We are back and once again working on our new garden pathways behind the house. Since we are putting in literally hundreds of different plants out there, we thought it would be best if we ran a water line for another hose hookup. For the most part, all the plants should do fine once they get established, but sometimes those hot dry spells leave some of the plants looking a little weak and in need of some water.

A few months back, Kelley planted some trays with a couple hundred seeds from our Heliconias (Lobster claw) plants. They are now a good 6-8″ tall and ready to be put in the ground. We are planting them around the perimeter of the garden trail area. Once they fill in, they should make a nice colorful, and tropical-looking border around the whole area.

We also just planted nine more cacao trees out behind the house. This brings our total to around thirty cacao trees. Only the first eleven trees we planted eight years ago are currently producing. I imagine in 4-5 years, when they’re all producing, we will have more cacao than we can handle. So far, we have grown at least 100 cacao trees from seeds and have given away or traded at least 75 of them. It’s very hard for us to take a seed or cutting from another plant and not put it in a pot to see if it grows.

We are still having on-and-off rain and very mild temperatures for this time of year. One good thing is that we are seeing quite a few Oyster Mushrooms popping up every other week or so. Sometimes there’s just a few, but other times we can pick a whole bowl of them. It’s sort of fun not knowing when or where they will appear, and when they do, we will try to plan our dinner around them. Usually, it will be steak or pork chops with fresh sauteed mushrooms on top.

It was time to pick our black peppercorns. As soon as one or two of the berries start to turn from green to red, that means it’s time to pick them. We have learned that instead of just putting them in the sun to dry, you need to put them in boiling water for a minute or so first. What that does is it helps to accelerate the drying process and triggers a uniform black color to them. After that, they can then dry in the sun for a week or so until they are black and wrinkly. At that point they are ready to be ground up and enjoyed.

Last year when our dragon fruit was ripe Kelley made some jam, like she does with a lot of our fruits. For some reason, the dragon fruit jam didn’t turn out like all the others. It was delicious, but the texture of it was sort of like slime (the green stuff kids play with). You get a spoonful of it from the jar, and it just stretches until it all just slides back off the spoon. She has tried everything that the internet suggested to fix it, and nothing worked. So we decided to dehydrate it and turn it into fruit leather. After 3 days in the dehydrator (most stuff only takes one day), the jam was still sticky and not very dry. It’s very tasty, and we don’t want to throw it away; it’s just too sticky to eat. So we thought we could incorporate it into some of our chocolates. We plan to pour a thin layer of chocolate on a baking pan, then lay some of the sticky dragon fruit on that and then cover it with more chocolate. After that, we would cut it up into smaller pieces. I tried a little piece of chocolate and sticky dragon fruit together, and I think it might work.

Our vinegar that we made from the liquid of our fermenting cacao last month was finally ready to taste. It was a little tangy, yet it had a slight fruitiness to it. After looking up the best ways to use it, we came up with a few things to try. First of all, it says that it’s a great substitute for balsamic or apple cider vinegar. It says that it makes a unique salad dressing when mixed with olive oil and other ingredients. It’s also a great marinade for all types of meats and vegetables before you throw them on the grill. Another suggestion was to use it in a BBQ sauce. Since Kelley always makes our own BBQ sauce and uses apple cider vinegar, we thought next time we would try a batch with cacao vinegar and see how that turns out. It’s always great when you can take something you usually throw away and turn it into something good and useful.

Last year I gave a fishing friend of ours a couple of wahoo lures we don’t use anymore. In exchange, I said that when he caught any wahoo I wouldn’t mind a couple of steaks. The lures worked great and he started catching a lot more wahoo on his fishing charters. Recently, he returned the favor and gave us some nice big pieces of wahoo to take home. We invited some friends over, and Kelley cooked up eight big pieces in a sage and brown butter sauce, and it turned out very tasty. Wahoo is a mild, firm, white fish that is sometimes compared to albacore, swordfish or even veal or chicken.

We have been seeing and hearing a lot of different critters around here lately. There’s been kinkajous making noise up in the trees every evening. We’ve seen a few coatimundis around the property along with some iguanas and of course, the agouties, which we see every day. Kelley got this picture of a coatimundi just lounging in a tree above our back deck. He really didn’t seem to mind us checking him out and taking pictures.

There have also been a lot of toucans around here lately. We’ll see them in the morning when we’re eating breakfast outside, and in the evening when were out having a beer. Plus, all day long they are in the trees just squawking away. I’m sure they are just eating whatever is ripe in trees currently and will eventually move on, but it sure is great to see them while they are here.

We even got another picture on the driveway trail cam of a wild cat of some type coming towards the house. The picture was dark, so it wasn’t worth sharing, but it looked like it was about the size of a medium dog. Of course, we do have some more common animals around here, such as squirrels. We have two types, one is the Yucatan squirrel which is generally bigger than the common Gray Squirrel found in the States. The other is the Deppe’s Squirrel, which is very small. Both types of squirrels are always running around here gathering and eating cohune nuts.

Besides everything else, we are still making our meats and processing more chocolate. We look forward to our breaks or little getaways to unwind. So if you’re thinking about coming down for a visit just let us know, the guest house will be ready.