Not much has been happening around here since our last post. Just small projects and tending to all the plants around the yard. That’s all about to change, as we have a very busy February and March coming up. We have friends coming down who have never been here, and we are very excited to show them our little piece of paradise. Then after they leave, Darren is coming back down for ten days with a friend. Then while Darren’s here our other neighbors, Craig & Monica show up for a couple weeks. Amanda’s also got some friends staying up here for a couple days. After that our other neighbors, Chuck & Roxi, who built next to us will be here for a couple weeks. During that time, we will also be heading to Placencia twice. One to show our friends around and do some fishing and another to catch an end-of-season a Lobster-bash. While in Placencia, we’ll also meet up with another friend who will be down there for a couple of weeks. It’s going to be a fun and exciting six weeks or so. I just hope our livers can hold out.😎

Our local produce market asked us if we had any whole cacao pods we were willing to sell. We told him that there was a bunch ready and we could supply him with some. He said that he would like a dozen, then he said 2 dozen, so we ended up taking him 3 dozen nice big cacao pods. He was very impressed with the quality and size of our cacao. Then he told us that there is only one other person in the area who grows cacao, but theirs are small and don’t compare to the ones we brought him.

Our produce guy has a customer out on Caye Caulker who needed some for a beauty product they make. We had no idea how to price them, because we’ve never seen whole cacao pods for sale. We let him name the price because he knew what he was going to sell them for, and we were very pleased with what he offered us. I’m thinking this year we might just sell most of our cacao pods to the market instead of making chocolate with them.

Not to worry though, we still have somewhere around 40lbs of dried cacao beans ready to be roasted and made into chocolate.  Because we hadn’t made any chocolates since Christmas, it was time to make up some more. Kelley made a bunch of dark chocolate bars, small candies with craisins, and some with peanuts. We also found some small snack size coconut flavored wafer cookies at the market and thought they would be good covered in chocolate. They turned out good, sorta like a coconut-chocolate, Kit-Kat bar. If we can ever find these wafer cookies again, we will be making more.

It looks like it’s time to fire up the grill and toss some steaks on. One of the logs on our new paths busted out with an abundance of oyster mushrooms. These mushrooms are our favorites, especially when sautéed in butter with some onions, then topped on a steak. I guess we’ll be taking a hike around the property and see if we can find some more.

It had been a while since we bought any new paintings, so we commissioned our friend Jorge Landero to paint us another one. Right above the TV we decided to move a few small paintings we had and get a bigger one of a toucan. We told him the size it needed to be and what we wanted it to look like, and he did a fantastic job. Now when we are watching TV, it looks as if we are looking out of one of our windows.

We also had him paint a mermaid for our friends Ron & Rhonda down in Placencia. He did a great job on it with all the bright colors and it should look great in their beach house. With all the long, wavy hair on the mermaid, we even think it looks a little like Rhonda.

It has been on and off rain for quite a while now, but we are finally getting some sunny days. So we decided to start working on our new garden trails again. It was time to get the mushrooms that I made into the ground and see how they looked. We think it adds a little color and a whimsical feel to the garden.

Last year we decided to make an arch over the trail that heads out towards the back area. We searched the property for some good, hard vines to use for the arch, then attached them to a couple of trees over the pathway. We put some variegated philodendrons along with some thunbergia (blue trumpet vines) at the base of the trees where the arch was. The plants have finally grown up to the arch and are really starting to take off. The philodendron has big yellow and green leaves and the thunbergia gets clusters of draping purple flowers. In a year or so, when it fills in and has purple flowers hanging down, it should look pretty good.

The trees across from our front porch and above the casita are currently loaded with different berries and have attracted a lot of birds. The other morning, while we were sitting out there having breakfast, there were 4 Aracaris (a type of toucan) all in the trees eating berries.

Along with them, there was a bird that we rarely see, a Red-capped Manakin. He’s a small, beautiful bird that looks like he was put together with whatever bird parts were left over. He has a bright red head with yellow eyes on a jet-black body with bright yellow legs.

Then there was also a colorful Motmot, a woodpecker, and a squirrel cuckoo hanging around in the trees. Plus a bunch of other smaller birds feasting on all the little berries. And of course, the hummingbirds all around the feeders. We saw all of these in about ten minutes while we sat on the porch eating our breakfast. Kelley commented, wouldn’t it be nice to just sit there for a couple hours and see what else comes around. That’s about what we’ve been up to the past couple weeks, mostly plants and birds.

It’s funny how one day your life revolves around racing motorcycles, skateboarding in swimming pools, snow skiing black diamond trails, water skiing, bull riding, and living life to its fullest. Then everything just slows down and stops, and now you get excited when you see new sprouts on your plants or see a certain bird. It’s funny how life changes.

After a very busy December, our holidays were pretty quiet. Around Christmas I ended up catching a cold that lasted for about a week, so we just laid low. That doesn’t mean we just sat around, we accomplished a bunch of projects, we just didn’t visit with too many people. Besides that, there was a cold front that came through around New Year’s with the nights getting down to the low 60°s and even a couple in the upper 50°s. After chopping all that firewood a few weeks ago, we sorta wished we had a fireplace in the house. The good thing was that we had hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps and coffee with Irish cream to help keep us warm.

Our favorite New Year’s Day tradition is when Ruben brings us Gibnut tamales wrapped in banana leaves.  He usually shows up around 6:30 am with a bag of warm tamales. It’s a good thing we don’t stay up till midnight anymore. This is something he has been doing every New Year’s Day since we moved here. A week or so before New Year’s, Ruben will go out hunting for a couple of these delicious wild animals. This is the only time of year he will get Gibnuts, and he only harvests enough for them to make tamales.

Now that the new year is here, it’s time for us to start making our corned beef briskets again. The first 45 lbs. of briskets just went in the brine and will come out in about 14 days. Then the next batch will go in, and we’ll keep doing this for the next two months or so. There seems to be more and more people requesting them every year, and I really don’t know if we can make that many. I guess we’ll just see what we can do.

We finally got around to dehydrating some of our green chiles that had turned red. This was the last of the chiles until we get some more planted, which might not be for another year. We dehydrated somewhere between 150-200 big red chiles. You can find dried red chiles like this in the market occasionally, but they want $1.00 a piece for them. Between all the roasted green ones and the dried red ones, we should be set on chiles for quite a while.

We just picked a bunch more cacao that was ripe, with more being ready in a couple weeks. The wheelbarrow was getting full, so we decided to just pick the cacao and toss them out from under the trees and pick them up as we go. This picking gave us another 20-25 lbs. of seeds that we fermented for a week before setting them out in the sun to dry. It’s looking like this year we need to concentrate on making a lot more chocolate.

Amanda saw that one of the plant nurseries advertised that they had pink lemon trees. The next time we went to town, we swung by and picked up two, one for her and one for us. The pink lemon was discovered in California around 1930 on an Eureka lemon tree as a mutant, and since then, they’ve been cultivated as their own. They are yellow with green stripes on the skin, pink flesh and a variegated leaf color. Besides being called pink lemons, they are also called a zebra lemon or a variegated Eureka lemon. They are perfect for lemonade as they are sweeter than a yellow lemon. And no, this is not where pink lemonade comes from, that needs red berries or a coloring of some type.

Right after the first of the year we decided to remove about 20 banana plants that were out by our front gate. Over the past couple of years this area seemed to hold a lot of water after the big rains. All the banana plants there got some type of disease and were not looking healthy, and were only producing a small handful of bananas, so we decided to take them out. Ruben got us a few new healthy plants and Amanda also brought over a few apple banana plants. She also scored us a Red banana plant from a friend. Red bananas are thick, shorter and creamier than a yellow banana, plus have a hint of raspberry flavor. They all got planted up on higher ground, where they should do much better and hopefully later this year we will start getting bananas again.

It was time to trim back our variegated leaf philodendron before it got too much higher on the palm tree. This plant was from a cutting that we got from a restaurant a few years back. We cut a six-foot and a four-foot section off the plant, then we planted them around the base of a couple trees along our new paths. The past couple of weeks, we’ve planted another 70 or so plants around the paths, all from cuttings around the yard.

As we were at the nursery picking up the lemon tree, we saw another plant that we didn’t have and thought it would look good out back. We picked up a couple of red Anthuriums. Some common names are Flamingo Flower, Little Boy Plant, Red Peace Lily or Red Heart Plant. They get this beautiful red flower and they supposedly spread and propagate well. So this will be another plant that will go in our new area to give it a little more color. We’ve got a ways to go, but the new garden paths should look pretty good once all the plants mature.

Speaking of our new garden paths, we finally have a plan (sort of). Besides all the different plants, we decided to make it a little whimsical with a few other things. I’m currently casting some mushrooms out of cement and painting them bright colors to mix in with all the other plants. I’m using a bowl and a plastic cup as the mold on the bigger ones and a small bowl and a piece of wood for the smaller ones.

I also made up 50 or so ladybugs out of bottle caps to place on some of the trees. I’m even thinking about making some topiaries, so we can train plants to grow on them in the shape of animals. There will be an area in the middle where we will plant more cacao trees (because we need more)? Then we are going to put a small section along the back with local medicinal plants and little signs explaining what each one is used for. Once that’s done, we will spread gravel over the pathways so you can walk around without getting muddy. It’s not a very big area, but it should be quite the tropical garden once we are done.

We recently checked the trail camera in the driveway. Besides a lot of pictures of us going back and forth there were also a few smaller animals. The most interesting one was a Tayra, locally known as a Bush Dog. He was headed down the driveway towards the garage or maybe the house. Tayras are omnivores, although they are classified as carnivores. A favorite food is the spiny rat, but they will eat anything that’s available, including squirrels, birds, poultry, fruit, invertebrates and reptiles. They have a rather long lifecycle in captivity where they have lived 18-22 years.

Kelley has the Merlin app on her phone that identifies birds from their sound. In the past she has heard a Green Jay,  but has never gotten a picture until now. One landed in the tree right off our front porch and she managed to get a couple of pictures before it flew away. It’s a beautiful bird, we just never see them, let alone get a picture.

Then on Christmas Day, a Summer Tanager landed right next to the porch. We don’t see these too often, so to see a bright red bird on Christmas Day was pretty cool.

I know some of you have already made your New Year’s resolutions, but it’s never too late for one more. 2026 could be your year to come and explore Belize. Unbelievable wildlife, Mayan ruins, caves, waterfalls, cave tubing, Caribbean beaches, fishing, diving, lobsters, or just chillin’ on the beach with an umbrella drink. However you choose to spend your time here, you won’t be disappointed. We hope to see you down here this year.

 

December has been a very wet month, with rain almost daily. So far, we’ve accumulated 13″ of rain this month alone. One night though, it rained so hard that it woke us up and lasted for a few hours. After it was finally light enough out, I could see all the water flowing through the yard. There was a river about a foot deep flowing down the driveway and in front of the casita where it was at least 20′ wide. Some of the bamboo bordering the walkway in front of the casita was washed away, along with solar lights and the doormat. The last time we had this much water run through the yard, there were some good sized fish swimming around. It’s going to take quite a while for this to dry up, since rain is predicted till the end of the year. The good thing is that Kelley followed the flow of water towards the creek and managed to find our bamboo, solar lights and door mat. After assessing everything, I checked the rain gauge and it recorded almost 5″ of rain in a very short time.

I know that most of our friends up north already have their firewood chopped and stored for the winter. We just got started the other day with some trees we cut down last year. The first year we were here, I got an ax and thought I’d chop our own wood. With most of it being hardwood, that didn’t take long for me to give up. So we bought a log splitter and now it’s fast, easy and our backs thank us.

I know some of you are thinking, they don’t have a fireplace to keep warm and they have a gas firepit on their porch, so what’s with the firewood? It’s for the pizza oven out back. This should be enough wood for all year, considering that it’s stacked two rows deep. It looks like we’ll have to start firing up that pizza oven a little more this next year.

This is what our Sunday afternoons look like lately, we sit around roasting chiles, watching football and having a few cold Belikins. So far, we’ve picked seven five-gallon buckets of green chiles and there are still more on the plants. We’ve roasted about five buckets and the rest we’re using fresh and giving some to friends. Most of the roasted peppers are being frozen with six nice big chiles per bag, which is perfect for just about anything Kelley makes.

The last batch we picked, we are letting set out and turn red. Once they are all red we’ll put them in the dehydrator and dry them out really well. They’ll work great for making enchilada sauce, birria or any other red based Mexican food. All these chiles should satisfy our chile cravings for the next year.

The other day on our way to town, two Collared Peccaries (Javelinas) ran across the road in front of us. We knew there were Javelinas in Belize, we’ve just never seen one in the wild. Back in Arizona they are quite common, and once a year I would hunt them. Besides the Collared Peccaries, Belize is also home to the White Lipped Peccaries, which are a little larger.

With Thanksgiving being so late this year and how busy we’ve been, we really didn’t have much of a chance to get in the Christmas spirit. We did manage to get a few lights up around the house and a couple small decorations, but that was about it. We didn’t even get our Christmas tree up, but we did get our small sea glass one out, and I guess that sorta counts.

The weekend before Christmas we headed down to Hopkins and Placencia to deliver some meats to our friends. It was one last chance to get in a little beach time before 2025 was gone. In between the rains in Hopkins, we did manage to get some great fried chicken from our friend Ant at his new BFC (Belly Full Chicken) chicken shack. We took the chicken and a couple of cold beers down towards our river lot and sat on the tailgate enjoying the views. After that, we headed over to Mangos to drop off more meat and to play some music bingo. It was only one night in Hopkins, but we still had a great time.

The next day we headed over to see Ron & Rhonda for a couple days in Placencia and to drop off more meat. On Saturday night Barefoot Bar was having a calendar signing with the models from the 2026 Belikin calendar. I can’t believe this was my 10th year of getting a signed Belikin calendar. Sunday, our friends Jolly & Darrel at Fin Obsession said that they recently got a few big Wahoo on some lures I gave him last year. So they gave us a big bag of Wahoo steaks to take home. We will cook some of these either blackened or with some sage brown butter and I might even throw a few in the smoker. Either way, they should be great.

Throughout the year we are still very busy making all our different sausages and other meats. Once a year, around this time, we make up our summer sausage and everyone seems to love them. Most everyone shares them with friends over the holidays, but I’m sure there are a few that save it all for themselves. In early December we started making these and got the first batch in the smoker. While they were in the smoker I posted on our Wicked Toucan site saying that they would be available. It only took about two hours before they were all spoken for. Over the next couple of weeks we ended up making around 80 summer sausages before we decided to call it quits.

It’s been a while since we made some Irish Cream. Almost every year before we moved here we would make up a big batch and give it to friends around the holidays. It goes great in a cup of our fresh roasted coffee. At least that’s my opinion, as Kelley still can’t stand the smell of coffee.

Every year around Christmas time Kelley bakes a bunch of different cookies to give to friends. This year’s assortment was orange dreamsicle cookies with white chocolate chips, red velvet cookies with a white chocolate kiss and some with cherry-filled kisses on top, pretzel bark with toffee covered in chocolate and peanut brittle.

Since we have an abundance of chocolate around here, we decided to include an assortment of different chocolates on our cookie plates. This year’s assortment included chocolates with caramel, dried pineapple, marshmallow fluff, craisins, and mini s’mores (graham cracker with marshmallow covered in chocolate). Maybe next year we’ll start selling little boxes of assorted chocolates.

Just to make everything look a little more festive, we took some Oreos and dipped them in chocolate. After that we added some pretzels for antlers, a couple of white chocolate chips for eyes and a red M&M for a nose.

We also heated up some candy canes in the oven to soften them and then pressed them together in the shape of a heart. After that we filled them with chocolate and added some shiny red candy balls to give them a more festive look.

We hope everyone had a healthy and happy year and are ready for the next chapter in life. Kelley and I had a very busy and amazing year and we can’t wait to see what next year holds for us.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from Belize.

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We hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving weekend, I know we did. Our friends Ron & Rhonda drove over from Placencia to spend the holiday weekend with us. Pretty much your typical Thanksgiving weekend with friends, lots of food, drinks, football, beer pong, rain and even a porcupine in the tree by the garage.

As long as I can remember, we’ve always had a turkey on Thanksgiving, but this year we thought we’d change it up a little. We have tried the turkeys down here, and for the price they’re just not that great. So this year we decided to smoke a beef brisket and have some friends over. The brisket was cooked low and slow in the smoker for 22 hours over some hickory and cherry wood. After that it was wrapped and rested in an ice chest for another 5 hours before being served, and it turned out moist and tender.

There were 11 of us and everyone brought a delicious side dish to share. Besides the brisket, there was smoked turkey breast with gravy, mac ‘n cheese, roasted veggies, stuffing, creamed chia, potato casserole, bread, an orzo salad, sugar-coated cranberries, brownies and a Jamaican lime pie with a chocolate drizzle. It wasn’t a so-called traditional Thanksgiving dinner, but a feast is a feast.

We did actually have a whole turkey on Thanksgiving. Every year around this time, our friends at the French Croissant Bakery in San Pedro bake up loaves of bread in the shape of a turkey. Since we were heading to the island for a couple of days, we reserved one to bring back. Edd and Runi at the bakery make the best breads and cookies anywhere, and their buttery croissants are to die for. On the plane ride back from the island, we had a big box with the turkey bread, a bunch of croissants and a couple dozen cookies. If you are ever in San Pedro make sure to stop in the bakery and say hi, it’s right across from the air terminal.

Living in the Southwest for so long, you know that green chiles have become one of our favorite food groups. Well, down here in Belize green chiles are hard to come by. Earlier this year, we ordered some chile seeds from Hatch, New Mexico. Ruben planted around 600 plants on our farm lot that were just for his and our personal use. We just did our first picking of them the other day and there are still plenty left on the plants waiting to get bigger.

Since we have all these green chiles and fresh tomatoes, we thought we’d make up some pico de gallo and some ranchero sauce. So Kelley cut some green chiles, tomatoes, onions, jalapeños, garlic and limes, then into the smoker they went for a couple of hours. The pico and ranchero sauce went perfectly on chips and as a topper for the rellenos.

On the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend, we fired up the grill, turned on some football, grabbed a few cold beers and started roasting chiles, not a bad way to spend a Sunday. The smell was heavenly, and it reminded us of the big chile roasters that we would see in front of stores back in Arizona during chile season. Wouldn’t it be great if someone made a Hatch Green Chile scented candle to burn in your home when fresh chiles aren’t available? Anyway, the first thing Kelley made was some proper chile rellenos, like we used to get back in Arizona. Of course we will also be making some bowls of green chile, green chile smothered burritos, quesadillas with green chiles, green chile bacon cheeseburgers and just about anything else you can imagine with the green chiles. This is a rare treat for us and we are going to enjoy every last one of them.

This week’s garden offerings were cacao and grapefruit. There were also a few habaneros and a little bit of kale. At this point we’ve decided not to plant any more vegetables and just concentrate on all the different fruit trees. Ruben always has a few different veggies growing on our farm lot that we are always welcome to. Besides that, they have opened a great produce stand in our village that usually has everything we need. Our vegetable garden was just taking up too much of our time with all the constant maintenance it needed. Now with that extra space, we will be able to put in another lemon tree and a cinnamon tree, which we already have growing in pots.

It had been a couple of weeks since our first picking of green chiles and it was time to do it again. We picked another two buckets of the bigger ones. Hopefully, we will have 2-3 more pickings before the plants start to die out. After we roast them, they are getting bagged and frozen, and that should keep us in chiles throughout the year until the next crop goes in.

The nights have been getting chilly down here (don’t laugh, 65° is really cool for us). Anyway it seemed like a perfect time to make up some lobster chowder and invite the neighbors over. We invited John, Penny, Rick, and Amanda over for a few drinks and some warm chowder. Amanda has been making some good sourdough bread lately, so she brought over a loaf to go along with the chowder. It was a nice warm comforting meal on a cool evening. I used to always make clam chowder, but clams are simply not available down here, unless we order them on Amazon. Although there is plenty of lobster available, so why not.

Since the nights are a little cool it was the perfect time to sit on the porch around the fire pit and have some hot chocolate. The peppermint schnapps that we made was ready and just waiting to go into some hot chocolate. Kelley and I sit around enjoying the cool evenings while they last, because the days are still up around 85°.

It’s hard to believe that this year is almost over and the cold weather and snow are starting to set in up north. We hope everyone stays warm the next few months, I know we will.

 

 

Advisement: Since your body doesn’t naturally make chocolate…it’s okay to take daily as a supplement.

It was time to make another batch of our chocolate and get ready to incorporate it into some of our holiday treats. After roasting and peeling some of our dried cacao seeds, we had enough for a five pound batch of dark chocolate. We let our cacao grind in the machine for at least 24 hours, which makes for a nice, smooth and silky chocolate.  We’re not sure what chocolatey treats we’ll be making yet, but we’ll post them when we do.

Last year we made some hot fudge with our homegrown chocolate. Kelley doesn’t eat it and I rarely have it on ice cream. So I thought I’d try something, I stirred a spoon of it into my morning coffee and it was good. Then again, chocolate and coffee go really good together in my opinion. I also heated up some milk and stirred in a spoonful of the hot fudge, instant hot chocolate. Now all we need is some peppermint schnapps to go in there, which we have never found down here. In the past we’ve made some schnapps with vodka, sugar and peppermint extract. So it looks like we’ll be making up a bottle of that to enjoy on our cold winter nights.🤣

After about six weeks our chocolate/grape liqueur was finally ready to taste. You could definitely smell the chocolate and a little bit of fruitiness. Upon tasting it, we decided that it needed a little more simple syrup to sweeten it up a bit. I don’t think it was as tasty as the chocolate/raspberry one we made, but considering they were wild grapes, it was still pretty good.

Our habanero peppers, which had been soaking in vinegar for six weeks, were finally ready to make into a sauce. After the peppers were ground fine, we cooked them down and strained them so there were no chunks or seeds. While it was on the stove, I decided to try a taste of it. For some reason and total misjudgment, I took a big spoonful of it. WOW that’s a spicy habanero sauce! I thought it had a really good flavor, but probably too hot for most. We’ll be sharing it with a couple of our friends who love hot food and see what they think.

Our cacao trees are once again loaded with pods. Usually the cacao pods grow higher up in the tree, but this one tree decided to produce a bunch right at ground level. When they grow higher up in the tree no critters seem to bother them, but the Agoutis will eat them if they can reach them. So it looks like we will be putting a little chicken wire fence around the trunk of this tree.

We’ve got a lot of coffee that is starting to ripen, but we just don’t have time to pick and process it. The berries are starting to split open and are falling off the plants. We told Ruben to come down and pick what he wanted, and so far he’s picked a couple of good sized bags full. We still have a lot of dried beans from last year that are vacuum sealed and just need to be roasted. Kelley doesn’t like coffee and I only drink one cup a day, so I don’t know what we were thinking when we thought we needed 12+ plants.

The next crop of tomatoes is starting to ripen on our farm lot. Ruben planted a different variety this time and they are big and juicy. Usually he has three crops going all at once in different stages, but this is the last one for a couple of months. After this crop is done the whole area needs to be plowed and turned under. Then in a few months he’ll start it all over again.

Recently we did some major trimming around the yard. The crotons around the front of the house were getting out of control and needed to be cut back. After a good trimming, we ended up with 75 or so nice cuttings that we stuck into pots. These root easily and in a couple of months they’ll be ready to go back in the ground. Most of them will probably get planted in the new area we’ve been working on out behind the house. Of course, we had a lot of other cuttings that also got put in pots, so the area on the side of the garage is looking like a nursery once again.

Since our bats are still hanging out under the cover for our butane tank, I thought I might as well make them a proper house. After a lot of bat research, I decided that I needed to build a two-chamber house that would attract the most bats. Since bats can consume 1,000’s of insects a night, I figured the more the better. I rummaged through my scrap wood and found enough for the size and design that I wanted to build. Now we just have to mount it at least 15′ or so up on a tree and hope they find it. I read that a bat house this size can hold 75 or more bats. If that’s the case and they each eat 1,000 insects a night, we might not need insect repellent around here.

The other Friday we were sitting in the garage during a big rain storm and in hopped a Mexican Burrowing Toad. We rarely see these as they only come out after a big rain. They are a unique species known for it’s specialized burrowing lifestyle, living almost all of their life underground. The Mexican burrowing toad is on a unique evolutionary branch and is the only living member of its genus and family, with all other related species having gone extinct millions of years ago.

The Mexican Burrowing Toad has a small pointed head with tiny eyes, and their front legs have nail like structures on each digit to help them dig. Their hind feet have two enlarged, shovel-like spades on the inner ankles for digging, which helps them to bury themselves quickly. If threatened, they will blow up like a balloon making it hard for predators to get a hold on them. Kelley took him out of the garage and placed him back in the yard, but a little while later another one hopped in. They only come out of the ground for a short period to mate before they burrow back in. With them being such a unique species, I think we are very lucky to get to see them.

Living in Belize, you just never know what’s going to happen next. For instance, Mike Nash (musician friend) said that he was back at his place on Ambergris for a short vacation. He was going to do one show Friday night at the Blue Water Grill to try out some of his new music he’d been working on. We thought about it for a minute and said why not. After all, it’s only a 2 hour drive and a 20 minute plane ride away. We managed to reserve a room next to where he was playing and we were on our way for a fun-filled weekend on the island.

Mike put on a great show like he always does, along with some new songs he’d been working on. Saturday we grabbed a golf cart for the day and cruised around the island seeing all the new developments,  and there’s a lot of them. Basically we just soaked up some sun and bar hopped around. It was quick spur of the moment trip, but well worth it.

 

This blog is rated G (General Audiences)

It contains no spiders, snakes or other scary creatures.

We just got back from the States for our annual doctor’s checkup and to spend some time with the family. The doctor said that we are good and healthy, and the family is doing well also.

We had a great visit in the States with the grandkids, playing cards and darts, throwing the football, helping them with a few small projects and Kelley got to spend a lot of time playing dolls with Alli. The grandkids big thing now is playing Minecraft on their tablets, and they are addicted to it. Even though we see the grandkids 2-3 times a year, it seems like they are growing up way too fast.

Like most of our trips up there, we spend a lot of time in the garage helping the kids work on different cars and stuff. We got the grandkids go-kart running and they ran that strong for a few days. We helped with a few little things on some of their other cars, but the main thing was that the 1965 Lincoln with the big block 460 finally drove after 19 years. It will still need a bunch of small stuff done to it before it’s road-ready and looking sharp, but at this point, it starts, stops, and moves… and that is a major thing.

One Saturday morning they pulled out three of their cars and we headed over to a car show that was going on. There were about 400 nice classic cars there. Some of them looked like weekend drivers and a few others looked like they just came out of a showroom. We always enjoy going to car shows when we’re up there, and it’s even more fun if we get to drive one there.

This trip, my 1977 Yamaha TT500 that I’d been working on got a new back tire and I was finally finished with it. After getting some gas in the tank, it only took two kicks for it to come to life. Not bad for a bike that hadn’t been started in probably 20 years or so.

I took it for its maiden trip around the block and it ran great. Randy also took it for a ride, and we both agreed that it was a powerful beast of a bike. I would love to keep it, but at my age I know that I can’t take a fall like I used to. So, the bike will go up for sale and I will be looking for another one to restore.

Since the last time we were in the States, my son found me another bike to work on. This one’s a 1974 Yamaha 125MX, and was one of Yamaha’s early entries into motocross bikes. It was pretty much a basket case that needed a lot of work and parts when he brought it home.

I managed to find a set of forks at a wrecking yard, some aftermarket fenders and side plates, new handlebars, levers, cables, a chain, and a few other parts. Next time up there it will have a new seat, plus I plan on stripping the gas tank, giving it a new paint job and some new graphics. I still need to find an original carburetor, some tires and a few other small parts before it’s done. Hopefully, I’ll have it running and looking good next time we’re up there. If you know anyone who has an old 70’s dirt bike that’s gathering dust, let me know, I might just be interested.

Time to head back home before the jungle takes over.

Our big wood-carved iguanas that have lived in front of the casita for over six years were in need of a little repair and paint. Over time, they had gotten a few big holes in them and the paint was really starting to fade. There was a hole in his head that was so big I could put my fist in it. So I went to work patching the holes and doing some fiberglass repair on them.

Once I got all their bodywork done, it was time to start over with the paint. They used to be a lot darker green, but after seeing real iguanas around here, I knew they had to be much brighter. After a good base coat of paint, I went to work with all the other colors to help bring them back to life. Now they are looking refreshed and ready to greet you when you visit our guest casita. On a side note, a three-foot bright green iguana just walked across the driveway. Maybe these are acting like giant decoys.

One of the local restaurants in town has a brick pizza oven (by the same guy who built ours). At the end of the evening before they close, they put chickens in pots and put them in the oven to slow cook overnight. In the morning the chickens are fully cooked and ready for that day’s recipes. We recently fired up our oven and had some friends over for a pizza party. Earlier in the day Kelley prepared a chicken and some veggies in a cast-iron pot. After our last pizza came out, the chicken went in till the next morning. The oven was still 175° in the morning when we pulled the chicken out. It looked and tasted great, although the breasts were a little dry. I think the problem was that we placed ours in around 6:30 and the restaurant probably puts theirs in after 10:00 once they close. Next time we fire up the pizza oven, we will try this again, possibly with a big pork roast for some slow-cooked pulled pork. It seems like a great way to cook some meat, since the oven stays warm all night.

If you know us, you know that we love trying different foods and don’t let anything go to waste, especially when it comes to all the fresh fruits and vegetables we have around here. So here are a few more things we’ve been doing with some of the stuff we have available.

Our Moringa tree is doing very well, and we still use the leaves in some recipes. If you are not sure what Moringa is, look it up, as it’s a superfood with many health benefits and is available in supplements. Currently, our tree has some seed pods on it, and when cooked they somewhat have the flavor of asparagus. Or the seeds can be removed from the pods and roasted, where they end up tasting like almonds or pine nuts.

We also have a local small leaf sweet basil that grows wild around the yard. And since the moringa seeds resemble pine nuts, why not make up some pesto and see how it turns out. There was only a small amount of moringa seeds, but Kelley still managed to make up a small batch of pesto. It turned out really good, and with all the health benefits of moringa and the wild basil, it must be a super healthy pesto.

We’re getting quite a few grapefruit this year and some of them are huge. Last year we left them on the tree until February, waiting for them to turn yellow (they never did) and they were dry inside. This year when they had a slight color change, we decided to pick some and give them a try. So far they are juicy and delicious. Looks like this will be our breakfast for the next month or so. Does anyone remember baking or broiling grapefruit with brown sugar on it? We will try it this weekend and see if it tastes like we remember from our younger days.

Our dragon fruit did very well this year and we have been enjoying them for breakfast for the past couple of months or so. Mostly they are purple, but this year we were also getting more of the white ones. Side by side, the purple dragon fruit looks like they would be sweeter than the white ones, but we agreed that the white ones are actually a little sweeter. Before we left for the States, we had a bunch that were ripe, so Kelley made up a batch of Dragon Fruit jam. We decided to combine the white and the purple ones together, and it turned out good. We usually don’t eat much jam around here, but now we have starfruit, raspberry, pineapple, and dragon fruit jams. This way we can still enjoy them until fresh ones are back in season.

The habaneros we planted a while back are really producing a lot of big peppers right now. We can only eat and dehydrate so many, so we decided to pickle some and make more habanero pepper sauce. After packing as many peppers as we could in the jars, we added some garlic, salt, a carrot and topped it off with vinegar. In a few weeks it will all get ground up, bottled and we will have three quarts of some very hot habanero pepper sauce.

In the past we’ve made liqueurs with all the different fruits we have around here, including cacao. Around six years ago we made some with wild grapes that were growing on our road, and it turned out great. Since then we haven’t seen any of the grapes, but this year they were all over the place. So we decided to make another batch of liqueur with grapes and add some cacao nibs for a chocolate/grape flavor. Last year we made a chocolate/raspberry liqueur that everyone loved, so why not try a chocolate/grape? If it turns out as good as I think it will, we’ll be passing this around during the holidays.

From now until April is a great time to visit Belize. The weather is mild, the rains are few, and everything is very green. December and January might have a few cool nights, but for the most part it’s usually shorts and T-shirt weather. And if you visit the coast, the beautiful turquoise waters of the Caribbean are always warm. So if you’re looking to get out of the cold and snow in the next few months, we’ve got a guest house just waiting for you.

Hope to see you soon!

 

 

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

On Halloween eve the great habanero pumpkin rises out of the pepper patch to burn everyone who tries to eat him.

 

The rainy season has finally started. So far it mostly just rains overnight and the days are sometimes sunny, but usually cloudy. That’s great for all the plants as everything has lots of new growth and it’s very green around here. It’s also a great time to get some new plants in the ground so that their roots can take advantage of the wet soil and get well established.

The past few weekends we have been working hard on our new garden paths. We’ve been cutting and clearing all the old jungle growth, cleaning up what’s left on the ground, cutting down more trees to use as borders, and it’s finally starting to come together. So far, we’ve planted around 160 plants that we’ve had in pots from cuttings and a few we bought at the nursery.

There is still a lot of work to do, but we are getting it done twenty feet at a time. Hopefully, by early next year, we will have it done and all the plants will start to fill in, and all the different colors of flowers will be blooming. Now we just have to find a couple six six-foot garden gnomes and we’ll be set.🤣

Last year we bought some shampoo ginger plants that grew well for a few months and then died off. We didn’t know at the time that they go dormant during the winter, but now they’re back and doing well. They are starting to get red flower heads on them that resemble a pine cone. By squeezing the flower head you can release a clear fragrant juice that is used as a shampoo and conditioner that softens and brings shine to your hair. It can be left in your hair or washed out, and can also be used as a massage lubricant. We’re always amazed at some of the unique plants that we have here.

We just ate our last pineapple of the season. This year we ended up with 80-90 pineapples, but about 20% were eaten by critters. Now it’s time to replace the plants that did produce and get some new ones in their place. There are still a lot of plants in the ground that didn’t produce a pineapple, but they should next year. Plus, we have another 80 or so tops and slips that are rooted and ready to go into the ground. By next May or so we should start having pineapples ready again.

It’s been a while since we’ve picked any of our own bananas. Last year took a big toll on the plants when they were flooded out for weeks at a time. They seem to have made a comeback, but are still not doing as good as they once were. Since then, we have planted a few more in an area that should never have any standing water around them. The old plants are still producing a few bunches of small bananas. Even though they are lacking in size, that sure doesn’t affect how tasty they are. Plus, they make some delicious banana bread.

A while back we bought some habaneros at our local produce stand that were exceptionally big. We decided to save and plant some of the seeds from those peppers to see how they’d do. Well, they grew into the biggest, healthiest plants we’ve had yet. Anyway, the plants are loaded with peppers now, and they are just as big as the ones they came from. They are big, beautiful peppers, but they are very, very spicy.

Yellow lemons are usually hard to find down here, and when you do, they are quite pricy. Around six years ago, we planted a yellow Meyer Lemon tree. It has grown into a decent-sized tree, but has not produced any lemons until this year. There are only about a dozen lemons on the tree, but that’s still very exciting for us. Hopefully, now that it has started to produce, next season we will have an abundance of lemons.

Since we’ve had on-and-off rains lately, there have been all kinds of mushrooms popping up everywhere. Last week, we gathered up a bunch of wood-ear mushrooms, which are commonly used in hot and sour soup. Then we decided to get our boots on and go in search of the highly prized oyster mushrooms. After a short walk around the property, we had gathered up a good-sized bag of these delicious fungi. That evening, we threw a steak on the grill and Kelley sautéed up these mushrooms with a little butter and onions. They are so delicious and I wish we could find them all the time, but if that were the case, they probably wouldn’t seem so special.

One crop of tomatoes at our farm lot is done and is about ready to be taken out. There are still a lot of very good tomatoes left on the plants. Ruben says that they are too small to go to market and currently the price is way down. So before most of them fall off or get plowed under, we went up and picked a good 50lbs. to bring home. There are still about 5,000 other plants in the ground at various stages, from seedlings to some that are just about ready to start picking. So we don’t need to can or freeze any of these, as we will have fresh tomatoes till the end of the year. Besides some fresh pasta sauce, we thought, why not juice some? Kelley got the juicer out and made a bunch of tomato juice, she also added celery, carrots, parsley, habanero, and some spices to it. At this point it’s looking like there could be Bloody Mary’s in our future.

We’ve been making more candies with our homegrown chocolate. This time we thought we’d try making some Andes Mints, you know the kind with dark chocolate layered around a green minty layer. We kept adding a lot of mint to the green layer, but in the end we think it still could have used a little more. We also made some of them in round molds with the mint chocolate on top of the dark chocolate. Since we were melting chocolate, we also poured some over craisins in small round molds, and those also turned out really good.

Saw this furry creature down in a hole out back the other day. Okay, it’s not a porcupine or a Wookiee or some other type of hairy critter; it’s what’s left from a palm tree stump. Every time I saw it, I’d take an extra glance thinking it was an animal of some type. So I thought it needed some googly eyes and a nose. Now I don’t even take a second look when I walk by.

Out back, attached to the house, is a small covered shed with no door where our butane tank is kept. Recently a couple of bats have taken up residency inside the shed. I’m fine with that because I know they eat their weight in bugs every night. The only problem I have is that every time I get too close to the shed, they come out and circle around me before taking off. I think the bats are cool and everything, but when they startle you, that’s another story.

Only a handful of times have we seen the Russet-naped wood-rail up around our place. It was long thought that they were primarily a coastal species found around the mangroves. However, there have been a growing number of inland sightings suggesting an elevational migration, with the mangroves being their winter habitat. The past week, there has been a family of 5-6 wandering around our yard. They are a cool bird to watch with their long pink legs and a chicken-like walk.

We usually look forward to Fridays as it’s the beginning of the weekend. We’ll go to town, get some lunch and maybe a couple beers. Then that evening, we might have a couple of friends over for happy hour and throw something on the grill. This Friday morning, I got up at 5:30 and got in the shower only to find out that there was no water. Usually, when there’s a problem in the village, we will still have some water coming out of our pipes, but this time they were dry. So I assumed it might be a broken pipe on our property, and I was right. The main 2″ water pipe just inside our gate had broken a fitting. Kelley and I dug it down, and I rummaged through my spare parts and came up with what we needed to fix it. The only thing I didn’t have was some wet PVC cement. Once the little hardware store in the village opened, I went to see if they had any, and luckily they did. We are lucky that it broke while we were here, because a 2″ water pipe would put a lot of water in our yard very fast. After all that, we did end up going to town for lunch and we did have a happy hour.

From the beginning, we have struggled with decent internet service. Some providers have towers in our village, but we have mountains around us that prevent us from receiving a signal. An independent provider managed to set up a couple of small repeater towers and provide a decent signal to us. Recently, the guy who was providing our internet passed away, and the company dissolved. They only gave us a few weeks’ notice before our internet was to be gone for good. Our only option was to see about Starlink, but it’s not available in Belize yet. After checking into it, Belize will give permission if there is no other way for you to get service. So we ordered a Starlink system on Amazon and managed to get a three-year approval from the Public Utility Commission here in Belize. Our old internet would go out quite often and usually have download speeds around 5 to 30mbps. Now with Starlink we are averaging download speeds well over 100 and we have seen speeds up to 290. It looks like we have finally got this internet problem figured out.

Now when you come down to visit us, you can stay connected to the rest of the world, if you want to.

 

Over the American holiday (Labor Day), Kelley and I decided to head over to the coast for an extra long weekend. We stopped in Hopkins for one night to make a meat delivery and see some friends before heading over to Placencia for a few days.

In Placencia, we stayed with our good friends Ron & Rhonda in their guesthouse. Our buddy Darren (who built next to us) was finally getting back down to Belize after a long absence. He flew into the city and then met up with us in Placencia to spend a few days on the beach before we headed back up to the jungle.

It was pretty quiet in Placencia, as a lot of restaurants and resorts shut down this time of year during the slow season. So we didn’t really do anything exciting, mostly, it was just a chance for us to relax on the beach without the crowds and to see some friends we hadn’t seen in a while. One day, we played music bingo at The Sea Cow beach bar and I actually won some beer money. Then another day, Placencia Beach Club was having a decades music pool party with a DJ playing music from the 60’s to the 20’s. Other than that, we just enjoyed the beach and hung out at some of our favorite places that were still open.

One of the reasons we picked that weekend was that we’d made arrangements to pick up everyone’s lobsters for our Lobsterfest in the Jungle coming up the next week. We brought back 70 lobster tails and 5 big whole lobsters. Once we got back home, everyone came over and picked up their lobsters so they could start thinking about what delicious lobster dish they would bring to the feast.

It was a perfect day for Lobsterfest in the Jungle, the sun was out, the weather cooperated, and no pesky insects. There were about eighteen friends who came together to share their favorite lobster recipes with everyone. Reggae and other beach music were playing in the background, cold beverages were flowing, and everyone was having a good time.

All our friends outdid themselves with some phenomenal lobster dishes. It was a great chance for everyone to try different ways that lobster can be served. There were mini lobster grilled cheese sliders,  lobster Thermador, candied bacon wrapped lobster bites, jalapeño poppers with lobster, lobster ceviche, lobster pasta salad, cheesy lobster dip, Thai lobster curry, creamy Cajun lobster pasta, lobster mac-n-cheese, plus a few side dishes. There was something for everyone. I know I tried everything and still couldn’t decide on a favorite.

It was a great Lobsterfest in the Jungle, and everyone thought that this should be an annual event. We are perfectly fine with that, because where else do you have a chance to try so many different lobster recipes in one place? Maybe we’ll see you here next year!

After stuffing ourselves with all that lobster, we still managed to go out back and throw some hatchets at the board. A lot of the hatchets hit the ground, but after a while everyone was getting the hang of it.

The next morning after Lobsterfest, Kelley cooked up a dozen eggs for breakfast. Okay, they weren’t chicken eggs, they were small quail eggs. We saw them at a meat market and thought we’d give them a try. They were good and buttery tasting and I said that they would make great mini eggs benedicts. Then I laughed… who wants a mini eggs benedict, I want the full size with lots of hollandaise sauce.

One food that Kelley and I love that is not available here is artichokes. For the past 6 years, we have tried to grow them with no luck. Every so often, we’ll ask about them at the market in town and they always say they can’t get them. We asked our friend about artichokes at the produce stand in our village. Since he supplies produce all over the country, he said that he would ask his importer about them. About a week later he sent us a picture of ten nice artichokes he’d got for us. They were not cheap, but sometimes when you want something, price doesn’t matter.

The biggest and one of the most beautiful flowers we have around here are on the dragon fruit plants. They usually only bloom at night for one evening before they start to develop the fruit. I was up early in the garden the other morning, and to my surprise, there were at least 20 big flowers wide open, it was quite a sight to see. We have been eating dragon fruit for a few weeks now, and there are at least another 80 buds on the plants. We have the white variety and the deep purple, which are both very delicious.

Our daughter-in-law recently sent us some information on the nine-banded armadillos that we have in Belize. It said that the nine-banded armadillo has a unique reproductive cycle and will give birth to genetically identical quadruplets, all from just one fertilized egg. This will happen once every year during their 12-14 year life span.

We have seen armadillos around our house before, but usually just one at a time. The other day on the side of our house, we saw something amazing, there were four little armadillos all foraging around in the bush. They couldn’t have been more than six inches long, not including their tail. We got real close and watched them for a while, and Kelley got a few pictures. They were the cutest little things, and to think that they were all identical quadruplets made it a very special sighting.

Another special sighting was a Collard Forest Falcon. He swooped right across the front yard and landed in a tree opposite our front porch. They are one of the largest members of the falcon family, very secretive and a fierce hunter. They are able to kill prey larger and heavier than themselves. Sometimes we can hear them calling in the distance, but we rarely see one.

There are a lot of big insects around here, but this might be the biggest one we’ve seen. We see many stick bugs around, and this one has to be at least twice as big as any of the others we’ve seen. As you can see, he is about the length of Kelley’s forearm, and yes he is harmless.

We have learned that you never just grab anything without looking first, not knowing what might be there. For instance, a few weeks ago I went to get something out of my toolbox and there was a 3′ snake in there. He was a harmless parrot snake, so I managed to get him out of the garage and back in the yard. And then last week I went to grab my beer koozie in the garage, and it’s a good thing I looked first, as there was a big spider on it.

Belize is an amazing place, and we have seen and experienced more than you can imagine in the short time we’ve been here. Plus everything we’ve learned about plants, animals, insects and all the Mayan history, that we never would have known about if we hadn’t moved here. I feel that we have gained a lifetime of knowledge in that short time. I know this life isn’t for everybody, but it’s been one hell of an adventure for us so far.

It’s been fairly quiet around here. Mostly we’ve just been trimming, gathering, and potting plants. I think for once we’ve actually got a little ahead of things, but I know that won’t last long.

We’ve been working on the new area out behind the back patio. This past weekend, we cut down another seven trees to be used as borders for some of the garden paths. Only the smaller trees are coming out, which will allow the bigger ones to thrive. Also, this will let a little more light in the area and the new plants should do well.

We’ve got an idea of how we want the paths to go, so we’ve started laying out some of the logs and clearing the dead leaves from them. We will have to cut a few more trees down for borders as we need them. Which won’t be a problem as there are thousands to choose from. After cutting down the trees and dragging those logs around, we were a little sore the next day. I hate to say “we’re getting older” but I guess we actually are.

For the past couple of months, we have been gathering a lot of plants we find and getting cuttings in pots from stuff around the property. One plant that is common up north for landscaping is lantana, with its orange and yellow flowers. We just happen to have that growing wild on our road heading down to our place. After a little Google search, it said that lantana roots easily from cuttings. So we took a hike and brought back a bunch of cuttings to get started in pots. Hopefully they will take, if not, we will try again.

The other day we took a walk around the property to look for a few more plants to relocate back towards the house. We ended up finding a few nice philodendrons that we will put on some of the trees out back. There were also a couple of nice six-foot bay leaf palm trees that we will attempt to relocate back here.  We know that the philodendrons will have no problem growing, but we have never attempted to relocate a bay leaf palm. If the palms do well, we might have to try a few more, as there are a lot of them around.

Another plant that grows wild here is the Snake plant or mother-in-law’s tongue. We’ve already got some growing around the house, but we will probably try and gather up some more to place along the new trails. There’s such a variety of native plants to choose from that it’s almost like going to a Home Depot garden department up in the States.

Other plants that we have growing around the house are the Philippine violets. They grow very well, get a lot of beautiful purple flowers, and do great from cuttings. Most of the time when we trim them, we either give the cuttings to friends or just throw them out in the bush, but this time we’re putting a bunch in pots for future use.

Also our caladiums (heart of Jesus) are starting to reappear, after the past months of being dormant. After the first of the year, when they go dormant again, we will be able to dig up some of their tubers and get them planted around the new paths. It’s starting to look like a plant nursery around our place. Currently we’ve got well over 100 plants and cuttings in pots getting ready to go in the ground. Over the next few months we will start getting some of these planted along the paths. Hopefully, in a year or so, they will have taken hold and started filling out.

It’s been a while since we’ve checked our trail cameras. The one out in the bush didn’t have much on it, so it will get moved to a different location. On the other hand, the one in the driveway had quite a few different critters on it. Besides a lot of pictures of us going back and forth, there were also birds, possums, squirrels, agoutis, big green iguanas, and a Tyra (bush dog). There was also a dark picture of a wild cat walking towards our house. I wish the picture had turned out better, but you could definitely tell it was a good-sized cat. We think it was possibly an Ocelot or a Margay. We don’t think it was a jaguar because of the size, unless it was a juvenile.

Here’s an interesting picture. Any idea of what it is? Give up, it’s a centipede curled up on a tree. Usually we see centipedes just crawling along, not all curled up. We didn’t know that they are segmented like that. Learned something new today.

We’re still picking a lot of cacao, but we were getting behind in our chocolate making. Our malanger (chocolate grinder) started making a noise, so the manufacturer sent out a new transmission for it. That lasted about 2 uses before it started making the same noise again. So they sent another one, and that one did the same thing. Then they contacted us and said that there was a bad batch of bearings, and sent another one. So, after a couple of months of being down, we are finally up and going again.

Since we were able to start making our chocolate again, we decided to try another type of copycat candy. This time we made Kelley’s favorite, chocolate peppermint patties, sort of like a York candy. They turned out great and will stay on our list of candies to make again. After making these, there was still some melted chocolate left, so we put some peanuts in a mold and covered them with dark chocolate. It’s great being able to make our own candy bars and actually controlling what ingredients go into them.

We were talking to someone who helps people with their weight management. She found out that we made chocolate and asked if we had some that was sugar-free, because she believed there would be a market for it. So we made up a batch of chocolate bars using stevia instead of sugar. I could tell the difference between real sugar and stevia, but for the most part, it was still a good chocolate with a little sweetness to it. I think if you are cutting out sugar in your diet for any reason, this would still satisfy your chocolate cravings.

Whether it’s your first time to Belize or you’re a regular traveler here, you need to know that Belize has redesigned its paper money. This past few weeks was the first time it was made available to the public. The Queen on the paper money has been replaced by Belizean historical figures. It will take a while to phase out the old currency, so if you end up with two different bills of the same denomination, it’s okay for now. Just be sure to use up the older ones with the queen on them first to help phase them out.

Earlier this year they decided to replace the low wood bridge between Santa Elena and San Ignacio that took you towards the market. Every year during the rainy season the old bridge would flood over and end up needing repairs. They still have a ways to go on the new cement bridge, so in the meantime, you have to use the New Macal River Bridge on the other side of town.

Okay, any of our friends or family up for a spur-of-the-moment trip to Belize? Saturday, September 6th we are once again having our “Lobsterfest in the Jungle”. At this point, our guest house is available. So if you are feeling like you need a quick getaway for some delicious lobster dishes, just shoot us a note and the guest house is yours. And for our Arizona friends, remember it’s only a 2½ flight from AZ to TX and then another 2 hours down to Belize. Are any of you that adventurous?

We had a lot of fun last month up in the States, and it was a great break from our daily lives in Belize. Now that we are back home, there is a ton of stuff around the garden and yard that needs to be done, plus all the other projects around the house.

A while back we bought some habanero peppers at our local produce stand to make more habanero salts. The peppers were so big and healthy that we decided to save some of the seeds to see if they would grow. Boy did they grow! They’re the healthiest looking pepper plants we’ve ever seen. After we got back from the States we finally had a chance to get them into the ground. Kelley planted 24 habanero plants, 5 poblano pepper plants and some more kale. While she was doing that I got some yellow squash, butternut squash and some giant pumpkin seeds in the ground. We haven’t tried growing pumpkins here yet, but hopefully, if they do grow we might have a jack-o-lantern come Halloween and some fresh pumpkin pie come Thanksgiving. And of course, we will roast up and salt the seeds if we get any pumpkins. Since we’ve put the seeds in, we’ve had some rain and within a week everything has sprouted, so it’s looking good.

Earlier this year, all 15 of our coffee plants were totally white with blossoms, and it looks like most of them took. The plants right now are all overloaded with coffee and are starting to fall over. Usually we can tie our plants and trees up with wood stakes, but these are so heavy that we had to pick up some 1/2″ rebar to support them. This is by far the most coffee these plants have ever produced and I assume that it will keep getting better each year. Is anyone interested in coming down for a visit in a couple months and picking some fresh coffee?

There are still a few pineapples left on the plants, but for the most part they are done for the year. Which is great timing, because our dragon fruit is just starting to ripen. The other day I counted at least 70 fruits on the plants with more popping out every few days. This year they are mostly the purple ones, but we are also seeing quite a few of the white ones. Looks like we’ll be enjoying dragon fruit for the next few months.

Ruben has just started picking tomatoes down on our farm lot. He’s got at least a couple thousand producing plants currently loaded with Roma tomatoes. To keep on top of things, he also just put in another two thousand more tomato plants that should be producing in a couple of months. Plus he has another rotation of seedlings just started that will go in after the current crop is done. He said that we should have fresh tomatoes for the rest of the year, and we’re fine with that. I also ordered a bunch of green chile seeds, so hopefully he will get a few big rows of chiles planted. Green “Hatch” type chiles are very hard to find here, so we’re looking forward to having some fresh ones to roast.

Recently our black pepper plants produced enough peppercorns to fill up a couple grinders. That was great, but it’s not enough to last us throughout the year until the plants produce again. So we did a bunch of trimming on the existing plants to propagate new cuttings. We’ve done this before and it’s worked out pretty well. Our goal is to produce enough black pepper to last us throughout the year. We use a lot of black pepper in our meat making as well as just about in every meal.

At this point we have decided that the newly cleared area behind the back patio will have a small pathway lined with tropical plants and a bunch more cacao trees. So we have been trimming and potting a lot of our current plants to have ready once we get started on that project. One of my favorite plants here is the pheasant tail. They get big, are very tropical looking and grow well from the seeds they produce. I think Kelley has at least 300 seeds planted in trays that will go in the ground once they get bigger.

Another plant that we started out with three or four is the zebra plant. Pretty much all you have to do is take a cutting and stick it in a pot or the ground and it grows. Currently, we have these lining some of our pathways around the yard, so they will carry over to the new area just fine.

Then there’s the dieffenbachias, when it gets too tall and falls over (which it does), all you do is cut the stock in three inch pieces, stick it in the ground and you have a new plant in no time. With all the other plant trimmings, we figure that after the first of the year, we should have enough to get started on this new area.

Recently we had Ruben’s son (Kevin) come down to re-chop and help clear up the area behind the patio. There were a couple more cohune palms that we wanted taken out before they got too big. One of the palms was big enough that he was able to save the heart out of it.  He took most of the heart home to his grandmother, because she loves it and rarely gets any. Kelley went out and scraped a bowl of it out of the stump and brought it for us to try. Raw, it was a little sweet yet tender and sort of crunchy. Then she also fried some up with butter, salt and pepper. Some people say it sort of tastes like an artichoke or white asparagus. Either way, the heart of palm from the cohune tree is considered a local delicacy here in Belize.

Kelley finally had some time to weed out her flower garden. Over the dry season it didn’t get much water and about the only thing that actually grew was the weeds. Anyway, now that the rains are here, she’s got it all cleaned out and put a ton of new flower seeds in. There were a few specific types that she wanted, but for the most part it was just a mix of all types of flowers.

A little over a year ago a friend gave us a miracle berry bush. This year it finally started to get some blossoms, and a few fruits are starting to appear. These are an interesting berry, because when they are consumed they alter your taste perception, making sour or bitter foods taste sweet. We invited Ruben down to try one of these sweet tasting berries. After eating one, we tasted a lime, some mustard and some vinegar. You should have seen the look on Ruben’s face, because everything tasted very sweet. The taste-altering effect can last for a short period, typically between a few minutes to an hour or two. If you are interested in more information on this berry, check out https://health.clevelandclinic.org/miracle-berries

Over the past few years our house has settled somewhat. For the most part we can’t really notice it with the exception of a few small cracks in the walls. The one really noticeable area was in the shower. The water did not completely drain towards the drain anymore and we have to squeegee it down before we get out of the shower. I ordered a couple of screw jacks to put under the house around the shower to help level it. Of course, by doing that a lot of grout in the shower cracked and had to be replaced. It’s a good thing we have the shower in the guest house that we could use for a few days.

It’s been a while since we’ve made some different types of candies with our homegrown chocolate. Kelley recently found a recipe for one of my childhood favorites, chocolate covered honeycomb. It’s an airy toffee that looks like a honeycomb, and when covered in chocolate is delicious. The stuff we made tasted just like I remembered from when I was young. When I was a kid, my dad would take us to MacFarlane’s Candy Company in Oakland, CA. It was a huge candy store where they made all their candy. There were more choices there than you could imagine, but I almost always went right for the chocolate covered honeycomb. How great it was to be a kid going to a big candy store like that, where everything was made in-house, sold by the pound and there was no commercial packaging.

After the past couple of weeks of bust’n our asses trimming, planting and chopping everything, we got word that our Amazon order had arrived. A few weeks back we made an order on Prime Day and had some things shipped down here. One of the great deals was a green neon sign that we thought would be just perfect on the back patio.

 

It was about time we headed back up to see the grandkids again. Since we have a bunch of Rapid Rewards points with Southwest Airlines, why not use them? Usually we pass through Texas on our way to Arizona, but this time we decided to stay in Texas for a few days and check out Galveston Island. We usually don’t associate Texas with beaches, but they’ve got some good ones.

Galveston Island is 32 miles long with sandy beach access everywhere. In the heart of the island, along the seawall, there are lots of restaurants and beach bars where you can watch all the people enjoying the beach. Of course seafood is highlighted in most of the restaurants along the beach, and we definitely took advantage of that. There is also an amusement park out over the water called Pleasure Pier. They have roller coasters, a big Ferris wheel, a bunch of other rides and restaurants all out over the “Gulf of America”.

Before we travel to someplace we’ve never been, we always check out the local food and recommendations. Since we were in Texas, we had to find a good BBQ joint. Queen’s BBQ was highly recommended and for good reasons. The inside was decorated with old signs, corrugated tin on the walls and a great smoky smell in the air, everything you’d expect at a good BBQ joint. We both had the brisket, which was melt in your mouth tender, plus they also had a great peach cobbler. Now that BBQ was out of the way it was time to check out the local seafood. We went to quite a few restaurants and bars where we had gumbo, oysters on the half shell, crab and lots of shrimp. One day we opted to give some Tex-Mex a try. After a couple ice-cold Modelo’s, the bartender highly recommended that we try the chili relleno. It was a huge poblano chile pepper, over stuffed with shrimp, dripping with cheese, covered with a green chili sauce and was delicious. I wish we had more time there to check out more of the great food in the area, but we’ll save that for next time.

One of the days we decided to take a tour on a duck (DUKW) boat. A duck boat is an amphibious vessel built during WW2 that drives on land and then goes into the water just like a boat. We toured around the island learning about all the vast history of Galveston. How the hurricane in 1900 was the worst natural disaster in US history, how they raised the entire island 10 to 17 feet, plus a lot of military history.  There are a lot of big mansions, Victorian homes and unlimited ghost stories to go along with everything. After all, it is considered the most haunted city in the US.

After a tour and history lesson around town, we headed towards the water and drove right in for a tour of the bay. The duck boat only does about 7 knots on the water, which was just perfect. I was thinking how much fun it would be to have one of these down in Belize.

I don’t really have a bucket list, but there was one thing that I’ve always wanted to do. That was to ride in an open cockpit biplane. Well, that got checked off, because Scallywag Air in Galveston offered that thrill.

We met with our pilot (a 30 year old female) and prepared for a 20 minute flight over the island. Kelley and I (Yes Kelley) climbed into the front seat of the cockpit only a few feet behind the prop and away we went. It was an exhilarating ride, flying that high above everything in an open cockpit plane with the wind in your face and enjoying every sharp turn she made. Sarah, our pilot, truly loves her job, and in my opinion is the best job anyone could have. If you are ever in Galveston, I highly recommend looking up Scallywag Air and booking a flight with Sarah.

In our opinion Galveston Island was a great place to visit and we will be going back again on one of our stops in Texas. There are a lot of Airbnbs right on the beach, so next time maybe we’ll rent one of them instead of a hotel. With all the great history, ghost tours, attractions, beaches and great food, it’s worth going back to. Besides that, it’s only a 45 minute drive from Houston Hobby airport.

After a great time in Galveston we continued on to Arizona to see the grandkids. Our neighbor Amanda caught up with us in Arizona for a week in the hot sun. A few of the days the temperature was up around 115° so we ended up spending a lot of time in the pool with the kids, and of course some cold adult beverages

Most days started out working in their shop on some of their classic cars. This trip, the ’48 International pickup and the ’65 Lincoln got most of the attention. But there was still time to put a new electronic distributor in the convertible Nova and I managed to get the carburetor rebuilt on my Yamaha. We always spend a lot of time in Arizona working on stuff in their shop, and we love it!

Since Amanda hasn’t really seen a lot of Arizona, we decided to head up to Canyon Lake for the day and show her that there really are lakes in Arizona. Canyon Lake is the 3rd and smallest of the four lakes on the Salt River. It’s a pretty good-sized lake that covers around 950 acres and has a shoreline of 30 miles. After checking out the lake we headed over to Tortilla Flat in the Superstition Mountains to grab some lunch.

Tortilla Flat is an old west town with a general store, bar and a good restaurant. Inside the restaurant the walls are papered with dollar bills, they estimate that there is around $700,000 in bills tacked on the walls. The bar stools are saddles, there are lots of animal mounts on the walls, they have great food and they also make their own root beer. Tortilla Flat is the last surviving stagecoach stop along the Apache Trail. It’s also the smallest community in Arizona (population 6) with a US Post Office.

We had a great time in Galveston and Arizona and are looking forward to our next trip.

…Okay, here’s a couple of back stories from our trip.

The biplane was quite a challenge for me to get into. There was only about a foot clearance between the wing and the cockpit. But I was determined to get into that seat no matter how long it took me. The pilot told us that she calls this “airplane yoga” and it is quite common. Anyway, I did make it into that seat and getting out was just as much of a challenge.

After that plane ride we headed back to Houston to catch our flight over to Arizona. Well, that’s when the big storm came through Texas and delayed all flights. We were at the Houston airport for 9 hours before we managed to get on a plane headed to Arizona.

The kids recently had their pool redone, complete with a waterfall and slide. Us being young at heart, Kelley and I both had to try out the new water slide.

Kelley went down the slide very gracefully like a pro. Me on the other hand thought I would hold my arms up like I do on a roller coaster. As soon as I started down the slide, my body just laid down flat and I came off the slide very horizontal. Next time I won’t raise my arms so high.

On our way back to Belize there was another incident at the Houston airport. It seems that an engine on a plane caught fire after takeoff and had to return to the airport. Everything was okay, but inside the airport the fire alarm was going off for a good 20 minutes. There was a very loud siren, flashing lights and an announcement every 10 seconds to exit the building. It’s amazing that most people just ignored the alarm and just sat there or kept walking towards their gates, sitting at the bar or eating their meals like nothing was happening. These are not the people I want in the emergency exit rows on my plane.

I hope everyone had a great Father’s Day weekend, I know I did. For that weekend, we decided to head over to the beaches of Placencia for a few days. Ron and Rhonda offered for us to stay in their guest house, so we took them up on it. On the trip over to the coast we decided to stop at St. Herman’s Blue Hole National Park.

The park has a blue water cenote where you can swim and cool off, plus there are also two big caves to explore. We have been to the cenote before, but never made it to the caves. So this time we brought our flashlights and hiked about 20 minutes to the first cave’s entrance.

Once there, we found cement stairs going down into the cave. They were steep, covered with wet leaves and very slippery. We decided not to go in too far, as we were the only ones there. Besides that, you are only allowed to go about 200 yards in before they require you to have a guide. Still, that was far enough for us to see how big and amazing this cave really is.

Besides the blue hole cenote where you can swim, they also offer cave tubing, which is something you have to experience. This time we only went to the one cave, so next time maybe we’ll stop and check out the Crystal Cave.  St. Herman’s Blue Hole Park is only about an hour’s drive from our place and is a great place to stop, especially if you’re already heading to Hopkins or Placencia.

Like most of our weekend beach getaways, there are no plans, just go there and see what happens. The weekend was windy, so getting out on a boat was not an option, but that didn’t mean water wasn’t going to be involved. A lot of places there allow you to use their pools as long as you purchase food or drinks, which is not a problem for us.

It was a great relaxing weekend, seeing old friends, meeting new friends and just enjoying time at the beach. On Sunday for Father’s Day, Ron & Rhonda invited a couple of friends over and cooked up a delicious prime rib roast. It was a great meal and a perfect way to end our long weekend in Placencia.

Once we got back home it was time we started picking some pineapples. Now that they are starting to ripen, the birds are pecking holes in them. I think the electric fence is keeping most of the ground critters away, but that can’t stop the birds. We are trying to let the pineapples get as big and ripe as we can on the plants before we pick them. But sometimes, as soon as they start turning a little yellow, we need to get to them before the critters do. Just this past couple of weeks we’ve picked around 60 pineapples, and there are still more on the plants. We’ve been eating them just about every day for breakfast plus giving some away.

We have also been dehydrating some, and Kelley made up a batch of pineapple jam. Another way that is delicious is to soak slices of them in brown sugar and rum for a couple of hours, then throw them on the grill. As they are grilling, take the rum/brown sugar mixture and reduce it down on the stove for a thick dipping sauce. It makes for an excellent dessert that everyone seems to love.

Our dragon fruit is just starting to get blossoms on the plants. The first ones should be ready in a month or so, and we should continue to get them for the next few months. So far it looks like the first blooms are the deep purple ones, so the white ones shouldn’t be too far behind. I can see some purple dragon fruit margaritas in our near future.

We’ve said it before, most everything grows big and fast down here. About five years ago a friend gave us a local avocado, which was delicious, so we decided to plant the seed. It sprouted immediately in some dirt, then we planted it in a bigger pot until it was a good four feet tall. We had a spot in the garden where a plum tree had died, so that’s where we planted it. Now, here it is five years later and it is huge. We really thought this would be the year that it finally got avocados, but maybe next year.

All of our fruit trees on our farm lot are doing great and getting big. I’m thinking that in a couple of years we should have an abundance of mangos, avocados, citrus and a few others. Recently one of our citrus trees up there died. So we replaced it with a ruby red grapefruit tree. It’s small right now, but it shouldn’t take too long before it catches up to the others.

We find quite a few different types of orchids around the property, which we will usually relocate back near the house. We have a few Catasetum Integerrimum Orchids that will bloom every so often with big flowers that only last a couple of days. About the only reason we know when it blooms is because of the loud buzz from the big black and yellow bumble bees that it attracts. The only time we ever see these big bees is when this orchid is in bloom, we have never seen them anywhere else.

The other morning after our first good rain of the season, we noticed an exceptional number of different types of birds swooping down on the ground and eating bugs. Then we saw why. It was a massive migration of army ants moving through the yard, there must have been millions of them. In front of them every insect you can think of was running for its life. Cockroaches, spiders, crickets, scorpions and everything else were trying to get away from the ants.

I got the hose out and sprayed water just in front of the ants to keep them away from the house, but that didn’t stop all the other insects from running towards the house. It’s kind of a little creepy seeing all of that, but hopefully after the ants are gone, the bugs will retreat back to the jungle. If you ever want to see a wide variety of birds in a short period of time, I guess keep an eye out for a giant ant migration.

The other thing that happens after the first big rain of the season is the flood fly invasion. This is where millions of termites leave their nest to mate and start a new colony. Usually around dusk on the day after the first big rain, termites will take to the air by the millions. We have learned that when this happens to shut all the windows and turn all the lights off for a couple of hours until they quit. After mating they will shed their wings, leaving behind a huge mess everywhere that we will be cleaning up for weeks. Then if that wasn’t bad enough, a couple of nights later, we had swarms of big flying ants all over the house (we have never had these before). I guess they also come out after the first big rain looking to mate and relocate. They are harmless (they say), come at dusk and are attracted to lights. So once again, we had to turn out all the lights and shut the windows, but they still managed to get into the house. They were only there for an hour or so before they quit swarming. The good thing was that they didn’t shed their wings, they just died and that made clean up the next morning a lot easier. We’re happy that the first big rain is behind us now and we shouldn’t have to deal with these again till next year.

Chachalacas are a common bird around here. They are a good-sized bird and are very loud, especially in the early mornings. They are considered a pest in the garden and will eat seedlings as soon a they pop up. We planted a bunch of bush beans last year, and as soon as they popped up they were gone. We replanted them three times and even built a scarecrow and put old CD’s on strings to scare them away before we just gave up. In Texas they actually have a hunting season on Chachalacas and they say the flavor is similar to chicken or pheasant. We’re always up for something new, maybe we’ll have to give one a try.

Last week we were at the grocery store and saw something we’d never seen here before, bags of frozen crawfish! Of course we had to get a couple of bags to see how they were. Now all we could think about was a big Louisiana-style crawfish boil, with crawfish, corn, potatoes, spicy sausage and a lot of spice. The only thing we didn’t have was a good spicy sausage. Not a problem, we’ve been making Texas style hot links that we think are pretty good. So we whipped up ten pounds of sausage, got it in the smoker and now we were ready for a crawfish boil. Saturday we put it all together, invited Amanda over and dug into a big pile of delicious finger food.

We’re thankful that the rains have finally come and there were no big fires around us this year. All the plants are looking great and the animals are a lot more active, but the bug invasion this past week was something else. Now that we’ve had the big first rain of the season and the termites and ants are out of the way, the rest of the year should be great, with mild temps and a little rain thrown in.

 

June is here and the weather has started to calm down a bit. This past couple of weeks we’ve had cooler temps, cloudy days and even some rain. Since rain was predicted, I decided to fertilize all the trees and plants that we’ve ever planted, and that’s a lot! The next day we had a good rain for about a half hour, so everything should have some nice growth spurts coming up and be nice and healthy looking.

Now that the weather has gotten better, we were able to get back out and get some things done around here. All of the cacao trees in the garden were overgrown, and you couldn’t get under them to get the cacao pods, so they all got a good trimming. Last year Ruben cut down a couple of big palm trees out behind the BBQ, but the bases were still a good 6-8′ tall sticking out of the ground. We got the truck up in there with the winch and got them pulled out, and then dragged back a little farther. We’re still looking for ideas of what to do with that area we just had cleared. Maybe some garden paths lined with colorful tropical plants, or more cacao trees, a greenhouse, a small pond with a waterfall, a hen house, or maybe nothing at all. I’m sure at some point we’ll come up with something.

The other day I was up in the garden and there it was, a big bright patch of orange in the palm tree. One of the Cohune seed pods had just opened up, and the pod was standing straight up. The orange part of the pod was at least five to six feet long, and being that big and bright, it really stood out against the dense green jungle. Just when you look out and think everything is shades of green, something will surprise you.

Not too often we walk the trails around the property, but the weather was decent, so why not. Since we had some rain last week we were mostly on the hunt for oyster mushrooms. We didn’t find any, but we did find another orchid to relocate back near the house. Now we’ll just have to wait for it to bloom to see what it is.

Every so often we clean our windows and wash all the screens, not as often as we probably should. Anyway, a few weeks ago we got them all cleaned up and shiny, and now it seems like every few days a bird will crash into a window. Most of them just fly away, others will sit on the porch for ten minutes or so before they take off, and then there are some that just don’t survive. It makes me wonder if we should just keep our windows dirty to help protect the birds.

One bird that we don’t have to worry about hitting the windows are the hummingbirds. They will zoom inches from your face and weave in and out around the porch railing faster than you can imagine. We have two feeders pretty much right on the front porch, and the birds will let you get within a foot or so of them. Of the twenty-five species of hummingbirds in Belize, the White Necked Jacobin is very common around our place. At times there will be 5-10 all chasing each other away from the feeders. If you are wondering how fast hummingbirds are, in general, they fly around 30 mph and more than 45 mph during courtship dives. To move that fast, their wing beat is around 70 times per second in regular flight, and more than 200 times per second while diving. It’s no wonder they sound like a jet when they go by.

The other day we noticed a small white spot on a leaf of the basil plant. Upon further investigation we discovered that it was a small Mahogany Tree Frog. After looking him up on Google, we found out that he is nocturnal and is white during the day while he sleeps. At night though, he changes color to yellow and even orange. Next time we’ll keep him around until the evening so we can see him wake up and change colors.

Last week Kelley was walking around the yard and looked down and thought she had lost a back to one of her earrings. When she bent over to pick it up, it turned out to be a beetle. Of course, she got some pictures of it and we had to look it up to see what it was. Turns out it was a Target Tortoise Beetle. He was only about an 1/8″ long, looked like someone dipped him in gold glitter, he had a clear looking tortoise shell with a black target on it. There are certainly a lot of interesting insects down here.

We’re getting some more plants ready for the garden. This time we’ve got habaneros and artichokes. The last time we got habaneros from our produce stand in the village, the peppers were huge, so we saved some seeds to see if they would grow. They did grow and are looking very healthy, so hopefully we’ll get some good peppers out of these plants. We keep trying to grow artichokes, and either they die before they go into the ground, or the ones that do make it never produce an artichoke. I know that they grow great on the cool coast in central California, and we have also grown them in the Arizona heat, so I think that they should grow here. Kelley and I love artichokes, but they are simply not available in Belize, which is why we keep on trying to get them to grow.

Sunday morning we decided to pick the ripe grapefruit off the tree to give the new ones a better chance of getting big. While we were up there we also grabbed a few pineapples, local oranges and I think the last of the starfruits. Looks like it will be a good fruity breakfast this week.

We always have something from the garden on the front porch, either ripening or drying. Whether it’s pineapples, tomatoes, oranges, coffee, or cacao, we’ve never had a problem with critters until now. Last night something got up on the porch and went to town on one of our pineapples. We assume it was a possum, because we’ve seen a few around here lately. It looks like we are going to have to start bringing everything in before we go to bed.

One thing we love about living here is how everyone shares things they are growing. The other day for example, Ruben came down with some avocados. Our trees are not producing yet, so this was a great treat for us. And since Ruben doesn’t have Starfruit trees and we do, we gave him a bag full. A couple of weeks ago, he brought down some bananas and we gave him some okra and peppers. Soon we will be swapping some of our pineapples for some sweet corn and tomatoes. It’s great when everyone is growing something different and shares.

We ended up with a lot more starfruit than we thought we had on the tree. We’ve eaten a bunch, juiced some and given quite a bit away, but there was still more. So Kelley decided to try making a couple jars of starfruit jam. She made some with just the starfruit and the other she added some raspberries. They both turned out very good, and we will be making this again once the tree starts getting more fruit.

We are now making giant-sized dark chocolate candy bars. Now all we have to do is come up with some packaging and I’m sure somebody would want one. Actually, this is the cacao beans after they had been ground smooth for many hours and then poured onto a cookie sheet and let cool. This time we did two batches back to back and now all we have to do is temper it and pour it into some smaller molds.

That’s about it this time, hope all you dads have a Happy Father’s Day!

 

Usually our very hot and humid months are April and May. This year we were lucky and it didn’t really get hot until mid May. We had a few weeks up around 100° and the humidity was close to the same. So we’ve been trying not to do any big projects around here until next month once the weather calms down a bit. At this point the weather for the next two weeks looks cooler with a chance of rain, hopefully that holds true. In the meantime we’ve been playing with different foods and recipes, after all, we still have to eat.

We see a lot of different types of birds around our place, and when possible, Kelley will try to get some pictures of them. A bird that we seldom see is the Masked Tityra and they just happen to be building a nest in the peak of our garage. For the past few years, the Social Flycatchers have had a nest in the lower of the 2 beams at the top of the garage. I guess this didn’t bother the Masked Tityras as they started building a nest just above them. We assume there are baby birds in there, as the male and female keep flying up there with insects in their mouths. With close to 600 species of birds in Belize, either resident or migratory, I’ll bet we haven’t seen 1/3 of them yet.

A couple of years ago we ordered some corn hole bags that were weatherproof and would not mold in this jungle environment. Well I finally got around to making the boards. In the past I hand-painted the boards with Homer and Bart Simpson on them. This time Kelley and I came up with a design for the “Toucan Hideaway”. Instead of me painting them, we found a company on Amazon that prints vinyl for corn hole boards. The company was great, they will print any design or photo for your boards and they shipped within two days. Once we applied the vinyl, I decided to clear coat them for a little extra protection. We think they turned out awesome and should be a lot of fun.

We’ve been wanting to have some friends over for a fish fry, but we didn’t have enough fish left in the freezer from our last fishing trip. Recently when we were in Hopkins, we asked around and found someone who could get us ten pounds of snook fillets. So Memorial Day weekend (a holiday in the States) we invited a bunch of friends over and fired up our disco for some delicious fried fish. If you don’t know what the disco is, it’s a plow disk for a tractor that has been modified for cooking.

There were about fifteen of us and everybody brought a delicious side dish to go with the fish. It was a great group of people, all the food was delicious, corn hole was played and of course there were some drinks flowing. I now think that snook is my new favorite fish. It was white, flaky, very mild, and delicious with some malt vinegar sprinkled on it.

For the fish fry Kelley made some smoked Barracuda fish dip with cream cheese, mayo, sour cream, parmesan cheese and spices. She has made this a few times before and it’s always a big hit. This time there was some left over, so we thought, why not stuff some jalapeños with it and throw them on the grill? We make jalapeño poppers quite regularly, but usually with a bacon, chicken or shrimp filling. The smoked fish dip in the poppers was delicious, and we will be making this again to share with friends.

After the fish fry we had a few pounds of snook left over. So the next day I made up a basic brine of salt and brown sugar and let the fish soak for a few hours. Then I fired up the smoker with some apple wood chips and sat around with a few cold beers until it was done. I love smoked fish, it’s just that we don’t have as much fish around anymore since we moved away from the beach.

The other day I was out back roasting some green chilis when there was a thump on the roof over the BBQ. I didn’t think too much of it, because I thought it was probably just a branch or something. Then I heard it a couple of more times and I assumed a lizard or a squirrel was up there. Turns out it was a very young toucan that had landed there. When he saw me he flew away, but not before I could call Kelley to get her camera.

I know this isn’t for everybody, but Kelley and I do eat beef liver. Every so often, we will get some from our butcher and Kelley will cut it into finger size pieces, dredge them in flour and fry them up. They are delicious with a little hot sauce on them and a side of fried okra. Anyway, we had some liver in the freezer, so why not try to make some pâté. Kelley found a recipe that sounded good and went to work making some. It was really good on crackers and even better on some toasted sourdough bread. I know a lot of people would never even try this, but then again we both like Braunschweiger and liverwurst, which you can’t find here.

A classic Caribbean dish in Belize is split pea and pigtail soup, which we have had many times and love it. Many of the markets will have a 5 gallon bucket full of pickled pigtails, where you just pick out as many as you want. When we were in Hopkins we picked up some smoked pigtails to try. We were going to just try them plain, but then we thought that they would add great flavor to some split pea soup. So Kelley made up some split pea soup with the smoked pigtails and it was really good. It wasn’t quite like we’ve had here, because we used smoked pigtails not pickled. It was basically a split pea and ham soup. But, like I said about the pâté, it’s not for everybody, but we like it.

It was finally time to grind up our cayenne peppers that had been fermenting for about six weeks. Kelley poured off some of the vinegar that they had been soaking in and saved it. Spicy vinegar is good for lots of things, I especially like it on cooked spinach. Anyway, Kelley ground up the peppers and bottled up the hot sauce. For some reason the yellow cayenne peppers have a fruiter smell to them, but are quite a bit hotter than the red ones. I can’t wait to try this pepper sauce mixed with butter on some chicken wings.

Speaking of spinach, we have Malabar spinach growing in pots. Malabar spinach is a perennial, grows very fast and will get vines up to 30′ long. It tastes like the regular spinach that most people are used to and can be eaten raw or cooked. There are two varieties, the purple vine and the green vine. We had the purple ones growing and then Amanda brought down some seeds from her green ones and they took off fast. As needed, Kelley will cut a foot or so off the plants for different recipes. Malabar spinach should be available at Asian markets in the States, so next time, why not try something a little different?

Around the outside of the house we have pots with different herbs growing in them. We’ve got Basil, Sage, Rosemary, Chives, Oregano, Ginger, Turmeric, and of course Spinach. This makes it really convenient, especially since we are sort of out here a ways, and fresh herbs are sometimes hard to find in the markets.

Our pineapples are finally at the stage where we can start picking a few. At this point the birds have only pecked a hole in one of them. It seems like the electric fence is keeping the other critters away, but we’ll have to see when they really start to ripen. Our grapefruit tree still has a lot of fruit on it and are slowly ripening, which is great that they are not all ready at once. And just when we think we’ve gotten all the starfruit off the tree, there’s a bunch more the next week that we didn’t see.

We’re still having fun with our chocolates. This time we decided to make a version of one of our favorites, a crunch bar. This was a super simple recipe, just melt our chocolate and stir in some Rice Krispies. We made some in our regular candy bar molds and then we did some others in one of our thicker molds so you could really get a big bite of chocolate. All the different chocolate candies we’re making are a little different from the originals, because most of them use milk chocolate and we are using dark chocolate. I’m not a big fan of milk chocolate, but dark chocolate is my weakness and is much healthier for you. In my opinion, I like the ones we’re making better than the originals, but that’s because I love dark chocolate.

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Hope to see you soon.

 

During the off-season, there are a lot of good deals to be had at local hotels and resorts. Hopkins Bay Resort had a great deal going on, so off to the beach for a long weekend to take advantage of it. Ron & Rhonda also found out about it, and since they only live an hour away, they decided to join us for a Mother’s Day weekend getaway.

We really had no plans in Hopkins, the whole weekend just revolved around chill’n out, doing some bar hopping, seeing friends, enjoying the pool, and of course eating. Then again, that’s what these little getaways are usually for.

One of the little beach bars we went to check out was closed, but the owner was there on the shore teaching his son how to fish for the first time. He was nice enough to take time out from helping his son to get us a couple cold beers. While we were on the beach sipping our beers, the kid caught his first fish ever. Of course, we all cheered for him, and Kelley went over and took his picture. After we got back home we sent the picture down to his father and he was very thankful.

That was a great little getaway, but now back to the jungle.

We finally made it up to Blacaneaux Lodge one Sunday to check it out and grab a quick bite.  Blacaneaux Lodge is a high-end, Francis Ford Coppola resort only about ten minutes from our place. They have three different restaurants on site: an Italian, a vegetarian, and a Guatemalan. Being the off-season, the Italian restaurant was the only one open at the time, so we opted for a pizza and a few cold draft Belikins beers. They have a 3.5 acre garden on the property that supplies 80% of fruits and vegetables for their meals, which makes everything very fresh, and of course, they have a good selection of Coppola wines. The Italian restaurant had a great-looking menu, and would be a great place to bring guests, or for a special occasion dinner. We will definitely be going back to try the other restaurants, if not for a fancy dinner, then for another pizza and beer lunch.

We are still getting quite a few cayenne peppers off our plants, but it’s looking like the plants are starting to slow down a little. Kelley has been using the peppers in many dishes, such as soups, Chinese food and Mexican food. We’ve had more than we could keep using fresh, so besides making our pepper sauce, we decided to dehydrate a bunch and vacuum seal them in jars. Cayenne peppers are not common here and are almost impossible to find anywhere. We decided to grow these peppers since they are not really spicy, but pack a lot of flavor. So, as needed, we will be able to grind some of these up to be used on pizzas and others can be used whole in different dishes when our fresh ones aren’t available anymore.

We were talking to Ruben the other day about clearing a little more bush out behind the back deck. As we were pointing out trees to be removed, there was a dead one that was full of oyster mushrooms all around the base of the tree. This was a surprise to us, as we haven’t had any rain in quite a while. Kelley picked about a pound of mushrooms and we gave half of them to Ruben. They were a delicious addition to our meal that night, sautéed in butter with a little garlic salt and pepper. It’s great when you can find delicious stuff growing wild in the jungle. As for that dead tree that was going to be removed, we decided to let it stay where it is, just in case there might be more mushrooms that pop up.

After we got back from Hopkins, Ruben had underbrushed and cleared some of the smaller trees out from the area behind our back patio. It really opened it up a little more and should look great once we finish getting it cleaned up. Eventually, we will start planting decorative and flowering plants in that area, and who knows what other crazy idea we might have.

We are starting to get star fruit off our tree. It seems that the tree always has blossoms on it, but we never see any fruit. The other day I finally saw one that looked like it was ripe, so I got a pole and shook the branch. When I did a bunch more fell to the ground. They are very hard to spot on the tree, as they look just like the leaves and we usually don’t see them until they hit the ground. So far, we’ve gotten a few dozen. Every few days, I’ll see one that looks ripe and shake the tree, and when I do, more start falling that we didn’t even see.

Recently Ruben brought down a stock of apple bananas from one of the plants on our farm lot. He grabbed some for himself, Amanda took a few and we had at least another 25 left for us. These are my favorite little bananas, they are just so sweet and you can easily eat 2-3 at a time, especially with a little peanut butter on them. It looks like this week’s breakfast will be bananas and star fruit.

We’ve got nine cacao trees that we planted about six years ago and at this point, they are providing us with a constant supply of cacao. These plants germinate very well, so when we get some seeds that aren’t good enough to make chocolate, we’ll sometimes plant them. We’ve probably given away at least 50 good-sized plants, and we have another 50 that are just getting started. Recently, for some reason we decided that we might as well plant a few more trees around the property. So we planted twelve more plants (2′-4′ tall) out in a clearing on the side of the house. If these grow like our original plants, we could end up with a whole lot more cacao for making chocolate. Maybe we’ll even plant a bunch more in the new clearing behind the back patio. Is too much chocolate really a problem?

This is just in case you didn’t know about cashew nuts. Cashews actually grow very well here in Belize. The picture of the cashews above was growing on the side of the road down in Hopkins. The one nut itself actually grows on the outside bottom of the fruit. The cashew fruit is used locally to make wine, jams, and jellies, though mostly it’s grown for the nut itself. Once harvested, the nuts need to be separated from the fruit, dried, roasted and then shelled before they are ready to eat. Parts of the cashew must be handled with care, because it is related to poison ivy and poison sumac, which can cause an allergic skin reaction in some people. They are an expensive and very delicious nut, but considering the process to get to that point, I think they are well worth it.

If you know us, then you know we are always up for trying some new foods. Last week when we were in Hopkins, we stopped in at Beef Masters and picked up some beef steaks and some other cuts of meat. They also raise and sell buffalo, so we picked up some burgers and thought we’d give them a try. This is not buffalo (bison) meat like they sell in the States, here they raise Asian water buffalo. One Friday night we fired up the grill and invited Amanda over for some bacon, green chili, water buffalo cheeseburgers to see how they compare to regular beef. Okay, we all agreed that these were some very delicious burgers and ranked them way up on the burger scale. On our next trip to Hopkins we’ll be picking up some more burgers and maybe a steak or two. If the steaks are as good as the burger, we could become big fans of water buffalo. We also picked up some smoked pig tails while we were there. We’ll have to let you know how those were a little later.

It’s a great time to visit Belize, we hope to see you soon.

 

We are always very busy around here tending to the yard, working on different projects and of course constantly making our different meats. So this time I thought I’d just share some of the other foodstuffs we’ve been working on.

Kelley had a chance to start getting some of our cayenne peppers fermenting. The first batch is currently soaking in vinegar, garlic and salt for up to six weeks. After that, they will get blended up into a hot pepper sauce that is one of the ingredients in our homemade chorizo. The peppers vary in heat range; in fact, it turns out that the yellow ones actually seem to be a little hotter than the red ones.

We have a lot of requests for our habanero salt that we make. So the other day at our local produce market, they had a 10 lb bag of big red habaneros that were just picked that day. I couldn’t resist, most of them were the size of golf balls and looked beautiful. We didn’t need to make more pepper salts, but when the peppers look that good you have to take advantage of them.

Recently Amanda brought over some habaneros that she has been saving from her plants. I had the smoker out, so I tossed them in there with some mesquite chips to see what would happen. The peppers really soaked up that mesquite flavor. Since we just picked up that big bag of fresh peppers, I thought I’d load the smoker up with a bunch more. After they smoked for a few hours, they went into the dehydrator and then ground up and mixed with salt. So besides our regular habanero salt, we now have mesquite smoked habanero salt that is excellent on meats.

It’s been a while since I’ve had a “Guess what’s drying on the porch picture”. This time it’s the cacao beans that we picked a couple of weeks ago. They are done fermenting and are now in the drying stage. After they dry in the sun for a week or so, they will be ready to roast and made into chocolate. The other day, we picked this amount again that is currently in the fermenting tub. There is still more on the trees, so this will be a common sight on the porch for a while.

Over the past few months, Kelley has had a hard time getting our chocolate to temper properly. If the chocolate does not temper, that just means it needs to be refrigerated and will melt in your hands. Tempering is pretty tricky, it’s a process where you have to melt the chocolate to a certain temperature, then cool it back down, and then raise it back up to a certain temp in order for it to form the perfect type of crystals. After that, it’s poured into molds, but you will not know if it’s tempered until it cools down. In the past she has gotten it to work great, but for some reason it just hasn’t been working lately and is very frustrating. After a lot of research and trying different methods, we found that there is a machine that will automatically do this for you. It automatically heats the chocolate, cools it down, heats it back up, is digital and has different beeps to let you know what stage it’s at.

We took a chance and ordered the tempering machine, and so far the first batch of chocolate came out tempered like it should. This should take all the frustration and guesswork out of trying to get it to temper. Which is great, because we have a lot of chocolate we need to start making.

Since we have all this chocolate, we are still playing around with different ideas. This time we thought we would try a copy of a Kit-Kat candy bar. We used wafer cookies and dipped them in dark chocolate to see how close it would come to the real thing. First off, we were using dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate and the cookie center wasn’t quite the same. But overall, it did sort of taste like one and the crunch was there, so we will be making these again.  Maybe we’ll call these Jungle-Kats, instead of Kit-Kats.

Who does not love an orange Creamsicle ice cream bar? About a year ago, I came across a recipe for Creamsicle cookies. It called for orange Jello, orange cake mix, and white chocolate chips. We decided to give these a whirl, problem was we couldn’t find orange cake mix anywhere. We looked for over a year at every store we went to, even looking in the States when we were up there, but still no luck. Finally, one day at a store near us there it was, Duncan Hines orange cake mix. We were really looking forward to making these cookies since we had been searching for orange cake mix for so long. Kelley made up a batch, and we both decided that these are some of the best-tasting cookies that we’ve ever had. So we went back to the store and bought five more boxes of orange cake mix, just in case we can never find it again.

Since the orange cookies turned out so good and it reminded Kelley of her favorite ice cream treat, she had another idea. What if we put ice cream in between two cookies and make it an ice cream sandwich? She thought vanilla ice cream was the perfect choice, but we didn’t have any in the freezer. What we did have was a pint of some locally made Key Lime ice cream. The orange of the cookie and the Key Lime ice cream were great together, but we are still going to try it with some vanilla ice cream. That is, if there are any cookies left by the time we get to the store for more ice cream.

Usually we have a fairly steady supply of bananas growing here, but for some reason our plants have not produced in close to a year now. Ruben thinks a disease or a bug is affecting the plants and that we need to take them all out. I think it might be because of all the rain we had, where they sat in basically a swamp for weeks at a time. Anyway, they are starting to look better now that it’s dry, and we finally have some bananas forming. I’ll give them a few more months to see how they do, or if we need to remove them and plant new ones.

A lot of the local fruits are not available here when they’re not in season, such as mangos, avocados, and pineapples. For us, pineapple season is almost here, and we can’t wait. Ours are getting big and we should start picking them in about a month or so. Since they are in various stages of development, we should have fresh pineapples available throughout the summer months. Of course, now that they are getting big and starting to ripen, we had to get our electric fence back up around them. This usually slows down some of the critters from getting them, but they will still get their fair share. So far, we have 80+ pineapples on plants, and if we get 3/4 of those, we’ll be happy with that.

We have literally hundreds of cohune palm trees growing on our property. They get these huge clusters of mini coconuts, which the animals love once they fall off the tree. The palms are native to Belize, where the Mayans had many uses for them, including making oil. The oil is not sold commercially because of the difficulty in cracking the nuts and the process by which it’s made. If you are lucky, sometimes you can find people selling bottles of cohune oil along the roadside in small villages.

Last year, a guy who was trimming our trees asked if we could save some of our cohune nuts for him so that he could make oil out of them. Between Amanda and us, we loaded up his truck bed with cohune nuts. The other day, he gifted us with some cohune oil that he had made. The oil can be used for cooking (which has a nutty flavor), soapmaking, lamp oil, and as a beauty treatment for your skin. It’s just one more natural product that comes from the jungle we live in.

April and May are usually our two hottest months here, but so far it has been great. With highs right around 90° and the lows around mid 60ºs. I don’t know what May will bring, but once June gets here, the weather is usually really nice. If you are planning on visiting us, any time from June till the end of the year should be great. Hope to see you soon.

 

After the excessive rains we had the past few months, we decided to make a trip up to the states where it was a little drier and to visit the grandkids. We see them 2-3 times a year, and every time we do they keep getting bigger, smarter and more mature.

While we were up there, the kids invited a bunch of friends over for a happy hour/bbq. It was great seeing and catching up with friends that we used to see all the time at our place in Mexico. Of course we talked about Belize and that we have a guest house anytime they wanted to come for a visit. Hopefully, there will be a few that take us up on the offer.

Kelley also met up with some of her family, as they were having a group birthday party for a few of them. Two of her four sisters and one of her three brothers were there, plus brother-in-laws, nephews and their kids. Some of them she hadn’t seen in a couple of years, so it was great for her to catch up and hear what they’ve been up to.

Since we were at the kids house for just over two weeks, we really had the chance to kick ass on fixing up some of their classic cars. Besides seeing the kids and grandkids, working on their old cars is one of my favorite things to do. Just about every day, Randy, Stacy, Kelley, and I did something to one of the cars. Stacy’s ’48 International pickup got some holes repaired and paint on the fenders, all the old wood from the bed removed and some of the old glass replaced.

Most of the time was spent on the ’65 Lincoln, which Randy has had for close to 20 years now. It needed a lot of work, and over the years, it had been pushed to the back of the pile of projects until recently.

One big project was to replace the dash and work on the interior. On a car of this caliber, that meant there were a lot of wires and vacuum hoses to figure out or replace. The entire wiring harness had to be cut out and then pieced back together. And since the dash was all apart, everything got a new paint job and all the chrome got polished up before being installed.

By the time we left, the dash was back in the car, a new carpet kit installed, the newly upholstered seats and door panels were in and it was looking great. There is still a lot of work to do on it, but everything is in motion now, and it shouldn’t be too long before it hits the road again.

Not all of their cars need a lot of work, some just need a little fine-tuning. One Saturday, they pulled out three cars so we could do a little cruise. Stacy drove her ’59 Cadillac, Randy drove the’ 48 Plymouth and Kelley and I took the ’62 Nova convertible. Three classic cars driving down the road was a lot of fun and they sure attracted a lot of attention.

In between working on the cars, I had some time to work on my bike that I picked up last year. This time, I repaired some missing bolt threads on the engine case, tapped in a new petcock on the gas tank and found a correct skid plate for it. About the only thing left to do is pop out a few more small dents in the gas tank and rebuild the carburetor. Then, it will be ready for a test ride before I list it for sale.

Back to the Jungle

Once we got back home, there was no shortage of things to do around the yard. Since we had about 4″ of rain in one day, there was lots of clean up to do. The yard was full of leaves, and fallen branches were everywhere. Overgrown plants needed to be trimmed, along with cutting back some of the jungle. You don’t realize how much daily maintenance helps until you are gone for a while. I can’t imagine being gone for a few months and not having anyone look after the place. I imagine the jungle would take it over.

While we were gone, our cayenne peppers started to ripen. Our neighbor Amanda came down and picked them as they turned red and also kept all the plants watered that needed it. All our cayenne pepper plants were supposed to be the red variety, but I guess when they got packaged, they must have just put in a variety of different seeds. A lot of the peppers are nice long red ones, but there are also some yellow ones and a few purple ones. The day we got back, we picked a nice big bag of them, and the plants are still loaded with more peppers and blooms. We should get quite a few this round, and that will allow us to make a bunch more pepper sauce.

We picked a bunch of ripe cacao just before we left for the States. When we got back, there was a whole lot more that were ripe on the trees. Kelley and I went up with our cutters and picked 85 pounds of cacao pods. Not counting this picking, we already have about 40 lbs. of dried cacao beans ready to be roasted, plus 15 lbs. of already made dark chocolate in the fridge. Are any of our friends chocolate lovers that want to come down for a visit?

Pinterest has all kinds of copycat candy bar recipes, and they are usually pretty close to the original. Our Butterfinger candy turned out good as well as our almond joy candy. So this time we thought we would try making three Musketeer bars. They turned out a little chewer than the real thing, but they were still delicious.

Besides just making our dark chocolate bars, we are always looking for other things to do with it. I found a recipe for hot fudge using our homegrown chocolate. The recipe says that it will last up to a month in the fridge, and all you have to do is heat it up in the microwave when you want some. Of course, it’s great on ice cream, but it should be very good on some of our fresh fruit. Give me a plate of fresh pineapple, mangos and raspberries with hot fudge, and don’t bother me until I’ve got chocolate all over my face.

I’ve mentioned before that when we get our pork bellies for bacon that we always get the ribs with them. This time, instead of just making your basic bbq ribs, we decided to do something a little different. We made Mexican-style baby back ribs with a lot of spices and finished them with a homemade enchilada sauce. The idea was good, and they were okay, but I don’t think we will be making these again.

That’s about it for now, lots to get done around the garden and a ton of other projects.

It’s finally starting to dry out around here after what seemed like a very long, wet few months. As I’m writing this the temps are around 90° during the days and the nights are in the 60°s, which is perfect for me. With this great weather, there are a lot more critters moving around. We are seeing toucans around the house almost daily, plus lots of other birds that are hopping around in the trees.

For the past couple of weeks, there have been two or possibly three kinkajous in the trees above the house and back deck. They are usually nocturnal and we can hear them in the trees making noises all night long. The past couple of days they have been out just before it got dark, which allowed Kelley to get a few pictures of them. We love seeing all the animals and birds so close to the house, but they make a big mess on the deck and the truck which I have to hose off every day.

As we pulled into the driveway last week, there was a nice sized green iguana just sitting on the stoop in front of the garage where we usually set our chairs. Kelley was able to get out of the truck and snap a few pictures of her before she ran off. She was only 2 1/2-3 feet long, hopefully, she will hang around and we will see her later this year once she has grown to full size.

I was walking across the driveway the other day and there was a beautiful, harmless Parrot snake just sitting there very still. We rarely see snakes around here and when we do they usually just scurry off. This three foot parrot snake just sat still in the driveway with his head up waiting for Kelley to get the camera and take his picture. We finally had to poke at him to get him to move along.

Besides all the cool animals, the warm weather is also bringing out other types of critters. Just about every day we’re removing big black scorpions from the garage. Then the other night I went to roll up the door on the garage and there was a big, black Red Rump Tarantula in the corner. We got a few pictures of him and then shuffled him outside.

After all the rains we’ve had and now a couple of weeks with warm sunny days, everything is in bloom. Our coffee plants are almost completely white with flowers and have a very sweet aroma to them. The star fruit tree is almost all purple with blossoms everywhere. The citrus trees are starting to bloom and the avocados are also getting flowers. After all the trimming we did on the dragon fruit, it’s growing like crazy and should start fruiting in a couple of months.

We’re finally getting some citrus off our trees. Our local orange tree had quite a few fruit on it this year. They are all ripening, but before we can get to them the parrots are pecking at them and knocking them off the trees. Which leaves a big mess of half-eaten oranges all over the ground. So we had to pick as many as we could before they got to all of them. These local oranges are a bit sour but are great to flavor water, tea, marinade meat or even with a little rum. Okay, they’re really sour, so maybe a lot of rum and a splash of juice.

Our grapefruit tree has a bunch of big fruit on it this year that are just about ripe. The tree is grafted with white and pink grapefruit and will produce both. In the past, we’ve gotten a couple nice pink grapefruit off of it, but this time these all seem to be the white variety.

The trees we planted on our farm lot a couple of years ago are already starting to produce. We just picked a handful of Mandarin Oranges that are very delicious. Some of our other citrus like Valencia oranges, lemons and ruby grapefruit are just starting to get blossoms. Hopefully, in a couple of years, we will have more citrus than we can handle.

The Custard Apples are finally ripe. This year the tree only had a dozen or so, but at least we got to them before the birds did. Custard Apples are native to Central and South America and are rich in vitamins, antioxidants, and can boost your immune system. The fruit itself has a creamy texture, somewhat like custard with a sweetness to it. Usually, they are not available in the export markets because they do not travel well. If you’re ever in Belize during custard apple season, it’s a fruit that you have to try.

We’ve also got about 60 baseball size pineapples on plants so far, with more popping up weekly. In total we’ve got about 250-300 pineapple plants, and whatever doesn’t fruit this year should next year. It’s looking like we should have an abundance of different fruits from the garden this year.

We just picked our first decent amount of black peppercorns. In the past, we’ve picked a small amount, and it was just enough for us to get a taste of it. This time once we dried them, there was enough to fill up a pepper grinder or two. The pepper plants are getting bigger and producing more every year, so hopefully in the future we should harvest enough where we won’t have to buy black pepper anymore.

All the cayenne pepper plants we put in a couple of months ago are doing great and are just about ready to start picking. In a few weeks we have a bunch of habaneros and poblano plants that will be ready to go in the ground. The cayennes we will use to make some fermented pepper sauce, the habaneros will get dried for some habanero salt and the poblanos will make some great chili rellenos.

Our okra plants are doing very well and need to be picked every other day. I know a lot of people are not fans of okra, but we are. Kelley pickles them with some habaneros, and it is delicious. Then you can’t forget using it in gumbo or frying some in bread crumbs which is always good. Kelley likes it just sautéed in butter and eaten plain. I’m not a big fan of it that way, but the other ways are great.

We’ve been busy running a hundred and twenty feet of new water line out to the clearing behind the house. During the dry season our hoses won’t reach without connecting a couple together to water some of the plants we put out there. Besides making it easier to water, we are going to plant another 10-12 cacao trees out there that we currently have growing in pots. Do we need more trees producing chocolate, probably not. But you never know.

For the past two months leading up to St. Patrick’s Day, we’ve made 37 corned beef briskets that averaged 4lbs. each. Most of them went to repeat customers from last year with a few going to some who just found out about them. We only make these available this time of year, even though we’ve had requests throughout the year. Besides a few restaurants serving it, we’re the only ones making them for people to take home and cook themselves. Otherwise, the only other corned beef option down here comes in a small can at the supermarket. So when we do let people know we have corned beef briskets available, they go fast.

Lobster season is now closed in Belize until July 1st. The spring is a good time to visit here, but if you are looking to get your fill of lobster, you’ll have to wait a few months. Come July when the season opens back up, Placencia, San Pedro and Caye Caulker all host a big Lobsterfest right on the shores of the Caribbean. Of course, it’s a big party with live music, dancing, cold drinks and more lobster dishes than you can imagine. If this sounds like something that might interest you, maybe a bunch of us could get together and meet up for one of the Lobsterfest, it would be a blast!

That’s about it for now. Hope to see you soon.

 

We had our good friends (Jer & Kris) come down for a first-time visit from Montana, where they left negative temperatures for a constant 85° down here. We met them in Placencia so they could defrost and start their trip off with a little beach time.

It just happened, that weekend the annual Placencia Art Walk was going on. So we got to cruise around and check out all the local artists and their wares. There were lots of paintings, wood carvings, conch shell art, and just about anything else you could think of. Of course, we ate at some of our favorite beachfront restaurants where they enjoyed lobster omelets and of course Barefoot Bar’s famous lobster grilled cheese sandwich. In between all the eating, there were also stops at some of our favorite beach bars for some ice cold beverages. We even got in the pool at a swim-up bar, I’m sure that’s something they never thought they would be doing in February.

While at the art walk, we did pick up a small piece for our place. It was a toucan made completely out of butterfly wings. It turns out that the artist who makes these gets a lot of his wings from the butterfly ranch right about a mile or so from our house. This was a small, simple piece, but he had some that were big and very elaborate.

After a couple of days on the beach, we headed up to our place so they could see our little jungle paradise. The roads were still muddy so we didn’t have a chance to take them to some of the caves, waterfalls, or other attractions around here. We did visit Cahal Pech ruin in San Ignacio. Of course, we went to some of our favorite restaurants and hangouts where they met a bunch of our friends. Other than that we really didn’t do a lot of other stuff, as one of us seems to have caught something leading to headaches and sore throats. By the time they were getting ready to leave all of us had caught it and we really didn’t want to do a whole lot of anything. I think they had a good trip, but we certainly could have had more fun if we all felt a little better.  Maybe on their next trip, we can get them out to do some fishing, island hopping, beach lobster bbq, or maybe some cave tubing. There is so much more to see and do here, we really hope they come back soon.

Lobster season is coming to a close at the end of the month, so we grabbed a few to take up to our place for their last dinner before they had to head home. With the art walk going on in Placencia, plus with Valentine’s Day coming up, the lobster prices were outrageous. We know a guy that is on the outskirts out of town where we had gotten them in the past and his prices were much more reasonable.

With all the recent rains over the past few months, some of our cacao pods are getting really big. This means that the seeds inside are bigger and plumper and that makes them easier to process.

Well, we finally had a little time to make some more chocolate. After the cacao seeds are roasted and peeled you end up with the nibs. We then put the nibs into the food processor and grind them to a fine powder. After that, it goes into the melanger. In case you don’t know what a melanger is, it’s a rotating drum with two grinding stones in it. After about 12-18 hours or so in the melanger you end up with a silky smooth dark chocolate. We make our chocolate at 70% cacao which is just sweet enough for the candy we make.

Pinterest has a lot of copycat recipes on how to make your favorite types of candy bars. Since we have been picking a lot of cacao lately, we thought we would try something a little different than our basic dark chocolate bars. We made a cookie sheet of Butterfinger bark candy. It tastes just like a Butterfinger candy bar, but it was missing that little bit of crunch that they have. After reading a little more, people who have made this had a few suggestions on what to add for that little crunch. They suggested grinding up rice crispies or cornflakes and mix that into the filling. In case you are wondering what the filling is it’s nothing more than melted candy corn and peanut butter mixed together. Even without that little crunch it still tasted like a Butterfinger, and there was nothing wrong with that.

Since the Butterfingers turned out so good, we thought we would try some Almond Joy and Mounds bark using our dark chocolate, coconut, condensed milk and some almonds. Making these candies as bark instead of bars is just a whole lot easier than hand dipping each piece in chocolate. In the end, it tastes the same anyway. Every time we make something like this, I still can’t believe that we actually are growing and making our own chocolate.

There is a big Ramon tree over the casita that has a bunch of ripe berries on it right now. For the past two weeks, there have been toucans in it at all times of the day. Besides toucans, it’s attracting all types of other birds too. Kelley held her phone up the other morning with the Merlin bird app open, and it identified 9 different types of birds all making noise. And that’s not counting all the other birds that weren’t making any noise.

Of course a few days after our friends leave all the coatimundis come around. This is the first time we’ve seen them in a while. At one point the other day I counted between 30-40 of them, climbing trees and rooting around the yard for insects.

Males over two years become solitary due to behavioral disposition and collective aggression from the females and will join the female groups only during the breeding season. Even when accepted into the group, males are still subordinate to the females. He will breed with various females in the group and then eventually be driven away. The female will make a nest and give birth away from the group, and will only leave the nest to find food. When the young are around 5 months old they will leave the nest to rejoin the band. Once in the band, the whole group will raise the young together including nursing, grooming, and protection.

Since the coatimundis are around again and we’ve already got at least 50 pineapples on plants, that means it’s time to set up the electric fence around the pineapples for the season. The fence only goes up around the pineapples in the garden area, so all the ones around our driveway are fair game for them.

This is not a problem that most people have, but you never know what the jungle will throw at you. Last year about this time we had a lizard get inside of the garage TV and fry the board. We ended up having to buy a new one. Well, the other night I turned on the garage TV and inside the screen is a bunch of tiny ants. I pulled the TV off the wall and sprayed it good hoping that would get rid of them. The next day they were still there, so I had to take it apart to see if there was a nest inside. I didn’t see a nest, but there were still a bunch of ants inside on the screen. I managed to get the screen exposed so that I could get to the ants. All is good now and we didn’t have to replace the TV again.

Kelley and I have been down for about a week with headaches, sore throats, congestion and just feeling weak. We are both feeling better now, hopefully we will be back at 100% very soon.

We have had constant rain here since around October and our place is a muddy mess because the water is just not soaking into the ground. Our creek has been running constantly for the past few months, whereas in the past it has never run for more than a few days at a time. With the ground being so saturated, that means our septic wasn’t leaching properly and filled up. The truck driver for the septic company was afraid that he’d get stuck down here, but we finally had a couple of dry days and he managed to get us pumped out. Thankfully our casita has its own septic that was working perfectly.

We had a few days of sunshine, which allowed us to get up in the garden and get some stuff planted. In the past week, we managed to plant a bunch more pineapples, we now have close to 300 plants. Also transplanted 20 or so raspberry plants to a spot we had cleared. Put some sorrel (jamaica) plants in the ground that we already had started, and got a few seeds in for kale, romaine, okra and cilantro. Now we just have to hope the rain isn’t too much for them.

It wasn’t that long ago that Ruben gave us a few cactus cuttings so that we could start growing dragon fruit. Well that stuff grows fast, and we have now propagated and planted just about all we need. In the past we have given a few cuttings to friends, but now our plants need a big pruning. We contacted a friend who knows someone who has a farm and asked if he wanted a truckload of cuttings. His answer was yes, so in a couple of years he should have a nice crop of dragon fruit that he can start selling.

On another note…our local produce store in our village asked us what we are growing. When we said cacao, he told us that he needed to make a trip down to Punta Gorda to get some cacao plants so that he could start growing cacao on his farm. Punta Gorda is a five-hour drive each way down to Southern Belize. We told him that we have 50 or so 24″ plants that we had in pots ready to go in the ground. He wanted to know if we sell them, and we said no that we would just give some to him. We ended up giving him 16 plants, and he and his father were very thankful. After we plant a few more around here we’ll probably give him the rest. It’s nice to know that we are able to supply some of our plants to local farmers.

We have been picking coffee for the past few weeks and now the plants are just about done producing. Kelley and I sit around on the weekends with a cold beer and peel the coffee beans so they can be put out to dry. There are still a few straggler beans on the plants, but for the most part, the plants are starting to get new blossoms.

I have been roasting different batches of coffee trying to figure out what I like best. All the unroasted beans are getting vacuum sealed and put away until I need them and can decide on the roast I prefer.

Our cacao plants are also ripening and we should be picking them over the next month or so. Once harvested the pods are cut in half and all the seeds are taken out and put into big tubs to ferment. After five days, the fermented seeds are taken out of the tubs and put on trays to dry.

We have been roasting the dried cacao beans and then sitting around peeling them when it’s been raining outside. It’s a slow, tedious process peeling the roasted beans, but well worth it once they get ground into that delicious dark chocolate. If the rain keeps up we might actually get around to roasting and peeling that 25-30 lbs. of cacao beans we already have vacuum sealed.

Our local produce market had some big beautiful red habaneros the other day, so we picked up five pounds of them. They will be going into the dehydrator for 18-24 hours until they are nice and dry. Of course, the dehydrator needs to be in the garage, because the smell of the drying habaneros will make you cough. After they’re nice and dry, they will get ground up and made into our habanero salt that everyone here loves. And yes, gloves are a must and definitely don’t dare wipe your face or eyes.

Our raspberry plants are just starting to flower and it’s looking like we should get a lot of raspberries again this year. We still had a couple of Ziplock bags full in the freezer from last year, and we thought we should use them up before the plants started producing again. So Kelley made up some more raspberry jam like she did last year. This is a healthy jam that just uses raspberries, honey and lemon juice… no sugar. And it only takes about ten minutes on the stove to make. It’s a nice change from all the super sugary jams that you’d buy in the store.

Baconized pork ribs with a Knob Creek Whiskey and honey glaze. We picked up a couple of nice big pork bellies from our butcher the other day to make some more bacon. After we got the bellies all coated in the spices and into the cure, there was a bunch of the cure left over. When we get the bellies they always come with the rib section, which he cuts into spare and baby back ribs for us. Since we had leftover cure and baby back ribs, why not throw them in the cure for a few days. After the ribs were done curing, they went into the smoker with a little apple wood. Once done smoking, some of them were coated with a whiskey/honey glaze and then caramelized with a torch. We invited a few friends over for a tasting of some bacon ribs and they all gave it a big thumbs up. We usually just make BBQ ribs on the grill, but sometimes you just have to think outside the box.

Usually, we try to have an inventory of our different meats on hand, but over the holidays we sold out of everything we had. So the past couple of weeks we have been busy making more. In the past week or so, we have made up 20 lbs. of Italian sausage, 20 lbs. of breakfast sausage, and 20 lbs. of bratwurst. We still have a couple more varieties to make up, hopefully within the next week or so. We’ve also got 40 lbs. of bacon ready to be sliced up and packaged. Once we get our usual meats back in stock, we will be concentrating on making corned beef for St Patty’s Day. We already have a bunch of standing orders for corned beef, which is why we need to start now because they do take up a lot of space while curing.

When we get our pork for our sausage we always end up with the skin and the bones. Usually, we’ll give the skin and bones to Ruben who uses it for soup and to make chicharrones. This time we decided to save the skin and make our own chicharrones. First, all the fat had to get scraped off, then the skin got boiled for a couple of hours. After that, the skin was cut up into smaller pieces and placed in our food dehydrator until they were hard and dry. Then you just put them in some hot oil and watch the magic happen. After a few seconds in the hot oil, they are pulled out and sprinkled with some of our spicy pepper salts. We also tried them with cinnamon and sugar and they tasted like a churro. It might seem like a lot of work, but we love chicharrones and you just can’t find any good ones here.

Well, January has kept us very busy around here. The weather has been crazy the past few months. Constant rains, then the sun comes out for a few days and it gets warm, then it clouds up again and we get more cold rains. The temps have been from a chilly 61º in the mornings and then up to a warm 92º in the afternoon. It’s been hard to plan what we think we can actually accomplish each day. Hopefully the weather will stabilize in the coming weeks so that everything can dry out and we can get things back to normal around here, (whatever normal might be).

2024 ended with visits from friends and family. Randy, Stacy and the grandkids came down for a week long visit just before Christmas. Everyone met down in Placencia to enjoy a little beach time before heading up to our place for a few days. We reserved a beachfront house complete with a swimming pool and a dock. The kids played in the pool and snorkeled around the dock where they saw starfish, snails and a variety of fish.

One of the days there we chartered a boat to take us out to Ray Caye, a 7-acre resort island about 17 miles off the coast of Placencia. There we dropped off Kelley, Stacy, Tyler, and Alli to snorkel and explore the island. Randy, Luke, and myself stayed on the boat and went out farther to do some fishing. The weather was not the greatest, but we did manage to catch a couple of nice fish and of course, we lost a bunch of them.

Ray Caye is a beautiful resort island with 20 cabins available, dive boats, a swimming pool and a big beautiful restaurant. After lunch on the island, we all got on the boat and headed back towards Placencia. Along the way, we stopped for a little light fishing so that Alli and Tyler could also catch some fish.

After all the fun in Placencia, we headed up to our place in the jungle where it had been raining the whole time we were gone, which made for a muddy mess. Because of the weather, there were a lot of things we had planned to do that just didn’t happen. They did get to tour a Mayan ruin, go to a butterfly farm and visit the Green Iguana Sanctuary two times where they got to feed and hold Iguanas.

Around our place, the grandkids had some butterfly nets to help keep them busy. They caught a few moths, crickets and a few other bugs. They also caught a little tiny frog and got to see a big Rhinoceros beetle.

We don’t usually fire up the pizza oven for just a few of us, because it takes hours of stoking the fire to get the bricks up to temp. Since the kids were here, we invited a few neighbors over and it was well worth the effort to get that thing fired up. As fast as Kelley could make the pizzas, I was getting them in the hot oven. I don’t know how many we made that night, we just kept making them until everyone was full.

It was not the most ideal weather for the kid’s trip down here, but I still think everyone had a good time.

Two days after the kids left, a good friend of ours came down on Christmas day for a visit. We have known Dan for over 35 years and this was his first visit to Belize. We showed him around our side of the country and took him to all our favorite places where he met a bunch of our friends.

While Dan was here we went over to Oxmul Coffee farm in our village. It was sort of spur of the moment so there was no tour, we just talked to the guy about his farm and the process of making coffee. Oxmul started growing coffee in 2005 with just three plants and now they have over 1,500 plants. All their coffee is organic, roasted over an open fire, and ground by hand in a big mortar & pestle. The guy there told us that they have a light roast and a dark roast and that they do 25 pounds at a time. Oxmul Coffee is not available in retail stores, but they do serve it at the local resorts around here where you can also purchase some to take home. We each bought a couple of bags to give it a try.

One of the days we took Dan to tour the Cahal Pech Mayan sight right in the middle of San Ignacio. There are 36 structures, which include tall temple pyramids, two ballcourts and several range-type buildings or palaces. The tallest temple in the central core stands at 77 feet high. I think he enjoyed seeing all the artifacts, reading about the history, and seeing Mayan ruins for the first time. While we were walking around there was a Howler monkey up in the tree being very vocal. So that was an extra bonus, getting to see and hear a Howler Monkey up close.

After that, we told Dan that he couldn’t come this far without heading over to the beaches of the Caribbean. So Kelley found him a place to stay in Placencia for a few nights and a couple more in Hopkins to check that area out. He had a great time here up in the jungle and I’m sure he will love it over on the beach.

Last time I stated that our coffee was starting to ripen, well it has and needs to be picked. We are heading up to the garden about once a week picking quite a bit every time. Since I’m going to start drinking it this next year and I only drink one cup a day, we should have enough to last me till the next harvest.

On Christmas Eve a bunch of parakeets landed in the trees above the casita. They, along with parrots, usually fly over the house every day but rarely stop in the trees. The parrots and parakeets around here are both green and yellow and are very loud.  A couple of ways we can tell the difference when they fly over is that parakeets have a longer tail, fly much faster, and are a bit more vocal.

We have lots of butterflies around here in every color of the rainbow, but there are definitely more interesting and colorful moths around here. Just about every day we will see a moth on the wall by the garage light that we have never seen before. Usually, Kelley will get a picture of them and I put them in a folder on my computer. Maybe sometime I will send out a big collage of pictures of just all the moths we’ve seen around here. You’ll be amazed at the beauty and intricate detail of the moths.

We made up our summer sausage for the holidays like we’ve done for the past few years. Just before Christmas, we made 32 sticks, all of which were spoken for within a day or so. After more requests, we decided to make up another 24 summer sausages just before the new year. Once they went into the smoker we let people know that we had more available and they were all spoken for before they even came out of the smoker. We would have loved to make more, but we just didn’t have time. Maybe mid-year we’ll make up some more so everyone won’t have to wait until the holidays.

We just planted 80 or so Cayenne Pepper plants up in the garden.  Last year when we grew Cayenne peppers, we fermented them and then blended them into a hot sauce. While experimenting with one of our sausage recipes trying to get it where we wanted it, we found out that our homemade cayenne sauce was the perfect ingredient for the taste we were looking for. Since Cayenne peppers are sometimes hard to find here, we need to grow our own to make sure we always have our pepper sauce for that sausage.

Every year between December and February we will actually have a cold snap. This is where most of our friends up north can laugh, yes it will be down in the low 60°s. Anyway, we’ve always thought, wouldn’t it be nice to have an outdoor firepit for those rare cold evenings. Well on our last trip down to Placencia, someone there was advertising an outdoor firepit for a great price. We went and checked it out and it was brand new, still in its original box. The gal brought it down when she moved here and never got around to using it. After talking to her, it turns out that she lived in Alameda, CA where I grew up.

On New Year’s morning bright and early (maybe a little too early) Ruben brought us some Gibnut tamales. This has turned into a New Year’s Day tradition that he has done since we have been here. Gibnut is a highly prized wild animal here in Belize that is absolutely delicious. Back when Queen Elizabeth visited Belize, they wanted to serve her a dish that was unique to the country. They decided on Gibnut, and ever since it has been known as the Royal Rat.

We hope everyone is healthy, happy and had a great holiday season. Now it’s time for those New Year’s resolutions to kick in. Hopefully one of your resolutions is to travel a little more, if so maybe we’ll see you here in Belize.

Nothing really exciting has been happening around here lately. A lot of trimming plants and cleaning up the yard, but nothing anyone will ever notice. We have had dry weather for the past few weeks and the temps have been perfect. The daytime highs are in the upper 80°s and the evenings drop down into the mid 60°s, which is great in my opinion. This allows you to get out and soak in that warm sunshine during the day and then cuddle up with a nice warm blanket in the evenings.  We did have a cold snap come through for a couple of days where we saw a low of 56°. I know that’s not cold for a lot of people, but for us, it was quite chilly. Now for the past week, we’ve had rain daily and everything is very wet and muddy, you just never know what to expect this time of year.

There are a lot of cacao pods on our plants right now and they are starting to ripen. Which means that the house has a nice sweet aroma in the air as the cacao seeds start to ferment. After they ferment for a while, they will set out on the porch in the sun to dry before being roasted. We still have around 25 lbs. of dried seeds from earlier this year, so we really need to find some time to make more chocolate.

Our coffee is also starting to ripen and the trees all have a good amount on them. It’s quite a long process going from bean to cup. I only drink one cup a day and Kelley can’t even stand the smell of coffee. Every so often I will brew some, but It’s a lot easier for me to just make one cup of instant every morning. This next year I just need to suck it up and start brewing a pot of our own coffee, after all that’s why we started growing it.

A while back we made a batch of chocolate, coffee, and raspberry liqueurs with fresh ingredients from the garden and they all turned out great. We had some vodka left over from making those, so we decided to make up one more batch. We had a big jug of caramels that we use sometimes when we are making chocolates, so we thought we would try some caramel liqueur. They all turned out very good on their own, but when you start mixing them together they get even better. Chocolate/raspberry or chocolate/caramel mixed together are very good and almost taste like a boozy candy bar. I bet these would even be very tasty in some hot chocolate on a chilly night.

Thanksgiving was a couple of weeks ago and I’m sure most of you back in the States had a big turkey dinner with friends and family. We were no exception, Kelley cooked up a traditional turkey, and friends brought over sides to go with it. A lot of the restaurants in Belize offer up a turkey or ham dinner on the American holiday. They usually put their own tropical twist on the meal, like rum-glazed ham, coconut rice and beans, potato salad, or bread pudding. I’ve even seen lobster as the main course on a Thanksgiving menu. It doesn’t matter what you eat as long as it’s good.

Recently we had a big bag of Blue Diamond almonds that were starting to go a little stale. They were still good, just didn’t have that sharp crispness that they usually have. So we decided to put them in the oven at 350° for 15 minutes and then put them in the food processor with a little salt. After about 15 minutes in the processor, we had some really good tasting almond butter. I love it when you can take something that you would normally throw away and turn it into something useful.

We have been very busy making and stockpiling our meats for the holidays. Currently we have breakfast sausage, Mexican style chorizo, Italian sausage, bacon, bratwurst and summer sausage. As soon as we posted that these were available, we sold out in just a few days. So far this year we have processed close to 1,000 lbs. of pork and beef, it is no wonder we don’t have time to make more chocolate.

There are always a lot of butterflies around here, but currently, there seems to be more than usual. They are in all colors of the rainbow and almost daily we will see one we’ve never seen before. They are all beautiful, but to us, our favorite ones are the big Blue Morpho butterflies. Blue Morphos are among some of the biggest butterflies in the world and are very territorial. This time of year we will see them everywhere just floating around the yard. Since they are very territorial, hopefully, they will always be around our place for us to enjoy.

The other day we heard some bird calls that we didn’t recognize, luckily Kelley has an app on her phone that would identify them. We finally got a glimpse of them and they were just what the app said they were. They were Montezuma Oropendolas, a bird that we had never seen around here before. They are a rather large bird, the male is twice the size of the female at about 20″ long and can weigh up to 18 oz. The female builds a long hanging woven nest that is anywhere between 24-71 inches long. There are usually at least 30 nests in a colony, where the dominant male will mate with most of the females. And in case you are wondering what their call sounds like it is “tic-tic-glik-glak-GLUUuuuuu”.

We hear a lot of bird calls around here that we don’t actually recognize and we can’t always get a picture of them. At least Kelley has an app on her phone that listens to the bird’s call and then identifies what it is. The app is called “Merlin Bird ID” and all you do is hold your phone up so it can hear the bird call and it will tell you what bird it is along with pictures. This app should work anywhere, so next time you’re out hiking or something, give it a try and see what different birds are around you.

It’s that time of year again when everyone gets in the holiday spirit with their Christmas lights, trees and other decorations. This year we just didn’t have time to get our tree up, but we did manage to get a few other small decorations out. And I did at least get some lights up around the outside of the house. Although we’re about the only ones who will actually see the lights on the house, it still helps to get us in the holiday spirit.

Hope everyone has a happy and healthy holiday season, and maybe we’ll see you down here next year.

After the 15 inches of rain we had while we were in the States we returned to a nice week of warm and sunny days. We were hoping that this was the beginning of the dry season, but Mother Nature had one more big storm to throw at us.

The tropical storm Sara dumped a ton of rain all over Belize. The international airport was closed, the San Ignacio market was flooded, all rivers were way beyond flood stages, many bridges were closed and on Sunday all businesses were told not to even open.

Since we are up in the hills we did not see the bad flooding like a lot of the country, but we did have our share of water. The road just past our gate was flooded out, even with a 24″ culvert under the road. Our driveway turned into a river, but everything seemed to flow just the way it should. All in all we received close to 25″ of rain in the past month.

Hopefully this was the last big one of the season and we can start to dry out around here. The good thing is that all the trees should have another major growth spurt.

The other day after a light rain we had one of the most intense rainbows over the yard. After a few minutes, there was a second rainbow that showed up just above it. I did adjust the color in the picture in hopes of seeing the second rainbow better. If you look closely you can see it. Did you know that when there are two rainbows next to each other that the colors are opposite of each other as a reflection.

Ruben recently stopped by with some red bananas, grapefruit and a couple of lemons for us. The other day was the first time we had tried a red banana and we said how good it was, so he brought us a bunch down. They are shorter and plumper than a regular banana and a little sweeter. And supposedly they have a longer shelf life than a regular yellow banana. In the future we will be looking to get a couple of red banana plants, just so we will have a little more variety around here. It was perfect because that morning we had just picked the last of our dragon fruits and finished making bratwurst sausages. So it was good to be able to make a little trade with him.

The other evening as I was locking up the garage, I heard a faint noise up in the palm tree. I looked up to see some critter eating cohune nuts. I assumed it was a Kinkajou or a Possum, but it wasn’t. After calling Kelley back over with a flashlight and a camera, we could see it was a porcupine. We had never seen a porcupine here before. In fact, I didn’t even know we had them here let alone that they climbed trees. After a few pictures and a search on the internet, we identified it as a Mexican Hairy Dwarf Porcupine. They can live for 15 years in the wild, are nocturnal, rarely come down from the tree tops, have one baby per year and have over 30,000 quills. And no, porcupines do not shoot their quills. It’s always cool to see some new critter roaming around the property.

We have been making a habanero salt for a few years now and people who can stand the heat just love it. Recently we had to buy 5lbs of habaneros because we didn’t have enough from the garden. Over the past year we have grown different types of peppers in all levels of heat. They have been going in the freezer until we had enough to dry and make some different pepper salts. We now have different levels of the salts that go from ‘help me I’m going to die’ to ‘that’s really good’. Our hottest one is made with scorpion peppers, then habaneros, jalapeños, green chilis and then a heatless habanero. The scorpion pepper salt is extremely hot and it’s almost too hot for me. Then on the other end is the heatless habanero pepper salt. It has all the flavor of habaneros without any real heat to it.

We did a little more clearing up in the garden and now you can really see this one big Cohune palm. What’s impressive is the size of the split-leaf philodendron growing on it. To help put it in perspective the fronds on the palm tree are around 40′ long.

Here are a couple of pictures of the trails we put in out behind the house. The top picture was about 4 years ago after chopping all the underbrush before we started putting in decorative plants. The one below is after all the plants have grown. Along the trail there are Zebra Plants, Ferns, Yesterday Today and Tomorrow plants, Purple Moses, Corydalines, Philodendrons and a bunch of others. And the the best part is that they are all from cuttings that we rooted from others plants we had around the yard.

This next week is going to be clean up and waiting for everything to dry out around here. We had no real damage, just a few plants that will need tending to. All the rain we get is what keeps this place so green and lush, so we just take it in stride.

 

 

 

 

We managed to escape up to Arizona for a couple of weeks for our annual Dr. checkups, see some friends, family, and have some fun. This time we were lucky to get out of Belize on time because of a big tropical storm that was right over the country. The day we were leaving they closed the port to all water taxis and to all small planes coming from the islands. They didn’t close the international airport to commercial jets which was good for us, but all the other tourists catching a boat or small plane from the islands didn’t make the flight home that day. The takeoff was a little rough, but in no time at all we were over the storm and had smooth cruising. For the short time we were gone, there was over 15″ of rain at our house.

While we were in Arizona the kids had planned a trip down to Puerto Peñasco, MX for a long weekend and to participate in a poker run. This was a great opportunity for us to head back down to where we used to live and see some friends. Kelley and I were going to do the poker run, but there were a lot of people to see in a short time that we hadn’t seen in a while. So we decided to pass on the poker run and do a little beach bar hopping and see some of our old friends.

It was a great weekend with nice sunny skies and warm weather on the shores of the Sea of Cortez. We saw so many friends that we hadn’t seen in a few years and a lot more that we hadn’t seen since we moved away over six years ago. A lot of our friends showed interest in coming down to Belize for a visit, now we just have to get them here to show them our new piece of paradise.

One of the days while we were in Mexico, friends of ours Frankie and Lowell invited the whole Adams family for a day of sailing on their catamaran. This was the first time Randy, Stacy and the grandkids had ever been on a sailboat, and they all loved it.

The weather couldn’t have been any better that day. Nice and warm, calm seas and enough wind to get the sails up. Just when our sail from the harbor over towards Cholla Bay couldn’t get any better, dolphin showed up. They were jumping in front of the boat and between the two hulls, literally right under the kid’s feet. It was a great day for everyone. Thanks again Frankie & Lowell for a fantastic day on the water.

On Halloween, the grandkids got dressed up in their costumes they picked out this year, and they looked great. As they went door to door collecting candy we followed along in a golf cart keeping a close eye on them and giving them a ride between long stretches where there were no lights on the houses.

Kelley and I thought about all the candy that the kids were going to get, but what about us adults? So we made up some margarita bark candy. It consisted of white and green candy melts with some tequila, lime juice, and a little salt sprinkled on top. Stacy was in charge of passing it out on Halloween to the adult friends, and it seemed to be a big hit with everyone.

Last time we were up in Arizona I picked up a 1977 Yamaha TT500. It needed a bunch of work, but it was a bike I’d always wanted when I was younger. I managed to locate some of the parts I needed and after a lot of work, it’s coming along. There is still a bunch more to do to it, but maybe next time we’re up there I’ll be able to take it for a spin.

It’s always a lot of fun to help the kids tinker on some of the old cars they have. One Saturday we spent most of the day on Stacy’s 77 year old International pickup truck. Randy and I worked on straightening out the grill, Kelley worked on some lights and Stacy worked on getting the gauges back in the dash. One thing I really miss living in Belize is working on old cars that you are in no rush to get them going.

On our last full day in Arizona, it just happened that Jim Dalton, Nick Scropos, and The Jons were playing at the San Tan Brewery. Of course we had to go see them, after all it was only ten minutes from the kid’s house. We got a table right up in front of the stage and enjoyed some great music and cold beers from the San Tan Brewery. The grandkids really got into the music once they started and little Alli was even dancing in the aisles.

We had just seen all of these guys a few months ago when they were all playing down in San Pedro. After talking to them, they all said they can’t wait to get back to Belize next year for some more fun on the island. They have been playing in San Pedro around August for the past few years, and from what they said they will be there again this next year.  We also met up with a friend who was at the shows in San Pedro as well as a couple more friends from Mexico that hope to make it down next year. Maybe we’ll see some of you there come August, I know we’ll be there.

Once we got back to the jungle after all the rains, we had clear, warm, sunny days. With all that rain and now a bunch of sunshine, all the plants are growing like crazy. After walking around the yard we noticed that some of the plants and trees have up to two feet of new growth. Earlier this year a friend of ours gave us some offshoots from a Hawaiian Orchid plant. With all the rain and sunshine they are starting to bloom. What’s great here is that everyone is more than willing to share their plants and cuttings with you.

There was a lot of cleanup to do around the house and yard after two weeks of heavy rains. Besides trimming trees and other plants, it was time to get some stuff planted in the garden. We waited until we got back to get more veggie seeds in the ground so that we could keep them moist in case there was no rain while we were gone. That wouldn’t have been a problem with all the rains, but I’m sure all the seeds would have washed away. We got a bunch of bush beans and kale into the ground. In seed trays, we put a hundred or so cayenne pepper seeds plus basil, sage and of course artichokes which we will try again. In the past, we have gotten artichoke plants to get about full size, but never produce anything. And then sometimes the plants would get a few inches tall and then die for no reason. Since we love artichokes so much, we will just keep trying to get them to grow since you can’t get fresh artichokes here in Belize.

Now that the rainy season is ending and the tourist season is here, it’s a great time to come for a visit. It gets a little congested this time of year around the coast, but it’s always very peaceful up where we are. You know we’ve got a guest house, so what are you waiting for?

It’s always a great escape up to the States to see family and friends, but like they say “There’s no place like home”.

 

 

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.

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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.