they ripen, but now there is more than we can eat fresh before the next group is ready. So we are dehydrating a bunch of them so they will last longer. We have dehydrated some with cinnamon sugar, with Tajin, and some with sea salt. They were all good and tasted totally different from each other, but our favorite was when Kelley juiced fresh ones. The green beans and lettuce are on their way out, but the coffee and cacao are just starting to ripen. Some of the pepper plants will soon need to come out, but there are more seedlings already started along with some okra. The way things ripen around here there is usually always something from the garden to eat.

About five years ago we were in town and there was a big tropical almond tree there. They are big beautiful trees that get layered branches and you see them all over Belize. They are mostly around people’s yards as they make great shade trees to sit under and cool off. Kelley picked up a couple of seeds from the tree that were on the ground and planted them to see if they would grow. It did grow and now 5 years later we have a great shade tree.

The other day there was a King Vulture soaring above our house. Since we’ve been here we have only seen a few of these big birds. Excluding the two species of condors, the king vulture is the largest of the New World vultures. It can have a wingspan of up to 7′ and can weigh up to 10lbs. For such a big bird, they have quite a long lifespan, the oldest animal at the Belize Zoo is a 40 year old King Vulture named Rex. The top picture Kelley took as he was soaring above our house and the closeup below is pulled from the internet just so you can see how beautiful these birds are.

Recently we have had some critter eating some of our cacao pods on the trees. We have not had this problem in the past, so we decided to set up a trail camera and see if we could catch the culprit. We have a bunch of Agouties around here, but we didn’t think they could reach as high as some of the pods that were being eaten. Well, the camera proved different. There were pictures of them going from tree to tree and even standing up on the trunks to reach the higher pods. But the real kicker was when one of them grabbed a cacao pod and posed in front of the camera to eat it. We’re not sure what we can really do about them, we are just thankful that they can’t climb the plants.

This past week we had two of Kelley’s sisters, Sue and Karen come down for a visit along with Karen’s husband Erik, and Sue’s friend Arnaldo. They started off their trip with a few beach days out in San Pedro before heading up our way to do a little jungle exploring.

One of the nights we fired up the pizza oven and invited a few neighbors over. Kelley was putting the pizzas together with whatever toppings were requested and I was cooking them up as fast as she could make them. I think we ended up cooking seven or eight pizzas that night.

We only fire up the pizza oven when we can get more than a few friends over because it’s not worth it to do it for just us. I usually start the fire in the brick oven a good six hours before the first pizza goes in. The temp in the oven gets around 900 degrees and that will usually cook the pizza to perfection in about three minutes. The next morning I checked the temp in the oven and it was still at 170 degrees inside. We haven’t tried it yet, but one of the restaurants here will put their chicken meat in the pizza oven at the end of the night. The next morning they say it cooks to perfection for use in their other dishes that day.

While the family was up here they checked out a couple of different Mayan ruins, got to put their car on a hand-crank ferry across the river, went on hikes, saw Mike Nash doing his show, zip-lined and even went cave tubing. Between all that fun they did find time to sit around our place and enjoy the peaceful surroundings. Kelley also gave them a course on our process of how we make chocolate. From the cacao pods on the trees to the fermenting of the seeds, drying and then peeling the roasted beans. I think they might have been helping peel the roasted beans just so they could have more of the finished product.

I believe they all had a great time exploring different parts of Belize and seeing how diverse and friendly this country really is. From the hustle & bustle of the beaches in San Pedro to the quite lush jungles up by us. After they left our place they headed back over to the Caribbean shores of Hopkins. Hopkins is a quiet little beach town and a great place to spend the last few days of their trip to just unwind.

Since the family left, the temperature up here had really dropped, in fact, we got down to 53º a couple of nights. The sisters shot a note and said it was a nice warm day over on the beach in Hopkins. Well, that was all it took for us to decide to take the 2½ hour drive over to the warm Caribbean shore and surprise them. Boy did we surprise them! They just happened to be checking out our river lot when we came pulling up.

I know when they get back they will have lots of pictures and stories to tell everyone. Heck, we might even start seeing more family come down and visit us. After all, we have a guest house and that’s what it’s for.

If you feel the need to get away from the world, where the WIFI is weak and the beer is always cold, you know where we are.

New Year’s morning started off great with a visit from Ruben. He brought us down some Gibnut tamales that they had just made. Gibnut is a rare treat, as it is the most prized game animal in Belize and is considered a delicacy. He brought us down five big tamales all steamed and wrapped up in banana leaves. We have been lucky enough to try Gibnut in a variety of different ways, and the tamales are one of our favorites.

The sun has finally come out and it’s drying up around here, which means we can actually get some yard work done. One thing was to trim our Moringa trees back to a more manageable size. We usually try to save the leaves and either use them fresh or dry them for later use. I’ve mentioned before that moringa has a ton of health benefits and is considered a superfood. Kelley uses the fresh and dried leaves in soups and salads. Once dried she also makes a very healthy tea out of the leaves. The Moringa tree is also called The Tree of Life or The Miracle Tree, and since we have a couple of them growing here it doesn’t hurt to include some in our diets.

It seems like there is always something on the porch drying in the sun. A couple of weeks ago it was moringa, this week it is cacao beans. They will sit in the sun until they are completely dry before they get roasted. Then they will get peeled, ground, and turned into chocolate. It looks like once this batch of cacao is dry then the coffee will be about ready to start picking. Then it will be coffee beans out in the sun drying before they can get roasted. As the coffee is drying they sort of look like peanuts. There have been a couple of friends who have tossed a few beans in their mouths thinking that they were peanuts, boy were they surprised. We do sometimes have peanuts drying on the porch, but it’s always best to ask us what it is before trying anything.

This year our star fruit tree has a decent amount of fruit on it. They are just starting to ripen and turn yellow. We are just starting to get raspberries again, and in a few weeks, we should have some custard apples ready. Bananas are randomly ready throughout the year and come June we should have a bunch of pineapples and dragon fruit ripe. Most of the time Kelley and I will have fruit for breakfast, even if we have to buy it when nothing is ripe around here. Once some of our other trees mature and start producing we should have a good variety of fruits available throughout the entire year.

With all the rains in the past months, Ruben hasn’t been able to plow or plant our farm lot with new crops. He did manage about a month ago to get a 300 foot long row of lettuce in. This was not to sell, but just for his and our personal use. I’m sure when it’s all said and done, we will have only used or given to friends 30 or so heads, which leaves a lot for Ruben and his family.

This past weekend it was 90º and sunny, which was a great time to get some plants in the ground, catch up on our tans, and drink a few cold beers out in the sunshine. We always have cuttings from plants that we have trimmed and are rooting in pots waiting to go into the ground. Of course, as we plant the cuttings that are ready, we trim others and they go into pots for a few months. It’s a never-ending cycle, but we hate to just throw the cuttings away.

On a recent Sunday morning, it got extremely loud around here. It sounded like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “The Birds”. In the trees above the casita, there were hundreds of parrots that all landed there at once. They were all squawking for a good half hour before they slowly started to fly away. We see parrots fly over almost every day and usually not more than a dozen or so at a time. Every so often a few will land in the trees around the house, but nothing like this time. It really was an amazing sight and sound.

We see a lot of hawks around, usually sitting alone in a tree, on our antenna, or on a power line. We have never seen two of them sitting together before, until now. The other afternoon when we saw these two, we were standing in the yard talking to Amanda when one of the hawks chased a Chachalaca bird. We were standing only a few feet apart and this Chachalaca dove between us almost hitting us. The Chachalaca bird is not a small bird, they range from one to one in a half pounds in weight.  Kelley saw him coming and ducked and I just felt a giant burst of air on my shoulder. The hawk turned away when it got close to us and the Chachalaca got away. That sure would have been cool to see the hawk grab that bird right in front of us.

The same time we saw the two hawks there were a dozen or so little birds all over the ground that we’d never seen before. It turns out that they were Gray-headed Tanagers, which Kelley found out are uncommon around here. It says that they follow swarms of army ants around, which is why they were all over the driveway. There was a mass migration of ants going across our driveway. They were at least ten feet wide going across the driveway turning our new white rocks in the driveway black. Seeing that many ants at once is the thing nightmares are made of. At least there were birds there to eat a few of them.

We have also been seeing more Toucan around the property. I think now that the sun is out all the critters seem to be more active, or maybe it’s because we are just outside a little more than we have been.

We are always looking to try something new to eat. The other day at the market they had Singo Pears which I assume were imported. I guess another name for them is Asian Pears which can sometimes be found in the States at the grocery store. Anyway, we had never seen one before and it was all wrapped in this fancy package, so we knew it must be something special. It was juicy, crisp like an apple with sort of a pear taste. It definitely was not worth the $5 price in my opinion, especially when there are so much better local fruits available at a much better price.

Darren and his aunt and uncle were down for a visit to check out Belize. They spent a few days in San Pedro before heading up this way to see Darren’s place. The first few days they were up here, at least one of them had been not feeling well. Not a great way to spend a vacation, they seem to think it’s the flu or something. They pretty much have stayed to themselves, but we did manage to have a couple of meals together. The first night they were here we made some giant pork ribs on the grill. We hope they all get better, as his aunt and uncle have been on a world tour for the past year and have more places to go and see once they leave Belize.

Until next time, have fun with whatever you’re doing and maybe we’ll see you down here sometime.

The weather is still a little unstable around here, with more days being cloudy and rainy than there are sunny days. Same with the temps, most nights are in the mid 60ºs and the days can be from 70º to the high 80ºs if the sun comes out. The good thing is that everything around here is very green, even though there’s still a lot of mud.

With all the rain we have had the past couple of months, a lot of our gravel in the driveway washed away leaving nothing but mud. So it was finally dry enough to get a truck in here with 15 more yards of white gravel. Besides the driveway, more gravel was needed in front of the casita where it had also washed away, and a little more in front of the garage. It’s a shame we had to put it on top of all the grass that was filling in so nicely, but in a few months, I suppose it will grow back through the gravel.

Lots of plants, either wild or ones we planted around here are putting out flowers right now. I know it’s the middle of winter for most, and you might not see any flowers in your yard for a couple more months. So here are some flowers from around our place that will hopefully hold you over until your plants bloom or you can start planting again.

There are lots of squirrels around here and they seem to be hiding nuts for the winter. For the past couple of months, our Cohune palms have been dropping their nuts like crazy. Every day the squirrels can be seen picking them up and running off into the trees. They seem to be hiding them in places that are up off the ground where I guess other animals can’t get to them. We have seen them in trees, in a corner of the BBQ, inside the railing on the porch, and many more places. Below are a few pictures of some of their hiding spots.

We have had a couple of interesting insects around here lately. The first one is a rhinoceros beetle. He is a real powerhouse of an insect with a hard shell and intimidating horns on his head. Only the males have horns which are used in battle. They get up to three inches long, but this one was just over two inches. He really had a grip on the cement and it was tough to lift him up. When Kelley put him in her hand he really started to dig his legs in and get a grip on her.

The second big interesting insect around here this week, which we have seen many before was the peanut head. This one is about 4″ long and very cool looking. When his wings open up there are two spots that look like cat eyes to help scare predators away.

One of our Jamaican Lime trees is starting to put out a few fruit. Jamaican limes are green on the outside and bright orange on the inside and super juicy. Their taste is a combination of lime juice and orange juice. It’s a favorite to make a limeade for a hot summer day or with a little bit of rum it’s outstanding.

We are always willing to try something new to eat. The other day as we were wandering around the grocery store we saw a package that was written in Chinese and had a picture of chicken feet with some chili peppers. The feet were individually sealed so we assumed they were “snack feet”, bet you’ve never heard of snack feet before. Anyway, we bought them and took them home to try. They were fully cooked with a spicy sauce on them, and they were actually pretty good. Chances are we will never buy them again, but you have to try new things every so often.

Not much else has happened around here since Christmas, but I thought I’d get one more blog out to end the year. Here’s wishing everyone a Happy and Prosperous New Year. We hope to see you in 2024!

Well it’s supposed to be the beginning of the dry season, I think it was a big lie this year. It has been raining almost every day since we got back from our visit to the States last month. The yard is nothing but a giant mud puddle making it tough to get things done around here. Besides that, this last week has been cold, especially for Belize. Heaters and fireplaces are pretty much unheard of down here, so all we can do is bundle up. The daytime temps have been in the 70ºs -80ºs but the nights are dropping down to the high 50ºs. One night it dropped down to 51º, and that was the coldest it’s been since we’ve been here. With this weather, there’s not a whole lot to do around here but stay inside and make some food.

A friend of ours dropped off a couple of big stalks of bananas. We gave a bunch away and ate as many as we could before they started to get too ripe. Once they ripened, it was time for Kelley to make up some of her delicious raspberry banana bread. These make great gifts around the holidays and also an excellent breakfast.

It wouldn’t seem like Christmas around here if Kelley didn’t make her holiday cookies. This year she made peppermint bark, ginger snaps, peanut brittle, red velvet cookies with a white Hershey kiss, and some Heath-type candy with our homegrown dark chocolate on top. She really cut back on the amount of treats this year as we are trying to both lose a little bit of weight.

Back when our pineapples were ripe we ended up picking quite a few of them. We ate what we could, but we also dehydrated a bunch, and some of those got put in the freezer. We recently pulled a bag of vacuum-sealed dehydrated pineapples out of the freezer and there was no getting the pieces separated. Because they were sticky and compressed they would just not come apart. So we decided to cut them up into small little pieces and dip them in dark chocolate. We also made some sea salt caramels with dark chocolate. They both turned out very good.

Word got out that we had our dark chocolate candy bars available. Well, we sold out of all 130 within a couple days, not what we expected. We are in the process of making more now, but they won’t be ready for another week. The good thing is that we still have another 15 pounds or so of dried cacao beans from earlier this year. Plus the trees are loaded and we should start picking again shortly. Making and growing chocolate was never something that we thought we’d be doing, but you never know where life will take you.

The holidays are here and that meant it was time for us to make our summer sausage again. The first batch sold out before it was even out of the smoker. So far we’ve made twenty 1½ lb. sticks, last year we ended up making around 75 of them. In the past, we started making them around Thanksgiving, but this year we got a late start, so not sure we’ll be making any more this year. Well, there was a big request for more, so we called up our butcher and are making another batch in time for New Year’s.

Since the weather has not been so great we decided that it was a good time to restock our meat supply. In December alone we made close to 200 lbs. of sausage and bacon, which 3/4 of that has already been sold. So far this year we have processed close to 1,000 lbs. of meat. This could probably turn into a full-time thing if we wanted it to, but for now, we are just doing it as a hobby when we feel like it.

Now is the time we need to start processing corned beef for St. Patty’s Day. We will put all our other meats on hold for a while because the corned beef takes up space and time in the fridge while it is curing. Last year we made up around 30 corned beef that were between 3-5 lbs. each and they were gone instantly. As far as I know, we’re the only ones around making corned beef. It takes our butcher time to get us the right size briskets we are looking for. So he has started rounding them up now for us so we can get them processed in time for St. Patty’s Day.

Last month we picked up a beautiful prime rib roast from our butcher. After he got it all trimmed up it weighed in around 17 lbs. which was still a little more than we wanted. So he cut this big 2 lb. steak off the end to make it more the size Kelley was looking for. After all was said and done he ended up giving us the steak that he cut off for free. We grilled that steak and it was probably the best most flavorful steak we have had in Belize yet. The prime rib roast has been sitting in the fridge for the past few weeks aging and waiting for Christmas Day. Hopefully, it will turn out as good or better than the steak that came off the end of it.

The cayenne peppers that we had fermenting were finally ready to grind up into a nice pepper sauce. We have made this before, but this is the first time in a couple of years, only because we haven’t grown cayennes recently. It turned out really flavorful, with a little sweetness from the peppers and some pretty good heat. There was also a small jar of heatless habaneros that were fermenting. They have all the flavor of habaneros, but there is no heat. It’s interesting because you taste habaneros and you are waiting for the burn, but there is none.

Ron & Rhonda now live in Placencia and are busy putting the finishing touches on their new home. They will be joining us for a few days at our place over Christmas weekend. When they got here Saturday we made up some lobster chowder served with sourdough bread. Then Christmas Eve we are having some friends over for a fish fry with some of the fish we caught last time we were in Placencia. Last but not least, is the Christmas Day prime rib roast. Amanda and Ron & Rhonda will join us on Christmas Day for prime rib and all the fixings. If all this doesn’t get us in a food coma, I don’t know what will.

Here’s wishing everyone a Merry Christmas from Belize.

We got back home from a great trip to The Florida Keys and Arizona only to find out that we’d been having a lot of rain. In the first few days of November before we got back, our weather station recorded over a foot of rain (13+ inches).

Our village gets its water from the river up in the mountains, but with all that rain, it took out the water system for the entire village. Which meant we got home to no water in the pipes. Luckily we have a backup water tank that was full, but it’s not hooked up to the house. So we had to fill up 5 gal buckets and bring them over to the house for dishes, toilets, and such. We had heard there was a chance that the water could be out all week, but luckily they had it fixed the next day so we could get a shower and do some laundry.

So far we have seen over 18″ of rain just in November. And just like last year when the holidays started to roll around it was once again time to quote cousin Eddie from Christmas Vacation, “Shitter’s Full”. We have a very big 3-stage septic tank, big enough that my Jeep would fit in it. But with all this rain the ground is just saturated, which means that the septic is not draining properly. Since the ground is so wet we had to wait a few days for the road to dry up before we could even get a pumper truck in here. At least we have the casita with a septic tank that rarely gets used.

After the rains, there was a lot of cleanup to do around the property, nothing major just palm fronds, tree branches, plant trimming, and lots of mud. Once it dries up a little more I will have to get the tractor out to scrape the driveway smooth and take down some of the big ruts on our road. For the most part, the garden looked good, thanks to Amanda for taking care of it while we were gone. I’m actually surprised that the tomatoes and pepper plants survived all the rain. Ruben’s tomatoes on our other property didn’t do so well. They all had green fruit on them and with all that water they absorbed, most of the tomatoes split open and he lost the entire crop.

Our garden is on a slight hill so all the rain didn’t have a chance to sit around the plants and puddle up. Actually, all of our peppers are doing quite well. We are still picking cayennes, the habaneros are starting to ripen, there are a few green chili plants and the Italian peppers are starting to get big. The tomato plants from the seeds I got from my sister are starting to blossom. This week we will be planting bush beans and some purple carrots.

Kelley has got some of our cayenne peppers bottled up, waiting to make some pepper sauce. The peppers are fermented in vinegar and water along with some salt and garlic for about six weeks. After that, everything will get pureed down into a fine liquid. There is also a small jar of heatless habaneros fermenting to see if it makes a delicious sauce without the heat.

We are still making dark chocolate around here. Recently Kelley has had a problem getting the chocolate to temper, sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. Recently we picked up some local cacoa butter that should help it temper, along with the cooler weather it should be fine. The chocolate is still very good even if it doesn’t temper, it’s just that after a while it melts in your hands if it’s not tempered correctly. Which will be great come Christmas time when Kelley is making cookies and you want to bite into that soft chocolate chip cookie.

Anyway, the chocolate that does temper we’ve been making into individual bars that get packaged and sealed so they will last. Not sure what we’ll be doing with all of them besides enjoying them and sharing them with our friends. Maybe we’ll be selling them door to door as a fundraiser to send ourselves to summer camp next year.🤣😎

A year or so ago Kelley cut open a papaya and some of the seeds were starting to sprout. Well you know Kelley, she had to plant them. The plants grew to a couple of feet tall, but we had no extra room around here to plant them. So we gave them to Ruben to plant down on our farm lot. The plants didn’t get really tall, but they are getting some nice big papayas. Neither one of us is a big fan of papaya, but Ruben loves them, and we will take a few for the bird feeder.

The first weekend of the month, The Bluff has been having a big yard sale where anyone can come and sell stuff. We have been asked if we would come and sell some of our meats. So we have been really ramping up our production. Hopefully, we should have ready summer sausage, beef snack sticks, bratwurst sausage, Italian sausage linked and crumble, breakfast links and patties, bacon, and maybe some chocolate. This will be the first time we have actually set up and sold our meats. Usually, it’s just word of mouth and everything is gone in a week or so.

It’s been a while since we have heard or seen any toucans around here, but that’s changing. I assume that the wild fruit in the trees is starting to ripen as we are seeing more of them around. We are starting to see them in the trees out behind the house and just flying over. As soon as the fruit in the trees over the casita ripens we should see a lot more out in the open and Kelley can get some more great pictures of them.

The other morning we heard what sounded like a  laughing falcon in a tree just outside the house. He was out there very loudly calling for a good hour. Finally, Kelley couldn’t take it anymore and got the camera and went out looking for him. She found him in a tree just off the back patio. He stayed around long enough for a few good pictures before taking off.

We haven’t seen these mushrooms around the yard since last year. The common name is the latticed stinkhorn and feeds off decaying wood matter or garden mulch. It has a bad odor, somewhat like rotting meat, which attracts flies and other insects to help disperse its spores. This one was about the size of a softball, and with that smell and bright color they are hard to miss. After all the rains we’ve had mushrooms popping up everywhere, hopefully, we will find some oyster mushrooms around, because they are delicious.

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving, I know we did. Kelley cooked up a traditional Thanksgiving meal and we had a few friends over. The weather here this last week has been great, with no rain, highs of 85°, and low of 67°. We are starting our dry season, so the next few months should be great down here.

See you in Belize!

In the last post, I said that there were alternative plans for Kelley’s 60th birthday. Well here’s the second part of that plan, after all, this was her birthday month.

We thought on our way up to see the kids in Arizona we would do a little side trip for a drive we’ve been wanting to do for some time now. So we caught a flight to Miami, rented a truck, tuned in some Margaritaville, threw on our flip-flops, and headed down Highway 1 to Key West for a little more birthday celebration.

We couldn’t have asked for better weather for the drive down. Of course, everywhere you looked there were seafood restaurants and beach-themed stores selling anything that had to do with the sunny beachy lifestyle of the Keys. There were some gift shops you just had to stop at, especially when they have a giant lobster out front.

We avoided the bigger touristy restaurants and bars, but instead chose the more local looking places that had more character. There were more fresh seafood choices than you could imagine and of course when in Key West we had to have some key lime pie. We ended up finding some nice little places that overlooked the water where we could grab a cold drink, watch the boats, and check out all the big Tarpon that cruised around the docks.

For the most part, we just drove all the way down to Key West stopping at State Parks and checking out interesting watering holes along the way. The only tour we did was a cruise on the original “African Queen” from the 1950’s movie. We thought it would be cool to take an actual cruise on this piece of movie history, and it really was. The boat was built in 1912 in England and then shipped off to Africa where it worked until it was picked up in the 50’s for the movie “The African Queen” starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn.

It is an amazing 5 ton steel hull boat with a coal boiler that in turn runs a steam engine. For the tours, they just had a small outboard motor that powered it. They said it was just impractical to keep the boiler fired up all day long to run the engine. The engine did work though, and the captain did take the break off the prop shaft so we could see the engine turn over as if it was actually running on steam.

After the movie was done, the boat was purchased and shipped to a company in San Francisco in the late 60’s. Then in the 80’s it was sold to someone in Florida where they now conduct tours. I know a lot of people have never seen the movie “The African Queen”, but it’s a classic movie that’s worth checking out.

If anyone can ever have boat envy, this was the place to have it. Most of the boats in the Keys were center console fishing boats from small to very large. There were boat dealers on just about every corner it seemed. A lot of them had yards full of new and used boats and some even had racks where the boats were stacked 3 stories high.

Most of the bigger center console boats were usually running four 450hp+ outboards. The one running four outboards was well over the million dollar mark. I knew we’d never have one of those boats, but it was still fun to imagine cruising one of those big horsepower boats around the Caribbean doing a little island hopping.

It was a great side trip down to the Florida Keys, but now it was time to continue on to Arizona to see the grandkids and prepare for Halloween.

This year the kids dressed up as a police officer, a little witch, and a stick figure. The boys were super excited to get started, but the little witch Alli had just woken up and it took her a little bit to get going.

Ever since I can remember we have had a big Halloween party, but since we moved out of the States some 15 years ago we have passed all our decorations on to our son and his family.

Over the years, they have acquired more Halloween stuff than you can imagine, luckily they have a place to store it. In fact, they have to use a forklift to put pallets of stuff up on racks in the shop, plus they have a room full of all the latex creatures in their house.

This year some new additions were a spaceship complete with aliens, flashing lights, and a fog machine under the spaceship for effect. Another new one was a couple of old skeletons watching a bony dancer on a pole.

Of course, there were coffins, hanging heads, hillbillies roasting a corpse, a train full of zombie babies being attacked by giant spiders, an electric chair (that really works), and many more things around the yard.

Another addition this year was an old couch they refinished, which made for the perfect spot to get your picture taken.

It’s always a great party seeing the decorations and the creativity everyone puts into their costumes. We are so happy that they continued the tradition and really get into the spirit of Halloween. After all, we are “The Adams Family”.

We had a great time in the Florida Keys, a lot of fun with the grandkids, and of course, the Halloween party where we got to see a lot of our friends. Now it was time to head back to the jungle to get back into our routine and relieve Amanda of garden duties.

Until next time remember…it’s a big world out there, get out and explore!

This October Kelley turned the big 60. We had some good plans to go do something, but it didn’t work out, so we came up with a couple alternatives. We started off her birthday weekend with a 4 day trip over to the Caribbean in Placencia. The plan was to enjoy some beach time and hopefully have at least one good day to get out on the water and do some fishing. Well to our surprise, every day the water was calm as can be and was that beautiful turquoise blue color.

So we called up a guide who we’d fished with before and headed out around 7 am. After about an hour’s boat ride in the beautifully calm Caribbean water, we were catching fish like crazy. Every time our live minnow hit the water we had a fish on. Just before 10 am we had caught more fish than we needed and decided to head back towards shore since the weather was really starting to heat up.

On the way back we stopped at Ranguana Caye, a small 2 acre resort island 20 miles off the coast. Since we’d been there a couple of times before, we knew there was a small beach bar there with ice-cold beer. We knew it was early, but we figured after all those fish we deserved a couple cold Belikins.

One of the gals working on the island came over and showed us a box of sea turtles. She said that in the last two days, they have released over 300 of them back to the sea from that tiny island. She told us that they gather them up when they hatch and release them at night so that the birds won’t eat them. That’s pretty good thinking.

After a couple of beers and visiting with some friends who just happened to be on the island for a day trip, it was time to head towards shore. As we were leaving the island there were some dolphins that came up next to the boat and followed us for a bit. It was the perfect day, glassy calm turquoise water, lots of fish, turtles, dolphins, and some friends on an island, all that and we were back on shore by noon. It was one of those days that dreams are made of.

Once we got back home I fired up the smoker and loaded it with barracuda steaks. We also threw in a couple of lobsters that will be used on a pesto and artichoke pizza. All of the fish we caught were filleted except for the barracuda, which I knew I was going to throw in the smoker.

Our friends Stephen & Raquel, along with his sister Anne and her husband Brian, came down for a first-time visit to Belize. They stayed with us up in the jungle for a few days where they explored a Mayan ruin, went cave tubing, and just checked out the area around us. We showed them our garden and later they sampled some of our dark chocolate, dragon fruit, and some banana-raspberry bread.

We went out to a couple of our favorite restaurants in town and one night we fired up the pizza oven and made a bunch of pizzas. Kelley also made some smoked barracuda dip for an appetizer while the pizza oven was heating up. Looks like they had a great time in the jungle, but now they were off to see the Caribbean side of Belize. They will be heading to the coast in Placencia to get their toes in the sand and enjoy all of the things that the beach has to offer. Hopefully, we’ll see them back down here again sometime.

Well, most of our dragon fruit this year seemed to ripen within a couple of weeks. Which was great, they happened to be ready when our guests were here so they could give some a try. This year most of them were deep red inside and a handful of them were white. We are sorta split on which ones taste better, I like the red ones better and Kelley likes the white ones better. Either way, they are both delicious, especially when chilled. I know they are sometimes hard to find and expensive in the States, but well worth trying if you’ve never had one.

We have been slacking on our vegetable garden this year, but we finally got a few things going. At this point, we have okra, kale, cilantro, cayenne peppers and poblano peppers. There are also some red Italian peppers and beefsteak tomatoes from some seeds that my sister sent down from her plants in Washington. The tomatoes and red pepper plants are looking very healthy at this point so we are hoping for a good harvest. We have never had these red Italian peppers before and it is almost impossible to find anything but Roma tomatoes down here, so we are looking forward to those. At this point, the Cayenne peppers and okra are needing to be picked daily. Kelley will eventually ferment the cayenne peppers and make a hot sauce out of them.

Our village of San Antonio just held its first Peanut Festival. After all, San Antonio is the “Peanut Capital of Belize”, so why not? It was held on a Friday and a Saturday, we chose to go there on Saturday afternoon which was our mistake. They must have had a lot of the vendors sell out on Friday as there weren’t really that many there on Saturday. Still, it was a big event for the village and I’m sure next year will be bigger and better.

This year we were lucky enough to be right in the path of the solar eclipse. Over on the coast of Belize, they had the perfect view with 100% blackout of the sun with a nice ring of fire around it. Since we were a little to the west we just barely missed seeing the complete solar eclipse, but it was still very impressive.  Most years will have two solar eclipses, but on average, it takes about 375 years for a total solar eclipse to happen again at the same location.

We won’t be here for the next total solar eclipse, but you could be here for your next vacation. Hope to see you soon.

We’ve seen a lot of very cool critters around the property, but this one might just top them all. The other day I checked my trail cam that I just put up in the driveway. It had only been up about a week, but I thought I’d give it a check anyway. Well to our surprise there was a good-sized cat walking down the driveway towards the garage. We think it was an Ocelot, but Ruben seems to think it was a juvenile jaguar. Either way, it was exciting to see a beautiful wild cat that size walking on our property.

We’ve got a driveway dinger to let us know if someone is coming in the yard or if there are any animals in the driveway. Usually, it’s just birds or squirrels or other small animals that we usually don’t get a chance to see. The other day it went off and there was a small fox walking towards the house. He must have heard or seen us as he turned back around and headed out the gate, but not before Kelley could snap a couple of pictures.

There are a couple of Rainbow Ameiva lizards that hang out around the deck out back. They’re medium size lizards that are very colorful and will let you get fairly close to them before they move away. They must be a mating pair as one is quite a bit larger than the other and they are usually seen together. The males can get up to 18″ and the females up to about 14″ in length.

A few days later the two Rainbow Ameiva lizards were out in the open mating. Kelley managed to get a bunch of pictures of what we assume is a rare sight. Soon the female will be laying her eggs and we will have more of these beautiful lizards around here to help keep the insect population down.

The other morning there was a lot of commotion in the trees just off the porch. Kelley grabbed her camera and spotted a bunch of Coatimundis in the trees. It was a big family of them with a lot of small young ones, we estimated there were somewhere around 25 of them. They eventually all came down a tree single file and were on their way. I think they were actually here showing their young ones where the best pineapples are for next season.

And we still have the two little Agouties that are roaming around the yard all day. As the sun goes down we will be sitting in the garage with lights and music going and it doesn’t seem to bother them at all. They will be twenty feet in front of us just doing their own thing. Plus we’ve been seeing a few Toucans around. It’s like having our own private zoo.

Well, we just picked the last of our pineapples of the season and they were delicious. Out of all the plants we have, about a quarter of them produced a pineapple this year. The rest of the plants are healthy and should produce next year. This season we ate a lot of fresh pineapples, froze some, and dehydrated a bunch. The pineapples might be gone till next year, but the good thing is that our dragon fruit is just starting to ripen.

It was time to pull out all the pineapple plants that were done and replace them with more slips and rooted tops. The slips should produce next year and the tops the year after that. After planting and replacing everything around the yard there were a lot of slips and tops left over. So we took them up to our other lot and planted them around the coconut trees. Now all I can picture is Pina Coladas in our future. At this point, we have somewhere around 300 plants that should produce for the next two years. As we were planting the new ones we noticed three plants with little pineapples developing, so maybe in a month or so, we will have a couple more.

We’re looking at getting a new wheelbarrow for when the pineapples are ready next year. It might be an overkill, but like they say “Go big or go home”.

A friend of ours called the other day and asked if we were interested in some wood planks he was selling. There were four 12′ x 18-24″ slabs of live edge cabbage bark lumber that had been drying for about four years, at a price we couldn’t resist. My thoughts were to square up one side, connect them together, and make a big table for the back patio. After Kelley and I unloaded them from the truck, we decided there is no way we would be able to move a large table by ourselves. Cabbage Bark is a very heavy, hard, durable wood that is used in the construction of bridges, train tracks, docks, boat building, and more.

If I decide to build a table I’ll just have to round up a bunch of people to help move it. When finished, Cabbage Bark is a beautiful piece of wood that will last forever. We have a small entertainment cabinet made from Cabbage Bark and it took four people to move it into the house.

Here’s a little food porn for you. We picked up 5 lbs of chicken wings the other day. They were going to get fried like we normally do, but I had an idea for something a little different. What if we brine them in the same brine we do for our bacon and then smoke them with some hickory chips? After four days in a bacon brine and a few hours in the smoker, it was time to see how this experiment turned out. They were great and the opinion was that we need to make these again. We had some leftovers for lunch the next day and tried to criticize them and decided that there was nothing we would do differently next time. So if you are looking to do something a little different with some chicken wings, definitely give this a try, I’m sure you’ll be impressed..

Where do you live? 🤣🤣🤣

Rural: If you stand naked on your front porch and no one can see you… it’s rural.

Urban: If you stand naked on your front porch and the neighbors ignore you… it’s urban.

Suburban: If you stand naked on your front porch and the neighbors call the cops on you… it’s suburban.

That’s about all for now, time to go sit on the porch and watch for more animals.

It’s hard to believe it’s already September. I know it’s been a while since we’ve posted anything, but there’s not a whole lot happening down here with us. Mostly we’ve just been working on long overdue projects, maintenance, and tending to all the plants around here. We have been having a little bit of rain here and there, just enough where we don’t have to water any of the plants, which is nice.

The past couple of weeks we’ve had a few friends stay with us. Ron was here to check on construction of their new house down in Placencia. Michael also joined him for a week of hanging out and a chance to see how the new house is coming along. Ron had some business to take care of up in our area, so they decided to spend the night with us instead of driving to and from Placencia all in one day. We had a few beers, cranked up the grill for some lamb kabobs and they were out of here first thing in the morning.

Next was Chuck & Roxana who are building just past us. Their house is just about done, in fact, this trip was the purchase of appliances, fans, water heater, etc. Five years ago we were one of the first to build in our little area and now out of the eight property owners, seven have built. A few of us have multiple 5-acre lots so we are still spread out quite a bit from each other.

Labor Day about 8:45 in the morning there was a very loud boom right near the house. It turns out our transformer at the end of our driveway blew. I went out to inspect it and no oil leaking or damage, but both fuses were off and it looked like what was left of maybe a nest. Anyway, we drove up the road where the phone would work and reported it to the electric company. Within 45 minutes there was a truck there replacing the fuses and removing what was left of a nest. We couldn’t have asked for better service than that.

It’s that time of year when our Cohune palms start dropping all their nuts. This means that the squirrels, agouti’s and I’m sure others, are out feasting on them and storing them away for later. Just about every day for the past couple of weeks there have been agoutis around the yard carrying nuts off into the bush. We think we have a family of them here as we keep seeing two larger ones and two very small ones. Besides all the cohune nuts around, we also throw our fruit and veggie scraps just off the porch. The agoutis really seem to like the pineapple and dragon fruit scraps that we toss out there.

The agouti is related to the Guinea pig, but is larger and has longer legs. They can get up to 14lbs and a length of 29″. They are excellent swimmers and can run for hours when being chased by predators. When they eat they always sit up on their hind legs and hold their food up to their mouth. They’re always fun to watch when they’re around eating and gathering nuts.

We get a lot of butterflies around here, in fact, there are at least three butterfly farms within a few miles from us. It’s always great to see the beautiful blue morphos or bright orange ones and so many others. It must be that time of year as we have a lot of butterflies around here currently. There are quite a few that have jet-black wings with a different solid color. Some are black with red, others are blue or orange. The other day this one that was a neon greenish-yellow landed on our big toucan out front and Kelley managed to get a few pictures.

This is the time when we see the golden orb spiders around the yard, mostly because it’s their mating season. They are a big colorful spider that weaves a golden web and are a sight to see. They can get up to 2″ not including their legs, which in my opinion makes them a big spider. The venom is relatively harmless and rarely causes more than slight redness and temporary localized pain. Their webs are gold in color, extremely strong, and can be between 1-2 meters in size. It’s awesome to see one of these wicked-looking spiders in a big golden web, but at the same time also a little scary, especially if you have a fear of spiders.

The other day we were on our way up to Pine Ridge to meet some friends for pizza and a few cold beers. On the side of the road eating something was a King Vulture. They are a fairly rare sight to see, in fact, we have only seen a few in all the time we’ve been here. They are a big beautiful almost all white vulture with black on their wings and tail and a red head. They can have a wing span of up to 7′ and unlike other birds, there is no difference in plumage and little in size between males and females.

We just finished making up another big batch of pastrami. Deli-style meats are just about impossible to find in Belize unless they are imported. There are a couple of the bigger meat companies that make round lunchmeat-style ham and such, but not deli-style meats. Who doesn’t love a good hot pastrami on rye with some melted swiss cheese, which is why we chose to make our own. It’s a long process that takes around three weeks by the time the meat is cured, smoked, sliced, and packaged, but very well worth it.

It’s looking like a lot of our dragon fruit buds got pollinated so we should have quite a few this year. The big flowers bloom only at night and depend on bats, moths and other insects to pollinate the flowers. It takes about a month from the time the flower blooms until it is ready to pick. Most of our dragon fruit is deep purple, but we do have a couple of plants that have white flesh.

If you have never tried dragon fruit you don’t know what you are missing. Kelley and I love to have them for breakfast right out of the fridge. They are one of our favorite fruits that we have growing around here. Besides just eating them plain, they make for some very good and colorful margaritas. I even had a piece of cheesecake the other day with a dragon fruit puree topping and it was great.

Like I said, not a whole lot of anything exciting happening around here, but we are getting stuff done. Hope to see you down here sometime.

We just got back from a quick trip to Arizona for a follow-up visit on my cataract surgery and to spend a little more time with the grandkids. But, the main purpose of this trip was to head up to the pines in Pinetop, Arizona to catch a couple days of music with some of our favorite musicians.

Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers were playing their annual show at the Lion’s Den in cool Pinetop, AZ. Besides Roger, his special guests were The Jons, The Cole Trains, and Drew Cooper. There were three shows, Friday night, Saturday night and then an afternoon Borracho Sunday show which was a lot of fun. There were a lot less people there on Sunday, plus the bands were having fun and the beer and tequila were flowing.

Our friend and neighbor Amanda had become a big fan of Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers but had never seen them in person. When the dates for the Pinetop show were announced, it was right about the same time as Amanda’s birthday. So road trip it was.

With Pinetop being such a small venue, it was much easier to approach and talk to the musicians between sets. I believe the highlight and most memorable moment for Amanda was getting to meet Roger Clyne and get a picture with him.

It was a great trip up to Arizona and especially up to Pinetop for the shows. We met up with a lot of friends that we haven’t seen in a while and even met some new ones. I’m sure this is a trip that Amanda won’t soon forget.

Now Back To Belize

Our cacao trees are loaded with blossoms this year like we have never seen. Thousands of flowers per tree, from the ground up to the tallest branches and everywhere in between. At this point, we have nine trees that are flowering. If just a small percentage of the blooms take, we will be very busy processing and making chocolate in the coming months. Plus we just planted a bunch more three-foot trees that we grew from seeds. I’m not sure what we were thinking about planting more trees, but can you really ever have too much chocolate?

Kelley has been busy making chocolate bars from the cacao beans we picked earlier this year. We still have about 25 more pounds of dried beans that need to be roasted and processed. It’s a long process, but well worth it in the end.

With all this chocolate we are always looking for other ways to use it. Recently Kelley dipped some dehydrated mangos and pineapple in dark chocolate. My favorite is the mango, but then again there’s nothing wrong with the pineapple.

A friend of ours gave us some avocados off their tree. Besides all the basic things to do with avocados, we were looking for something a little different. So we found a recipe for some chocolate avocado brownies. We have a lot of chocolate and now some avocados, so it seemed like the perfect thing to do with them. They actually turned out really good and moist. You would not know they were made with avocados if no one told you.

Dark chocolate has many health benefits, one being that it is full of flavonols which is a huge benefit for your heart. Flavonols are related to the production of nitric oxide, which relaxes your blood vessels and improves blood flow. In turn, this also lowers blood pressure. Due to their antioxidant properties, flavonols are also beneficial in fighting cell damage relating to aging. This along with other healthy benefits, I feel good about having a little dark chocolate treat every day. Of course, this is only for dark chocolate of at least 70% cacao, whereas milk chocolate is usually 10% cacao, dried milk, sugar and other ingredients making it not so good for you.

Last year a bunch of our coffee plants lost all their leaves and seemed to have died out. I trimmed them back and left them there to see what they would do, and now they are coming back. I believe it was our Robusta plants that died back, but whatever affected them, didn’t affect our Arabica plants that are doing great.

The dragon fruit is doing really well this year. I’ve been looking up how to get the plants to produce more fruit. I don’t know if what I’m doing is working or not, but we have a lot of buds this year. Hopefully, they will get pollinated and we will end up with a bunch of dragon fruit.

The star fruit tree is producing, even though we lost a bunch to the wind and rains. The custard apple tree is starting to set fruit and of course, we still have pineapples, and there are bananas throughout the year. Overall, all the fruit trees are doing well and we usually always have some type of fresh fruit available around here.

When we get our pork bellies from the butcher they always come with the ribs attached, that’s just how he sells them. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, as we love smoked or grilled pork ribs. We make a lot of bacon so that means there’s going to be a lot of ribs. Usually, we will cook up a bunch of ribs and throw them in the freezer for another night. Sometimes when we are getting too many racks we will invite friends over for a BBQ. Either way, if pork ribs are a “by-product” of making bacon, I can definitely live with that!

Well, off to get about 500 seedlings started so they can go in the ground next month. Always something to keep us busy around here. Have a great day and hope to see you soon!

It’s already July, and here in Belize, that means lobster season opens and it’s time for Lobsterfest! Belize has three main Lobsterfest celebrations which usually last a long weekend. The oldest one being on the island of Caye Caulker which started in 1994  as a way to celebrate the beginning of the season. The longest celebration, which started in 2007, is in San Pedro which usually goes on for more than a week. And then there is the one in Placencia, which started in 1997, as a way for the town to raise money in the slower summer season. It doesn’t matter which one you choose, as they all have their own separate vibe. But, one thing they do have in common is lobster, beer, live music, dancing, local art and the promise of a good time.

We have been to a few Lobsterfests in Belize and this year we were headed to Placencia for the festival. Ron and Rhonda were going to be there to check on the construction of their new house, plus some other friends Steve and Denise were down from the States for a first-time visit to Belize.

The first morning in Placencia, we started off with lobster omelets all smothered with cheese and served with a side of fry jacks. Of course, with it being Lobsterfest, every restaurant had its own special dishes that included lobster. A lot of the restaurants were actually closed for the weekend so that they could set up a makeshift kitchen over at Lobsterfest.

Once we worked our way over to Lobsterfest there were all kinds of food booths set up cooking lobster, just about any way you could imagine. Of course, everyone had whole lobsters on the grill, but there were also jerked lobster, lobster egg rolls, lobster kabobs, lobster fritters, ceviche and so much more. The one thing we noticed was the size of the lobsters this year, some of them were huge!

Besides all the food there were also all kinds of artists there showcasing their work. There were vendors with paintings, wood carvings, jewelry, etc., something for everyone. One of the wood carvers even had a giant carved wooded bottle of Belikin beer, but when I asked him how much, he didn’t want to give me a price.

Of course, there were beer tents everywhere and lots of music. One of our favorites was the group playing the steel drums. It’s amazing how effortless they make it look even when they are playing one with each hand. Our least favorite was probably the loud, live music and DJ’s till 5:00 am, but that’s probably just because we are not as young as we use to be.

Below is the special lobster menu from one of our favorite beachfront bars. They really know how to showcase the lobster. If you are planning on visiting Belize and are hoping to eat or even catch your own lobster, remember that the season runs from July to the end of February. Otherwise…No Lobster For You!

After Lobsterfest, Steve & Denise still had some more beach time in Placencia before they headed up to our place for a few days. Unfortunately, when they got here we had a couple days of rain, so that stopped them from seeing some of the natural beauty around here such as caves, waterfalls, Mayan ruins, and other things. Still, that didn’t stop us from having a good time, we took them to a few of our favorite restaurants and bars to hang out and to meet some of our friends. We invited a few friends over for a BBQ and even ordered in pizza one night. That’s right, I said ordered pizza.

There is a guy close to us that is a pizza chef at one of the restaurants in town. He recently built his own pizza oven at his house and is delivering pizzas on Sundays. Whoever thought we could be sitting in the jungle and have wood-fired pizza delivered to us? It wasn’t too long ago that we didn’t have water, electricity, internet, or even a decent road to our place, and now we can get pizza delivered with just one call. I can’t wait for football season to start up and be sitting in the garage on a Sunday, watching the game with a cold beer and then ordering up a pizza.

Now that we got the critters to stop eating the pineapples, they are ripening quickly. They are all nice big and juicy pineapples, but the ones that are growing more in the shade close to the house are a lot smaller. I’m calling these personal pineapples, you could almost just peel it and eat it as you would an apple. Or you could core it out and make mini virgin pina colada for the kids. Either way, it sure is a cute little pineapple.

We had more apple bananas ready recently. We ate what we could, dehydrated a bunch, and made some more nice cream. This time we added chocolate and some caramel to the banana nice cream. Down here it’s hard to find caramel syrup or little squares etc. For the most part, it comes in a can. The cans just have a white label on them that says caramel, and that’s it. I guess when you boil a can of sweetened condensed milk for a couple of hours it turns into caramel, who knew? I was really surprised when we opened that plain white label can and it was full of great caramel. I assume there’s someone here that is turning sweetened condensed milk into caramel, re-labeling it, and getting it into the stores.

If you have been looking at our Facebook page for Wicked Toucan you know we have been making and selling all kinds of meats. Our breakfast sausage is a big hit down here, and we have always offered it in patties. Well, recently we decided that we should also offer it in links, so now there is an option, patties or links.

Back when we first started setting up areas around the yard, we arranged some downed tree logs to form a small area where we could plant flower or herb seeds. Well, the wood finally rotted away, so we decided to make it a little more attractive than just some logs that would eventually rot. It’s just some cinder blocks we painted and some fence poles, nothing too elaborate.  But, once we get some colorful wildflowers growing in there it should look pretty good.

I’ve mentioned before that we have a lot of different types of orchids around here. We have a few Catasetum Integerrimum Orchids, which are some of the larger ones that will bloom once or twice a year. When they do bloom they attract the Belted Orchid Bee, which is about an inch long, yellow and jet black. The only time we see these bees is when this orchid blooms. From what I could find out, the male bees are attracted to certain orchids not to gather nectar, which these orchids don’t possess, but rather to collect fragrant compounds which are then used to attract the female bees. The male and female bees will visit other flowers to obtain the nectar that they need, but we’ve only ever seen them on this one orchid.

The peppers and tomatoes are all done down on our other lot, and the corn is just about ready for harvest. In the next day or so the soil will be tilled up again and ready to plant. Ruben has thousands of seedlings that are already a few inches tall and ready to go in the ground. I’m not sure what all he has planted, but I do know he is planting more green chilis. Whatever it is, we will have more fresh veggies in a few months.

That’s about what’s happening down here this July. Hope everyone is having a great summer and maybe we’ll see you soon.

We were just up in the states this past March to see about getting my cataract fixed and get a lipoma about 3″ long removed from my neck. After a lot of Dr. visits and testing they said it couldn’t be done that trip. So we scheduled some surgery appointments for June. I went in on a Wednesday for the neck surgery and then Thursday morning for the cataract fix. Everything went very smoothly and I can now see like I haven’t seen in years, plus I don’t have a big lump in my neck anymore.

Of course while in the States we got to spend a lot of time with the grandkids since they were on summer break. There were games of poker, Yahtzee, and a bunch of Lego time with the grandkids. For the most part though, they just played together and entertained each other. They have a lot of electric cars and bikes to ride around the yard, so they were constantly on the go. On the weekends with the temps hovering around 100º there was also some good refreshing pool time.

The last time we were in the States I helped my son get his ’62 convertible Nova running. This trip it was time to get the ’65 Lincoln fired up. He had dropped a built Ford 460 SVO motor in it a while back that he pulled out of a truck he had. The motor hadn’t been fired up in a long time, but after tinkering with it for a day, that big block roared to life. I think he now has a major motivation to get that Hot Rod Lincoln back on the road, and I can’t wait to go for a ride with him.

While we were up in the States one of our favorite stand-up comedians (Brad Williams) was doing a few shows at a local comedy club. If you are not familiar with him, you need to check him out, he’s hysterical. Brad Williams is a little on the shorter side, so he talks about and makes fun of things that have happened to him in his daily life. He has a couple specials out on DVD, Netflix, or whatever, called “Fun Size” and “Daddy Issues”. I guarantee you will not stop laughing.

A few days after we got back home the rains started, which meant it was time for the annual invasion of the flood flies. Flood flies are termites that leave the nest looking for a new place to set up shop.

When the first rains come after the dry season we will see a few of them flying around in the evening. Once we get a good rain is when they come out thick. I mean shut the doors, close the windows, and turn out the lights. It’s usually only for one night and only lasts for a few hours, but they shed their wings and leave a mess for weeks to come. Luckily everything we have built has been with hardwood and the termites seem to leave us alone.

A few years ago we bought some coffee plants to see how they would grow in the shade. Well, when they bloomed it turned out that they were not coffee, but Jasmine. They are still nice green plants with white flowers and sometimes a great scent. All these tropical plants were new to us when we moved here, so we just had to trust the guy at the nursery and sometimes he got them wrong.

A while back I ordered up a bunch of Hatch Chili seeds from New Mexico. Ruben got some planted down on our other lot and they did quite well. They didn’t get as big as I was hoping, but there were a lot of them and the flavor was there. The picture below is just the first picking, we still had a couple more to go.

We have been roasting the chilis to freeze and Kelley has been canning some in jars, plus we are also dehydrating the smaller ones to make a green chili salt mixture.

A lot of the chilis were starting to turn red, so we separated them and let them continue to ripen. Once ripened we dried them and now Kelley can rehydrate them to use in chili, enchilada sauce, pozole, birria, and a bunch of other delicious dishes. The reason they were all picked at once was that the plants were starting to die out. Plus Ruben was ready to get another crop in, but come this fall he will replant the chilis again.

There are a lot of wild orchids around here, and when we find one we usually try to relocate it closer to the house. Recently there was a wild one growing on a tree just off the back patio. There was nothing special about it, just two small leaves about 4″ long. It finally got a small shoot and produced two flowers. The flowers were only about a 1/2″ in height, but they were amazing. If you look closely you can see all kinds of images. I see a fairy with a yellow face, two big eyes, nose, mouth, and a purple hairdo. I also see a black cat with eyes and two paws just under the purple. Kelley says she sees a devil and an Oriental person. Can you see any of these, or let us know what you can see?

Since I’m talking about plants, the electric fence seems to be working well. We haven’t had any critters eating the pineapples in a few weeks now and we are actually starting to harvest some. In case you were wondering which one of us would be zapped by the fence first, it was Kelley. She was straddling the wire picking a pineapple and the machete in her other hand touched the wire.

There has been a Jaguar spotted in the hood about a half mile from us. It’s believed that it took one of the neighbor’s small sheep. The authorities have set up cameras to try and get some pictures, and if that pans out then they will try to trap it for relocation. There have also been vampire bats around seen biting the neighbor’s chickens. Just some of the excitement of living in the jungle.

In reality, the chance of us seeing a jaguar in the wild is slim to none. Although that would be a bucket list item if we ever got to see one. And as for the vampire bats, they usually only land on animals, unless you choose to lay on the ground and play dead. If for some reason I start drinking Bloody Mary’s, sleeping all day, and only active at night, I’m sure Kelley will let you know.

Hope to see you soon.

This June it’s been five years since we hopped that plane and headed off for our new adventures in Belize. The casita was just finished, and we now had a small place in the jungle to call home.  The main house was just getting started and would not be finished and ready to move into until the first of the year. I’ve got to admit, it was a little challenging living in such a small place with all the rain and construction workers here every day, but it was all part of our new adventure.

When we started there was no road into the property, no water, no electricity, and no internet, but here it is five years later and we are doing well. I know some of you had your doubts about how long we would last down here, but we’re still here learning and experiencing new things almost daily and that’s what it’s all about.

It’s mango season! You don’t realize how much you really love mangos until they’re not available. If you can find any out of season, they are very expensive. Mango season in Belize usually runs from about May to September. We are lucky enough to have friends who have big mango trees on their property with excess mangos. Amanda brought over a bag of about 50 mangos from a friend of ours the other day, and they said there’s more when we are ready for them. Besides eating them fresh, we are also dehydrating them and cleaning some to freeze. That way when there are no mangos available, Kelley can pull some from the freezer and make a mango cobbler or something else delicious.

We actually have a bunch of mango trees that we planted around here, but they have yet to produce. I know someday, we will be the ones giving away mangos to all our friends, but in the meantime, we will gladly take whatever our friends are sharing.

Finally found some time to cure another ham. We told our butcher that we wanted a 15 lb. or so pork shoulder. We didn’t look at it, just put it in the freezer until it was time to cure. Turns out it wasn’t the piece of meat I was expecting, but it still turned out great. We brined it for about a week, then smoked it with some apple wood and it turned out very moist and flavorful. Kelley thought it was probably one of the best ones we’ve done so far. So, we decided to share it and have a few friends over one afternoon for some cold ham sandwiches and a game of darts.

From what we have read, Belize has four types of Trogons. Kelley has gotten pictures of three of them right from our front porch. We have seen so many different birds around the yard, and that’s only when we are out and about. I can’t imagine how many we’ve missed by not being outside actually looking for them. This area where we live really is a birder’s paradise.

We love seeing the coatimundis around here, but they are really starting to get on our nerves. Almost daily they have been taking a pineapple off our plants and eating it. We know we need to share the fruits with the animals, but at this point, they are taking more than their fair share.

So far here’s what I’ve done to try to detour them. I built wire cages for the pineapples, but they were just pulling the cages over and taking the pineapples. Then I looked up how to keep critters away from your garden, and spraying vinegar around was supposed to work because critters don’t like the smell. That didn’t work, so someone suggested placing mothballs around the plants and that might help keep them away because of the smell. Nope, still not working. So now we have resorted to putting up an electric fence to see if that will stop them.

We really love seeing the coatimundis and other critters around the yard. But when it takes a year or so to grow a single pineapple and they are taking them almost daily, it gets a little frustrating. I know it probably would have been cheaper to just go buy a bunch of pineapples instead of an electric fence, but that’s not the point.

Some friends from Cholla (where we used to live in Mexico) showed up the other day. Ron and Teresa and a few of their friends were down here for a first-time visit to Belize. The first week of their trip they hopped a catamaran in Placencia and cruised around doing a little island hopping. After that, they headed to our neck of the woods to check out the jungle. While up here they had a chance to explore Mayan ruins, waterfalls, caves, and much more. After a few days in the jungle, it was off to San Pedro for some more beach time. It looked like they were having a great time all around the country and hopefully, they will all be back again sometime.

The dry season usually ends in May and this year is no exception. For the past couple of weeks, we have been getting some rain every few days or so. Not a ton of rain, but just enough that you can see all the plants have a lot of new growth on them. There are tons of new leaves on all our fruit trees and the grass around the yard is filling in nicely.

Yes, we are now in the rainy season, but don’t let that stop you from thinking about coming down. There are plenty of beautiful sunny days during this season. The rain will usually just last for a little while unless there is a big storm present. Besides, this is the time of year when everything is at its greenest. Hope to see you down here soon.

After a bunch of little mini vacations over to the beach this year and a trip to the States it was time to buckle down and get some stuff done around here.

We finally found time to get the railing painted on the main house. This was supposed to happen a few months ago right after we painted the railing on the casita, but things came up. Because of the intricate design of the railing, it was almost impossible to sand it all down and varnish it again, so we opted to just paint it. After a good pressure washing and a bunch of scraping it was ready for a coat of paint. We are hoping that the paint will hold up, plus it adds a little splash of color around here. Next up is to sand the porch down and get another coat of clear on it.

A couple of the trees we cut down a few weeks ago were hardwood. It was time to get them cut to size so they will fit on our log splitter. Once they dry and we get them split they will be perfect for the pizza oven and the smoke house. Not sure what type of wood they are, as our friends only knew the Mayan name for them. Either way, Ruben and the guy who cut them down said that they were very good for cooking.

We had given the meat making a break for the past couple of months, but now we are back at it. We have been making bacon, summer sausage, bratwurst sausage, Italian sausage, and breakfast sausage, usually at least 20lb batches at a time. As soon as we get the word out of what we have, it’s usually gone in a few days. So besides everything else around here, this is keeping us pretty busy.

It was time to get back to making chocolate again. At this point, we have around 25 lbs of dried cacao that needs to be roasted. We are making 4 lbs of dark chocolate at a time and have been flavoring it with mint, orange, or raspberry. We even tried some with our habanero salt sprinkled on top, which was actually pretty good. So far we are just eating it and letting friends sample some, but the way the plants are producing this might become another Wicked Toucan offering.

Yes, we are still getting plenty of our little sweet apple bananas. We have enough banana bread made in the freezer and still eat them for breakfast almost daily. So I thought I’d make some banana nice cream. I found a recipe where you just slice and freeze the bananas and then put them in a food processor and it is supposed to taste like soft-serve ice cream. I was skeptical at first because I’m an ice cream lover. It needed a little milk in the food processor to help get it going and then I added some of our homemade raspberry chocolate. It turned out better than I expected, super creamy and it really taste like ice cream. Even after some time in the freezer, it tasted like hard ice cream. And the best part is that it’s really healthy.

The other day a lone Coatimundi (commonly called “Quash” in Belize) was wandering through the yard. He didn’t seem to mind that we were on the porch talking and taking pictures of him. It’s possible that he was a male out looking for a female as this is the beginning of their mating season which coincides with the start of the rainy season.

We watched him wander around the yard for a while sniffing everything he could. Then we saw what we had suspected all along, he was the one eating our pineapples. Usually, the critters will wait until the pineapples are about ripe to dig into them, but recently they have been taking bites out of small immature ones.

I have recently made about 75 chicken wire cages to fit over the pineapples to hopefully detour them from just taking a bite out of them. I know we will lose some of the pineapples to the animals once they ripen, but they’re at least a good month away from that point.

The pineapple cage update. A week after I put the cages on the pineapples here comes a coatimundi strolling through the yard again. He goes up to a pineapple with a cage on it and just pulls the cage and breaks the pineapple right off the plant. It’s like he was going to carry it home all packaged up in a wire basket. So now I’m trying a vinegar spray around the plants to see if that detours them. I sure hope so, because we really love pineapples and it would be nice if we got a few for ourselves.

Of the 450 or so species of birds in Belize, we have seen a lot of them. Yet every so often there will be one in the yard that we have never seen before, and if we’re lucky Kelley will get a picture of it. This time it was a Red Legged Honey Creeper and it’s mate. It’s not too often you can get a picture of a bird and its mate together. The Honey Creeper is a fairly small bird, the male is bright blue and black with red legs and the female is more of a green and white with a little blue in her bill. There are still hundreds of birds in Belize that we haven’t seen yet, so every time we see one we haven’t seen before it’s pretty exciting.

There have been a lot of Toucans around the yard lately. One day there were seven Keel-Billed Toucans in the tree above the casita. The next day there were two Keel-Billed Toucans and seven Aracari Toucans in that same tree all at the same time. Kelley got a picture of them all together, but they are too small to really see in the big picture. Here is a single close-up of one of the Aracari Toucans.

Ruben’s got our other piece of property looking like a real farm. He’s down there every day, pulling weeds, adjusting the irrigation, setting up trellises for the tomatoes, and making sure everything is good for the best harvest possible. Currently, there is cilantro, bush beans, Roma tomatoes, beef steak tomatoes, cabbage, habaneros, and green chilis. And of course over 40 fruit trees that we put in last year.

Recently one of the furniture stores we buy from advertised that they had some Adirondack chairs for sale. So we went and checked them out and they were very well constructed, comfortable, all made from hardwoods and they were only $50usd each. We grabbed a couple of them and brought them home. They were fine with their natural finish, but we decided that we would paint them to add a little more color around here. These are great for just sitting around relaxing with a cold drink in hand, (if we ever find time to do that).

Well, that’s the haps around here the past couple of weeks. Come on down for a visit, that might actually give us a chance to relax and use these chairs.

It was back to the beach once again. This was our fourth trip to the coast this year, but when it’s only a couple hour drive, why not? This was a trip that we had planned a few months ago for our 39th wedding anniversary. This time it was off to Placencia where we met up with Ron who was down for a few days checking on the construction of their new home.

One of the days we decided that it should be a pool day, so we thought we’d go over to The Other Side, a place we’d never been to before. The Other Side is on a lagoon island, and the only way to get there is by boat. They have a small resort and a pool with a swim-up bar. To get there all you have to do is stand on the dock across the way, give a wave to the bar and they send a boat over for you. Pretty cool!

It’s a great place to soak up some sun and have a few cold drinks while watching boats go by. When you are ready to leave, just pay your tab and the boat will take you back across the water. They don’t have to worry too much about anyone skipping out on their tab, as the little island is surrounded by water. Plus, there’s also a sign there that might discourage anyone thinking about swimming across.

After a bunch of trips over to the coast, the weather finally cooperated with us, and we were able to get out and do a little fishing. A friend of ours in Placencia told us about her husband who is a fishing guide, so we decided to give him a try. We opted for just a half-day fishing since the weather was pretty warm. We left by 8:30, drove about 22 miles out to an island where the captain gathered a bunch of live bait. After that, it was another few miles out to the fishing spot. As soon as our bait hit the water we had a bite or a fish on. After couple hours we were out of bait and had caught more fish than we needed.  It was definitely one of those great fishing days, and we were back to the dock in time for lunch.

The hundred-quart ice chest on the boat was just about full of the fish we decided to keep. We caught barracuda, mackerel, snapper, and jacks. We decided to just keep a snapper and a jack because that was more than we needed to have a couple of good fish frys once we got home. Our captain definitely knew where the fish were and what he was doing. Next time we are in Placencia and the weather is good, we will be booking another trip with Darrel.

A few days after we got back from Placencia, Darren flew in for a week’s visit. This was a perfect time to invite a few friends over for a fish fry with some of that fish we just caught. We cooked up some of the Jack and also some conch. Everyone brought a side and it was all very delicious. Plus there is still enough fish in the freezer for a couple more fish fry’s.

Of course, the day we decided to cook the fish was one of the hottest days of the year (104º), but there was also a storm moving in later that night. The storm arrived just as we were eating, with wind, rain, and the power going off and on. Luckily the power would only go out for a short burst, as when it did, it got really dark in the jungle. Some places around us even reported good size hail falling, which is very unusual for Belize.

Bananas are still doing good around here. About every other week for the past month or so we have been picking a bunch. We give some away, eat what we can and of course, Kelley is making banana-raspberry bread. At this point, the plants still have more bunches at different stages. It looks like we will have a steady supply of bananas for the next few months.

This seems to be the time of year when the wild Passionflowers are blooming around here. If you can catch the flowers when they open, they are probably one of the most beautiful ones you’ll ever see. Not all Passionflower vines produce fruit, but some of the ones we have around here will. We have tried the fruit in the past and decided that it’s better to just leave them for the animals to have. Of course, like most of the plants around here, there are many health benefits associated with the passion fruit.

On our first bunch of flowers on the vanilla vines, it looks like only two took. Not for lack of effort, Kelley was out there every morning as the flowers would open, pollinating them by hand. Even though there are only two vanilla beans at this point, they are our first and that is exciting to us. Hopefully, next time they bloom maybe some of the other vines will decide they should too.

It’s been a while since we’ve cleared out any big trees around the house. After we originally cleared, all the trees that were in the background decided it was their turn to start growing big and taking over the yard. So we finally found time and made arrangements for some professional tree trimmers to come take a few down. In just a few hours they had five trees down and all cleaned up.

Can you guess what this picture is? No, it’s not some type of strange looking UFO or a bug on the camera lens. It’s a Toucan in mid-flight with his wings tucked back. Kelley has taken a lot of great pictures of Toucans around here, but this one is just a little different view of these magnificent birds.

On Cinco de Mayo, 5th month, 5th day, 5 years ago we officially moved out of Mexico. Our home in Cholla Bay which we purchased on Cinco de Mayo 24 years prior, was now somebody else’s dream home.

Over the years we owned the home in Mexico, we met a lifetime of friends, and had some of the best times and adventures anyone could ever imagine. We just felt it was time for new adventures in our life, so off to Belize it was. Kelley and I are very grateful to have lived in Mexico and now in Belize, seeing and experiencing things that most people never will.

Speaking about Mexico, it’s amazing what a small world it really is. We met a gal in Placencia who said she was moving to Mexico. We asked where and she said Puerto Peñasco. Then we were talking to another couple in the pool, she said her stepdad lived in Cholla Bay and used to buy fishing tackle from me. Then, the guy who owns Big Titty Rum said that back in the day he spent his summers as a teenager running around Cholla Bay. It really is a small world once you get out and start talking to people.

Well, we’ve got about another month of hot, humid weather down here before it cools off again and we get some rains. In the meantime, lots of water on our plants and keeping ourselves well hydrated is the main goal. Come June the weather should be great through the end of the year, hope to see you down here.

If you have been trying to comment on recent blogs and can’t, it is now fixed. Somehow the setting that allowed comments was turned off. So all is good now.

It was time for a visit stateside to see about getting a cataract fixed in one of my eyes. After a few doctor visits and consultations, a surgery date was all set, but not for a few more months. It looks like it will be another visit up north come summertime and hopefully, I’ll be able to see a whole lot better when it’s all said and done.

It was great to see friends and family and especially the grandkids and how big they are getting. They are so full of energy, constantly running around or flying around the yard on some wheeled device. While we were there they got irrigation in their yard, which left them with a pond for about a week. This meant that every day the ducks would fly in and swim around in the water. After school the kids would go out and toss bread or popcorn to them, practically getting them to eat out of their hands. It was their own private duck pond right in their backyard.

While we were there I had a great time helping my son work on his 62 Nova convertible. The car hadn’t been on the road in over 20 years, but after getting it running, a complete brake job, and a new fuel tank, it was able to take a few laps around the block. The only drawback to helping him with the car was that I tweaked my back and my sciatic kicked in. Usually, when this happens it clears up in a few days, but this time it held on for over a week. So much that it postponed our trip back home for an extra week.

One of the days there was a small “coffee and cars” gathering going on not far from the kid’s house. In case you don’t know what a coffee and cars gathering is, it’s where a bunch of locals gets together in a parking lot at a local coffee shop for a few hours and show off their cars.

There were some nice old-school hot rods there as well as some very nice older semi-stock vehicles. That is one thing that I really miss living in Belize, seeing classic cars and hotrods almost daily.

When we got back from the states my back and leg were still not 100% from my sciatica.  So, after checking the house and yard for a couple days we decided that sitting on a beach and soaking up some vitamin sea would be good for it. Being Easter weekend and short notice, all the rooms in Hopkins and Placencia were booked. San Pedro on the other hand had a lot more options. We had no problem finding a room and booking a flight over to the island. So before we knew it, we were sitting at our favorite beach bar drinking a cold one and enjoying the cool Caribbean breeze.

We found a great room at The Isla Bonita Yacht Club overlooking the pool and the Caribbean. We had nothing planned, just chill’n out and enjoying ourselves. It was just what we needed to recharge ourselves for a few days. And it worked like a charm, we were both feeling good and ready to get back to it once we got home.

Now back to the jungle

After being away from here it’s always great to get home and see how much all the plants have grown. Thanks to Amanda for keeping the garden watered while we were gone. The first batch of green beans was ready to pick and we got enough for a couple meals. We also picked another big bucket of cacao pods, some custard apples and cut down another bunch of bananas.

Our pineapples are going nuts this year. There are at least 65 pineapples on plants currently, with more popping out weekly. At this point, only about 1/4 of the plants have fruit on them. Once they ripen, we will be enjoying fresh pineapples daily and giving some to friends. For the majority of the pineapples, we will be dehydrating them so we can enjoy them throughout the year.

For the first time, it looks like one of our vanilla vines is flowering. Vanilla in its natural environment is pollinated by a small stingless bee. Due to the particular anatomy of the flowers, pollination rates in the wild are low. In cultivation, vanilla must be pollinated by hand, in the early morning, while the new flowers are still fresh. Kelley looked up a few videos on how to pollinate a vanilla flower, so every morning as a new flower opens, she is out there hand pollinating it. Now we just need to wait and see what happens.

Since the weather is warming up that means a lot of the plants are starting to flower. My favorite tropical plant is the heliconia or lobster claw. We have a lot of these