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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hope to see you soon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s wishing everyone a Merry Christmas from Belize.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you in Belize!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where do you live? 🤣🤣🤣

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now Back To Belize

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hope to see you soon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now back to the jungle

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

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

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

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

Another plant that is flowering is the Torch Ginger. We have a bunch of these around the yard, as they are easy to propagate. We’ve got red ones and also some pink ones. These make great cut flowers as they will usually last a couple of weeks in a vase.

Our pinkish/orange Amaryllis (a type of lily) in front of the casita is also blooming. Every year around Easter they start to bloom. This year there are a lot more flowers than there have been in the past.

This is the time of year when the Cassia Grandis trees locally known as the Belize Bukut, all turn a brilliant color of pink. These are big trees that get a long thin fruit that has a somewhat unattractive smell. When Andrew Zimmern from Bizarre Foods tried the fruit, here was his description. Bukut, also known as the stinky toe fruit is fantastic stuff. It taste like anchovies and fish sauce mixed with molasses and was kind of delicious. That really doesn’t sound too good to me, so at this point, I’m just going to enjoy the beautiful pink trees and pass on tasting any of the fruit.

You never know what you will see around here and the other day it was a cattle drive. Well not a big one, but we still had to pull over to the side of the road. A friend of ours who has a farm and a vegetable stand at the market in town was moving some cattle down to another field. He was in his truck and the cattle were just following him down the road. I suggested to him that he just keep going and bring them down to our place and we would have a big BBQ. He laughed about that, but they never did show up at our place.

That’s about what’s happening around here for now. Hope to see you down here sometime.

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A couple of weeks ago it was quiet around here so we decided to head down to Hopkins for a couple days and chill out in the pool and on the beach. We got there on Tuesday, just in time for the Mardi Gras celebration at Driftwoods Pizza joint. They have great pizza, but that night they were also serving up Gumbo. Of course, there was live music, masks, beads, and a whole lot of partying going on. Since seafood is not all that common up where we are, this was my chance for the next couple of days to get my fill of all that good beach food. Besides the shrimp gumbo, I also had some great jerked conch, coconut shrimp and some fish & chips. It might seem that we are always heading over to the coast, but it’s only a couple hour drive and it’s just good to get away for a little break.

Ever since we’ve been going to Hopkins we thought it would be great to have a little spot down there where we could escape for the weekends. Hopkins is a very laid-back village with great beaches and good fishing. Plus it has a big navigational river with crocs, manatees, otters and a ton of other wildlife. Well, this last trip the opportunity came up and we took advantage of it and bought a lot there. We are not riverfront, but one off with a view of the river. The lot at this point is currently very dense with palm trees.

There is a well maintained road in front of it with water, electricity and internet available. There is a public boat ramp at the Sittee River Marina about 1,000 feet from the lot. Plus it’s only a 1/2 mile walk to the beautiful sandy beaches. From the launch ramp, it’s only a 5-10 minute boat ride out to the open Caribbean waters. At this point, it’s just an investment, but I could also see us down there with a boat fishing for snook, jacks, tarpon and spending the day just cruising around the Caribbean. For now though, we will just sit on this and see where life takes us.

We used to be about the only ones down our road, but people are now starting to build. This past weekend there were six of the eight lot owners down here all at the same time. Which meant it was a great chance to have a little block party for everyone to meet their neighbors. Craig & Monica were down along with Craig’s parents (their place is complete). Dan from the top of the road (house complete). Amanda whose house is under construction. Chuck & Roxane who are building just past us, and Kelley & I who are always here. About the only one missing was Darren. We also invited John & Penny, they are not technically on our road, but close enough. Out of everyone, Kelley, myself, and Amanda are the only full-time residents, so it is still usually very quiet around here.

For the block party, everyone brought something and we grilled up some of our homemade bratwursts. Simmered them in a beer bath with onions and peppers and then seared them on the griddle for a little crispness. Of course, we also had some spicy mustard and sauerkraut to go along with the peppers and onions.

The hatchet throwing board is great, but the first time we started throwing I broke one of the wooden handles on the hatchets. So it was off to Amazon to see what they offered in the way of actual throwing hatchets. I found these nice all metal, double sided throwing hatchets that work pretty well, but It turns out that the wood for the target board was still too hard for them to easily stick into. So I had to put a layer of softer pine over the target board for them to actually stick. They go in much better, now all we have to do is get some practice in.

After all the rains we’ve had, it’s great to see the past few weeks sunny, and temps in the 80°s. Which means all the plants are loving it, especially the fruit trees. Currently, on plants we have six bunches of bananas, forty pineapples, a bunch of custard apples, a lot of cacao and a ton of raspberries.

Some of the other fruit trees are starting to blossom, such as starfruit, coffee, and peaches. Still nothing on the mangos or citrus, but for the first time our avocado tree is getting some blossoms. Hopefully, we will get some avocados and the citrus and mangos won’t be too far behind. It’s looking like it should be a very fruitful year, haha.

We are finally getting a few strings of peppercorns on our plants. We assumed that once the peppercorns dried up on the plant then they were ready for harvest as black pepper. I guess that was wrong according to what I’ve read. It states that if you want black or green pepper, then you should pick them when they are green and just starting to ripen. If you want white pepper, then you harvest them when they are red and they’ll turn white as they dry. It’s always interesting to learn about all the different things we are growing down here.

Usually, we see one or two toucans at a time when they fly over or land in the trees around the house. The most we’ve ever seen at the same time was four. The other day Kelley spotted one flying over the driveway and then another and then another. By the time they were done flying over she had counted nineteen of them and there were still more calling from the bush where they had come from. It looked like they were heading to some trees out behind our house somewhere. It’s always amazing when we see a toucan fly over, but seeing this many all at once was something else.

We saw a beautiful rat snake in the yard the other day doing what he does, eating a rat. I was cleaning up the leaves around the casita when I noticed something moving on one of the plants. Then all of a sudden a rat comes running towards me, but the snake didn’t follow. I called for Kelley to get the camera because the snake was still hanging on a plant. He didn’t chase the rat because he was already wrapped around another one.  In a matter of about a minute, he positioned that rat towards his mouth, swallowed it whole and went back into the bush.

I know a lot of people are squeamish around snakes, but rat snakes are good to have around. First of all, they are nonvenomous constrictors and are no threat to humans. Because of their gentle nature and nonaggressiveness, they are very beneficial because they help control the rodent population. They are a rather large snake and can get up to nearly 9′ in length (this one was only about 4′). They are daytime hunters looking for rats, mice, squirrels, birds and are excellent tree climbers. We don’t see too many snakes around here, but when we do we are always very cautious until we can identify what kind it is.

This month the weather is great down here, but the next two months will be hot. Once June gets here the temperatures will be nice again for the rest of the year. I know airfares are on the high side right now, but if you watch the sales and book ahead of time you should be able to score some good deals.

Hope to see you down here someday.

Breakfast this week around here consists of star fruit and raspberries fresh from the garden. Our raspberry plants are just starting to produce and it looks like we’ll need to be picking them a couple times a week for quite a while now. The raspberry plants are very invasive and need to be cut back at least once a week or so. If they weren’t so damn delicious I’d probably just take them all out.

Another fruit that is ripening on our trees is custard apples (Cherimoya). They are not really apples, but a subtropical fruit that has a sweet custard-like texture. Like most fruits and things down here, there are a lot of health benefits to them. We are chilling them, cutting them in half, scooping out a spoonful, then adding a couple of raspberries and it is almost ice cream like. They are a fruit that is rarely seen in the states, but you can order them on Amazon. If you really want to taste this fruit wait until you come to Belize or some other tropical country as they are $55usd a pound on Amazon.

Our cacao plants are doing great and we are picking a bucket full every few weeks. In the past, after we’ve fermented, dried, and roasted the seeds, we were then using a food processor to grind them up to make chocolate. The food processor worked fine but it left the finished chocolate a little gritty. Since we are getting a lot of cacao we decided to invest in a chocolate malanger. It’s a machine with grinding stones that grinds the cacao very fine to produce a silky smooth chocolate. For the first batch, we made four pounds and let the machine run for about twelve hours. It turned out very smooth and delicious. Now that we have all the right equipment and we’re making more, it’s time to experiment by adding some flavors such as mint, raspberry, and coffee.

A couple of weeks ago we planted about 150 bush beans and they are all growing fast. It was also time to get our lettuce and kale seedlings in the ground. There are more than 100 romaine lettuce plants and a bunch of kale. By the time the bugs and animals eat what they want, there should still be plenty left over for us.

We got a new batch of habanero salt all made and ready to spice everything up. We still have a few more batches to make, but this should take care of everyone who has been requesting it. I have found that the longer it sits, the hotter it gets. I guess the salt really soaks up the flavor from the habaneros. The last little bit of mine that had been on the counter for quite a while, I had to throw out. Yes, it got too hot for me, and I like stuff about as hot as it gets. In case you are wondering about the different color lids, we have been saving all our spice jars from all the meat we are making and reusing them for the habanero salt.

I know a lot of people like and even collect air plants to have around their homes. And why not, they are easy to care for and will grow just about anywhere. Down here you will see them growing on trees, powerlines and just about everywhere else. We have a lot of them growing around the property and when we find a good one we will transplant it closer to the house. Sometimes we don’t have to go looking for them they just appear. Like this big example that fell off a tree and was just laying in the road. We pass a lot of them that are on the road, but this is a big one that we thought needed to come home with us.

The other day there was a vulture in the palm tree just five feet out Kelley’s office window. We thought that was strange because we have never seen a vulture in a tree so close to the house before. He flew away once we went outside, but we did notice a foul smell around there somewhere. We looked all around on the ground and didn’t see anything anywhere. Then Kelley glanced up in the palm tree and there it was. It was a dead kinkajou hanging in the tree. I managed to get him down from the tree and we didn’t see any cuts or damage to him. So we’re just going to assume that he died from old age. It was sad to think the cute kinkajou that we’d grown accustomed to seeing would not be around anymore. Then later that evening we heard two or maybe more squawking and moving around in the trees. We’re not sure what happened to that one, but it’s good to know there are still a few more in the area.

Our little meat venture has really taken off. Currently, we are selling as much as we can make, and that’s only by word of mouth and to friends. Since December we have made summer sausage, Italian sausage, breakfast sausage, hickory smoked pepper bacon, corned beef, brats and beef snack sticks. Over the past few months, we have processed somewhere around 500lbs. of meat.

Recently we had to buy another freezer to store everything, one is for the finished products and the other is for the meat waiting to be processed. We found these nice freezers that have plastic drawers on each shelf. That way we can keep the products organized and we’ll be able to tell when we are getting low on something. The other nice thing about these freezers is that each shelf has a cooling coil on them to help freeze everything evenly.

For the past few months, I’ve been wanting to build an ax-throwing board. Well, we finally rounded up all the pieces needed to put together this rustic medieval looking board. All the posts are sapodilla, leftover from Darren’s house build. Sapodilla is a really hard wood that should last a very long time and I can’t remember what the target board is, but it is something the hatchets will stick into. I don’t know why we need to practice this, probably just for fun. Or I guess on that rare occasion when something is charging you and you happen to have a hatchet handy, a skill like this would be nice to have.

Here’s wishing everyone a Happy Valentines Day! Instead of going out this year, we decided to spend a quiet evening at home. Of course, we will make a nice dinner of grilled steaks, portabella mushrooms, stone crab claws, asparagus and of course a bottle of wine.

Hope everyone is doing well and maybe we’ll see you soon.

After the past few months, Kelley and I decided that we needed a little break from all the mud and rain, so over to the beach it was to put our feet in the sand. Placencia was our chosen destination this time, one reason being that Ron & Rhonda were going to be there to check on their property. Most of our time there was spent hanging out with friends, eating, walking around, bar hopping, and soaking in some sun. It was just what we needed to recharge ourselves after all the cloudy rainy days we’d been having up in the jungle.

Here’s a little more about this great little Caribbean beach town. Placencia has a Guinness World Record for the narrowest main street in the world. This street is not a place to drive on, ride bikes or even skate on, but rather to walk. Called The Sidewalk, this main street stretches for more than 1.5 miles and is only 4′ wide. When it was built, the main foundation for the sidewalk was conch shells, over 30,000 of them. Along the sidewalk you will find local artists, gift shops, restaurants, boutique hotels, and of course some of the best beachfront bars in Belize. When you are in Placencia be sure to take a walk down the sidewalk. It’s a great way to stretch your legs, do a little shopping, grab a bite to eat and of course, sit on the Caribbean shore with an ice-cold umbrella drink.

It’s funny how depending on what part of the world you are in what people consider weeds and others consider plants you want around your home. For example, around our place we have philodendrons, lantana, ferns, and a bunch of other tropical plants that just grow wild. In other parts of the world, these are considered house plants, yet here we just hack them down with our machetes. The other day at this roadside restaurant in Placencia there was a bleeding heart plant growing in the sidewalk. We asked the guy about it and he told us that it was just a weed and he will eventually pull it out. I guess weeds come in all shapes and colors depending on where you are.

We just picked a nice bowl of coffee this week. Currently, we have two types of coffee growing, Arabica and Robusta. Over the past year or so our Robusta plants have got a disease or something and are not doing too well. On the other hand, the Arabica plants are thriving and doing very well. We prefer the Arabica as they are a much larger bean and are easier to process. Plus it’s supposed to be a better coffee than the Robusta. When we process and roast the two types we usually just do them both together for a blend. If our Robusta plants can’t recover then hopefully we can replace them with more Arabica plants. The problem with buying new coffee plants down here is that a lot of the time the nurseries just call them coffee and you’re not sure which variety you are actually getting.

For the past year or so I’ve been making a habanero-sea salt blend that is extremely spicy. It seems that if you like spicy hot foods then you just can’t get enough of it. A lot of people are asking when I’m going to make more, well the time is now. We just picked up a full bag of big, ripe, red habaneros and we’ll start drying them later this week. Hopefully next time I make it we will be using our own homegrown habaneros, as Ruben is preparing to plant a few hundred plants for us.

Usually, once a week we go to town to stock up on supplies for the week and go to the butcher, baker, market, etc. For those times that we don’t want to make the run all the way to town, there is a great little roadside produce stand that opened a year or so ago right near us. The lady’s name is Nila and her stand is called UPE NAI which means, Dream Come True in the Mayan language. Her family has a small organic farm where they raise fruits and vegetables. She usually has fresh eggs and whatever is in season from her farm. The gal that we have gone to for years at the San Ignacio market also has a farm in San Antonio, but she also imports other fruits and veggies such as mushrooms, apples, and other stuff that they don’t grow here. No matter where we get our fruits and veggies from, we know we are getting the freshest available.

When we are making bacon or corned beef brisket we usually have to buy the whole side with all the ribs attached. The butcher separates them for us, but we are getting a freezer full of big racks of ribs. The pork ribs are great and we have been mixing up the recipes. Besides basic barbeque, we have done some Asian style and some hot wing style. The big racks of beef ribs I’ll put in the smoker, low and slow the same way I’d do a brisket. I’m sure we could cut the price a little and tell the butcher that we don’t want all the ribs that come with the pork bellies and the beef briskets, but then again who doesn’t like ribs?

The weekend after Placencia, Ron and Rhonda headed up to our place for a little jungle time and to do a little pricing and shopping around for things they will eventually need for their new home. Sunday was a beautiful day and most of the stores are closed, so we spent the day hopping around to some of our favorite little watering holes and visiting friends.

Mike Nash was back again playing at The Bluff as part of his Meeting of the Mayans tour. This year his tour includes Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, and Nicaragua. It’s a month-long tour that you can sign up for the whole thing or a week at a time depending on where you want to explore. You’ll get to see and explore all the spectacular sites in Central America, plus hang out with Mike at all his shows along the way.

It would definitely be a trip of a lifetime if you could tag along for the whole month-long tour. Especially this time of year when most everyone is freezing their butts off up north. Check it out here @ meetingofthemayans.com maybe next year you could be joining him on his Central American tour. Be sure to check out his blend of Trop Rock and country music @ nashmike.com. And for all our Puerto Peñasco friends, don’t miss him at the S.O.B. Festival (South Of The Border) this May.

Hope everyone is having a great year so far. See you soon.

Well the holidays came and went and here it is 2023. This is like some futuristic year that I couldn’t have imagined as a kid. Anyway all the Christmas stuff is packed away and we are ready to see what this new year has to offer. Not like we had a lot of Christmas stuff to put away, we just couldn’t get into the spirit of the holidays. Kelley did manage to make some cookies and treats that we took around to some of our friends. Plus we had a few lights around the house, but that was about it for our Christmas doings. It might have had something to do with all the rain we’ve been having, but hopefully that is over and we can start this year on a dry note. Well so much for that last statement that I wrote a couple of weeks ago as we are still getting daily rain showers.

One benefit of all these rains is that the mushrooms like it. Recently out by our front gate there was a small tree down and it was full of oyster mushrooms. Kelley brought a section of the tree back into the yard where we could keep an eye on them. At this point there are only two types of mushrooms around here that we will eat, and that’s only because someone told us they are good. Oyster mushrooms which are very good to sauté with a steak and wood ear mushrooms which Kelley puts in hot & sour soup. I know there are a bunch more we could be eating, but until someone actually points them out and tells us they are good we will not be taking any chances.

One of the projects we got done around here is building more trellises for our dragon fruit. We just expanded the trellises last year, but at the rate their growing we had to do it again. The dragon fruit cactus grows really fast down here, in fact all the cuttings we are planting are from the original couple pieces Ruben brought us a few years ago. Since we are moving the original plants, there was enough cutting leftover to also put down on our other property. Come summer time we should have a decent amount of dragon fruit to eat, even if the animals do eat half of them.

Now that the rains are lightening up, we are getting a few sunny days and there are a lot more animals roaming around. We’ve been seeing agouties, possums, kinkajous, coatimundis and a lot of squirrels. The squirrels are a lot of fun to watch as they never slow down. I watched this young squirrel run around and climb a tall tree at least ten times before he jumped off to another tree. Maybe he’s been eating some of the coffee we have growing.

There is a possum that climbs down the palm tree just three feet out our window every night as we are watching TV. When we see the plants moving on the tree there he is and we can get a good view from inside the house. Usually the kinkajous around us only seem to come out after the sun sets, but lately we have seen them just before the sun goes down. This one here was out over the guest house the other day and Kelley was able to get a few pictures of him.

We are also starting to see a wide variety of birds again. A lot of the smaller birds are migratory and we only see them this time of year. Not all of them are big colorful tropical looking birds, but they are still fun little birds to watch running around looking for food.

On the other hand we are seeing more parrots, parakeets, toucans, aracaris, motmots and other bigger colorful birds around the property. The toucans we are hearing and seeing just about every day now. These three pictures of toucans were all taken on different days.

Almost every late afternoon I’ll have an apple or some other piece of fruit for a snack. When I’m done I’ll throw the apple core or whatever off the porch into the bush. Recently there has been a Motmot waiting for me to throw something. As soon as the piece of fruit hits the ground there he is within seconds to grab it. Even in the morning if Kelley cleans a pineapple and throws the core out, there he is to grab it. I’ve seen him sitting on the porch railing and I can actually get pretty close to him before he flies away. Motmots are such beautiful birds, especially when you can get up close to them.

Our little meat venture seems to be getting bigger and bigger. We are getting orders from people we don’t even know and a lot of our friends have standing orders on certain products as they become available. As the year ended we had sold out of everything we had made. So we decided to take a break for a couple of weeks before we started in on it again. Since we had some time we decided to make something that would be just for us. So the first week of January we made up a bunch of beef snack sticks. We had no plans of selling these, but they turned out really good. So we will get some other people’s opinions and see if this is something they would be interested in. Snack sticks like these are almost impossible to find down here. So if we can get a good price point on these, they might become something else we offer.

The ground is still very wet and muddy, even though the sun has been peeking out occasionally. The temps are ranging from the mid 60°s at night to the mid 80°s during the day, which is just about perfect in my opinion. Anyway, with those conditions, we have been having some pretty good fog in the mornings. It usually only lasts for a half hour or so before it clears up. It’s still a little eerie looking, especially when you can’t see very far and you hear something moving around in the bush.

Darren was just here a few weeks ago and now he’s back again. This time he brought his sister and her husband and a couple of their friends. He got to spend some good quality time in his own home and show it off to his family. He’s getting some paintings on the walls and other personal touches that make it a home. They spent a few days up here seeing the sights before heading out to San Pedro for a little beach time. One night I fired up the pizza oven for a pizza and beer night. As I was stoking the oven with wood the smoke drifted out through the trees where the sun was shining through. It looked pretty cool with the blueish beams of lights shining on the smoke.

Overall the holidays were pretty quiet and uneventful around here. We did manage to get a few projects done and sneak in a little relaxation. This next year is shaping up to be a pretty exciting year. Some of our fruit trees are finally at that stage where they’re going to produce, our meat business is keeping us really busy, we have friends scheduled and others talking about coming down this year, plus we have already reserved a few weekends over on the coast just for us. We’d love to see you down here this year, so put some time aside and give us a call, and we’ll have the guest house ready for you.

Here’s hoping everyone has a healthy, happy, and prosperous new year!

Supposedly December was the start of the dry season in Belize. Someone here didn’t get that notice this year, as it has rained almost every day at our place in December. The past few months have been really wet and muddy around here, plus there was a hurricane thrown in. We’ve been trying to get our road fixed for a few months now, but it’s still too wet. And then to quote cousin Eddy from Christmas Vacation “Shitter’s full”.  So we had to get a septic truck out here to pump it out. He got here first thing in the morning with an empty truck and still only managed to get 3/4 of it before his tank was full. The ground has been so saturated from all the rains, in fact so far this year we have recorded 64″ of rain. I guess that’s all part of living in a green jungle.

Darren was just down for a visit and to check on his house. The construction is done and it was time to furnish it. He got beds, couch, recliner, barstools, microwave, tv and a bunch of other things that will make it more comfortable. It really came together and is looking like a home, and he even spent a couple of nights there. Of course, there are still things to do around there, but it is completely livable. The entire time he was here it rained every day, which made for a muddy mess everywhere. When he comes back in a few weeks with family hopefully the rains will have stopped and everything has dried out a bit.

It’s time for Ruben to plow our other lot and get ready for the new crops. That’s all great, but there were still a lot of good looking basil plants growing there. So before the plows came we went and rescued a few nice basil plants to put in pots around our place. We also picked a huge hefty trash bag full of leaves that we threw in the dehydrator for future use. The new crops going in are bush beans, purple carrots, beefsteak tomatoes, red pear tomatoes, habaneros, and green chilis. And if everything goes well there should be a whole lot of everything in a few months.

It’s been a few months since we’ve had any bananas on our plants, but now they are starting to produce again. Which is good because now we can quit buying them every week at the market. Also, we just ate our last loaf of banana bread, so now Kelley can start making some more. These are our favorite sweet little apple bananas that we think make the best banana bread.

We just picked 50 lbs. of cacao pods off our plants. A couple of weeks ago we also picked a bunch that is still in the drying stage. Our trees are getting really big and producing lots of cacao. Hopefully, over the holidays we will have time to process all this and turn it into some good dark chocolate. We still have a bunch of dried from earlier in the year that is vacuumed sealed and ready to be roasted and turned into chocolate. It’s a shame Kelley doesn’t like chocolate, but that’s fine with me because I love it!

Recently we roasted a pig on our rotisserie, as it turned out it was too big so we had to remove the head to make it fit. Well, we finally got around to doing something with the head. We brined it for five days in our bacon cure and then smoked it for a few hours with mesquite wood. You would not believe how good it turned out. Kelley diced it up for tacos and it tasted like a bacon/ham combo with just enough fat, plus the crunchy skin made for a nice little crunch. We have cooked many pig heads in the past, but this is probably the best one yet.

We love our natural wood house and wouldn’t change anything, except for maybe a simpler railing design around the porches. The railing needed to be refinished, but it’s impossible to get in and sand around all those tight angles. So we made the decision to pressure wash and scrape it as good as we could and then paint the porch railings instead. We started with the casita to see what it would look like before we tackled the main house. It does add a little more pop of color around here and it should be a lot easier to maintain in the future.

Recently we ordered in a couple of LED spotlights to point up at the trees above the back patio. It doesn’t make it any brighter out there, it just adds some uplighting. Of course, there is a wide variety of light colors to choose from depending on our mood. Currently, we have it on a green setting which we think looks pretty good.

Earlier this year we were at a craft fair over on the coast where we found a unique Christmas decoration. It’s a Christmas tree made entirely out of sea glass and even has a heart-shaped piece of coral for the top. It’s hollow up the middle so a string of lights fits up the center. Definitely a one of a kind piece.

We’ve been so busy this December that Christmas snuck up on us real quick. We did manage to get a few lights up around the house and some decorations inside, but that’s about it. We just haven’t gotten into the Christmas spirit this year and all of a sudden it’s a week before Christmas. We opted not to put our tree up, have the swinging monkeys hanging garland, or even put lights around the back patio.  We haven’t even heard any Christmas songs or watched any Christmas movies yet. Kelley did manage to get some Christmas cookies made and we will still have our annual eggs benedict on Christmas morning. Every year we cook a prime rib roast for Christmas, but this year we are just doing a store bought ham. With only a week left before Christmas hopefully we can get a little Christmas spirit before it’s gone.

Here’s wishing everybody a very Merry Christmas!

It’s been a busy November so far. The end of October we hopped a plane up to Arizona for a visit and to see our grandkids. We got there just before Halloween, which meant decorating cookies, pumpkin carving, and of course trick or treating.

This year Luke and Tyler went as Ninjas and Allison was a cute little fairy. At Alli’s first stop she was a little hesitant when they gave her candy. At the second house when they gave her candy she tried to give them the candy she got at the first house. A few houses later when she figured out that all the candy was for her, she was almost running up to the front doors for more treats.

November is the time of year that we go to Arizona for our annual doctor’s checkup. The doctor said we are both good and healthy, but Kelley had something on her cheek that they had to do a biopsy on. Turned out it was squamous cell carcinoma skin cancer that had to be removed immediately. So it was off to the specialist to get it removed.  While we were there I had also scheduled to have a hernia repaired that had already been repaired 15 years ago. We are both in good health, with the exception that I can’t lift anything heavy for a couple of months and Kelley can’t make funny faces for a while.

A few days after we left Belize there was a late tropical storm brewing in the Caribbean. It eventually turned into a category 1 hurricane (Lisa) that was headed directly to Belize. There was plenty of damage along the coast, but by the time it got inland to us, it was starting to lose strength. About the only damage I heard of up by us was a lot of downed trees and flooding. Besides losing power and a bunch of branches scattered around our yard, we were very lucky to only have lost a couple banana plants. The lot across from us lost a couple big trees and a few big palms. Darren’s lot next to us had a couple good size trees go down and a big palm that just barely managed to miss his house. It’s great to have friends who will check on and take care of things when we are not there.

Halfway through our trip to Arizona, our friend and neighbor in Belize (Amanda) flew up and joined us. We made a quick 3 day run down to the beaches of Puerto Peñasco, Mexico to show Amanda where we used to live. We gave her a whirlwind tour of the town and all the places we used to hang out. We saw a bunch of friends we haven’t seen in a while, ate a lot of seafood, got a lot of sun and of course drank too many crevesas.

One of our stops in Mexico was down to the estuary where they raise oysters. Kelley and I have been going there for well over 30 years, but this was Amanda’s first time and it did not disappoint. As we pulled up on the beach, the old man came out of his shack and asked what we wanted. In no time at all, he was pulling a crate of fresh oysters out of the water and shucking them for us. We only had two dozen between us (we easily could have done 2 dozen each) but we had more food stops planned for the day.

In the short time we spent in Mexico we managed to get our seafood fix in. We had steamed clams, octopus, fried oysters, coconut shrimp, and raw oysters on the beach. We also brought some jumbo blue shrimp and scallops back to Arizona where we had a big seafood feast at the kid’s house. All in all, it was a short trip down to Mexico, but it gave Amanda a chance to see where we use to call home.

Now back to Belize

Since the holidays are right around the corner, it was time for us to make our beef summer sausage again. We have been making it for a few years, but last year was the first time we offered it for sale, and everybody loved it. So far we have orders for at least 30 and we haven’t even passed the word to everyone yet. So it looks like the next couple of weeks we will be concentrating on making summer sausage in time for all the holiday gatherings. We also picked up another 50 lbs. of cubed pork to make more Italian and breakfast sausage.

Before we left for the states we were talking to our neighbors and the subject of clam chowder came up. We had recently ordered in a case of canned clams from Amazon because we’ve been craving clam linguini and clam chowder. Canned clams are almost impossible to find down here and if you do they are expensive. We said that when we got back from the states I would make up a batch of clam chowder and invite them over. So sourdough bread bowls were ordered from the bakery, the chowder was made and Kelley made some deep-fried lobster raviolis. Throw in some wine, cold beer, and good friends, what more could you ask for?

After being gone for a while it was time to check the old trail camera to see what interesting critters have been around. There were coatimundis, tayras (bush dogs), agouties, foxes, possums, squirrels, and a bunch of different birds. It’s good to see there are still a bunch of animals roaming around here and hopefully one day we will get a picture of a jaguar or tapir on the camera.

Belize has a very diverse landscape for being such a small country. There are hundreds of islands off the coast and beautiful beaches along its Caribbean shoreline. There are also wetlands, mountains, and tropical jungles. One surprise that some people don’t know about is the pine forest. We live on the edge of Mountain Pine Ridge and just a short drive from us the jungle disappears and gives way to streams and pine trees. It reminds us of Northern Arizona, with the pine trees, red dirt, and even deer. Sometimes it’s a little hard to believe that you are in Belize when there are pine cones scattered all over the ground.

While driving around the other day we saw a yard full of white goats  with a sign that read “NO TRESPASSING GUARD DOGS ON DUTY.” We just found humor in that.

It was a great trip to Arizona and down to Mexico where we got to see a lot of friends we haven’t seen in a while. Now it’s time to get a new garden in, make up a bunch more sausage, and take care of all the things that have been neglected around here for the past month. Even though we had no real damage from the hurricane, there is still a lot of cleaning up and trimming to do around the property.

This Thursday we’ll be making up a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with all the fix’n’s. We’ll invite a few friends over, eat too much, watch some football and talk about how we can’t believe it’s already the Christmas season. Here’s wishing everyone a safe and Happy Thanksgiving Day weekend.

There was a lot of cleanup around here after the recent big rains. Lots of debris everywhere and plants down or washed away. Most of the 200 or so pineapples we have along the driveway were washed over and laying flat on the ground. Kelley managed to get them all back upright and it looks like they should do well.

The rains also washed away a lot of the logs we had as borders around the house and garden. It’s a good thing we have a lot of trees around here, just pick one out and cut it to size. One doormat washed away, but Kelley found it 50′ out in the bush. As for the solar pathway lights, they’re probably lighting up some animal’s den right about now. Anyway, the new borders are up around the casita and yard, plants are back in shape and new solar lights are on the way. Everything is looking good again, and all that rain really gave the plants a major growth spurt.

Ruben finally got a small section of our other property chopped down, so it was time for us to cut a road in and decide where we wanted trees. Lots of rocks and stumps had to be removed, but now you can drive on the property. Our neighbor gave us a truckload of coconuts that were starting to grow, so we planted a bunch of them along the property line. We also planted 4 Avocados, 13 Mangoes (5 types), 3 Malay Apples, 1 Soursop, 2 Lemons, 1 Valencia Orange, 1 Mandarin Orange, 1 Yellow Grapefruit and 1 Red Grapefruit. Besides all the new trees there were already Bananas, Plantains, Guava and Jamaican Lime trees on the property. Most of the new trees are around 5′ tall, about half of them we’ve grown from seed, and the others we bought. It will take some time before all these really start producing, but once they do we might just have to set up a fruit stand.

Up on this other lot we also put in a Cortez tree. Once a year the Cortez tree will lose all its leaves and then bloom these beautiful yellow flowers for a couple of weeks, and it’s spectacular. Since we use to live on the shores of the Sea Of Cortez, we thought it was appropriate to put a Cortez tree on the property.

It was a decent harvest of peanuts this year and they’re all looking good. It took longer for them to dry this time because of all the rains we’ve had, but now they are ready for roasting.

Our Roselle or Jamaican Sorrel plants are ready to start harvesting and should be for the next month or so. Sorrel is a type of annual hibiscus plant that gets beautiful pink and red flowers. After the flower falls off, the “fruit” will develop for about a week or so before it’s ready to pick. The fruit itself is used to make wine, jellies and other stuff.

We like to dry ours and use it to make a red flavorful tea. It has a slight resemblance to cranberry juice, and of course it has many health benefits. Mexican restaurants serve this sweetened and it’s called Jamaica. We don’t sweeten ours and it’s still very tasty. Usually we’ll grow enough to last us all year, and in fact we just used our last little bit from last year, so the timing is perfect for these plants.

We’ve got a few black pepper plants growing around here and they are doing good. They’ve been in the ground a few years now and haven’t really started producing yet, but we did find a few peppercorns on one of the plants. We dried them out and then gave them a try. Wow, that was a strong black pepper flavor and we can’t wait till the plants really start producing. Black pepper is something we use constantly around here and is one of our favorite spices.

I’m sure many of you have or might have had Caladiums growing as a house plant. Here we have them just growing in the yard around the house. When planted outside in the right environment they will get a flower, which is what a bunch of ours are doing now. The one below is one we purchased from a nursery, but we do have other varieties that are not as colorful growing wild around the property.

Caladiums are perennial plants, meaning they will come back every year. Which is why we can walk around the jungle and not see any, then a few months later they are all over. The one below is one we found on one of our walks and relocated it near the house.

We’ve grown ginger in a big pot for the past few years and it does good. We usually just pick it as needed until the plants die out, then we plant some more. This is the first time that one of the ginger plants has flowered. I don’t know why the ginger plants have never done this before, it’s such a beautiful little flower.

When we were moving plants the other day we found the smallest little frog we’ve seen. Not sure what kind it is or even if it’s a frog or a toad. Anyway, just had to share a picture of this little guy.

The other night we were watching TV when Kelley heard a noise on the porch. We looked outside and there was a Kinkajou up on the beams of the porch just hanging out. Recently every night we hear and see him in the trees around the house, but this time he decided to get a little closer. He was up there a good 3 hours until we turned the lights out and went to bed. We only got a couple of pictures of him as we did not want to blind him.

We still have a bunch of lobsters left in the freezer. After eating a few “the normal way” we decided to start looking up other ways to serve them. There was a lobster pot pie recipe that caught our attention. So Kelley got to work on this new lobster recipe and it turned out great!  She will definitely be making this one again in the future. When you come for a visit, ask Kelley really nice and she might just make one for you.

Hurricane season ends next month, which means it’s the beginning of the dry season. It’s a great time to be in Belize, but then again it’s always a great time to be here. Hope to see you down here sometime.

Our neighbors raise a few pigs and wanted to know if we would be interested in one. They were all small and thought they would dress out around 20 lbs. or so. We thought this would be the perfect size for us to rotisserie on the BBQ. Of course we said yes, so this was the beginning of a Big Ol’ Barbeque. We picked a weekend when the weather was going to be good and invited a bunch of friends over. When the pig was delivered it turned out to be a little bigger than we thought. He dressed out at 40 lbs. and was too big to fit on the grill. So a last-minute decision was made to take the head off in order for him to fit. Not exactly the presentation I was hoping for, but in the end, it really didn’t matter. He roasted on the rotisserie for a good five hours and turned out all golden and juicy.

Once the pig rested for a while it was time to get him off the grill. Kelley wasted no time and went to work carving him up. We have cooked a lot of pigs in the past and this one was definitely the  juiciest.

This of course being a Big Ol’ Barbeque and not just a pig roast there had to be other meats. The night before the barbeque, we put 2 big beef briskets in the smoker and cooked them low and slow till the next day. Once the briskets came out we put some chickens in the smoker and had them ready when everyone arrived. Now we had enough meat to call this a Big Ol’ Barbeque.

Since the theme was barbeque, everyone brought sides that went great with all the meats. There was deep-fried mac cheese, cornbread, potato salad, deviled eggs, baked beans, cobbler and more. A great time was had by all and according to everyone it was “OMG delicious”.

After everyone got their fill of all this great food it was time for a few games of darts. As the sun was going down some people were starting to head back to their homes. Being a Saturday night, some of us still had a lot left in us. So it was off to the garage for some beer pong that went into the wee hours. Sunday was definitely a day of rest for us, which is something we never get to do.

Last year at a friend’s fundraiser we won the high bid on a 3-night stay down in Hopkins at https://www.villarisingsun.com.  So Kelley’s birthday weekend we decided that just the two of us would head down, even though there was tropical storm Julia heading this way. The storm was staying south of Belize, so let’s go enjoy the beach and do some fishing we said. Well, the storm did blow in with lots of wind and even more rain. We spent a lot of time indoors staying dry and watching tv.

Between the rains, we did manage to frequent a few of our favorite places for some cold beer and good food. One evening as we were heading home along the flooded roads in Hopkins, the road was alive with crabs. We had to drive slow and swerve just to miss hitting these crabs that were as big as my fist.

I don’t like posting pictures of animals that aren’t alive, but just outside of Hopkins there was an animal on the road that had been hit by a car. This wasn’t your typical squirrel or possum, so we had to turn around and check it out. It’s not every day you see a crocodile on the road that had been hit by a car.

On our way back home a neighbor of ours reached out, saying to be careful as there is a lot of rain. Once we finally got home there was water running everywhere like we have never seen before. Water was running across our driveway big time.

Our roundabout driveway we put in the front yard was a big river that you could have floated down.  It was all running down in front of the casita and down into the creek behind it.

The road just 20′ past our gate use to flood, so they installed a 24″ drain pipe under the road which usually works out fine. There was no way it could handle the amount of rain we had just gotten. This picture is of the road with the drain pipe under it.

All in all, we received 12+ inches of rain over the weekend with 8+ of that falling the day we got back. This is by far the most amount of rain we have seen at one time. Luckily the only damage we had was landscaping. It’s going to take us a while to get the yard all back in shape, but that’s nothing compared to some of the people in our village and the rest of the country. A lot of people in our village were sandbagging their homes, but that didn’t stop the amount of water that was running through. And to make things worst, the main water line into town washed out and broke. By the next day, the water had receded and the sun was out, plus they got the water line fixed. People are amazing, no matter how bad it is, they will always come out to help a neighbor or someone in need.

Usually, when we get a good rain it brings out burrowing toads and turtles, but this was a first for us. After the water receded we were out walking around the yard, and there in a puddle was a live fish. Not a little tiny one, but a good-sized fish. We started looking around and there was another one. We think they were tilapia that probably came from someone’s pond. Anyway, we took them down to where the creek was still running and let them go. Always something exciting around here, we never thought we’d find fish in our yard.

Earlier this year I mentioned that our marigolds from last year took over the yard when they started growing again. There were so many that I had to get the lawn mower out and cut them down before they were too big and got totally out of control. We did seem to contain some of them in a small flower bed where they still grew up to 8′ tall. I can’t imagine what the yard would look like if I hadn’t mowed them down when I did. Sure it would have been beautiful with all the hummingbirds and butterflies, but we wouldn’t have been able to get to our house.

Peanuts are ready! A few months ago we planted a bunch of peanuts and they were finally ready to harvest. Kelley and I got the pitchfork out and went to digging up peanuts. We will let them dry for a couple of weeks out in the sun before they get roasted. Once roasted and shelled we will make them all into peanut butter. Homemade peanut butter is so much better and healthier than store bought, because we usually only add coconut oil and a little salt. Not sure yet how much we will get, but it should be enough to last us till next year when we plant again. Luckily the peanuts were drying in the garage when the big rains hit.

Our little meat venture seems to be going well. We pretty much sold out of everything we’ve made in the past few weeks. So we just made up another 30 lbs. of Italian sausage and another 20 lbs. of breakfast sausage, which we already have orders for. Next month we will start making up our summer sausage just in time for the holiday season.

The next couple of weeks we will be getting the yard back in shape, other than that all is good. Hope to see you soon!

The past couple of weeks were going to be busier than usual around here. Mike Nash was coming back to The Bluff for a couple shows and Darren was coming down for 10 days or so. Mike had to cancel for some reason and Darren had to postpone his trip till December. That doesn’t mean there still wasn’t a lot to do around here. Kelley and I had been finishing up small projects at Darren’s house so it would be ready for him when he arrived. We’ve got his alarm installed, wired up his island for electricity, butane all installed for the stove, got him a new road put in, oversaw the cabinets and granite being installed and a bunch more small things that needed to be taken care of before he got here.

Darren’s house is just about done, so this trip was for him to get it furnished and ready to move in. Hopefully, by his trip in December, he will be able to get everything that he needs to start living in and enjoying his own jungle home.

This past week started off with our internet provider suggesting that we upgrade our equipment to get better service. This meant taking down our 75′ tower to put new equipment on it. We lowered the tower down and put a new antenna on it only to have it not work. So take it down again to put the old antenna back up until they could figure out what the problem was. A couple days later we brought it down one more time to put a different new antenna up and remove the old one. Every time we need to drop the tower we have to try and round up a bunch of guys to help. Our internet seems to be working better than before, so we’ll see what happens.

We met a young gal (Rose) from Lithuania the other night at The Bluff restaurant. For the past year, she has been couch surfing around the world. We didn’t even know what couch surfing was until we looked it up. Anyway, after talking to her awhile we decided that we would offer up our guest house for a couple of nights. Rose has been traveling all around for the past year by herself. She prefers to hitchhike where ever she goes and stay with friends she has met in the past or at homes that are listed on the couch surfing website.

As we were talking one night, it came up that we use to live in Puerto Peñasco, Mexico, and believe it or not, she had been there. She was coming up from Mazatlan to Peñasco a few years ago where a friend was going to get her a ride to Arizona. Such a small world. Anyway as a token of thanks for staying here she gave us a small vial of Lithuanian sand with a note inside written in her native language. Rose is a very adventurous gal and has a great passion for meeting new people and exploring everything this world has to offer. It was amazing to hear all the places she’d been and all the things she had seen. We were thrilled to have met her and to get to learn about her native country which we had no knowledge of.

Our other lot down the road that we are letting Ruben farm on is starting to produce some nice veggies. The past few weeks his yellow corn was ready to start harvesting. This week it’s green beans and cilantro. The green beans are great, but I’m not a fan of cilantro, so just a couple of bunches for Kelley should be enough. He also has a lot of peanuts planted, but we don’t need any of those because the ones we planted are doing quite well. I think this is the way we are going to garden from now on, just get some seeds and let Ruben do the rest. We’ll stick to just growing the fruit trees etc. and leave all the veggies to him. It’s a win, win situation. Ruben makes money selling what he grows and we have our own fresh veggies as needed.

Our new cabinet and the granite countertop were finally ready for pickup. Between the fridge and the wall, we had put a small table that we used when we were living in the casita. The table just happened to be the perfect size for that space. We never used it to sit at or anything, it was just a table to put stuff on. So we decided to get rid of it and have another cabinet made that would match the rest in the kitchen. This new cabinet is dedicated to all our meat-making supplies. Meat slicer, vacuum sealer, meat grinder, sausage stuffer, bags, casings, spices, etc. all in one place. It will be much better having everything in one place and it will be a lot easier to tell when we are getting low on supplies.

We recently made up a ten-pound batch of Louisiana-style hot link sausages. These are not for sale yet as we are still playing with the recipe and the cooking methods. Eventually, we will get this to where we want it, and once we’re happy with it I’m sure we’ll have a market for them.

Originally we were only going to make up corned beef around St Patrick’s Day, but it seemed that everyone wanted more. We just finished curing another batch and most of them are already spoken for.

A couple of the beef briskets we bought were a little too thin to make into corned beef. Our choice was to grind them up or turn them into beef bacon. I’m sure you can guess which one we chose. Anyway, after a week in the cure and some time in the smoker, we had two batches of beef bacon, one black pepper and the other one maple syrup both with a hickory smoke.

Also made up another 30lbs. of Italian sausage. If you are looking to try this sausage, order a pizza at The Bluff and ask for sausage on your pizza. The sausage is not on the menu, sort of like a secret, but now you know.

Change is good, well sometimes. Belikin beer has always been offered in a heavy dark glass bottle. Recently they have started putting their famous beer in cans. Kelley and I tried one and we both said it tasted flat and not the same as the bottle, plus it costs more. I know it’s the same beer, but it just seems to taste better out of the bottle. And since Belize does not really offer aluminum recycling, we will stick to our returnable bottles. It’s the least we can do for the environment.

The other night there was a little excitement in the hot tub. No, it’s not what you’re probably thinking. We were sitting in there just relaxing and the trees above us started rustling around. Right above us was a Kinkajou eating the berries on the trees. We sat there for a good hour just watching him jump from branch to branch above our head. All we could think about was, what if he slipped and fell in the hot tub with us? Luckily he didn’t, but that sure would have made for a good story.

September 21st is Independence day in Belize. It is a National holiday and a time for big celebrations throughout the entire country.  The official name of the territory was changed from British Honduras to Belize in 1973, and full independence from the UK was granted on 21 September 1981.

We went down into San Ignacio to catch the parade and join in on some of the festivities. Once the parade started the streets were packed. Everyone came out from the surrounding villages to watch the parade and show their Belizean pride. Everywhere you looked there were flags, banners, shirts, hats, etc. all showing how proud they are of their country.

We have been to a couple of Independence day parades before, but this one seemed bigger than the others. Possibly because there hasn’t been one the past couple of years because of covid. It was great to see this many people come out and show how much pride and spirit they have for their country. We’re glad we could be part of this celebration.

That about sums up the past few weeks. Hope to see you soon, either here or there.

San Pedro here we come! Just a 2 hour drive and a 15 minute flight from our place and we were on the island of Ambergris for a few days of fun in the sun and some great music. The music lineup was  Jim Dalton and Nick Scropos (Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers) along with the Jons, and Jeremy Lawton (Big Head Todd & the Monsters).

Kelley, Amanda and I met up with Ron, Rhonda and a few other friends out on the island for a fun filled weekend. It seems everybody at the shows were big fans of the musicians and most of everyone had seen them at Circus Mexicious. It was great meeting new friends and sharing stories about all the people, places and concerts we’ve all seen in Puerto Penasco, Mexico.

After a great show on Friday night, Saturday we all headed over to Secret Beach to soak in the warm Caribbean waters with friends. Many of the bars at Secret Beach have tables waist deep out in the water where they will serve you food and drinks. It doesn’t get much better than that!

When we are at Secret Beach we usually order a bucket of beer, but with 5 of us drinking beer and only 6 beers in a bucket, that was going to keep our waiter pretty busy. So they informed  us that they have a mega bucket full of ice and a whole case of beer. That just seemed like the way to go for the making of a great afternoon.

After another great show that night, there was a booze cruise the next day over to the island of Caye Caulker with the whole group to soak up more fun & sun. Caye Caulker is about a half hour boat ride from San Pedro or two rum punches depending on how you time it.

It was a great long weekend with old and new friends who all came together to support theses fine musicians. Hopefully we’ll see some of you down here next year for the show.

Back to the jungle

The other day I was out front and heard this rustling up in the trees just a few feet off the front porch. I called for Kelley to grab the camera and there he was, a big Tayra (Bush Dog) up in the tree. He took off once he saw us, but not before Kelley snapped off a bunch of pictures. Tayras can get up to 48″ long including their big bushy tail and weigh up to 15lbs. They are omnivores, hunting rodents, small mammals, birds, lizards, fruits and honey. They locate prey primarily by scent, having relatively poor eyesight, and actively chase it once located, rather than stalking or using ambush tactics. They are active during the day which is why we have seen a few of them around here in the past.

Amanda (who lives about a mile from us) has had a family of Howler Monkeys hanging out in the trees above here house. We went over there to check them out and for Kelley to get some pictures. Howler monkeys are considered to be the loudest land animals and can be heard up to 3 miles away. We constantly hear them at our place, but have yet to see any on our property.

The other day Ruben was pretty excited when he told us that he saw a Harpy Eagle in a tree only a few hundred yards from our house. Harpy Eagles are on the critically endangered list in Belize and are almost never seen in the wild. We have seen a couple at the Belize zoo and they are an impressive animal. They are one of the largest and most powerful raptor in it’s range. They can weigh up to 20 +lbs. and have a wing span of 7’4″. They possess the largest talons of any living eagle and have been recorded as carrying prey weighing up to their own body weight. Ruben seems to think that this one is hanging around because of all the new little lambs in the neighbors field. Hopefully we will get a chance to see him and Kelley can get some pictures. Below is a photo I pulled off the web so you can see how impressive they are.

The wild fruits and berries must be ripening on the trees around us because we are seeing and hearing a lot more animals lately. Nearly every night we are hearing the Kinkajous up in the trees and there are a bunch of squirrels running around all day. We are also starting to see more Aricaries and Toucans in the trees. If it’s not the berries in the trees that are attracting them then it must be that I just repainted the toucans out front and they are acting as giant decoys.

It was time to hit the nursery again for some more fruit trees. This time we got a few different types of mangos that we didn’t have. A couple more different types of avocados. More citrus including Mandarin Oranges, Valencia Oranges, Red Grapefruit and a White Grapefruit.  Plus a couple more Malay Apples and Velvet Apples.

We are lucky enough to have a Black Orchid growing on a tree just off the porch. The Black Orchid is the national flower of Belize and blooms almost all year round. It’s not actually black, but rather a deep dark purple. There are approximately 250 species of orchids in Belize and we have quite a few different one around the property.

We usually eat pretty good and healthy around here, but sometimes we just have to indulge ourselves. Awhile ago we picked up this giant 2 3/4lb. bone in ribeye cowboy steak from the butcher. We vacuum sealed it and let it age in the fridge a few weeks before we threw it on the grill. Since we were indulging ourselves we might as well throw in some lobsters. The steak was cooked to a nice char outside and rare in the middle. Of course the lobsters were of grilled with a good bathing of butter. Throw in a nice salad and a bottle of wine and it made for a great surf & turf meal.

Till next time. If you’re not having fun, then you’re probably not doing it right.

It might seem like we are always over on the coast, but that is one of the great things about living where we do, you can be on the Caribbean shore within a short drive from our place. This time, seven of us went down to Placencia for a few days to let loose for Amanda’s birthday. Of course, this being the rainy season it didn’t allow for any offshore adventures, but that was okay.

We spent the day in the pool meeting new friends under cloudy skies and getting more sun than we really should have. Of course there was some beach bar hopping involved and delicious food along the way. And since lobster season was open, we had to stop at Barefoot Bar for a lobster grilled cheese sandwich.

We couldn’t be on the coast during lobster season and not bring some back home, so we picked up 36 tails and 25 whole lobsters. It looks like we will be doing another “Lobsterfest in the Jungle” sometime soon. The last time we did this we brought back an ice chest full of lobsters and everyone bought them from us to make something tasty for Lobsterfest. Then the day of Lobsterfest everyone brought their dish back to our place where we had a taste of everyone’s creations. It was great tasting all the different recipes and a good time was had by all. If anyone is interested in participating this time, just let us know and we’ll see if we have any extra lobsters left.

We’re finally going to give this a go… We have been making sausage, bacon, pastrami, and other meats for a while now and everyone seems to want more. So we’ve finally acquired all the proper equipment we need to grind, slice, stuff, smoke, seal, and store anything we can make. We are starting out with sausages; breakfast, Italian, summer, chorizo, hot links, and maybe bratwurst. The Italian sausage will be sold in links as well as loose for use in pasta dishes or pizza. After that, we will move on to the more time-consuming meats such as corned beef, bacon, pastrami, and maybe ham.

Breakfast sausage, Italian sausage, and bacon are available in Belize, but as for the other meats, they are nearly impossible to find. The sausage and bacon you find here have a different flavor than what you would get back in the states or Canada. That’s why we will be making ours with the taste and spices that ex-pats were used to back home.

We’ll vacuum seal most of the meats in one-pound packages except for the summer sausage and the corned beef. Once we have a good supply we’ll put the word out to our friends and let them know what we have available. In the past when we’ve done this we have sold out very quickly leaving people wanting more. This time we hope to have most things available as needed. It will all be packaged under our trademarked brand Wicked Toucan.

A couple years ago Ruben gave us some cuttings from a cactus that he said was Pitahaya or dragon fruit. We built a small trellis for it to climb on not knowing how fast it would actually grow… and it grows fast. Over the last year or so we’ve been taking cuttings and planting them on a bigger, stronger trellis we built that is currently 35′ long. The small original trellis is currently falling down, so it’s time to cut that one down and add another 35′ of new trellis.

We have two different types of dragon fruit, yellow ones that have a white flesh and the other is a pink one with deep purple flesh. We had never really eaten dragon fruit before we started growing it, but it’s definitely one of our favorite fruits, if we can get to them before the animals do.

Another delicious fruit from the garden is Star Fruit. The tree was loaded with small fruit this year, but I think the rains knocked most of them off. The tree still has some fruit on it just not as many as it did, but that’s okay because we are still getting plenty of bananas and pineapples. It’s always great having a variety of fresh fruits available for breakfast.

Earlier this year when we were picking cacao pods, there was one that was left on the plant too long and it was starting to rot. So just for fun, we decided to plant the seeds and see if they would grow. Well within a short time they started to sprout and now we have 36 more cacao plants growing. We’re not sure where we are going to plant these as they need a certain amount of sunlight and shade combined. Most of our property is pretty shaded and doesn’t receive enough sun and our other one down the road gets too much sun. Maybe we will just stick them out in the bush here somewhere or place them down on our other piece where they get a lot of sun and see what happens. Either way, they will get planted here somewhere, because who doesn’t need more chocolate?

A couple of months ago we were out walking around the property when we spotted a plant that looked like a lily. So we dug it up and moved it up next to the house. This past week it bloomed and it turns out it was a white spider lily. We love going through the jungle and finding plants to relocate. Sometimes it feels like we are living in the Home Depot garden department where all the plants are free.

Last Sunday we got 2.5″ of rain in just about an hour. Which was enough to bring out the Mexican Burrowing Toads. They are interesting looking toads with a tiny head and can only hop a few inches at a time. Most of their life is spent underground in a burrow until there is a heavy rain when they come out searching for a mate. They usually only have 1-3 days to mate before they burrow back into the ground. A unique characteristic of this toad/frog is that they are the only ones whose tongue shoots straight out as opposed to all other species of frogs that fold out.

Recently we have noticed that a lot of people are finding the blog when researching info on Belize. There are also people who find it through suggestions from friends. We usually post a new blog every 2-3 weeks depending on what’s happening around here. If you would like to keep up with our adventures in Belize, you can sign up for notifications every time a new one is posted. Don’t worry there are no advertisements and we don’t do anything with your info, this is all just all for fun and to keep friends and family updated on what we are doing.

To sign up just click where it says “subscribe” in the left-hand column or send an email to BedrockToBelize@gmail.com and we will get you on the list.

Next week it’s off to the beaches of San Pedro to see Jim Dalton and Nick Scropos (Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers) along with the Jons, and Jeremy Lawton (Big Head Todd & the Monsters). Jim and the Jons put on a great show last year and it looks like Jim is going to make this an annual event, so mark your calendars and maybe we’ll see you here sometime.

Till next time, take care and keep your dreams alive.

We just got back from a trip to the states to see family and friends. Our destination was Arizona to see Randy, Stacy, and the grandkids. The kids were off for summer break so we got to spend some extra time with them. We just saw them a few months ago, but it sure seems like the grandkids are growing up fast. It was Arizona in July, so it was naturally hotter than H-E-double toothpicks. But that just made their pool feel better, especially with a few ice-cold beverages.

While we were in Arizona we decided to do a spur of the moment trip up to Washington to see more family and friends before heading back to Arizona for a few more days. We drove close to 600 miles around Washington seeing my mom, aunt, sister, and some good friends. One of the nights while in Washington we stayed in a casino resort near Olympia. It was a great place, plus they had a restaurant that served all kinds of seafood. We ordered up 3 types of crab, shrimp, oysters on the half shell, crawfish and a hot artichoke-crab dip, plus a few beers to wash it all down. We are not gamblers, but after dinner, we decided to each take $20 and head to the casino. Kelley pretty quickly lost hers, but I ended up winning enough to pay for dinner and the room. Not too bad for people who don’t gamble.

Just before we left Belize we planted a few hundred peanuts, here we are back home a couple of weeks later and the plants are looking good. In about three months they should be about ready to harvest. Once they are plucked out of the ground, we will dry them, roast them and then grind them into peanut butter. We like to use a little coconut oil when we make our peanut butter. It gives it a little tropical taste that even Peter Pan doesn’t do.

Have you ever heard of Moringa? The Moringa tree is also called the Tree of Life and it’s considered a superfood with so many health benefits. We’ve got a couple of them growing in the yard and Kelley will put the fresh leaves in soups, the blossoms on salads, and also dries the leaves to make tea. Our trees recently got their seed pods on them and they are also very beneficial for your health. The seeds themselves contain:

• Seven times more vitamin C than oranges
• Ten times the amount of vitamin A found in carrots
• Seventeen times more calcium than milk
• Fifteen times more potassium than bananas
• Nine times more protein than yogurt
• Twenty-five times more iron than spinach

Moringa seeds are used to cure or treat many things and are also a rich source of antioxidants and have anti-inflammatory properties. They can be used to help treat heart disease, lower cholesterol, reduce blood sugar levels, and boost your immune system. And that’s just scratching the surface of the benefits of moringa seeds. They can be eaten raw, roasted like nuts, or boiled like beans, either way, we’ll be including these in our diet. It’s recommended that you should not eat more than a couple a day. This is just what we needed after spending a couple of weeks in the states eating not as healthy as we usually do.

Last week our neighbor was kind enough to ask us if we would like a couple of ducks, as he had to get rid of some of his males. We had to quickly get them processed before Kelley named them and got too attached. So within a couple of hours, we had them all cleaned up and chill’n out in the freezer. Our favorite way to cook duck is to rotisserie them on the grill for a couple of hours and put a pan under them with thinly sliced potatoes. As the duck cooks, the fat drips down on the potatoes and cooks them. Nothing better than rotisserie duck and potatoes cooked in duck fat. Of course, that might require a little more moringa that day.

Ever since we built the garage there has been a Social Flycatcher bird nest in the top hollow metal beam. We have watched lots of baby birds fly out of that nest over the last few years. They have gotten used to us sitting right below them, talking and playing music, but there is one that we think is obsessed with us. We can be in the garage for an hour with no sign of the bird, but as soon as I turn the music on he is in the window whistling and squawking really loud. He will stay there staring in the window all day until I turn the music off. Now he’s coming over to the porch and the windows on the house squawking. I don’t know if he thinks we are his parents or what, but I’m not collecting seeds or bugs to feed him.

It’s great living out here in the jungle amongst all the wildlife, but sometimes you get to witness what it’s really like to survive. The other evening we were sitting in the yard enjoying a cold beer and watching for different animals. All of a sudden the little Seedeater birds with the three little baby birds (from the last blog) were squawking like crazy. As we looked over there, we see a snake leaving the nest with one of the baby birds. The parent birds did manage to get the snake to drop the baby bird, but it was already injured. Kelley put him back in the nest twice, but the parents kept pushing him out. At that point, there was nothing we could do. As we sat back down here came the snake back again, this time we scared him away before he could get the other two. But by morning the nest was empty and the birds were gone.😢

A while back we witnessed a Toucan come down and steal eggs from another bird’s nest. That time it was just an egg, not three little birds that we’d been watching for a week. I know this is all part of nature and survival in the wild, but sometimes it would be better if it didn’t happen right in front of us.

While we were up in the states a Blue-black Grosbeak bird had built a nest in the hedge just a few inches off the porch. The first day we were back it was empty, but by the next day, there were three eggs in it. If the birds hatch we will be able to get some really good pictures, as from the porch we look straight down into the nest. The only drawback we see is that the nest is right in the dripline of the roof, so it might be a problem if we get any substantial rain. Hopefully, the birds will hatch and fly away before something happens to them.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been 4 years since we painted the garage, and it sure did need it. Earlier in the week, I got the whole thing pressure washed in preparation for a Saturday paint job. Our friend Amanda came over to give us a hand on a beautiful sunny day. Well, halfway through the paint job the skies got dark and it started pouring down rain. Luckily the rain came straight down and with the overhang on the roof, it didn’t bother the new paint job. Now the garage should be good for a few more years.

Up in our village of San Antonio, they recently opened Oxmul coffee farm. Their motto is “From the tree to the cup!”. If you like coffee, you can get a tour of the farm and a lesson on how they make coffee. They also offer tasting and if you enjoy their coffee they sell bags of fresh ground to take home. It’s just one more thing to experience when you are up around this part of Belize.

Plants grow big and fast in Belize, which is why we don’t have house plants. I think this person was gone for a couple of months and their house plant grew through the roof of their house. Won’t they be surprised when they get home?

That’s about what our July looked like. It was great to get away and see family and friends, but it’s always great to be back home. Hope everyone is having a great summer and we hope to see you soon.

It’s that time of year again for the annual invasion of the flood flies. This usually happens in June during the first big rain of the rainy season. Millions and millions of termites take flight and then shed their wings leaving behind a huge mess. They will get into every little crack and crevasse in your home and leave a mess that you will be cleaning up for weeks.  In the past years, we’ve placed towels under the doors and even put tape along the door jams to try and keep them out. This year we were in the garage when they hit, so we just stayed there and shut the doors. After all the garage is where the beer fridge is and it just made sense. They are usually only around for a few hours, but in that small amount of time, they leave behind a huge mess. We’ve had a couple of small invasions earlier in the week, but this was the big one. Hopefully, that should be it until next year. In case you are wondering about our wood house and termites…the entire house is made out of a hardwood called Nargosta that the termites don’t seem to bother.

Darren was just here for his bi-annual visit and to check on the progress of his new jungle home. It rained almost every day he was here, but that didn’t stop us from having a good time. He did manage to tie up a bunch of loose ends at his place and the build itself should be done in a couple of weeks. Some of the cabinets are in and as soon as the rest are done it will be time for the countertops and sinks. He is also at the point where he bought a stove, refrigerator, and a couple of armoirs for the bedrooms. Soon he will need a bed, couch, tv, AC’s and he will be all set. His place is really coming along and I think he is happy with it, and I’m sure he can’t wait for it to be done.

Every time Darren comes down we do manage to sneak in a little beach time. There was a lot of rain predicted for the weekend that we were heading to the coast, but that didn’t bother us. During the nights there actually was a lot of rain, but lucky for us the days only saw cloudy skies and a few sprinkles. Which meant we were able to head over to the Placencia Beach Club and spend some time in the pool.

The Placencia Beach Club is a great place to hang out, they have a  pool with a swim-up bar, plus they also serve food. They are only open from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm. Yearly memberships are available as well as day passes. The day pass is $10Bz and that includes a towel, use of the pool, and the facilities. The day we went was Father’s Day and all fathers were free. I think the cloudy skies scared everyone away as there was only a hand full of people there. It’s a great place to cool off and spend the afternoon when you’re in Placencia.

We have a lot of different types of lizards around here, some that are only an inch or so long up to some five-foot iguanas. One of the most colorful and common ones around the yard is the Rainbow Ameiva or Barred Whiptail. When the sun hits them just right their colors really become iridescent. They have a greenish back and their sides are a turquoise blue. They get up to about a foot long and are usually pretty noisy as they walk through the leaves. Most of the time when we hear something moving through the leaves it’s a Rainbow Ameiva.

I mentioned before that there is always something new to see or discover around here, well here is something we have never seen before. The other day on the corner of the roof was what looked like a small green iguana. I stuck my hand up there to see if I could get him down and he climbed right onto my arm. After seeing him up close and looking up references, we decided that he was not an iguana like we’ve seen here before. It turns out that he was an Eastern Casquehead Iguana. He had no spines on his back and a very long tail making him at least 25″ long. After we took a bunch of pictures we set him on a plant and he went about his way. It turns out that it’s a fairly rare sighting in Belize, how cool is that!

Went to check the trail camera the other day and the last picture was taken just 15 minutes before the card was removed. The coatimundis were just there and in some of the pictures, there are 6 or 7 of them. Usually, we will see just one at a time, but last June we got pictures of around 15 or so right behind the BBQ. We’re thinking that June is when they seem to be in bigger groups and more active around our place.

In the peach tree in front of the garage, a small White-collared Seedeater has built a nest and all three eggs have hatched. The Seedeater is a very small bird that is only about 3-4″ in length, so you can imagine how tiny these baby birds really are.

It seems that our bananas ripen in waves, and lately we’ve been on top of the wave. This time it’s the small apple bananas and they are our favorites. These sweet little bananas make the best, creamiest smoothies. Especially when you add in a little honey, raspberries, pineapple, or any other fruit from the garden. Other than just eating them and making smoothies we are also dehydrating them, making banana bread, banana cookies, and giving some away. Good thing we are getting our fill now because it looks like it might be a few months before more ripen again.

We still have a constant supply of pineapples ripening which means fresh pineapple almost every day. Pineapple for breakfast and on the weekends grilled pineapple. The grilled pineapple we soak in rum, brown sugar, and a little vanilla for a few hours. After that, it goes on the grill and the leftover juice gets reduced down for a glaze. It makes for a nice after-dinner dessert. This week we needed to dehydrate nine pineapples before they went bad. Dehydrated they will last in the fridge for a few weeks or until we eat them all, and they make a great healthy sweet snack.

Like I have said before, our cacao plants are doing well and still have a lot of pods and new blossoms on the plants. Currently, we have about 20lbs. of dried cacao beans that are ready to be made into chocolate. So this past weekend Kelley and I spend the day making chocolate. It’s always fun and exciting to grow and process foods that we used to have to buy at the stores.

Fourth of July weekend in the states is a time for outdoor bbq’s and having friends over where it’s usually hot dogs and hamburgers. Belize doesn’t celebrate the 4th, maybe it has something to do with the US independence from England, but who knows. Anyway, after we lived in the states, we were in Mexico for quite a while, so we thought fish tacos would be perfect for the 4th weekend.

The airlines no longer require a recent COVID-19 test for international flights to the states. Air passengers will not need to be tested and show a negative COVID-19 test result or show documentation of recovery from COVID-19 prior to boarding a flight to the United States regardless of vaccination status. Plus masks are no longer required on flights and they are back to serving alcoholic beverages. This all makes flying to Belize a whole lot easier.

If you are considering coming down to Belize for a visit, this is a great time. Our hot months here are April and May and the cool months are December to January, the rest of the year is mild. Currently, our temps during the day are in the high 80ºs to low 90ºs down to low 70ºs and upper 60º’s at night. This is the rainy season so there is a lot of sunshine and a chance of rain daily, but usually never enough rain to ruin the whole day. Plus as of July 1st lobster season opens until the end of February. I know we’ll be hitting the coast a few times for some lobster and bringing some back up here for another “Lobster Fest In The Jungle”.

Hope to see you in Belize!

In case you don’t know, chocolate comes from the cacao plant. A few years ago we planted some plants that are doing very well and producing some good cacao pods.

Once the pods ripen on the plant they are harvested and the seeds removed. The seeds are covered in a slick film that has a fruit like taste to it. Without removing the film, the seeds then need to sit on the counter, stirring daily for around five days to ferment.

Once the seeds are done fermenting they then sit drying in the sun for up to a week. After they are dried they can then be vacuum sealed until we are ready to process them.

The next step would be to roast them. We have a roasting basket that goes on the rotisserie on our grill. As they start to roast they will make a popping sound. Once they stop popping then they are done.

After roasting there is a thin shell on them that needs to be removed before they go into a food processor to be ground up. You need a good quality food processor as it needs to run for about a half-hour.

They will first all grind down to a powder and then the natural oils will start to come out. This is when it goes from a powder to a thick fudge and then to a pourable chocolate. At that point, we add some sugar for the desired sweetness.

It is then ready to melt and put in molds and such or stored in the fridge for later use. We have a few different molds we use for making the chocolate. Things we have done with it are chocolate with coffee beans, dipped frozen bananas, almond joy bars, and a couple other things.

It is a lot of work and a long process, but what it comes down to is that we are growing chocolate and we think that is really cool!

With the exception of a pig roast, it’s been pretty quiet around here the past couple of weeks. So here are just a few things about what’s happening around the Toucan Hideaway.

Our friends down the road from us raise a few pigs and wanted to know if we would be interested in cooking one. Of course, we said yes, you know we are always up for a pig roast. The chosen pig dressed out around 100 lbs. which was going to be too big to fit in our cooking box. Not a problem, remove the head, cut him in half and he was then a perfect fit. The day before cooking, we injected it with a homemade Mojo sauce that Kelley makes. We have done this recipe many times in the past and it always turns out great.

After marinating overnight he was ready to go into the cooking box for a few hours. All week we’d had on and off rain showers and it was threatening to do the same the day of the pig roast. Nothing we could do at this point, but hope for the best and get that piggy cooking. It did start raining as the pig was cooking, but let up just as he was ready to be served. The rain didn’t seem to bother anyone as we all just hung around and BS’ed and enjoyed a few drinks until it was time to eat. Once the pig was taken to the table, Kelley wasted no time in getting him all carved up and ready to serve. The pig was moist, tender, and delicious and was a big hit with everyone.

It turned out to be a great afternoon even though it started with a little rain. A lot of friends to catch up with and delicious food, what more does one need.  The game of the afternoon was darts which kept everyone entertained for most of the day.

Pineapples are getting big and juicy, unfortunately, the animals know that too. Currently, we are losing about 1/4 of the pineapples to animals, which is why we are picking them before they are completely ripe. Spraying a habanero-water mixture on the pineapples seemed to be working, but now with some rain every day I think it’s washing off. The cacao plants are still producing well and thankfully nothing seems to bother them, so that means more chocolate to be made.

The pepper plants up in the garden are finally starting to take off now that we have steady rains. We’ve got about 250 pepper plants in the ground of all varieties. There are anaheims, jalapeños, cayennes, habaneros, and poblanos. There are even a few non-spicy habaneros that have all the flavor but without any heat.

The peppers are just starting to produce and the yellow squash is starting to get a few on the plants. One of the nice things up here is that if we have an abundance of fruits or veggies, it’s not a problem. The lady down the way from us has a small produce stand in front of her house with stuff from her garden. If we get too much squash or something, then we can take it over to her and trade for things we are not growing. How great is that?

Hopefully, the pepper plants will do well and supply us with enough till next year. The ones that we don’t eat fresh, we’ll roast, dehydrate or even throw them in the freezer whole.

The past couple of years we’ve had a decent run of coffee with the plants getting bigger and producing better each year. Recently though the beans were turning black and drying up and the plants looked like they were dying. After talking to other locals they told me that it’s a disease in the plant and it has been happening to them also.

It only seems to be happening on the Arabica coffee plants and not the Robusta. The Robusta plants are still doing well and the beans are a lot larger, but the quantity is a lot less. We’ve cut the Arabica’s back and they seem to be growing. Hopefully, we won’t have to pull them all and start over.

We have quite a few split-leaf philodendrons growing wild around the property. When we find one that we like, Kelley will bring it back from the jungle and plant it at the base of a tree near the house. We have quite a few around the yard, but this one has gotten to be the biggest so far.

The other lot that we recently acquired is starting to take shape. Two of the 5 acres are cleared and Ruben has plowed about an acre and is almost ready to plant. By planting a crop in this area it helps keep the jungle from growing back, plus it benefits Ruben and us. Along the roadside, we will be planting bananas and flowering plants. Then on the other cleared acre we will put a variety of fruit trees and leave a small clearing for a home. Approximately three of the acres are still jungle and we plan on leaving it that way.

Almost every day there are loud squawks from these green birds as they quickly fly over the yard. We use to think they were parrots, but parrots fly a lot slower. They finally landed in a tree in front of the house and Kelley was able to get some pictures. It turns out that they are Olive Throated Parakeets.  They are very loud when they fly and you can hear them coming a mile away.

The other day there was a big Basilisk lizard (Jesus Christ Lizard) in the yard. We watched him for a while and Kelley got some pictures. Then a few minutes later this other big one comes out of the bush and they start sizing each other up. They circled each other for a few minutes and then all hell broke loose. They were fighting, biting, and tossing each other in the air. I imagined this is what it would have looked like if dinosaurs were fighting. These lizards were at least two feet long, in fact, I’ve only seen one a few years ago that was bigger. Kelley took more than 100 pictures and here are a few of them.

June 12th will be our 4-year anniversary of living in Belize. It’s hard to believe that it’s been that long since we left our home in Mexico. In that short amount of time of being here, we’ve seen and experienced more things than we ever could have imagined. Just when we think we’ve seen it all there is a new place to explore, animals to see, plants we’ve never seen before, culture to learn about and so much more. It doesn’t matter how long we live here, we’ll never take it all in, but it sure is a lot of fun trying.

Until next time, be safe, and hope to see you soon.

One of the many great things about living in Belize is that there are so many talented local artists. When we lived in Mexico near the beach, all of our art and décor was beach or fish related. Since we were moving to the jungles of Belize we decided that we would leave all that stuff behind and start over with local Belizean art.

We have had so much fun over the past few years looking for that one special painting or wood carving that really spoke to us. Over time we have gotten to know various artists and their styles. Sometimes they will post a picture of their latest work or we will see it at a show and just have to have it. We have also commissioned a couple paintings and even a bunch of wood carvings. I wish we had more wall space because sometimes it’s hard to walk away from some of those special pieces.

We are currently in the height of the dry season. Which means it’s hot and everything seems to need constant watering. This is also the time of year when the Blue Morpho Butterflies are abundant. We have been seeing lots of them around the property for the past few weeks now and Kelley is constantly trying to get photos whenever possible. The Blue Morpho Butterfly is one of the largest butterflies, with a 5-8 inch wingspan and definitely one of the most beautiful. Their lifespan is only about 115 days so hopefully, they should be plentiful around here for a couple more months.

There are lots of different birds around our place lately. The other evening around sunset we were sitting outside enjoying a cold beer and there were birds everywhere. There were parrots, parakeets, aracaris, toucans, and a ton of other birds. The toucans were the most impressive as there were 8 of them all at once in the trees in front of the garage. We usually see 2-4 toucans at a time, but 8 at once was a real treat for us.

We’ve also got a lot of different types of hummingbirds around here. Kelley is good at identifying them, but this one she just can’t seem to find on any of her reference guides. We know he must be a healthy one, as he really likes the moringa flowers.

We checked the trail cameras recently and there were quite a few different animals on there. A lot of the animals are nocturnal so we really never get a chance to see them, except with a trail camera.

The camera captured Armadillos, Agoutis, Anteater, Pacas, Possums (lots of them), Tyra (bush dog), Coatimundis, Squirrels, Mice, and a bunch of different birds. There were also a few pictures of a cat that roams around here in the middle of the night. We’re not positive it’s a domestic cat as it does have spots on its hind end. In the past, we do have decent pictures of wild cats; a Jaguarundi and a Margay, but these current pictures we can’t be sure of. Not bad considering that the trail camera is only about 100 yards from the house.

We didn’t see for ourselves, but the other day a friend saw a deer just outside our gate and our neighbor about a mile or so behind us captured two pumas on their trail cameras. Another friend about a mile away had two monkeys in a palm tree above her porch that were tossing branches down while she was taking pictures. With what seems like a lot of building going on around here, it’s good to see that there is still a bunch of wildlife around.

I mentioned before that we’ve got a lot of pineapples getting ready to ripen. Well, that means that the critters know that too. Even though we have a fence around some of the pineapples, they are still getting in and eating them. I went on a search to see what I could do to at least slow them down from eating all the pineapples and here are a couple of things that we are trying. We set up a solar motion light to hopefully scare them away. The other deterrent is water, habanero pepper sauce, and a couple drops of soap in a spray bottle. We have been spraying the pineapples with that and at this point, it seems to be working. It wouldn’t be so bad if they ate the whole pineapple, but they seem to chew on one for a while then move on to the next.

Since the critters have found our pineapple patch we are taking no chances and picking some of them before they actually ripen. If the pineapples can actually ripen on the plant, they are usually a lot sweeter than when left on the counter to ripen. Even though these were not quite ready to pick, I’m sure they will still be very good.

We had at least five bunches of bananas on our plants recently. One bunch was looking about ready to harvest and another was getting close. Well, we waited too long and within a day one plant fell over and the other bananas ripened on the plant before we could cut them down. The ones that were turning yellow on the plant had already dropped about 25 bananas on the ground that were now there for the animals. All in all, we ended up with around 175 bananas this time. Update…Later in the week, another plant went down and there were another 45 bananas ready. We use as many as we can and give the rest away to friends. My favorite ones are the small apple bananas because they are so sweet. These were all local bananas, sort of like you would get in the states. Usually, we pick them when they are green, but the ones that did ripen on the plant were sweet and delicious, I think they might have even been better than the little apple bananas.

Everyone has seen those parking lot signs that say Handicap Parking or Reserved for Manager or any number of other ones.  Anyway, we were at a business the other day and we spotted this sign in the parking lot. There are a lot of Mennonites in Belize who drive horse and buggies, so this is not really that unusual down here.

Our passports aren’t due for renewal for another 4 years, but we are running out of pages to stamp. We were trying to figure out a time to send them back in later this year, and then this happened. The American Embassy will be at The Bluff (our favorite watering hole) to do passport renewals. How great is that! Grab a burger and a cold beer all while getting your passport renewed. Now that’s how it should be done!

That’s about all for now, and remember to live life to its fullest while you still can.

We made it down to Placencia for our anniversary getaway. It was actually a couple weeks past our actually anniversary, as ours fell in the middle of the Easter holiday and we wanted to avoid the crowds near the beaches.

We met up with our good friends Ron & Rhonda who were down from the states, still looking for their piece of paradise on the beach. We were hoping to get out and do a little fishing, but once again the weather did not cooperate with us. That’s okay because that just left more time to hang out with our friends in the pool and all the other great beach bars and restaurants. Hopefully soon Ron & Rhoda will find a piece of property that’s just right for them.

Belikin has started making craft beers and they are only available in a handful of locations around the country. They call them TWO-5 beer, which is a Belizean phrase meaning close friends. We were lucky enough to be at one of those locations where it was available. They offered a sample board of five different flavors. There was Soursop, Fever Grass, Pina, Caramel, and Bird Pepper. Ron & Rhonda, Kelley and I tried them all and I think we each had a different one as our favorite. Kelley and I are not really craft beer people, so we think we will just stick to our regular Belikin.

A neighbor of ours has bees and sells some really delicious honey. We are still picking quite a few raspberries so I was looking for some different things to do with them. I came across raspberry-infused honey and it sounded pretty good. It takes a few weeks to fully infuse the honey, but I bet it’s going to be good.

I also saw another recipe that only took minutes to make. Raspberry-vanilla-honey butter. We made this up and it was great, not too sweet like you might think it would be. It goes great on toast, banana bread, and just about anything else. Kelley has made savory butters before with habaneros, garlic or basil and stuff, but we have never done one that was sweet. We cant wait to try some other honey fruit butters with whatever fruit we are picking.

We just roasted up six pounds of cacao beans from the garden. Next step is to remove a thin skin from the beans and then they are ready to be ground up and turned into chocolate. Our cacao plants are still loaded with pods and are producing more blossoms. It looks like this is just the beginning of a good year for chocolate.

If you are not a foodie or are not an adventurous eater then you might want to skip this next section. No, it’s not crickets or armadillo (even though we both have eaten those), It’s a pig head.

We used to cook this quite often when we lived in Mexico, so we asked our butcher if he could round one up for us. After we cut it in half we roasted it on the grill in wine and spices for about 4 hours. It is very rich and fatty which made for some good tacos, plus you get that nice crunchy skin. Being so rich, we ended up giving Ruben half the head, because that was enough fatty goodness for us for a while.

Our heliconia’s or lobster claw plants are in full bloom. There must be at least 100 flowers on plants right now, and they are beautiful. We started with only a couple of plants, but they have spread and we are having good luck growing them from their seeds. Eventually, we will plant these all over the property. It seems that in the spring when the lobster claws bloom that means that the real lobster season is only a couple of months away. Lobster season in Belize opens on July 1st, which means it’s time for Lobster Fest!

A friend of ours from the states asked us if we could do a favor for them. I don’t know if you have heard of Flat Stanley. It’s where a kid takes a picture of their face and puts it on a cartoon body on a piece of paper and then takes pictures of them on different adventures. I guess this one kid in their grandson’s class, for some reason couldn’t participate in this, so they asked us if we could take him around Belize for some adventures. So Flat Ben spent some time up in the jungle doing different things plus he also got to go down to the Caribbean shore for a weekend. Kelley and I had a lot of fun doing this and it was great that we could send Ben out on a little Belizean adventure.

Belize is full of history and ancient Mayan archaeological sights. We have been all around the country and learned a lot about the history of Belize. It seems that almost every day we are seeing or learning something new about this great place. The other day we stumbled upon a piece of history that is not in any of their books or on any of their tours. A lot of the younger generation will have no clue what this is, but now that we are becoming part of history ourselves, we immediately recognized how important this used to be in our lives.

One thing that we miss by living in the jungle is a beautiful sunset. Usually, the sky here just goes from light to very dark in no time at all. Where we lived in Puerto Peñasco, Mexico there were some of the most beautiful sunsets in the world. So any time we get a little color in our jungle sky we think it’s something special to us.

Usually, April and May are the hottest months down here before the rains come. April was a pleasant surprise this year with very nice temps and some rains mixed in. May on the other hand is making up for it. The past few days have been very hot and humid. I’ve seen our temp gauge read 101 degrees with a heat index of 119°. We’ve had the heater off in the hot tub for a while now, but it wasn’t really cooling down. So the other day we drained it and refilled it with cool water that was actually almost cold to get into, and it felt great. It was like our own personal pool with a swim-up bar, okay it was an ice chest full of beer, but you get the point. Kelley said that it was a great way to stay cool on a very hot Mother’s Day. Once April and May are gone the temps cool back down, so it would be a great time to come down to Belize.

Happy late Mothers Day to all you great mothers out there!

Over the past weekend right in front of the guest casita, we had one of our lilies bloom. I guess you could call it an Easter Lily. Actually, it is an Amaryllis Lily, we are not sure if it is a Barbados or a Peacock variety as we have both types. Either way, it is a beautiful flower and there are more ready to bloom.

Our 25lb. Easter ham that we started a couple weeks ago turned out great. After curing for two weeks it was then put in the smoker for about eight hours. I started it out smoking with some hickory chips and then finished it off with apple chips. The next day it was put on the grill on low to warm it back up. While it was warming it was basted with a whiskey brown sugar glaze.

Another thing Kelley made for our Easter feast was a pie with some of the fresh raspberries we’ve been getting from the garden. Easter Sunday was a beautiful sunny day here, with good friends and lots of food.

Every year on Good Friday the town of Benque Viejo decorates the streets with sawdust tapestries in preparation for the reenactment of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. For weeks prior, people have been designing their tapestries and dyeing sawdust. On the morning of Good Friday, they start laying out their designs on the streets.

Good Friday events in Benque Viejo іncludе a re-enactment of the Passion of Christ in the morning, a church service in the afternoon, and the Holy Burial procession through the town’s main streets in the evening.

The tapestries won’t last long because the Holy Burial procession on the way to the church will pass right over them.

If you are ever in Belize this time of year, this is something you need to see in person. The amount of time and effort everyone puts into making these, only to have them last one day is amazing. And to think that they are all just made out of colored sawdust.

Besides Easter stuff…

Our most recent little project around here is a firepit and sitting area. I know what you’re thinking, why do we need a firepit in the warm jungles of Belize? Believe it or not, from December through February the temps do get down in the 50°s. We’ve spent quite a few evenings sitting outside bundled up thinking how nice a fire pit would be.

The rocks for the pit we gathered from the road construction once they were done. The wood on the benches we had leftover from a build and we spent under $20 on cinder blocks. Now that’s the kind of project we like!

Recently we were trimming the trees in the driveway and removing some of the dead vines. This one vine had a bunch of them all twisted together and was pretty cool looking. I’m thinking it could make a great door handle on a shed or something. What do you think?

About 50′ off our back patio we have a huge strangler fig that is wrapped around one of the big cohune palms. It is at least three feet wide and about forty feet tall. Eventually, when it kills the host tree we will cut it down and find something cool to do with it. When I was looking up info on the strangler fig I found a place in California selling smaller ones, and they wanted $4,500 each. Too bad we couldn’t get that kind of money down here for it.

A couple fruits that you don’t usually see in the states are the custard apple and the lychee. Custard apples and lychee are fruits that I’m sure many of you have never heard of much less tried. The custard apples around here have a beautiful pinkish-purple flesh inside and are loaded with seeds. They are sweet and creamy like custard and are very tasty, especially when chilled. The lychee is a rough skin fruit with an opaque white flesh that is very sweet.

Since we recently split all that firewood, it was time to fire up the pizza oven once again. Our neighbor Monica had some friends visiting from the states, so we invited them and Amanda over for a little pizza and beer.

It takes a few hours to get the pizza oven hot enough, so I only like to fire it up when I know we will be making more than a couple pizzas. That night we made at least eight pizzas, maybe more with all kinds of different toppings. They all turned out great, but our technique still needs a little bit of work. When you come down for a visit we’ll be sure to fire the pizza oven up.

Hope everyone had a Happy Easter and we hope to see you soon.

A couple of weeks ago we were back on the shores of the Caribbean at our favorite beach town of Hopkins. This time our neighbors Amanda & Monica went with us for a couple days of chill’n on the beach. It had been a little windy for a few days prior and the water was pretty churned up. Which meant no snorkeling or fishing this time, but that didn’t stop us from having a good time.

The resort we stayed at was having some great deals, with the rooms being only 1/3 of their normal rate. Their sister resort, where we usually stay in Placencia is having the same deals, so of course, we booked a trip down there in a few weeks for our anniversary. Hopefully, then we will have beautiful weather and Kelley and I can get out and do a little fishing.

All around the beach towns of Hopkins and Placencia they have built receptacles to recycle your plastic bottles. They are made of rebar and wire and built to look like starfish, manatees, fish and other sea creatures. Everyone seems to take it seriously because all the ones we’ve seen are only filled with plastic bottles, no other trash. This is such a great idea, that beaches elsewhere should be doing the same.

While we were in Hopkins we saw a cashew tree growing along the roadside that had fruit on it. Just in case you were curious how a cashew grows, here it is. The tree produces a pear-shaped fruit and on the outside bottom of it grows a kidney-shaped nut. Raw cashews contain a resin that is toxic if ingested and can cause rashes or burns on the skin. Therefore they must go through a rigorous roasting process before they are safe to eat. The fruit can also be eaten or made into wine, but in my opinion, stick to just the delicious cashew nuts.

It might look like a bunch of worms or grubs, but in fact, it is turmeric that we just picked. Turmeric is a root in the ginger family that grows under what looks like a nice house plant. This was all grown in a pot out near our back deck and is very easy to grow. There are many health benefits of turmeric and it’s the main ingredient in curry. Kelley uses it fresh in soups, rice, and other dishes. It can also be dried and made into a powder. Here’s a tip… add a little powder turmeric to your batter next time you fry fish and it will give it a nice golden color.

A while back we built a new trellis for our dragon fruit and it’s doing well. Our original plant was getting out of control and in need of being trimmed, so we decided to extend the trellis another ten feet and plant more cuttings. We should get a bunch of fruit this year and in a couple more years when it really gets going, we should have loads of dragon fruit. The deep purple dragon fruit is definitely one of my favorites, or is it the pineapples or raspberries or the apple bananas? I guess it just depends on what’s in season.

I know I keep mentioning about our raspberry plants, but they just keep giving. Kelley and I eat handfuls for breakfast which is good because our bananas and pineapples have about another month before they are ready. We have given away and chopped down a few hundred plants so far and they just keep spreading. So if anyone wants to grow their own raspberries, please come and dig some up.

April and May are the hot months here where the temps will get into the upper 90°s. That means it’s time to get peppers and squash into the garden. We’ve got around 200 different pepper plants that are ready to go in and a bunch of yellow squash. San Antonio is a big farming community and a lot of people sell produce in their front yards, so no real need for us to plant other veggies. Being from Arizona and Mexico we love peppers, especially anaheim, poblano, and cayenne.  They do grow habanero and jalapeños here, but that’s about it. So if we want some green chili burritos, stuffed poblanos, or some cayenne pepper sauce we pretty much need to grow our own peppers.

Last year for Easter we processed our first ever ham from scratch and it turned out great. Since Easter is approaching we thought we’d give it another go. We picked up a 25lb. pork leg from the butcher and started the curing process. After a long cure, it will be ready to go into the smoker and be ready for an Easter feast. It’s a little bigger than the one we did last year, so hopefully, this one will also turn out just as good.

As of April 1st Belize has lifted most of the Covid rules. Masks are no longer required inside or outside unless you choose to. There is no more curfew and all bars and nightclubs are now open plus we can have gatherings once again. When entering Belize no tests are required as long as you can show proof of vaccination. If you are not vaccinated, then you will still have to have a negative test when you arrive that has been done within the past 72 hours. With currently only around 100 active cases for the entire country, we are pretty much back to normal.

Southwest Airlines started  flying back to Belize last November, which is great for us because we have tons of miles that we will be taking advantage of. We just got back from a visit to the states where we saw family, friends and of course the grandkids.

The grandkids are growing up so fast! Allison is now walking all over the place and Tyler is learning to ride a bike without training wheels. Luke has outgrown all the electric power wheels rides and has moved up to a go cart. It’s not some little 3hp go cart, it has a 150cc motor and is plenty fast. So watch out for speedy Luke.

While we were up in the states we managed to get in a couple concerts from some of our favorite musicians. First one was Jim Dalton and The Jons in Scottsdale, AZ. Jim is lead guitar for Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers plus he has his own band The Railbenders. The Jons are another great band out of southern Arizona who have some really good music. We saw Jim and The Jons out on the island in San Pedro here last year and we can’t wait for them to come back again this year.

Then the next night after seeing Jim was Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers with special guest Wade Bowen out in Mesa, AZ. Roger had the whole band there, plus The Jons also took the stage with him.

Then the week we got back to Belize Mike Nash was playing again at The Bluff up by us.  Three great shows in two weeks, it couldn’t have got much better than that.

I mentioned earlier that this year our cacao trees are loaded with pods of all sizes. The trees are getting so big that we need to keep trimming them just to be able to get around them, and I think all the trimming is really helping them produce more fruits. When we got back from the states we picked 25lbs of cacao, and it looks like we will be picking a bunch more every couple of weeks or so for quite a while.

We have two types of cacao, some of the trees have dark brown cacao pods when they start out that will turn red when they ripen. Other trees will start out with green pods that will turn yellow when they ripen. There is supposed to be a little difference in the quality of them, but the end result is still the same, chocolate.

We picked up a few silicone molds when we were up in the states, so now we can make chocolate bars. Some of them are just straight dark chocolate and others have a little bit of our fresh grown coffee in them for that extra boost. Who says you can’t have chocolate for breakfast? Plus we got some foil candy wrappers to help keep them fresh. So now when you visit us, you might get a chocolate on your pillow when you arrive, unless I eat them all before you get here.

A few months ago we bought another piece of property up the road from us. When we initially had water run down to our property they were short on pipe so they just ran it across the middle of this other lot. Now that the property is ours, the water pipes needed to be rerouted along the road like they should have been in the first place. We also had them put in a spigot there so we can water trees once we get some planted.

The property is close to 5 acres and has about 2 acres cleared for farming and the rest is raw jungle. At this point, we are just cutting in a small access road back towards the tree line, and maybe set up a spot for a future home site. That road will then get lined with different fruit trees and the cleared area we will let Ruben farm on. By letting Ruben farm there, it will help keep the jungle from growing back, plus we will benefit from any crops that he happens to grow.

The Malfunction Junction bar down the road from us is now open once again. A friend of ours who is running it saw some pictures that Kelley had taken and said that we should make postcards and he could sell them at the Junction. So if you are up in our area and want to send a postcard to someone, you can pick them up at the Malfunction Junction just down the road from us. At this point, there are five different ones, but I’m sure there will be more in the future.

This past week Belize was visited by Prince William and Kate Middleton on their Caribbean tour in honor of the Queens Platinum Jubilee. They will have the opportunity to thank communities across Belize, Jamaica and the Bahamas for the support they had shown for the Queen over the years.

On their three-day tour of Belize, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge visited a Cacao farm in southern Belize to learn about chocolate production, a Garifuna community in Hopkins where they did a lot of dancing and learned about their culture. They also came right up past our place to visit the Caracol Archeological site. As they were leaving Caracol we heard their helicopter fly over. I’m pretty sure they waved to us, even though I didn’t see it.

At this point, it seems like Belize really has a handle on this covid thing. Everything here is returning to a normal pace and there are a lot more tourists around. There is no more curfew in place and masks are only required inside public buildings, but next week possibly all restrictions could be lifted. Currently, there are only a couple hundred active cases in the entire country and that seems to be dropping daily. So what are you waiting for, I’m sure you could use a vacation?

As we get older we all start looking for things that will make our lives easier. I decided that I’m getting too old to chop firewood anymore, especially since a lot of it here is hardwood. So we recently ordered ourselves an electric 6 ton hydraulic log splitter. I know, you’re thinking why do we need firewood in a warm tropical jungle. Definitely not for a fireplace, but rather for our pizza oven and the smokehouse.

I wish we had ordered this a few years ago because it works like a dream and my back appreciates it. We split a bunch of logs into perfect size pieces in no time at all. In case you are wondering what kind of wood we use, it’s oak, allspice and craboo, which are all great for cooking. Now we are ready to fire up that smokehouse and pizza oven once again.

Last year we had a few friends over and one of them brought a friend who said she was from New Mexico. Of course, the conversation turned towards Hatch Green Chilis and how much we love and miss them. Hatch, Anaheim or any type of those green chilies are just not available down here unless you grow your own. Anyway to our surprise, on her next trip down she brought us two 5 lb. bags of frozen, roasted Hatch Green Chilis. We can’t wait to make something good.

St. Patty’s Day is coming up soon and that means green stuff and corned beef. We’ve definitely got the green part covered down here, but corned beef is about as hard to find as a leprechaun with a pot of gold. Over the past few weeks, we’ve been curing around 70 lbs. of briskets for some St. Patty’s Day corned beef. Word has gotten out, and at this point, most if not all of them are spoken for. If there are any left, we will season them up, give them a good smoke and slice them thin for pastrami.

Up in the garden we are still getting a lot of raspberries, if you want some plants, please come and dig some up. There are 30+ new pineapples on plants and at least 5 bunches of bananas that will be ready in the next month or so.

The cacao plants are loaded with fruits this year. They range in size from a couple inches up to about ten inches in length.  At this point, we are just drying all the seeds and sealing them up for later. There will be a time later this year when we will roast them and start making a bunch of chocolate.

We are even picking a few star fruit. The sun is finally out and it’s warming up, so after all that rain we had, the plants and trees all have new growth and are starting to set blossoms. It’s looking like it should be a good year for fresh fruit around here.

The other day on our little dirt road we saw a snake sitting there. We stopped the truck to get some pictures, and he took off into the bush and up a tree. Kelley did manage to get a few pictures of him so that we could identify him. It turns out that he was an Oriole or Tiger Rat Snake about 6′ long. This is the first time seeing a Tiger Rat snake around here or anywhere. From what I read this is a non-venomous snake that will get over 8′ long. I’m guessing that if you saw one that was eight feet long and you are afraid of snakes, it could be harmful, because you could either hurt yourself running away or just have a heart attack right there on the spot. Seriously though, we rarely see snakes around here.

Every night for the past few weeks we’ve had a Kinkajou in the tree above the back patio. It’s always been too dark to get a decent picture of him, but that changed the other day. We were out back grilling, the sun was just setting and here he comes from up inside the palm tree just 6′ from our house and climbs over to the tree above the patio. He stayed directly above us for a good hour just going from branch to branch eating the berries on the tree. It didn’t bother him that there were five of us grilling, talking and listening to music, he just went about his business.

After about an hour I guess he’d eaten enough because he crawled back over to the palm tree for the night. The locals here call them nightwalkers and they are rarely seen during the day, so this was very exciting for us to see him up close when it was light out and get some good pictures.

When the big tree over the patio out back is full of berries it attracts all kinds of animals. At any given time there is an assortment of different birds out there, including toucans eating and dropping berries. It also attracts squirrels, kinkajous and who knows what else is up there in the middle of the night. That’s all great, but the mess they leave on the deck is huge. Every day during “berry season” I have to wash the deck down and scrub it with a stiff broom to remove all their droppings. It’s great seeing all the animals up there, but at this point, I can’t wait till all the berries are gone and they move on to a different tree.

After the holiday season, Belize saw a spike in covid cases that pushed the total for the entire country up towards 10,000 active cases. As of this posting, the total cases have dropped down to 1,451 and dropping more every day. With only around 400,000 people in the entire country and everyone being so spread out, Belize is a safe travel destination. Now is the time to start planning a trip down to Belize, I know you’ll have an unbelizeable good time.

After seeing Mike Nash play a couple of great shows at The Bluff, we invited him and Melissa up to our place for a BBQ. Great food, lots of cold drinks and even a game of darts. Mike kept saying how he is just blown away by everything in this side of Belize. So much that he is planning a big songwriters get-together up here next year, plus it looks like he will be back up our way again in March. If you haven’t checked out his music yet, you definitely should. He has some excellent beach and drinking songs as well as some very good country songs. I guarantee he will become part of your playlist.

We have been seeing a lot more critters moving around here lately, it must be that time of year or because the rains have lightened up. The Aracari Toucans have been around here quite a bit lately, most likely eating whatever is ripe in the trees. Last week there were at least five of them in the trees above the garage. Then a couple days ago there were 12-15 around the back patio. There’s a real good chance that a couple of these are the ones that were living in the power pole a couple of months ago. We have also been seeing some big Keel-Billed Toucans flying around, but nothing worth taking pictures of yet.

The same night that all the toucans were out back an agouti was also out wandering around. Then a little while later two Kinkajous were in the trees above the patio. Kelley tried to get a picture of them, but it was too dark and they didn’t turn out. In case you need a refresher on what a Kinkajou looks like here’s a picture I pulled off the web.

Since we’ve been here, we’ve seen probably at least a dozen different types of lizards around here, but not a Green Tree Anole. Well, the other day that changed when I saw one run across the yard and jump up on the trash can. I tried to get him off the trash can, but instead, he jumped on my arm and ran up to my shoulder. He stayed there long enough for Kelley to get her camera and get some pictures.

When we tried to take him off my arm, he jumped up on my head and sat there for a while. Finally, he ended up jumping off my head and onto a tree. I know this would have freaked a lot of people out, but it’s all part of the fun of living in the jungle.

Another lizard that we have around here is the Turnip-Tail Gecko. We only seem to see them on the outside of the house and in the garage. As you can see they have big sticky feet and can climb just about anything. These guys are fun to watch when they move because they have a great wiggle when they walk.

Around here there’s always some kind of critter to take a picture of. The other day Kelley spotted this translucent, Green Lynx Spider eating what looks to be some kind of flying ant or wasp. These spiders are usually hard to spot because of how well they blend in with the green plants. The Green Lynx is a hunting spider that does not make use of a web for capturing its prey.

I was checking the trail cams the other day to see if there was anything interesting on them. There were three different dogs, a domestic cat, an agouti, lots of possums and a bunch of different birds. And then there was a big surprise, an anteater walking by with another one on its back. After reading a little more about these, it says that a mother will carry a young on its back for about the first year before they go out on their own.

Our raspberry plants are at the peak of production right now. We are picking a least a half-gallon jug full every few days. The other day we pulled some mangos from the freezer and Kelley made a raspberry mango crumble. I love a good apple or peach crumble, but the raspberry mango combo was out of this world. The only thing that could have made this any better would have been a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of that hot crumble.

Over the past few years, we have seen a lot of different types of mushrooms around here, but this is one that we’ve never seen before. It looks like a flower, but it is actually a Rounded Earthstar mushroom. Like most of them around here, it’s an inedible mushroom, the only ones that we know are good to eat are the oyster and the wood ear. I’m sure there are other mushrooms that are edible, but we just don’t know what they are yet.

Just thought I’d share a picture of this giant fern we have growing next to the house. We have no idea where it came from and we have seen no others like it around here. We assume a bird or some other creature dropped a seed at some point and it just started to grow. It’s a big beautiful fern and it just keeps getting bigger. Maybe we’ll collect some of the seeds and see if we can get more to grow.

For a couple of days, the rain stopped, the sun came out and the cool weather went away.  So we took this as a sign to escape to the beach for a little vitamin-sea. We headed over to our favorite beach town of Hopkins. It was a short 2 1/2 drive from our place and that included a stop at Bertha’s Tamales. It was just a quick overnight stay, but that was still plenty of time to hit our favorite beach bar and even a little time in the swim-up bar at Jaguar Reef. It was great seeing some of our friends down there and a good chance to work on our mid-winter tans.

In all my postings I like to reflect on all the positive and good things happening in our lives. But just like everyone else, there is a lot of other things going on that no one wants to hear about. Almost daily around here something breaks, needs repair or maintained. I don’t know how many times our water is shut off because of a pipe break or the internet goes out or we lose power. We are constantly cutting the jungle back so it doesn’t take over the yard. The garden and all the plants around here need tending to almost daily. During the rainy season, there is a lot of mud everywhere! Recently Kelley broke a tooth that had to be fixed and I fell off a ladder and messed up my back. Plus a lot more other things that we all deal with in everyday life. Granted we love living in the jungle where every day is a new adventure, but everything is not always rainbows and toucans.

I just want everyone to know that we prefer to post all of the fun and interesting things around here and not all the other shit that nobody really cares about. I mean seriously, do you want to hear about how it took us two days to weed the garden or how we spent all day in the mud repairing a broken water pipe. I don’t either, so I’m mostly going to keep posting all the fun and interesting things around here that make us happy and I hope you will continue to follow along.

Hope to see you in Belize soon!

Darren is back down for a visit and to check on the construction of his house. There has been a lot accomplished since last time he was here. He’d hadn’t seen it since it was just a block and cement shell of a house.

Now the roof is on, the floors are tiled, all windows and doors are in, lights and fans are all working, completely painted inside and out and the wrap around porch has been started. It’s looking great and I think he is very happy with it. The next step will be to order all the kitchen cabinets and then start on furniture and appliances. Pretty soon he’ll be enjoying his own house in the jungle.

A few months ago when we were out on Ambergris for some Jim Dalton shows, we ran into Mike Nash in the crowd. Mike Nash is a great musician who plays everywhere including Belize and Puerto Peñasco. After talking to him and his wife awhile we suggested that he should come up to The Bluff near us and play. He said that they had never been to mainland Belize, only out on the island and said it sounded like fun.

Arrangements were made for him to play two nights at The Bluff. Mike said he was blown away by all the beauty and people up here and it reminded him of his home in Tennessee.  In his post the next day he said “I just finished what might literally be the greatest mind blowing night ever.” He had no idea about this part of the country and really fell in love with everything about it.  If he would have known he said he would have brought his hat, boots and shit kickers instead of shorts and flip flops. He’s already talking about next time and bringing other musicians up here. It was definitely an awesome night at The Bluff.

Our neighbor Dan has been raising sheep for about a year now. So when he told us that he needed to thin the herd down a little, we jumped on the chance to buy one. Kelley and I love lamb and it’s always one of the meats that we include in our meals. We had really hoped to cook it whole in our Caja China box or hang it whole in the smoker and see how that turned out. Either one of those methods would involve having a bunch of people over for a big BBQ, but we are still under covid rules and that means no gatherings of 10 or more. So we ended up taking it to our local butcher and had him cut it up into all the good chops, ribs and such. Earlier in the week, Kelley did a flyer for our friendly butcher so it was a perfect trade out for services.

We finally found time to make some more sausage. This time we started with a 20lb. pork hind leg. The goal this time was to make some more Italian sausage and breakfast sausage. Italian and breakfast sausage are available here, but they seem to lack some of the flavors and spices that we like. It was pretty straightforward sausage-making this time as we choose not to put either one in casings. The breakfast sausage was just formed into patties and the Italian will mostly be used in Italian dishes and to top pizzas.

Recently one of the hydraulic lines on the tractor developed a small leak. No problem, it just needed a couple new copper crush washers on the fitting and the leak should stop. Well, the leak didn’t stop and I got a little torque happy and ended up snapping the banjo bolt that holds the hydraulic line in place.

That should not be a problem locating a new bolt as there are tractors everywhere here in Belize. After checking all the possible shops around and coming up empty, I was starting to get discouraged. Then one of the shops suggested just having one made. So off to a machine shop to see if I could get one made. The guy said no problem and it will take him a day or so before he’ll have it ready. The locals here, especially the Mennonites out in Spanish Lookout are so skilled and resourceful that they can make or fix just about anything you need.

We were driving home the other day and there was a police checkpoint in the middle of the road up near our village. These are common along the highway where they are usually just checking your insurance and registration, but not up near our village. Anyway, he stops us and then tells me to pull over to the side. Then he ask if I have a permit for the LED light bar on my truck. Of course, I don’t have a permit, so he gives me a $50 ticket and says I need a permit. I tried to explain to him that we live way up in the bush and I need it when I’m not on the main road. It didn’t matter, have a nice day.

For the past few weeks, a Red-Vented Woodpecker has been pounding away on the Cohune Palm just a few feet off our front porch. He would pound away on it for a while, then the female would fly over and look at it then fly away.

Finally, he must have got it to where she approved because she jumped in and stuck her head out, and was ready to start a family. I assume in a short while we will have baby woodpeckers sticking their heads out and hopefully, we can get some good pictures.

Once again Kelley captured another great wildlife photo. This time it was a mama Rufous-Tail Hummingbird feeding her young. About a month ago we noticed a small nest in the mango tree. Every so often we would see mama bird sitting on that nest. Then one day Kelley walked by and up popped a tiny head. At this point, it looks like the baby is about ready to fly away. Soon it will be out on its own enjoying all of the flowers and feeders we have around here.

We have lots of different types of orchids growing on our property and whenever we find one, we relocate it closer to our house. That way we can enjoy them and take pictures when they bloom. The one blooming this week is an octopus bromeliad. It is an interesting looking orchid with a big ball and then arms that make it almost look like an octopus. It gets these beautiful red shoots that purple flowers with white tips come out of.

Hope everyone is doing well and thinking about a tropical getaway this year.

The new year has started off cool and wet at our place, so there’s really not that much happening. Of course, there’s always food happening so here are a few food highlights of the year so far.

There’s no better way to start the new year than with some traditional local food. New Year’s morning Ruben brought us down some warm tamales. They were absolutely delicious, moist tamales wrapped in banana leaves. But the real kicker was that instead of chicken this year they were made with Gibnut. What a great way to start the new year.

Speaking of Gibnut, a while ago a friend brought us over a hind quarter of one. We waited for a good rainy day and Kelley made a pot roast with all the fixings in the crockpot. Chicken, beef, and pork are great, but it’s always special when we get a chance to have a local delicacy. And Gibnut is the best wild game out there, after all, that’s the meal they served to the Queen of England when she visited Belize.

Another great meal that Kelley made was French onion soup and roasted bone marrow. Roasted bone marrow is one of those things I bet only a few of you have ever tried. Once you do try it, you’re like, how come nobody has ever told me about this before?

We have made corned beef from scratch many times in the past and it has always turned out great. Recently we picked up 30lbs. of beef brisket that will go in the brine for a couple of weeks. These will be for us just to see if the recipe needs any adjustments, which I doubt it will. After that, we will be taking orders for corned beef so all our friends can celebrate St. Patty’s Day come March. Corned beef is something you can not get here in Belize and most of the locals have no idea what it even is. But if you’re Irish or even pretend to be then come St. Patty’s Day corned beef is a must-have.

While I’m still on the subject of food, a friend of ours called the other day and asked if we needed any tomatoes. We’d just got back from the market and stocked up on veggies for the week, and of course, we bought some tomatoes. He told us that he was just starting to harvest his tomato crop and was selling them for $8 BZ a bucket, that’s $4 US for a 5 gallon bucket. Of course, we bought some, we couldn’t turn down fresh vine ripe Roma tomatoes.

Kelley’s got a bunch of whole tomatoes and tomato sauce canned, so it looks like we’ll be firing up the pizza oven for a pizza party pretty soon. At that price, it’s not worth it for us to even grow them.

This past week a local kid has been coming by on his bike selling radishes. I’m not a fan of radishes but Kelley loves them. They are beautiful looking radishes, and are all the size of golf balls and bigger. Since there was more than Kelley could eat raw, we decided to dehydrate the rest and see what happens. We did a couple different seasonings, garlic salt & pepper, and habanero sea salt. I’ve got to say, they really turned out surprisingly good. They are a good crunchy snack that goes great with a cold Belikin beer.

Since this new year has started we have harvested a nice stalk of apple bananas, a couple of pineapples, and some raspberries. So far our breakfasts for the year have consisted of fresh fruit and homemade bacon. It’s not a fast-food McMuffin, but sure is a lot healthier. One of the great things down here is that it doesn’t matter what time of year it is, there are always fresh local fruits and veggies available.

Okay, a little more editable stuff from the yard. Kelley was making Chinese food the other night and needed some ginger, not a problem. We have ginger growing, so we went out and picked a small piece for some lettuce wraps. We also looked around and found some wood ear mushrooms growing on some logs, so sweet and sour soup it was. It’s great to have all these fresh items available to us.

Remember the 6 foot tall marigolds we posted a few months ago. They finally died back so we got them all pulled out. Well, I guess while they were dying back they decided to spread their seeds everywhere.  A 40′ parameter around those original plants was a forest of marigolds coming up. At first, we thought it would be great to let them all bloom and have a beautiful orange yard. Then we thought of how big the patch might be next year. So I got the lawnmower out and cut them all down, I got a lot of them but they are still everywhere. Between the raspberry plants and the marigolds, I don’t know which one would be the first to take over this whole place. I never thought I’d be mowing down a field of marigolds.

We’ve got a whole new year in front of us now and hopefully, it will be better than the last two. People are starting to travel again and we are seeing a lot more tourists down here in Belize. Most of the major airlines such as American, Delta, United, Southwest, Alaska, and Frontier all have daily flights here. If you are flexible on your travel dates I have seen round trip flights from Phoenix for under $300. Most of the time though the flights are around $500-$700 round trip from many cities. A lot of the flights from the west coast stop in Dallas or Houston for a plane change. After that, it’s just a short 2 hour flight down to Belize.

The current requirements for getting to Belize are that you need a negative covid test prior to arrival or a recovery note, whether you are vaccinated or not. If that doesn’t work for you, then you can have a test at the airport when you arrive in Belize for a fee of $50. You will also need another test a day prior to leaving Belize. Everything is open and operating, so you can check out the Mayan ruins, go cave tubing, relax on a sandy beach, head out to one of the islands, or anything else that Belize has to offer. We hope to see you down here in 2022!

Because Belize is so culturally diverse, there are a lot of different Christmas customs that go on. Such as the Mayan Deer Dance, the Garifuna Jankuna Dance, Christmas Bram and more. Some of these celebrations involve very elaborate costumes that are a sight to see. Of course, being on the Caribbean shores you know there will also be some boat parades at some of the coastal towns. And most Belizeans will also celebrate Christmas the traditional American way by decorating a tree and waiting around for Santa to arrive.

All of the small villages and bigger towns usually put up a community Christmas tree in their town square or park. The trees range from simple to very big and elaborate. It doesn’t matter the size or amount of decorations on the tree, every community takes great pride in their tree.

In our village of San Antonio, they put up a real pine tree in the town square this year. And if you are wondering, yes Belize does have pine trees. After all, our main road is called Pine Ridge Road that leads up to Mountain Pine Ridge.

Everyone here really gets into the Christmas spirit and decorates their houses with lights and other decorations. Almost every store and business has some type of Christmas decorations and you can usually hear Christmas music playing in the background.

We are no exception, we’ve got our Christmas lights up on the house and the back patio, the tree is decorated inside and the monkeys are once again helping with the garland. Of course, we are also watching some of the classic animated Christmas specials as well as some of the movies. Some of our favorite Christmas shows are Charlie Brown, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Christmas Vacation, and A Christmas Story. What are some of your favorite holiday shows?

Of course, Kelley is making Christmas cookies again this year that we will take around to some of our friends. This year’s assortment consists of ginger snaps, peanut brittle, chocolate-caramel covered pretzels, red velvet white chocolate chip cookies, almond crescents, heath bars with almonds, and some oatmeal raisin cookies with a white chocolate drizzle.

We will also be keeping up our tradition of Prime rib on Christmas eve and eggs benedict and mimosas on Christmas morning. Later on Christmas Day, I will be making cioppino (an Italian fish stew) with fish, lobster, conch and shrimp to finish off the Christmas day feasting. When it’s all over I’m sure we will have had too many cocktails and too much food, but what the hey, it’s Christmas. Amanda will be joining us as well as Ron and Rhonda who will be back down here for a few days over Christmas. After all, we’ll still have another week or so before the diet and exercise begins, Right!

The holidays are a great time to have a few friends over for some tasty food and holiday cheer. So we broke out the ole disco and cooked up some of that fish we scored a few weeks ago when we were over on the coast. The fish turned out absolutely delicious, I think the Jacks we got just might be my new favorite type of fish. Everyone brought something to go with the fish, we had hush puppies, fries, chips & salsa, pasta salad, coleslaw and even some cookies. It was a great sunny afternoon with good friends, music, cold beer and some great food.

In case you are wondering what a disco is, it’s a plow disk from a tractor. The hole in the middle of the disk gets welded up, a rim and some handles are added then it’s good to go. We use ours on top of a turkey fryer burner and it works out great. Because the disk is such a heavy metal, it retains the heat and is perfect for cooking. We learned about these when we were living in Mexico and have been using one for at least 30 years now.

We have been seeing lots of small animals and birds moving around here lately. The other day Kelley got a picture of Tananger. He was bright red as if he was all dressed up for the Christmas season.

Another critter we have seen around here in the past, but have yet to get a picture of is an armadillo. That changed when this cute little guy started coming around during the day. He was right in front of the house and didn’t even mind that Kelley was up close taking pictures. The armadillo was rooting around for insects and came within a foot of her while she was taking pictures. Then the next day he was back again and that time Kelley managed to get some video of him.

Our December weather here has been all over the board. There have been sunny days where we’re pushing 90° and it feels like summer. Then there were days where the fog set in so thick and we couldn’t see the end of the driveway. Then to mix it up a little, it rained for a week straight which gave up a total of 5″. That rain really got our creek behind the casita flowing, which doesn’t happen too often. Now as we are approaching Christmas the nighttime temps are in the mid 50°s.  This time of year we just don’t know what to expect, but one thing for sure is that there will be no snow.

This is for all our friends up in the cold country. Hope you are staying warm!

Here’s wishing everyone a Merry Christmas from Belize! We hope everyone is healthy and all your Christmas wishes come true.

We’ve gotten quite a few pictures of birds in their nests with babies, but this one is really cool. One of our power poles has a hole in it near the top, and we assumed it must be a woodpecker. The other day we looked up at it and to our surprise, there were toucans sticking their heads out of the hole. These are the Aracari Toucans, which is a medium-size toucan and not as big as the Keel Billed Toucan. There was a total of four birds, so not sure which were babies and which were the adults. This was very cool to see, but I still worry about the big hole in our power pole.

Okay, so here’s what else has been happening around here the past few weeks. A couple days after we got back from the states it started raining, not a heavy rain, in fact only a couple inches in ten days or so. This was the perfect time to get the cooler weather veggies planted up in the garden. Besides that, there was a full moon thrown in there too. The locals here really stress about how important it is to plant everything around the full moon. So if all goes well, we should have a great crop of broccoli, romaine lettuce, and kale within a few months. The wet season is supposed to be over by December 1st, so I guess mother nature was giving us one last hurrah for the season.

We were back to making more healthy snacks again. This time we made purple cabbage chips with habanero sea salt. Once the cabbage is dehydrated and seasoned it’s a great crunchy alternative to potato chips. Besides tasting very good, we are also getting all the vitamins and health benefits that purple cabbage has to offer.

We had a good run of chili peppers this year, but at this point, the plants are about done. Although we did just get a bunch more habaneros seedlings in the ground that should be ready in a few months. This last batch of peppers all went in the dehydrator so we can make more spicy seasoned salt that everyone just can’t get enough of. We dried somewhere between 300-400 red & green jalapeños, orange habaneros, and cayenne peppers. We have learned that the dehydrator has to be in the garage when drying peppers because the fumes coming off it will really get to you.

Since the holidays are upon us, it was time to make some more summer sausage. Sausage like this is hard to find down here, so we resort to making our own. In the past, we have taken it to many gatherings and even the bars, where everyone raves about it and has offered to buy some. A few of the sticks we took to The Bluff restaurant for their big Thanksgiving Day gathering. The rest will be available to everyone who has been requesting it since the last time we made it. At this point, most of them are already spoken for.

This was one of the first times in 35+ years that Kelley did not cook a turkey on Thanksgiving Day. This year we were invited to spend it at The Bluff (our favorite hangout). They closed the restaurant on Thanksgiving Day and had a private party for friends and family. Of course, there were all the traditional Thanksgiving foods, from turkey to pumpkin pie and everything in between. There were at least 100 people there and everybody brought something delicious to share. It was a great day with wonderful food and friends, plus to make it even better it was a warm sunny day and the drinks were ice cold.

Our friends Ron & Rhonda flew down over the Thanksgiving weekend to spend a few days at the beach in Placencia. Since it’s only a few hour drive for us, we decided to meet them over there and also spend the long weekend on the beach. While we were on the coast, it was the perfect opportunity for us to see if we could round up some fresh fish to take back. We sat around the shore BS’n and enjoying a few beers waiting for the boats to come in. When the boats came in you’d have to be quick to claim the fish you want before someone else does. We did manage to get 6 nice Jacks that we had filleted for a future fish fry or two back home. Last time we got fish here we got Snapper, Jacks and some Barracuda. We decided that the Jacks were a much better tasting fish and after talking to the fishermen they all agreed.

The highlight of our weekend was a trip out to a small island to spend the day doing whatever we wanted. The island was Ranguana Caye, a small 2-acre island about twenty miles off the coast of Placencia.

The day we went, there were only 9 of us on the boat heading to the island. It was Ron, Rhonda, us, a couple from Holland, a couple from Canada, and a guy from D.C (who might just never go home). As the boat pulled up to the island the bartender greeted us with a tray of fresh coconuts with a straw in each one. There’s a small bar on the island along with 3 small cabanas that are available for overnight stays. They have snorkel gear, kayaks, paddleboards and of course some nice chairs right on the sandy beach.

The boat took some of the people out snorkeling on the reef while we stayed behind to just relax on the beach and enjoy this little piece of paradise. After all, we can snorkel, kayak or paddleboard anywhere, but a little island like this doesn’t come around every day.

Of course there has to be a dog on an island like this. As we got off the boat Kelley got a big ear licking from Shadow the resident dog. Shadow made sure no birds landed on the island, rolled in the sand, played with coconuts, swam out to chase away the pelicans, and even sat on the beach as if to guard us when we were in the water. This is the happiest dog I think I’ve ever seen, but then again what dog wouldn’t be, living on a tropical island where new people show up all the time and play with him.

The beers and cocktails were chilled perfectly, and around noon they cooked up a great lunch of chicken, rice-n-beans, coleslaw and fried plantains. Of course everything was great, we were barefoot on a little island in the middle of nowhere.

We really hated to leave this island paradise, but as we were leaving the island, dolphins showed up by the boat as if on cue. We have been to quite a few different islands around here and this is by far our favorite one yet. Maybe next time we’ll bring some fishing gear and spend the night, this island is truly a piece of paradise.

We hope to see you down here soon.

It’s been a year since we’ve been up to the states and we were well overdue. We stayed at the kid’s house, catching up with them and spending some great time with the grandkids. We also caught up with a bunch of friends and of course, we pigged out at all our favorite restaurants. After all, it was a vacation.

We just saw the grandkids this past summer when they came down to Belize, but we can’t get too much of them.

While we were there, their shop out in the back yard got finished and it’s a monster. Plenty of room to work on all their vehicles and any others they might acquire in the future.

The latest vehicle addition is Stacy’s pride and joy, a 1959 flat-top Cadillac that she has named violet. It’s a beautiful car done in a lavender and white finish. We were lucky enough to go for a short cruise with the whole family (and yes the whole family fit in there without a problem).

One day we were out in the new shop when the neighbor decided to remove a beehive from his yard. We assume they must have been killer bees because they just randomly started attacking us. Randy got stung a couple times, I got it a few times and Kelley got stung a few times. We ran towards the house and got in before they really started to swarm. Kelley got the worst of it and had a bad reaction causing her face to swell up. It lasted a few days before the swelling finally went down. We were just thankful that none of the kids got stung.

After a great visit with the kids, it was time to make our way back to Belize. As we get to the airport drop-off we notice it was really dark with a big line of people outside. We went in to find a ton of people in a dark airport. It turns out that there was a major power outage at the airport. Lots and lots of canceled flights and to make it worse NASCAR was in town over the weekend, so there were an extra amount of people there. We checked the flight board and for some lucky reason, our flight to Houston said on time not canceled. We made our way to the ticket counter and checked in and gave them our bags. Everything was handwritten since the computers were out. Most of the extra seats onboard our flight were taken up by pilots and flight attends heading to where their plane would have been going if it wasn’t canceled. Overall considering no power at the airport, a ton of canceled flights, and a mass amount of people, we were very lucky it went well for us and we were only an hour late getting into Houston.

Once we got home and got the house all opened up it was time to sit down with a cold beer and relax. We knew it was supposed to be a cool night so we closed up the windows before going to bed. By the time we got up in the morning, the temp had dropped to 54 degrees outside. The lowest we’ve seen it since we’ve been here is 58 degrees last year. 54° with the wetness in the air and no heater in the house made for a cold morning. By the afternoon the temp was in the 80°’s and all was good again.

Our cacao trees are really starting to produce. We currently have nine trees that are all loaded with cacao pods and new flowers. Usually, they all ripen at different times and that is what is happening now. The other day we harvested 16 cacao pods from just one of the trees. After getting the seeds out of the pods, it’s time to ferment them, then dry them, roast them and then grind them. Once we grind them and add a little sweetener we’ll end up with some delicious chocolate.

When we got back from the states we picked up a small 4×4 diesel Kubota tractor that should be very useful around here. Amanda (next to Darren’s) will be starting her build in a few months, Darren who is still working on his place, and we all went in on it together. We will all have a need for this at some point, but not enough to justify one of us buying it outright. This will also work out great for maintaining our road.

Recently we had a possum trying to make a home inside our BBQ grill. I finally got tired of it and just lit the grill to see what would happen. Just kidding! The kids found us a Halloween armadillo skeleton when we were up in the states. He will make a great addition to the Toucan Hideaway and maybe scare the other animals away from the BBQ.

Our friend stopped by the other day and surprised us with a nice hind quarter of a Gibnut.  Gibnuts are a wild game animal down here that is absolutely delicious, in fact, it is so delicious that it was served to the Queen of England when she visited Belize. We have cooked Gibnut a few different ways in the past and it has always turned out delicious, now we just need to decide how we want to cook it this time.

No matter where you live in the states, chances are you have probably seen a deer or elk crossing sign on the highway. Here in Belize, we do have deer, but I have never seen a deer crossing sign on the highway. What we do have though is Tapir crossing signs on the roads. Tapirs are the national animal of Belize and are protected by law. They can get up to 600 lbs. and have a lifespan of 30 years. We have been lucky enough to see a couple Tapirs in the wild. If you’d like to see one close-up for yourself, stop by the Belize zoo when you visit. They are actually very cute and gentle animals.

Hope to see you soon!

Since Halloween is just around the corner, I thought I’d share some of the folklore and legends that are told around Belize. There are a lot of different versions of these stories that have been told over generations, here are a few examples.

La X’tabai

One legend tells us of two women fighting over the same man. One of them, determined to win him, gave the other girl a potion that awakened her erotic desires so she shamelessly went into the arms of countless men. She eventually fled into the forest and took the form of the X’tabai who seduces men and sometimes kills them if they cannot satisfy her heightened sexual desires. So if you are ever seduced by X’tabai, you better hope you brought your “A” game.

La Llorona

From a Spanish word meaning “The Crying Woman”, La Llorona is described as being a slender, tall and very beautiful woman with very long black hair. Her face is always shrouded although it is believed to be misshapen and rather ugly.

La Llorona is said to be the spirit of a woman named Maria who drowned her children in the river as a sort of lover’s revenge. After realizing that her children were dead she drowned herself. Maria was challenged on the whereabouts of her children at the gates of heaven and was denied entry until she could locate them. Since then La Llorona wanders the river banks at night mourning the loss of her children by weeping and asking them for forgiveness. But that’s not all, she’s also looking for other children to drown in the river to take their place. The tale of the La Llorona is used by parents in Latin America to discourage their children from wandering out at night.

The Scary Sisemite

Legend has it that hairy male Sisemitos and female Sisemitas live deep in the caves of Belize. Their short, hairy figures made them appear closer to apes than modern men. They ate fruits and leaves just like apes, but they preferred the taste of human flesh.

A man would usually die within a month of looking a Sisemito in the eye. However, women were much luckier, as a Sisemito’s gaze would prolong her life if only she could escape. The male Sisemitos were known to abduct and rape women, while the female Sisemitas would molest and kill the men.

The Sisemito and Sisemita weren’t without weakness though. They were petrified of water and dogs. Smart Belizeans knew they could escape an attack by walking near a river or with a canine companion.

Tata Duende

One of the most popular folklore characters in Belize is Tata Duende. Tata is the Mayan word for “old man” or “grandfather” and Duende, Spanish for “dwarf.”

He is described as a short man, three feet in height, with an ugly old face, wearing a large red hat, often carrying a machete or knotted stick. He is also missing both thumbs, and his feet face backward to throw people off his trail

Most all Tata sightings occur at night when it is raining. When Tata is getting close, a whistling sound can be heard. If the sound is loud and close, have no fear, Tata is a trickster. It is time to worry only when the whistle is distant because that means he is actually close by.

Tata does not have thumbs, and this fuels his strong desire to steal anyone’s thumbs he encounters. The only way to stop him is to hide your thumbs in the palms of your hands as soon as you see him. If you are quick and hide your thumbs, Tata takes an immediate liking to you.

When Tata is irritated or annoyed, he can make anyone who sees him or is seen by him immobile, speechless, and fever-ridden for many days after their encounter. Tata’s mean streak comes out when anyone attempts to imitate his whistle.  He is also feared by hunters because if Tata sees them carrying a gun or a shovel in the forest on Fridays, he will chop off their heads and use them to decorate his own home.

So next time you hear a whistle in the jungle, we suggest hiding your thumbs and definitely don’t go hunting or carry a shovel on a Friday.

Happy Halloween!

After recently being over on the island for a few days, we got a hankering for some seafood. So we managed to round up a couple octopus to throw on the grill plus we made some lobster rolls. We couldn’t find any avocado that day for the lobster rolls, so we used lobster with a strip of red bell pepper and some wasabi. The octopus got cooked the same way we always do. Boil for a couple hours until tender, then brush with a spicy red chili sauce and toss on the grill for a little char. It was delicious.

Our Jamaican-Sorrel plants are flowering big time. Jamaican-Sorrel is a type of edible hibiscus that has many health benefits. Such as antioxidants, lowering cholesterol, boosting the immune system, lowering blood pressure, anti-inflammatory, and a bunch more. It can be used to make jellies, wines and my favorite, a wonderful refreshing beverage. If you have ever been to a Mexican restaurant and seen a dispenser on the counter with a bright red drink called Jamaica (pronounced “ha-mike-ah”) that’s what this is.

The plants will flower in the morning and then the flower will be gone by that evening. Then in 2-3 weeks the red fruit will be ready to harvest. Ours will be dried and saved to make a Jamaica Tea, plus we will dry the seeds for the next planting since the plants only live for about a year. You can usually find bags of dried Jamaica in your produce section at the store. If you don’t want to make this at home then look for it next time you are at your favorite Mexican restaurant, you won’t be disappointed.

A couple weeks ago we picked a stalk of about 90 apple bananas and hung them on the porch to ripen. Usually they will slowly ripen, but not this bunch. Over night they all got ripe and turned yellow. At least these are the small delicious apple bananas, so eating a few at a time is not a problem.

We had to do something quick with all those ripe bananas, so Kelley made 13 small loaves of banana-raspberry bread (that used up 26 of them). Next was some chocolate covered frozen bananas (there went another 20). Eat as many as we can and give some away, because there are three more big bunches on the plants that will be ready fairly soon.

It was time to trim the Moringa tree again. Some of you might know what it is and even take supplements, for those that don’t know, it’s called the miracle tree. There are many health benefits to this plant and the leaves can be eaten in salads, rice, pasta or any other dish. Kelley will put it in soups and on salads, but the most common way we eat is in a tea form. Here’s a link for more information on Moringa and some of the health benefits of this wonderful tree. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/319916

The new hot tub is finally up and going! The water is clear and we got the chemicals where they need to be. After working around the yard all day it feels sooo good to relax in the tub with a cold beer or a glass of wine. The evenings have been getting down to the upper 60’s, and it feels great!

Okay, so the other night I go out to grill like we do every few days. I open the lid to the BBQ and get ready to light it. To my surprise, it was full of leaves with a big, pissed-off possum sitting on the grates. Needless to say, I quickly shut the lid and waited for my heart rate to return to normal. Then I went in and got Kelley and a camera so we could get this thing off the grill. It looked like she was nesting up and possibly getting ready to have babies. She was the only one in the BBQ, so we chased her back into the bush. It looked like she got in through the vent holes on the back of the BBQ, so I guess it’s time to put a little wire mesh over those vents.

Other animal sightings around here recently have been an armadillo. We were sitting out back on the deck and here comes this armadillo strolling by just a few feet from us like we weren’t even there. The next one was a jaguarundi (wild cat). We were sitting in the garage one evening and he walked by the front gate and paused for a second. Of course, there wasn’t a chance of getting a picture of either one of those. Although a few years ago we did get a picture of a black jaguarundi with three babies walking on the property. The one picture we did get was a turtle, and Kelley had to chase him down because he was moving pretty quick.

When we bought our property six years ago the road getting to it was a rough dirt road that took at least 45 minutes off the main highway to get here. They have been working on the road for the past two years and it is now mostly paved and takes us about 15 minutes to get to the main highway. I still have mixed feelings about the road being paved, but what can I do? At least our place is still a good 3/4 mile off the pavement.

Speaking of roads, our property entrance was where our road ended. There are two lots beyond us but the owners have never done anything with them. One of the lot owners from the states came down and is ready to start building next year. So now the road goes about 100 yards past us. They had to install a big culvert where the water used to flow across the road. They’ve brought in lots of gravel for the road and have a small clearing done on the opposite side from us, back on a hill. We have met the new neighbors and they will be a great addition to our little hood.

On September 30th, 2015 we sent out our very first blog of our new adventures in Belize. Here it is six years later and we are sending out our 200th post. A lot has happened in the past six years and it has turned out to be the biggest adventure of our lives. I hope you’ve enjoyed following us along on this crazy little adventure. Hopefully, it might have inspired some of you to get out of your comfort zone and try something new. And when you’re ready, we have the guest house waiting for you.

Happy Halloween!