Ham and Easter go together like colored eggs and chocolate bunnies. Of course, hams are sometimes hard to come by down here so we thought we would try to cure one for ourselves. This was our first attempt at curing our own ham (not counting the watermelon ham). By the time we cut the bone down a little (so it would fit in the brine container) and removed all the fat and skin, we ended up with about an 18 lb. ham. After a couple of weeks in the cure, then some time in the smoker with some cherry and hickory wood chips, it was looking good. All that was left was a little taste test to see if it would be good enough to serve for an Easter dinner with friends. For a first attempt it turned out pretty good, but there is always room for improvement. Update on the ham….. We finished it off with a brown sugar, mustard, apple whisky glaze, and everyone thought it was one of the best hams they’ve had. I guess it really was pretty good.

There were some beautiful sunny days here last week, so we decided to head up the hill and find a spot in the river to soak for a few hours. A couple of the spots we usually go to had other people there with the same idea. No problem, we’ll just keep driving and look for a new spot. We found a nice place on the river that was easy to get to, had a small waterfall, and was plenty deep. It was a great spot to cool off, get some sun and enjoy a few cold beers. Especially in the middle of the week. And yes, those are pine trees in the distance.

Some of the people who visit us have trouble turning their vehicles around in our driveway. Since we have been clearing a little more out front we decided that it would be best to make a semi-circular drive where people could turn around easily. It took a few weeks for us to remove some trees and get the ground smooth, and now we are really close to being done. They have been working on the roads around here and when they grade them, all the big rocks get pushed to the side. We asked one of our workers if he could bring us a load of the big rocks so we could make a border around the new drive. It worked out perfectly and now all we need is a load of gravel to put down and it will be ready to drive on.

We had a couple colorful creatures visit us recently. There was a flock of maybe 50 or so of these beautiful blue birds that we have never seen here before. We think they were Indigo Buntings, at least according to our bird chart. Either that or they were the bluebirds of happiness.

Another colorful creature to visit us was a beautiful green vine snake. He was about as thick as my finger and at least 6′ long. He hung around long enough for Kelley to get a few pictures before heading back into the bush. Vine snakes help to control the rodent, frog, and lizard populations and are harmless to humans. Plus they are a beautiful snake that you don’t have to worry about getting too close to.

There’s not a whole lot happening in the garden at this point. A lot of the fruit trees are just starting to set blossoms and we have been busy planting a few hundred miscellaneous pepper plants. But with all the different things we have growing around here, there’s always going to be something ready to pick. This week we have been picking raspberries almost every day, plus using their leaves to make a refreshing raspberry iced tea (which is delicious). We have also picked a few Surinam cherries, Bok Choy, and of course another stalk of 132 bananas. Breakfast this week has consisting of fresh raspberry banana bread and a glass of raspberry leaf tea. You can’t beat that!

Just when we thought we had enough plants around here a neighbor brought over a few more for us. So now we have roselle or sometimes called sorrel plants growing which is a type of hibiscus plant that they use to make wine and jellies. The part that I’m excited about is that when you dry the buds on them you can make Jamaica. In case you don’t know what Jamaica is, it’s that wonderful deep red drink you can usually find at Mexican restaurants or taco stands. It’s one of my favorites beverages. I’ve been buying the dried stuff and making it at home for a long time and can’t wait to try some that we’ve grown ourselves.

It’s been a couple of weeks now that we have been drinking our ginger tea to see if it helps in weight loss. We really haven’t noticed a big difference, but I guess there are still other health benefits from drinking it. And truthfully I’ve just been sitting around and taking it easy for the past week and a half. Over a week ago I tripped and landed really hard on my shoulder. Luckily no major damage. I am slowly getting movement back in my shoulder and arm, plus there’s a big nasty bruise to go along with it. We have both tripped a few times on stumps and stuff around here without much injury, but this one really set me back.

In fact, you can see by the size of the banana how big my hand is swollen up. Okay, not really. This is just a tiny banana off the last bunch that didn’t fully mature.

The Belize airport is open for travelers and has been since October.  Belize is one of only a few countries that allow you to enter without a current covid test as long as you show proof that you’ve gotten a covid vaccination. Also, it was just announced that you don’t need a test before re-entering the states as long as you can show proof of a vaccination.  We have guests coming down in June and possibly in early July, but other than that, the Toucan Hideaway is waiting for you. Hope to see you soon!

Who doesn’t like free beer? Belikin has been having a promotion called “Pop A Stappa” where you can win prizes of a free beer, $20, $100 and $1,000. If you find a symbol under your bottle cap you win. So far we have got 14 caps,  worth a free beer each, plus one at a bar that they gave us on the spot. It’s not $1,000, but a free beer is a free beer.

The other day our neighbor came by again offering more fresh pork, so of course, we had to get some. How can you say no when you know it’s fresh and it’s delivered right to your door. So we picked up a 23 lb. hind leg, which will become our Easter ham, more ribs, and a pork belly. Kelley thought she would try something different with the belly this time, so she made porchetta. It’s an Italian dish where you put a lot of herbs and spices on the inside of the belly and then roll it up, tie it and cook it for 7-8 hours. It turned out savory, fatty, and rich, but how could it not, after all, it was a pork belly.

The porchetta was our Italian meal of the week, but now it was time for our Irish St. Patty’s Day corned beef which had been in the brine since the first of March. Homemade corned beef is so much better than store-bought and very easy to make. Besides, our only option for corned beef here is to make it ourselves. It just wouldn’t be St. Patty’s day without corned beef, cabbage, and red potatoes, Irish we could have shared with you.

While going through the garden the other day we noticed that a bunch of our pineapple plants were all trampled over like something big had run through the middle of them.  None of the pineapples were eaten or anything, just something big had gone through there. We haven’t seen any evidence of cow or any other footprints around anywhere. But it does let your imagination run wild, was it a Tipar, a heard of peccaries, or a jaguar chasing something. I guess we will never know.

Speaking of the garden, (you know I was going to), we finally got some veggie seeds to grow and are ready to start planting. This is the third time we’ve planted the seed trays in the past few months. The first couple times very few sprouted, because of too much rain, cold weather, and no sunshine to warm them up. This time there was little rain and nice sunny days plus I made a small plastic cover for them and it seems everything sprouted. So at this point, we now have 40 nice yellow squash plants in the ground, and in a couple of weeks, we will be putting in 300-400 pepper plants. There are green bells, colored bells, cayenne, jalapeños, and a few other varieties. Hopefully, they will do good and we will be set for peppers this year.

Our ginger plant finally died back so it was time to dig up the ginger roots. We will go ahead and use these as needed and then in a couple of months plant some more for later on. I didn’t realize there are so many health benefits from eating ginger, I mostly thought it was just used in Asian cooking. One of the benefits that caught my eye was to make a tea out of it and it’s supposed to really aid in weight loss, especially around the waist area. The tea is pretty strong and spicy, but we are giving this a try for a few weeks and see what happens.

Where’s Kelley? Our cacao plants are really growing great. There are a couple that are now almost twice as tall as Kelley. There should be a lot of chocolate in our future.

There have been a couple trees next to our house that have been needing to come down for quite a while. The trees really swayed a lot in the wind and we didn’t want them to fall on the house if there was a big storm. We’ve taken down quite a few trees around here ourselves, but these were now growing right over the house and were getting pretty big. So it was time to call in a professional or at least someone who could do it without damaging the house.

A friend of ours knows a guy (Julio) who is an expert and can climb a tree like nobody’s business. So Julio gets here and looks at the trees, then he gets a ladder, rope, and a machete and up the tree he goes. Mind you that he takes off his rubber boots and puts on a pair of crocks, plus he is about the same age as me. Once up the tree, he ties his rope onto a branch and then whacks away with his machete and then we lower it down to the ground. Once all the branches are off the tree then a rope is tied up near the top and he cuts the base of the tree with a chainsaw while we pull the rope to guide the trunk where we want it to fall. Overall, seven trees were cut down that day and there are a few more up in the garden that will need to be removed later. Julio definitely knows what he is doing when it comes to taking down trees, and I’m sure we will be calling him again in the future.

Over the past month or so we have been doing some more clearing around the back and side of the house. Mostly just getting rid of all the undergrowth and leaving the big trees. We like the way this is shaping up because you can now see more than ten feet out into the jungle. We have already been seeing more animals and birds moving around out there in the cleared areas.

We also made another trail with the downed trees that goes from the front of the house to the back trails. Eventually, the grass will grow in the cleared areas and the trails will be lined with some colorful tropical plants. It should look great once everything is grown in.

Earlier this month Belize started vaccinating for covid. It seems to be going smoothly and there are a lot of people getting the shots. Currently, Belize only has 51 active cases in the entire country, so that’s doing pretty good. Up until recently, you had to provide a negative covid test taken 72 hours prior to arriving here in Belize. That has now changed and all you have to do now is show proof that you have had a vaccination and you are good to go. Travel here is really pretty easy and safe, so come on down and see us sometime.

 

This posting is mostly for all our friends who love to garden but live in an area where tropical plants won’t grow. Or for those who are just interested in how some of your favorite foods grow. Anyway, we love to garden and have always had a garden, but we have mostly lived in a desert climate where the weather or soil was not the best. So moving to Belize with its great climate and rich soil was a dream for us. Now we can grow things we never even considered growing before.

Everyone loves bananas, but have you ever thought about how they grow? Banana plants might look like a tree but they’ve actually classified as an herb. This is because the trunks are made up of leaves, not bark like a tree. A banana plant will take about 10 months or so until it produces a flower. Once the flower is there it will take another 3 months or so until the bananas are ripe. The bud will have both the male and female flowers in it so that it can self-pollinate.

Once the plant produces a bunch of bananas and they ripen, it will be done and die. Not to worry though, because while the plant is growing, it’s producing more stalks around it’s base that will each produce bananas in the order at which they grew.

They say that the average American eats 27 lbs. of bananas a year. I’m not sure we ever ate that many before, but now that we are growing our own, we are way above that. Currently, 3 of our plants have bananas on them and two bunches are about to ripen at the same time. And just in case you didn’t know, each banana is called a finger, each cluster is called a hand, and the whole stalk is called a bunch. We just call them, free breakfast.

Coffee is something a lot of us can’t live without. It just happens to grow great where we are and is very easy to grow. Our plants went from about 1′ to 5-6′ in just over 2 years. They start by getting flower buds on most of the main branches. After a few months, the green berries will start to turn red in color, that’s the time to start picking them. Usually every few days we will need to go and pick the red ones as they don’t all ripen at the same time.

Once we pick them, we need to peel off the skin or fruit from the berry. Then they are soaked in water overnight to remove what is still left on them. After that, they are placed in the sun for a few days to dry. Once thoroughly dry then they can be roasted. Prior to roasting a thin parchment skin must be removed from the bean. After roasting then they get ground up and used as coffee. We have been drying the beans and then vacuum sealing them until we want to roast them. Unroasted beans will last a couple years whereas roasted will lose their flavor after a couple months.

I’m sure at some point everyone has cut the top of a pineapple and tried to get it to grow. That’s how we started out here and after two years they are finally producing pineapples. But there is a quicker way.

As the pineapple fruit is starting to mature it starts to produce slips around its base. Once the slips get big enough you just pick them off and plant them in the ground. Doing it this way can produce a pineapple in eight months or so, as opposed to two years rooting the top. At this point we have around 150 plants going and there are at least 30 pineapples on them currently.

Cacao or ‘chocolate once it’s processed’ grows quite well here also. Someone told us that it wouldn’t grow in this area, but we planted it anyway and it’s thriving. The cacao pods grow on the trunk and branches of the plant, not around the leaves. The blossoms that do survive will turn into this big, dark chocolate-colored pod. Once the pod starts to change colors toward red and yellow it’s time to pick them.

Now the fun starts. You cut the pod open to reveal the big white seeds that are covered in a fluffy white sweet flesh which is very tasty. After the seeds are collected, they must ferment for about a week or so. Then the fermented seeds must dry in the sun for a few days, where they will start to turn light brown in color. Once dried they can then be roasted and peeled. Finally, they are ready to be ground into chocolate and enjoyed. While grinding they will first turn into a powder and then the oils will start to come out and turn it all liquidy. This is where (if you choose) to add some sugar and make it into some great-tasting chocolate.

Starfruit is something that maybe you’ve seen in the produce section of your favorite grocery store but have never actually tried. It’s a really good fruit that has the flavor between an apple and a pear with a little sour undertone. Our tree was 18″ tall two years ago and is well over 15′ tall now. In the spring is when the little pink and white blossoms start to appear.

The blossoms that do get pollinated will develop into these wonderful fruits. When you slice them they are a perfect five-point star shape which is where the name Starfruit comes from. They say that a mature tree could produce between 200-400 lbs. of fruit each year.

Macadamia nuts, a favorite treat from Hawaii. Our tree is 9′ tall now and seems to be growing great. We have no idea yet as to how the nuts grow or even how to prepare them to eat. As soon as we see some blossoms or nuts we will let you know how all that goes.

I know it might seem that processing the coffee or cacao is a lot of work, but we love it! Hope you enjoyed this little insight into our tropical garden.

The past couple of weeks seem to be all about food around here, so here is a taste (haha) of what we’ve been doing.

With a hundred bananas ripe all at once we had to figure out something to do with them really quick. I mean seriously, you can only eat so many fresh bananas. So out came the dehydrator and we did about 70 or so bananas. What we have been doing is soaking the sliced bananas in fruit juice before they get dehydrated and they turn out great. In the past, we have used mango and orange juice, but this time we had some peach juice on hand. They always turn out good and end up tasting like a sweet chewy all-natural candy. Oh and by the way, an avocado slicer works great on bananas.

With so many bananas,  we also made frozen chocolate-covered bananas sprinkled with coconut. The chocolate was a little thick so we thinned it out with a little coconut oil so it would cover better. Talk about a tropical treat, chocolate, coconut frozen bananas, oh yah!

Well, it’s bacon time again. This time we are making two bellies for us, one for a neighbor and one for another friend. We have mostly been making a black pepper bacon, smoked with hickory. This seems to work best for us because it is great on BLT’s, breakfast, and even in chowders.

The pork bellies have cured and they were ready to go in the smoker. I was all set to use our small electric smoker since there wasn’t that much going in there. But just as I was loading it up there were a lot of big sparks and the breaker popped. Something had shorted across the heating element. I could tell because there was a big weld-like mark on it. I assume it was some type of small critter, remember the cat on Christmas Vacation? So plan “B”… fire up the big smoker, and since it was going we might as well throw on a couple racks of rib.

With St. Patty’s day quickly approaching, it was time to get some briskets in the brine so we could have some corned beef ready for that day when everybody’s Irish. There are a couple company’s here that sell packaged cuts of meat, but we like to go directly to the local butcher. When we order briskets they usually come with the bones and a bunch of other meat still attached. The butcher will trim up the briskets and give you all the bones and grind up the extra trimmings for burger.  With the two nice briskets, we also got about 6 lbs. of burger and a whole bag of bones for making some great stock. Plus we also ended up with a couple pounds of meat that were taken off the roasted bones that will make something good. If we want corned beef, we need to make it ourselves because they don’t sell it here. Well actually they do, but it comes in a little can next to the Vienna sausages, and we all know how good that stuff is.

That hogfish we got a couple weeks ago was ready for the grill so we invited a few friends over for a little beach party in the jungle. Kelley made up a pineapple, red pepper, habanero salsa with a little sour orange juice, and cilantro. That made for some great fish tacos along with some conch ceviche, jalapeño poppers, a cheesy spinach dip, corn salad, and of course margaritas.

Since we were having fish tacos and margaritas, we might as well keep up the theme with the desserts. We made these before in Mexico and they were a big hit, so why not make them again? They are personal key lime pies with a beachy theme to them.

Usually, when we make these beach desserts we buy some fruit roll-ups to use as little beach towels, but we couldn’t find any down here. So we puréed some mangos, poured them on some parchment paper, and put them in the dehydrator. Instant fruit roll-ups, can’t wait for the grandkids to get here and make some for them.

Ok, we saw this and thought we had to try it. A watermelon ham. I guess some chef in New York did it a few years ago and it was an internet sensation. So you peel the watermelon and then brine it for a few days with a bunch of herbs and spices, then rub it with olive oil and smoke it. I know at this point you’re probably wondering what I’ve been smoking. Anyway, it comes out looking like a ham. The first bite really messes with your mind, you don’t know what to think.  It was very savory with all the herbs and spices and really no flavor of the watermelon.  I’m sure vegans and vegetarians would love this, but as for me, I’m sticking to the real thing.

Just a few afterthoughts

If you plan on moving here and growing any fruits or veggies, a dehydrator is a must. From drying fruits and veggies when you have an abundance, to making your own herb and spice mixes. Unlike the states, not all fruits and veggies are available here year-round.

If you have ever grown zucchini then you know, once they start producing you can’t give them away fast enough. Well, we have decided that bananas are our new zucchini.

Since we had a big pile of banana peels we threw them in a bucket of water to make a compost tea for the garden. I’ve heard this is great for plants and I’ve also heard that it really doesn’t do much. Either way, we had a lot of peels so why not give it a try.

And just to let everyone know that we did make the 3-day challenge of not drinking beer on February 29, 30 and 31. I hope some of you did the same, but now it’s time for a cold beer…Cheers!

This past weekend we headed over to Hopkins for a little fishing, beach time, and some Valentine’s Day relaxing. The weather could not have been more perfect with the days in the 80’s and the nights in the low 70’s, plus no wind at all.

This was great, as we had a day planned out on the water to do a little tarpon fishing. We did find the tarpon, we could see them everywhere, but they just wouldn’t bite. After trying unsuccessfully all morning we decided that we had better just go and catch a few small snappers so at least we would have something to eat for lunch.

There is a whole string of small islands 12 miles or so off Hopkins, some are resorts, some are private islands and some are uninhabited. We ended up on Bread & Butter (a small, maybe 1 or 2 acre island) where you can pay a small fee to use their grill and palapa to cook up your fresh catch.

Our captain, while diving for conch and lobster, speared a big hogfish for us. We had caught enough other fish for lunch, so this delicious fish was taken back to the resort and put in their freezer for us to take home. Actually, we’re surprised we got the fish back, as everyone at the resort wanted it. In a couple of weeks, he will get put on our grill whole with a pineapple-habanero salsa and then stuffed into tortillas for some awesome fish tacos. Hogfish are highly sought after by spearfishermen and are highly regarded as a delicacy. They say they are the perfect combination of texture and flavor. Sweeter than grouper, flakier than Mahi, and richer than scallops. Of course, there will be some margaritas flowing with those tacos, now we just have to decide who to invite over for this special treat.

Out on the reef, there is a place they call bird island, actually, most of it has washed away and is now just some trees sticking out of the water. Anyway, the trees that are there, are full of frigates and I mean hundreds of them. The male frigates puff up their red throat during the breeding season. A couple of interesting things about frigates is that they have a wingspan up to 7′ 5″ and can actually sleep while flying.

One of the afternoons while we were in Hopkins, we headed over to the river to do a little bait fishing. I backed the truck down to the river’s edge, cast out the lines, plopped ourselves down on the tailgate and we enjoyed a couple cold Belikins. We didn’t catch anything, but right in front of us in the middle of the river, a big manatee came up and flipped his tail. Seeing that, was much better than catching any fish.

It was a great Valentine’s Day getaway for us. We finished up the weekend with an incredible three-hour, 7-course meal at The Odyssea restaurant in Hopkins. If you are in Hopkins be sure to check them out, great food, cold drinks, and wonderful people.

Meanwhile back at the old homestead

In the past, we’ve had some animals steal pineapples from us, but at least they’ve been nice enough to replant the tops when they were done with them. We’re doing a little more clearing out behind the house and there in the bush are some pineapple plants growing. Actually, we found five growing so far, we didn’t even know we lost that many. I’ve mentioned before that all you have to do is throw something out there and it will grow, and here’s proof.

Of course, we have more bananas. This bunch came from in front of the casita and had 102 of the local bananas on it. We left them hanging outside on the porch to ripen while we were gone for the weekend. Nothing has ever bothered them in the past, but these all ripened at once while we were gone and some critters got into them. After checking the security camera we found it was possums coming up on the porch and helping themselves. So now the bananas are in the house being eaten and processed in different ways.

Our cacao are starting to ripen and we should end up with enough to make a good batch of chocolate real soon.

We are very excited to eat our first grapefruit. We did not know what type it was until we cut into it. Once we did, it was just what we were hoping for, a nice pink grapefruit. Grapefruit are sometimes hard to find down here, especially the pink ones. So hopefully we will have an abundance of them in the future.

There are a lot of different types of orchids that we have around the house that we have relocated from other parts of the property. We have yet to find a Black Orchid (the official orchid of Belize), but our friend just brought over a couple for us from her place. With 300 or so native species of orchids in Belize, we are always on the lookout for more.

One of our neighbor’s sheep gave birth the other day, but the mother’s milk was not flowing. So he came down and got us to give him a hand, and in no time at all everything was good.

That’s about what’s happening around here the past couple of weeks. Hope everyone is doing well.

The 2021 garden is starting off good so far, as it just gave us a perfect pineapple. It was ripened on the plant and we managed to get to it before the critters did. Besides this pineapple looking so great, it set the standard of what a pineapple should be. It was the sweetest, juiciest pineapple we’ve ever tasted.

Last year we planted some dragon fruit from cuttings and it produced a few very nice fruits. The big surprise was how big and fast the plants grew in just a year, considering it’s a cactus. The plant got so big that it outgrew the trellis we built for it and we had to build a new, much bigger one. We took 24 good-sized cuttings off the original plant and set them around the new trellis. If they grow like the original ones did, starting next year we should have a great continual harvest of dragon fruit. Besides being healthy and delicious, dragon fruit makes an awesome margarita!

You know we love to experiment with making different types of foods. Well, our neighbor came by the other day with some fresh pork that he had just processed. So of course we had to get some ribs and a front shoulder. The ribs still had the skin and some belly on them so we thought, why not try and make some chicharrones (pork rinds). We found two recipes, one with just the skin and another where you leave a little of the fat on the skin. We did them both ways and they turned out good for our first time, of course, we coated them with some salt and some spicy chili powder.

As for the ribs, they will get some smoke and then a slow cook on the grill with some of our homemade BBQ sauce. The belly pieces have been cured as bacon and will then be diced into chunks with brown sugar and chili powder for some Super Bowl snacks. And the shoulder we will eventually cure for a ham, we’ll let you know how that turns out in a month or so.

A couple of days prior to our neighbor showing up with the fresh pork we had been to the butcher in town and bought a bunch of pork to make sausage. So the day before he showed up we had just finished making 20 lbs. of Italian and breakfast sausage. At this point, we are set on pork for a while.

I mentioned last time that we go looking for wild oyster mushrooms that grow around the property. Well, this time we didn’t even have to go looking for them, they were growing right in our driveway. A while back we lined our driveway with some trees we cut down, and our favorite mushrooms decided to take a hold on them. Hopefully, they will continue to grow on this log as they are delicious mushrooms, especially when sautéed on top of a steak.

We love seeing all the different wildlife we have around here, but sometimes…ugh. We expect the animals to get in the garden and eat the veggies and the sweet fruits, that’s just what they do. But lately, the trees above the back deck have ripe berries of some type that the kinkajous can’t resist. For the last couple of weeks or so they have been up there every night eating and dropping the hard peas sized berries on the deck. That’s not a problem, as we can sweep them off and all is good. But they are craping from 40′ up and it makes a big 2′ splatter when it hits the deck and the tables. If we don’t get it cleaned up first thing in the morning it dries and needs a lot of scrubbing.  Plus they don’t seem to mind that we are out there in the evenings. I can’t imaging sitting out there for a nice dinner and have a kinkajou do a major drop on one of us. So until they eat all the stuff off of those trees and move on, we’ve been eating our meals inside.

I think the toucans are figuring out that we are the “Toucan Hideaway” because they have been showing up quite a bit lately. It could just be that all the trees are full of all the stuff they like to eat, or maybe it’s the two big giant toucan decoys we have in the yard. Either way, it’s great to have these big beautiful birds around here.

I know we are all tired of this covid crap and can’t wait to get back to some sort of normalcy and traveling again. Of course, here like everywhere, masks, social distance, and constant washing of hands are a must. For the past month and a half, we have been on an 8:00 pm curfew and no alcohol sales after 6:00 pm. They just revised our curfew the other day to 10:00 pm. This means we can actually go out to dinner and have a couple of drinks and still make it back to the house before we get fined. Our borders are still closed for land and sea travel, but the airport is open. With the new rules, you must have a negative test when flying into Belize and another test before you enter back into the states. I guess all this must be working because the active cases are going down. As of today, there are 259 active cases for the entire country. Hopefully, it keeps on this downward trend and we will see some of you down here soon.

They say if you haven’t grown up by the time you turn 60, then you don’t have to! Next week we are heading over to the coast to do a little fishing for my birthday and Valentine’s Day getaway. Besides that, February 14th is the close of lobster season, so we need to get our fill of those delicious crustaceans until the season reopens again in June.

 

Last year was our second full year here and the garden did pretty well. The fruit trees were just starting to produce, and this year is looking to be even better with lots of new growth and blossoms. We had some trouble with some of the veggies last year, but I think we have it figured out now. Anyway here are a few of the things we harvested last year.

Bananas. Apple bananas, local bananas, and plantains. We started with 5 plants and now there must be at least 25. Plus you have to cut the plant down once you harvest the bananas and we have given a few plants to friends. It looks like we will always have bananas.

Cacao. We only harvested a handful of pods last year, but it was enough to make our own chocolate. This year the plants are doing much better.

Pineapples. If they last on the plant until they fully ripen then they are soooo sweet. We currently have about 150 plants.

Star Fruit. Last year we only got a few off the tree, but currently, the tree is loaded with new blossoms.

Coffee. The plants supplied us with enough to make about 25 pots of coffee. Right now the plants are starting to flower and it is looking good for this season.

Raspberries. Considering we just planted it 9 months ago, it still gave us enough to snack on. Now the plant is out of control and we are having to keep chopping it back even though it is loaded with fruit.

Guava. We had a few last year, but the tree is getting bigger and is already starting to set more fruit.

Calamansi Limes. Last year we got a dozen or so off the plant. There was a lot of growth last year so hopefully this year we will have a lot more.

Dragon Fruit. We only had a few last year and I think they were maybe the best thing in the garden. We are currently building a lot bigger trellis for them, as they are growing like crazy.

Golden Plum. This tree grew big and fast last year and was loaded with fruit. Unfortunately, it dropped most of them, but the ones that did ripen were great, sort of the texture of an apple and a slight taste of a pear.

Peanuts. Our first time growing them and they did great. We’re not sure we will plant more this year we just have to see how the space in the garden goes.

Cantaloupe. We actually did manage to harvest a few of them before the critters got to them, and they were very good.

Kale. The kale crop grew for the entire year and never stopped producing. We ate as much as we could and were giving some away to friends.

Tomatoes. They didn’t grow as we were hoping they would, but we did still get some nice tomatoes. Considering all the plants were from an old tomato that Kelley threw out in the yard.

Romaine Lettuce. We got a few nice heads, but then again insects, rains, and who knows what else got to a lot of them.

Okra.  The okra grew great here last year. Kelley breaded a bunch and froze for later and pickled a whole lot more. I think we might skip planting it this year.

Hatch Green Chiles. The plants did well last year, giving us enough to roast and save in the freezer until needed. The first harvest off of the plants was very good and hot, but the second round on the same plants were almost too hot to eat. Can’t figure that one out.

Other peppers. Habanero, cayenne, and pequin peppers. They all did pretty well which allowed us to dry, grind and make some very good extra-spicy chili salt.

Turmeric. We haven’t really used it too much, but it did grow well and is supposed to be good for you.

Mushrooms. We actually aren’t growing these we just forage for them around the property. And why not when you have wild oyster mushrooms out there.

Besides eating all this good stuff straight from the garden we also preserved them in different ways. The peanuts we made into peanut butter with a little salt and coconut oil.

There were spicy kale chips and plantain chips. Dehydrated pineapples and bananas. Pesto from the basil and peanuts. Chocolate covered peanuts. Different teas from the coffee skins, lemongrass, raspberry leaves, and moringa.

This year we are hoping that some of the other trees will start producing. There are still mango, avocado, 5 types of citrus, 3 types of apples, peaches, papaya, and macadamia nut that we are waiting patiently for. We know in the future that all these trees will be producing more than we will ever use, but I’m sure we will come up with something to do with it all.

That’s some of the harvests from 2020. There were a lot of veggies that just didn’t work out for some reason, but we will keep planting and trying until we figure out what really works here. In the meantime, we are looking forward to seeing what the garden provides for us in 2021.

We hope everyone had a great holiday season and are healthy and well. Over the last couple of months, we have gone to the states and had a few friends come down here for visits. Besides taking a little longer to get through the airport in Belize, everything went smoothly. You can still travel around the country and do and see most everything that Belize has to offer. There is currently a curfew in place, but that really doesn’t affect us as we are never out that late in the evenings. Of course, when you are out in public during the day, you still need to wear a mask.

Over the holidays we made our Rum-Popo (Belizean eggnog) like we have done for the past few years. Because we could not have social gatherings this year, we had a couple of bottles left over. So what did we do with it…we put it in the ice-cream maker and added some shaved chocolate. Let me tell you, Rum-Popo ice cream is pretty darn good!

We have not had anything in the vegetable garden in a few months now because of all the rain, (well over 30″ in the past two months).  We should be starting the dry season soon. So the seed trays are all recently planted with lots of types of peppers and squash, and we just planted broccoli, lettuce, bok-choy, kale, and some radishes in the garden. Hopefully, they will all do good and we will have a good harvest in a few months. All of the permanent plants and trees in the garden are love’n all this rain and are having major growth spurts. Last year we planted a very small raspberry plant and now it has taken over like the blob in an old sci-fi movie. There is no way to harvest the raspberries in the middle, so some major chopping and digging has to be done. Anybody want some raspberry plants?

Our small coffee harvest for this season is coming to an end. It looks like we have enough to brew about 25 pots of coffee. At this point, we are just cleaning and drying the beans and then vacuum packing them in one cup packages, which is enough for about 2-3 pots of coffee. Once we are ready to use them we will roast and grind them as needed.

Our friends Ron & Rhonda were here to try the first pot and they gave it the thumbs-up, and they drink a lot more coffee than I do. There were only a few plants that had the percentage of the coffee on them this year, but hopefully in the future when all 40 plants start really producing, we will have an abundance to start sharing.

The other day we were dropping a couple of things off at Ruben’s house and he asked us if we wanted some fresh coconuts. Of course, we said yes, we love coconuts. I’m sure Kelley will come up with something delicious to make with them.

A while back Ruben gave us a couple of poinsettias. We had them on the porch until they outgrew their pots so we planted them in the ground. They were getting about 4′ tall and then the rains came and drowned them. They were just bare sticks with no sign of life. Then around Christmas, one of them decided to get a little growth on it and it turned out to be the smallest poinsettia bloom we have ever seen. I guess it really is hard to kill plants around here.

I’ve mentioned before that we have a neighbor who lets us know when he has beef ready and another neighbor who has pork. Well, our closest neighbor Dan is now raising lambs. I can definitely see some lamb chops in our future, in fact, we might need to get a bigger freezer. This is like the trifecta of meats all within our little hood.

The Cohune nuts are starting to fall off our palm trees and that is attracting a few animals. We have been seeing squirrels jumping across the driveway or running through the trees with Cohune nuts in their mouth.

We have also been seeing agoutis right next to the house. They will just slowly walk around the yard looking for nuts and then just sit there and eat it. In case you are wondering what type of animal an agouti is, they are related to the guinea pig and will weigh up to about 8 lbs. or so. They also have a good life span and will live up to 20 years.

I guess there were a few people who did not think this was as funny as I did. A while back we found a dried vine that was wrapped around a tree trunk. I had this great idea to paint it like a green vine snake and put it on a tree in our yard. A  few people saw it and didn’t think too much about it, but then there were a couple that just wouldn’t go anywhere near it. I guess now it’s time to just move it to a different spot in the yard, I gotta keep people on their toes, don’t I?

Okay, I was not going to post this, but living in the jungle is not all happy toucans, parrots, and monkeys. There are a lot of dangerous things out here, from plants, insects, animals, and yes even snakes. The other night Kelley was walking from the garage to the house and there was a big snake stretched out right in the walkway in front of her that would not move. When we have seen snakes before they will usually quickly move out of the way never to be seen again, but this one just stood its ground. After determining what type of snake it was and that he was not going to move I had to make a decision on how to handle it. So I got the gun and it was one quick shot to the head. It was a 7′ 2″ Fer-de-Lance, one of the most venomous snakes there is. And this one here is about as big as they get. I am currently processing the skin and will mount it to a board so that everyone will be able to see it up close and be able to identify one out in the wild if they ever came across one. And if anything was to ever happen we do have 3 doses of antivenom in the fridge.

No matter where you live there are always dangers of insect bites, snakes, wild animals, or even random gunfire, it just depends on how you choose to accept it. Hopefully, this did not scare you off from coming down for a visit, as there are a lot more toucans, monkeys, and other beautiful animals to see than there are snakes around here. Hopefully, we will see you soon.

 

One of our favorite local artists (Walter Castillo) posted another painting that he had just completed. We saw it and fell in love with it! The painting is of a festival in Placencia, which we have been to a few times, so we really related to the subject matter. Plus it was the perfect size we had been looking for to fill an empty space over the front door. This was an early Christmas gift to us and it was perfect!

Being the Christmas season we thought we would try our hand at making some summer sausage. We looked at a bunch of recipes and spice options and put together one we thought would suit us. After grinding and seasoning the beef, it got stuffed into the casings and then into the smoker. It turned out very tasty, with great color, texture, and the flavor was better than anything we could buy here. Now we just need to test it out on some friends during the holidays and see what they think.

Our cacao is doing great and they are starting to ripen. Soon we should have enough to start processing and turning it into some delicious chocolate.

Of course, we still have a steady supply of pineapples and bananas. This bunch is the small apple bananas that are sweet, delicious, and our favorites. There are 120 on this stalk, now we are just waiting for them to finish ripening. Maybe there will be some chocolate-covered frozen bananas in our future.

We have lots of parrots that fly over all the time and some groups are quiet and some are very noisy. Now that we actually got some pictures of the noisy ones we discovered that they are Olive Throated Parakeets. We didn’t even know there were parakeets here. I think the locals call them all parrots because they all look sorta the same. Remember when you went to a pet store and all the parakeets would start squawking, that’s what it sounds like when they fly over.

We finally found Rio Frio Cave! Last year when Darren was here we searched for it, but Google maps lied and we never got to it. This time we had better information and found it without any problem. It is the largest cave opening in Belize with an entrance of 65 feet tall. I know… how could we not find it last year.

There is a rough set of stairs leading up to the entrance and a small trail that will take you into and through the cave. Once inside the dark cave, there were waterfalls, stalactites, stalagmites, and even a sandy beach.

A little farther in, the cave turned a little and you could see the opening at the other end. There is a trail that takes you through the cave and hikes you up around in the jungle and back around towards the entrance. Overall the cave is only about a 1/4 mile long but very impressive.

As we were heading into the cave Kelley spotted some Howler monkeys up in the trees above us. There were at least four of them and one of them was even holding a baby. Once we got into the cave they all started howling, like they didn’t want us in there, which made for a very eerie sound inside the cave. Overall, it took us about an hour each way on a dirt road from our place to get to the cave. Definitely worth checking out when you visit.

For the last few days of Darren’s trip, we decided to head over to the beach in Placencia. There were no real plans on doing anything, just hanging out at the beach. We did try to get a day charter out to this two-acre island for some relaxing and a beach BBQ, but the weather did not cooperate with us.

Since the weather was not being too cooperative, we ended up doing a lot of walking around. The good thing is that there are some good bars scattered up and down the beach. And with names like Tipsy Tuna, Barefoot, Pickled Parrot, and Toucan Jacks, how could you not stop.

So we spent a couple of days on the beach staring out into the Caribbean, listening to reggae music and day drinking. I guess someone had to do it, and it was our turn.

We did all get our lobster grilled cheese sandwich fix at Barefoot bar, and that made us very happy.  Plus Darren managed to get some Big Titty Rum. We called the guy who makes the rum and he was in the process of bottling, so once he was done he delivered it right to us.

Well, that’s about it for now, Darren is back home and I’m sure thinking about his next trip. Kelley is in the kitchen making Christmas cookies and I’m thinking about all my projects for this week. More friends will be here over the holidays, so I’m sure there will be a lot more fun to be had.

Take care and Merry Christmas!

After a month of heavy rains, it is starting to dry out around here. The sun keeps sneaking out and the temps are back to the 70’s – 80’s and all the plants are loving it. There are still light showers predicted every day for another week or so, but that just means we don’t need to water the garden.

With all the rains we had last month it brought out a couple creatures we’ve never seen here before. We have seen a lot of different types of frogs and toads around here but this one was a little different.

It’s a Mexican burrowing toad. It has a very small head with tiny eyes and red, yellow, or orange coloring on its back. They live most of the time underground and only come out after a heavy rain. An interesting fact about this toad is that their tongue projects straight out of their mouths, unlike all others that roll out.

Another creature that the rains brought out was this little turtle. We think he is a White-lipped mud turtle, which makes sense because right now we have a lot of mud around here. Kelley picked him up for a picture and when she set him down he scurried away pretty quickly (for a turtle anyway).

All the animals seem to be getting a lot more active around here. We are seeing a bunch of wood rails, toucans, and other colorful birds and we even had a big green iguana ( about 30″) stop and sit up on a log by the garage.

Every morning and evening flocks and flocks of parrots fly over the house. You can hear them coming a mile away squawking as they fly by.

Another rare sight was 3 king vultures flying over the house. King vultures are predominantly white with a colorful head of red, yellow, orange, and purple and have a wingspan of up to 7 feet. We have only seen them one other time and that was way up in the hills.

Also, there are a lot of different colorful butterflies around right now. At least a few times a day we are seeing the blue morphos, which are our favorites butterflies with their iridescent blue color.

Hopefully, we will start seeing some bigger animals around here and maybe they will even pose for some pictures.

Now that it’s drying up, there is lots of yard work and projects to get done. First of all, was to get some more veggies in the ground. This time we planted, broccoli, bok choy, lettuce, radishes, and more kale. There will be more types of veggies going in as soon as we get more of the garden cleaned up and back in shape.

All the plants and fruit trees have tons of new growth on them. There are currently four big bunches of bananas that will be ready very soon, we have pineapples sitting on the counter and the coffee plants are still producing like crazy. This next season the garden should supply us with a lot of fruits and veggies.

Besides all the fruits and veggies we have growing around here, we also have some nice flowering plants. Most of them usually have colorful flowers year-round. Which means we can usually put together a nice arrangement just about any time.

Next on the list is to get our little jungle home looking like Christmas. Lights on the house, a new bigger Christmas tree this year, and of course the monkeys were helping to hang the garland again.

Then it was time to freshen up the casita and get ready for our first guest since February. A little bit of new paint, a new table for the porch, and a smart tv that has a flash drive loaded with a bunch of different tv shows, so no more dvd player to mess with. Darren will be here soon for 10 days, and then Ron & Rhonda will be here over Christmas and New Years. It will be great to have friends coming back down once again. If you are up for a visit, just let us know and we will put you on the calendar. We look forward to seeing you soon.

After about 9 months of the country being locked down, they finally opened the airport back up. So we decided to take advantage of this and fly to the states to see some friends, family, grandkids, and our new granddaughter.  Of course, this almost didn’t happen.

A few days before we were supposed to leave, a Cat 4 hurricane (Eta) with 150 mph winds was bearing down on Nicaragua to the south of us. Luckily Belize was spared the big winds but received massive amounts of rain. In some places, the river rose more than 35′ above the normal water line causing some devastating flooding.

The day we left for the airport it was raining heavily, but there was no report of our flight being canceled so we continued on. Later that day we had reports of the highway being washed out and the river had now spilled onto the highway. Plus there was so much water on the runway that they had to close the airport. We were lucky to be a few hours ahead of all that was happening, otherwise, we wouldn’t have made it out.

We finally made it to Arizona after spending a night in Houston (because of flight schedules). We haven’t seen the grandkids in about a year and they are looking good and growing fast. The real excitement for us was getting to meet our new granddaughter for the first time, and she is a cutie.

While we were there we had a chance to catch up with a bunch of friends, get in some shopping and give Amazon a good workout. Of course, we had to hit all of our favorite restaurants and cook up some of our favorites foods that we just can’t get in Belize, such as snow crab, artichokes, and good Mexican food.

Since you can’t get good hard dry salami in Belize, I decided to bring one back in my backpack. Well, the airport scanner in Phoenix did not like that and thought it was a liquid of some sort, but after a thorough inspection, they let it go through. Then as we went through Houston it was pulled aside again, inspected, and even x-rayed this time. I guess if you want to bring salami on the plane you need to pack it in your checked baggage unless you really want to confuse the TSA.

While we were up in the states there was another hurricane forming (Iota) in the Caribbean and it was once again set on hitting Nicaragua. This one quickly built up to a Cat 5 with 160 mph winds and gusts up to 200 mph. These two hurricanes hit Nicaragua within two weeks of each other and made landfall within 15 miles of each other, causing mass destruction and loss of lives. Once again Belize was spared the winds, but not the massive amounts of rain. So just as the rivers in Belize were receding back to normal, everything changed and they were on the rise once again.

The Atlantic usually has an average of 12 named storms per season, using the alphabet to name them. This year is the most named storms on record with 30 so far. They have gone through the alphabet and are now halfway through the Greek alphabet. The hurricane season supposedly ends in November, let sure hope so.

We are fine where we are, everything held up great. Lots of rain still coming down, but it’s all going where it is supposed to go. At this point, we have recorded close to 20″ of rain out of the two storms. A few of the plants didn’t make it, but most of them are looking good and I’m sure they will have a major growth spurt in the near future. I’m also sure there are a few trees down somewhere on the property, we just haven’t looked for them yet. This is by far the most rain we have ever experienced. If you are planning on coming down for a visit, everything should be exceptionally green, even more so than normal, if you can believe that.

Oh, and if anyone is wondering how getting into Belize through the airport went. It took a little longer because of distancing and safety precautions, but overall it went just fine. We did a free rapid Covid test at a CVS pharmacy in AZ, 72 hours prior to landing in Belize so all was a go for us once we landed.

Good news… at this point, the regulations on quarantine and where you can stay when you arrive through the airport in Belize has lightened up. I believe that all that is required now is a negative Covid test 72 hours prior to arriving here or a rapid test once you arrive here at the airport. If you choose to do the test here (and it is Negative) it will take about 30 minutes and cost you $50 usd. Of course, masks and hand washing are still required anywhere out in public, but at least the country is open back up to tourists.

Just in time for Halloween, there have been a couple bats hanging on the house and the garage. Halloween is all about vampire bats, big scary spiders, and things that creep around in the dark. Well, we do have a lot of things that creep around in the dark, big scary spiders and yes we even have real vampire bats here. So no need for fake store-bought Halloween decorations, we have the real things out here. Happy Halloween!

Since our coffee is ripening at a steady rate now, we need to pick it every few days. Last year we got just enough for me to make a couple cups of coffee and try it. This year we should get at least a few pounds once we process it. In a few years when all 40 plants are producing well, we might just need a burro with some baskets to help carry it all.

Some of the locals here roast their coffee in a pan on top of the stove. We tried that last year (since we only had a small amount) and it was a pain in the ass, so we recently ordered a small coffee roaster. This way we can control the heat and figure out how to get a constant roast the way we want it. Plus the roaster can also be used to roast our cocoa, peanuts, sunflower seeds, and other stuff from the garden. Obviously, if all the coffee plants really start producing we’ll have to have it roasted by someone who actually knows what they are doing.

Okay, so we finally got around to making a tea out of the dried coffee skins called cherry tea or cascara. I guess Starbucks even makes a latte with cascara syrup.  We brewed it up and tried it cold, as we are not real big on hot tea. It was really good with a bit of fruitiness to it, and then we added a squirt of Calamansi lime from the garden and it was even better. I guess we can now say we are growing cascara along with our coffee. So if you are staying at the Toucan Hideaway in the near future there’s a good chance you can sample some of our homegrown coffee or some cascara tea.

A few weeks ago when we were over on the coast we decided to stop in a chocolate factory and buy 10 lbs. of bulk dark chocolate that is grown and made right here in Belize. Our plan is to start playing with it so that when we start getting a lot of cocoa on our plants we will have an idea of what we are doing.  Some of our cocoa plants are 7-8 feet tall now and starting to produce, so we just want to be ready when it’s time to start making our own chocolate, plus who doesn’t want 10lbs. of chocolate.

A couple years ago we were driving around our village and saw a big tree with baggies all over it, and yes we thought that was a little strange, but at that point, everything was new to us. Well now that we know what it was, we have our own baggie tree. I guess when guava gets the size of a small baseball you need to put a baggie over them to keep the bugs from burrowing in. Once the guava starts to smell sweet or fill up the baggie they are ready to pick, so we’ve been told. We assume that the animals know they are getting ripe judging by the broken tree branches and the missing baggies of fruit.

Last week we got our small electric smoker out and smoked some snapper and barracuda that we picked up on the coast. We love smoked fish and haven’t smoked any since we use to live at the beach in Mexico, and it was delicious!

While the smoker was out we also make 5lbs. of spicy, finger-size beef snack sticks and we smoked a big pork roast for some pulled pork with homemade BBQ sauce. Of course, we wanted to share this deliciousness, so we had a few friends over for a sampling of the smoked fish and some pulled pork sandwiches. There was also corn on the cob, some fried okra from the garden, and ice cold beer. Who needs restaurants anyway?

We recently sold our two Polaris 800 4×4 quads. We didn’t use them as much as we thought we would, plus now we have a Jeep and knew they would end up just sitting in the garage. So now there is a lot more room in the garage for more toys or another project. Who knows, maybe a boat over on the coast, then we could have a lot more fish to smoke.

It’s looking like there will be a new option for shopping down in the town of Santa Elena. We don’t know if they are associated with Sam’s in the states, but we will definitely check them out once they open.

Stay safe and we will see you soon.

 

 

Recently Ruben brought over 15 Mahogany trees for us that were about 6 months old. We were concerned about how they would grow under the cover of all the other trees on the property, or if we would have to clear an area for them. He said that it would be perfect under the other trees because they will grow tall and straight in search of sunlight and we would end up with nice trees. Since that is the case, as soon as the farmers have more seeds we will get more started and hopefully, by next year we will have a few hundred mahogany trees growing on the property. I have read that they can be harvested in as little as 10 years or wait 25 years till they are fully mature. At any rate, this will be great for our son or our grandkids in the future and hopefully, they can harvest them and build something really awesome.

There are some things that you just can’t find here such as stone-ground mustard. Having all that pastrami we just made, we knew it needed a good mustard. So after looking around for quite a while we found some mustard seeds and decided that we could make our own. Kelley looked up a recipe and ended up making some good spicy mustard that goes great with the pastrami.

Other things that are hard to find here, but not impossible are pepperoncinis which also go great with a pastrami sandwich. So we ordered in some seeds and now we have about 50 plants growing. If all goes well, within a few months we should have some nice pickled pepperoncinis.

We only have a couple habanero and bird pepper plants (which is about all you really need) and they produce quite a few peppers. We usually just dry them and grind them up for later use, but we had quite a bit of ground peppers so we decided to make some hot sauces. The combinations of different spices and peppers gave each one a distinct flavor, now we just have to narrow it down to which ones we like the best. Oh…and they are all very hot!

Our coffee is starting to ripen and at this point, we are getting a small handful every other week or so. The other day Kelley was peeling the skins off the beans and asked if you could do anything with them. So a quick google search and it turns out you can make a tea with them called Cherry Skin tea or Cascara. I guess it’s a common tea in coffee-growing nations and is just catching on in the states, fetching more price per pound than the actual coffee bean itself. I’ll give it a try and let you know what I think, who knows maybe we are onto something here?

When we were initially buying all of our fruit trees we bought one called a Chinese Plum. We had no idea what it was, but we were curious to see and taste the fruit that would come off it. Well, it started to bear fruit and after a little more research we found out that a more common name is the Jujube fruit. It’s a small fruit between the size of a cherry and a plum. When green it has the texture of an apple and taste pretty good. And I guess when it turns brown it takes on more of a date flavor. It has a wide variety of culinary uses from soups to jams to wines. It’s a good thing there are a lot of different uses for this Jujube as the tree is loaded with new fruit right now and this is only the first year.

All restaurants here are still closed with the exception of takeout or delivery and that really doesn’t work for us since we are quite a ways from them. Cooking at home has been great, but the percentage of the time we usually end up making the same things over and over. So we started getting a little more creative and thinking, if we saw this on a menu would we order it? So this week we came up with a grilled lobster stuffed Portobello mushroom. Olive oil the mushroom, add some Italian seasoning, a little mozzarella cheese, topped with lobster and a few scallions on top of that. Surprisingly it was very light and it was pretty tasty too. We think it could be a keeper.

Kelley also recently made some pesto with the peanuts and basil from the garden, so we decided to fire up the pizza oven and make a lobster, artichoke heart, and pesto pizza. Of course, there were also some basic pepperoni and homemade sausage pizzas. Since we’re not going out to any restaurants we are definitely trying some new recipes and hopefully the good ones we can share with you sometime when you are down here.

Since the pizza oven was fired up, it was a great time to try out my new pizza peel that I recently made. It’s made out of scrap tongue and groove Nargosta hardwood, leftover from the house build, so it should hold up very well.

We are having a lot of fun growing and trying things here that we never thought we could grow or even knew that they existed. Plus making from scratch all the different things that we used to just run to the store and buy. We are seriously in a foodies paradise, and we are loving it!

The Egg Update

The picture of the little eggs we found in the garage a few weeks ago finally hatched. They were just what we thought they were, geckos. We let them go outside, but I think they found their way back into the garage. There are a few geckos, other lizards, and usually a toad that lives in there. I assume by all their turds around that they are eating a lot of the bugs, otherwise they probably wouldn’t be living in the garage.

The airport has been closed since March (192 days), but next week it opens back up for tourists and travel. We also just got word that restaurants can open back up to dine-in customers with reservations, but limited to ten at a time. We’ll keep you updated on how this all goes so that we can all start making plans once again.

We recently posted pictures of our elephant ear plants and how big the leaves are getting. Little did we know that they were going to bloom with a few lily type flowers. So besides the plant having these very big beautiful leaves they also get flowers. The plants down here are constantly amazing us.

Another plant that grows wild around the property is passion fruit. In my opinion, the fruit is so-so to eat, but the star of the plant is the beautiful flowers that it produces. There are a lot of flowering plants down here, but the passion fruit flower is by far my favorite. If you are ever down here visiting and there are some blooming we will definitely point them out so you can get some pictures.

Kelley saves or throws out in the yard every seed from everything, and usually, they grow. Recently she planted some papaya seeds and you guessed it, they grew. She just planted about 20 papaya trees that should produce within a year or so since their lifespan is only a few years. It might sound like a lot of plants, but once they get bigger and we determine the males from the females then we’ll thin them out. We are not big fans of fresh papaya, but dehydrated they are pretty good, plus they will be great on the bird feeders.

We’re gonna need some more monkeys! We just harvested another bunch of the small sweet apple bananas. We knew they would be ready soon and I estimated about 120 or so on this bunch. Well, I was way off…there were 183 bananas on this stalk, our biggest one so far. The last big bunch we ate as many as we could and then Kelley sliced the rest, soaked them in mango juice, and then dehydrated them. Currently, we have dehydrated mangos, pineapple, and the mango soaked bananas in the fridge and the bananas are my favorite. Looks like more banana-everything.

Outside Kelley’s office window we set up a bird feeder so she can watch all the different types of birds and get some good pictures. Well, the other day there was a big surprise when a Collared Forest Falcon landed there just 20′ outside her window. It was the biggest bird that has been on the feeder so far and being a falcon we know he wasn’t there for the fruits.

As you know we love all types of food and especially Mexican food. The problem is that a lot of the ingredients for Mexican food like we are used to are not available down here. For instance, we had to grow our own Hatch (Anaheim) green chilies, make chorizo from scratch, and hominy is impossible to find. We’ve really been craving a big pot of posole, but the main ingredient is hominy. So along with the last Amazon order, we ordered a couple of bags of dried hominy so we could finally get our posole fix. Wouldn’t you know that the very next time we were at the grocery store they had cans of hominy, and we look for it every single time we go to the store. Oh well, we finally got our fix of posole and it was soooooo good.

Recently we were sitting out back and the sun was beating down on us and we thought that it would be great if we had an umbrella on one of the tables. We found a few at the local stores, but they were very expensive. So we thought why not ask the beer distributor if they had any, after all, they are quite common at restaurants. The distributor didn’t have any and didn’t even know where we could get one. So I asked at one of the restaurants and he said he has a guy and could get me one. About a month later he called and there it was, a brand new, in the box, Belikin table umbrella, and the price was excellent! So now when you are hanging out here having a couple cold Belikins while we’re grilling something up, we’ve got you covered.

It seems that everywhere you go down here they are taking your temp before you are allowed to go inside.  At our place, we are adopting that same policy and making sure our beer is the right temp before it enters our system. So far we have had no problems with the beer and everything is good. If everyone adopted this policy then the world would be a better place, well, except for those countries where they like their beer the same temp as they are.

Just before we moved here we were sitting at a restaurant in Mexico having some pizza and beer, when a guy walked up selling old road maps. At first, I said no thank you, then I decided to take a look anyway. Turns out he had a map of the Caribbean, and since we were moving there I bought it for $5.  Once we got it home I discovered that it was a Nat Geo map from 1947. It was very cool as Belize wasn’t a country yet, it was still British Honduras. Puerto Peñasco, MX where we lived was on the map, but San Carlos, MX was not.  Anyway, we finally got it mounted to a board and hung up in the garage. It’s great to look at this 73-year-old map and see everything that has changed over the years.

Speaking of change, the Toucan Hideaway has changed a lot this year. From the new deck, pizza oven, smoker, and tables out back, to getting reliable internet. The fruit trees are starting to mature, all the landscaping plants around the house are filling in and the grass is starting to fill in over the rocks in the driveway. Whether you’ve been here before or it will be your first time, you’ll love what we’ve done.

Hope to see you soon.

Hurricane Nana passed through Belize in the middle of the night. At least up here where we are there was very little wind and even less rain. We never lost power and it pretty much seemed like any other night, with the exception of waiting for what could happen. We woke up this morning to calm, blue, semi cloudy skies. The birds were out making noises and everything around here looked great!

We have slowly been taking down some trees that we thought were too close to the house. This storm was sort of a wake up call that we really need to get the rest of them down soon. We feel like we got lucky this time, so it looks like this Labor Day weekend we will be thinning out some more trees.

It looks like Belize is going to take a direct hit tomorrow from hurricane Nana, and I’m not talking about Kelley. It is currently a tropical storm, but it’s expected to become a hurricane later today. I guess this is the earliest “N” named storm ever recorded. I think we are prepared for it.  Everything is fuled up, extra water, lots of food, flashlights everywhere, generator and chainsaws are working, all butane tanks are full and a good supply of beer. We’ll keep everyone posted on how it all goes.

Well, the so-called second wave of this Covid virus has hit Belize and hit it hard. The country has gone from 40 total cases a month ago to close to 1,000 now. So at this point, we are back on a two week lock-down, no social gatherings, curfews in place, plus a lot of businesses closed. So we are just laying low and trying to be as safe as possible. We had big hopes that the country had this under control and we were starting to get back to a normal routine, but that changed when everyone let their guard down and carried on like nothing had ever happened. The Prime Minister announced that October 1st the airport will open back up and a couple of airlines have schedules in place. Let’s hope this works.

Back in May, Antonio (who built our house) was out at his farm when he came across a baby owl who was sitting on the ground by its dead mother.  He called us about it and we passed on information to him about the Belize Raptor Center. They said they would come out and pick it up. So Antonio carefully took the owl home until they could get there.

The center cared for this tiny Mottled Owl for 3 months until it was finally old enough and ready to be released back into the wild. It was a long way back to the farm where they found her, so we suggested that they could release her on our property. They liked that idea, so one evening as the sun was setting, Antonio and his family gathered at our place to watch the release. The cage was opened and the owl looked around for a minute and then took off up into the trees. If it wasn’t for everyone’s efforts this baby owl never would have had a chance to survive on its own. The Raptor Center told us that the owl should not venture too far from our property, so maybe we’ll get to see her again sometime.

The Belize Raptor Center rescues and rehabilitates injured and orphaned birds of prey, while they inspire the conservation and education of these magnificent creatures. The Raptor Center should definitely be on your list of things to visit when you are in Belize.

The other day while moving a light-up sign in the garage, we noticed some of these round white things the size of peas. At first, we thought they were some type of spider eggs until one rolled off the table and broke just like a regular egg. Since there are a lot of geckos in the garage we suspect that’s what they are. So at this point, they are in a jar and once they hatch we’ll let you know what they really are.

Well, the iguanas are still hanging around and this one seems to have taken up residence in our moringa tree. With all the healthy benefits of the moringa, he should be one healthy iguana. By the way, our moringa tree we planted just two years ago from seed is already well over 20′ tall. We mostly use the leaves for tea even though there are many other ways to get all the healthy benefits from this “Tree of Life”.

Bananas! We usually pick our bananas when they are green and then hang them on the porch for a few days where they will start to ripen. Usually, a few will ripen every day, well not this time, all 70 on the bunch decided to ripen at the same time. The good thing is that these are small apple bananas and are about half the size and twice as sweet as a regular banana.

Since they were all ready at once we had to get busy using them up. So first thing on the list was some banana daiquiris. Then there was some banana strawberry ice cream, banana cream pie, and some banana honey jam. We are still going to have to find some more recipes because our next stalk of bananas has over 120 on it and they will be ready to pick in a couple weeks or so.

Our pineapple crop all started with cutting the tops off and planting them and then waiting two years for them to produce. Now that we have pineapples we can take the slips (small shoots that grow under the fruit) and plant them. These will only take about a year before they start to produce as opposed to 2 years from the top. At this point, we have about 100 plants, and every time we pick one, we plant 3-7 more slips.

The garden just keeps on giving and this time it was dragon fruit! I know they always say that the fruits or veggies you grow yourself are better than any you could ever buy. That was definitely the case with these dragon fruits. They are sweet, juicy, and oh so good.

This being the wet season we have been getting a little bit of rain almost daily, just enough that we don’t have to water the garden. The other day started out with clear blue skies ( I even washed the truck) until about noon when the rain started. It rained heavily for about an hour then clear skies for an hour and then more rain for another hour. In that short amount of time, we recorded over five inches of rain. All the water was flowing where it was supposed, so everything here was good.

Before we moved here, a client of ours gave us a grinding mill that in the future we could use for coffee and other things. The other day Ruben brought over a sack of dried corn that needed to be ground for chicken feed. We ran it through the mill once and it was perfect. He told us that usually, he would have to pay and send it by bus somewhere to be ground because there isn’t a machine anywhere around here.

In exchange for grinding the corn, Ruben chopped down a tree that had fallen on the casita after the big rains.  We try to keep the trees cut back from the buildings, but this one broke a good 20′ up and had to fall somewhere.

Recently we picked up a couple more slabs of wood. The round one will go on a tree stump out back as a tabletop. As for the other one, no plans yet, but I’m sure we will think of something.

A LITTLE OF THIS AND A LITTLE OF THAT

Recently a gas station in town was selling margaritas when you purchased gas. I guess everyone is getting a little creative in their marketing.

Our friend at the beer distributor sells slices of cake once a week that his wife makes. Beer and cake in one stop, you can’t beat that. The chocolate cake was fantastic!

We just traded our old tires off the truck for some fresh beef and vegetables. Not too bad considering we were just going to dispose of the tires anyway.

There was never a shortage of TP down here, but now there are no canning jars. We were told that since everyone in the states is now doing home canning there are none available to ship to Belize.

There is a company here that all they do is shipping, so when you order something you send it to their warehouse in Texas, and in a couple of weeks, it’s here ready for pickup. On the back of their shirts is says “It’s just like Christmas”. It makes sense because sometimes you just forget what you ordered on Amazon.

That’s about what’s happening here, hopefully, within the next couple of months, we will be able to make a trip up to the states to meet our new granddaughter.

There’s not much happening around here in the way of new adventures or excitement lately, even the animals seem to be laying low. The things that are keeping us busy around here is tending to the garden and making some good food. So here is a little update on the food situation at the Toucan Hideaway.

Up in the garden, it was time to get the old tomato plants pulled out and get something new in there. Since we already had some good trellis set up where the tomatoes were, we decided to plant cucumbers for pickling. Prior to the tomatoes that same area is where we previously had planted peanuts. Of course, when you pull up the peanuts there are always a few that are left in the ground, and of course, they grew. So as we pulled out the dead tomatoes we also had some peanuts that were ready to dig up and be roasted.

Besides the new pickle plants, we also just put in some bush beans, romaine lettuce, and yellow squash. The okra is still doing good and the sweet corn is starting to get a bunch of ears on them. Good sweet corn is sometimes hard to find here or it’s pretty expensive, so we are excited to hopefully have some good corn.

We also still have a variety of peppers growing and a few artichoke plants that we have big hopes for. And of course, there is a handful of pineapples that are just about ready to be picked. There are also a few cilantro plants that Kelley loves, me not so much.

The one thing we are really excited about is our 12 or so asparagus plants, where some of the shoots are already starting to get as thick as a pencil. Hopefully, by next year we will have a constant crop of asparagus, especially since it’s very expensive here, about $1 a stalk at the market.

Well, this was our first time making chocolate out of cacao that we actually grew. It was quite a process, we had to ferment all the seeds for a while, then dry them in the sun and then roast and peel them until we had cacao nibs. After that, we put them in a food processor and ground them until they turned into a powder and then eventually a creamy texture where some sugar was added. After that, it was into a double boiler to temper it so it will harden correctly. I really had doubts about this whole process, but considering it was our first time making chocolate from scratch it turned out amazing. We ended up pouring the chocolate over some of our homegrown peanuts and some of them even got topped with a fresh raspberry from the garden. Everything except the sugar was grown in our garden and who knows maybe we just need to grow some sugar cane. Anyway who would have thought you could grow chocolate candy, I thought you could only grow veggies in the garden.

After making all the chocolate treats there were some peanuts leftover. Instead of just eating them, Kelley went out and picked a bunch of basil and made some pesto. Usually, Kelley uses pine nuts to make pesto, but they are hard to find down here. In the past she has made pesto using cashews, almonds, peanuts, pine nuts and they all have their own very unique flavor.

Currently, four of our banana plants have bunches on them. There are the local bananas which are just like regular bananas, the apple bananas that are small and sweet, then there are the plantains that are good for cooking or to make chips with. Our biggest bunch to date is the apple bananas and there are at least 120+ bananas on the stalk. It looks like more banana-everything is in our future.

This season our coffee plants are doing quite well and we know that as time goes on they will do even better. Only a couple of plants are loaded like the one in this picture, but most of them do have berries on them.

Good fresh deli-style meats pretty much do not exist down here. So for the past couple of weeks, we have been curing nine beef briskets that were finally ready to be processed. Three of the briskets will be saved for corned beef; one for corned beef and cabbage and the other two sliced up for some reuben sandwiches.

The other six will be seasoned, smoked, and steamed for pastrami. As for the pastrami…well, it’s getting sliced, vacuum-sealed, and ready to be made into some of the best sandwiches in Belize.

Oh, and our little restaurant outback finally opened up again and this time it opened as a Jerked Chicken Shack. They served jerked chicken, fry jacks, and grilled sweet corn. Of course, a meal like that would not be complete without a couple cold Belikin’s and some Marie Sharp’s pepper sauce. The sweet corn actually came from the field next to us and was some of the best corn we have had down here. Our sweet corn that we planted a while back should be ready in about a month and we can’t wait to try it.

We have no shortage of good fresh food down here and hopefully someday when you come for a visit we can share it with you.

We get asked all the time about what kind of animals we have seen down here. I’ve already posted pictures of some of the birds, lizards, and colorful insects we have around here, so this time I will tell you about the other animals we have seen on the property. Birds are easy to get a picture of, but the animals on the ground will take off as soon as they see you. So most of these pictures are pulled from the web as we don’t always have a camera ready when we do see something.  Anyway, these are the animals we’ve seen on the property so far, we have seen other animals in our travels around Belize, but these are there ones around the house.

Margay Cat

The Margay is a small cat that rarely gets bigger than about 8 lbs. It’s a nocturnal hunter that spends most of its life in the treetops. A Margay’s ankles can rotate 180 degrees allowing him to climb down a tree headfirst.

Tayra or Bush Dog

The Tayra is a member of the weasel family and can get up to 48″ long including its tail. They do most of their hunting by scent since they have relatively poor eyesight.

Nine-Banded Armadillo

This armadillo is one of the largest species weighing up to 22 lbs. Unlike other armadillos, this one can not roll itself up into a ball. However, it is capable of floating across rivers by inflating its intestines, or by sinking and running across riverbeds. It is possible to sink and run across the bottom due to the fact that it can hold its breath for up to 6 minutes.

Paca, Gibnut, or Royal Rat

The Paca is the sixth-largest rodent in the world, weighing up to 30 lbs and reaching a length of 30″. They are great swimmers and when threatened will dive and can stay submerged for up to 15 minutes. They can also jump up to 3′ in the air and when threatened will freeze for up to 45 minutes. These are very common animals around here.

Tamandua Collared Anteater

The Collared Anteater will get up to about 60″ long and a weight of around 18 lbs. They eat mostly ants and termites, scooping them up with their amazing 18″ tongue.

White-Nosed Coati

Coatis are omnivores and will reach a weight of 18 lbs. Coatis also have ankles that can rotate 180 degrees allowing them to walk down a tree headfirst. Their long snout-like nose can rotate up to 60 degrees in any direction to aid in their search for food. We have seen a lot of Coatis around the property, and as many as 15 at a time.

Jaguarundi

The Jaguarundi is a medium-sized cat, getting up to around 15 lbs. Unlike other cats, the Jaguarundi is mainly active during the day. We have seen brown ones and a black one with 3 kittens walking behind her.

 Gray Fox

We have seen a few of the gray foxes in our driveway from time to time. And unlike other canines, the Gray Fox can climb trees.

Opossum

Opossums are marsupials, meaning they have a pouch like a kangaroo. When threatened or harmed they will “play dead”. When playing dead their lips are drawn back, the teeth are bared, saliva foams around the mouth, the eyes are half-closed and a foul-smelling fluid is secreted from the anal gland. There are quite a few possums around here, we usually see them at night eating the fruit we put out for the birds.

Agouti

The Agouti is a rodent that is related to the Guinea Pig. Agoutis can grow up to 24″ in length and weigh up to 9 lbs. They are renowned for being very fast runners, able to keep hunting dogs occupied with chasing them for hours.

Yucatan Squirrel

Squirrels are constantly running around the yard and jumping from tree to tree and gathering cohune nuts.

Kinkajou

Kinkajous or Honey Bear is not closely related to any other tree-dwelling mammal group. They are seldom seen by people because of their nocturnal habits. When the fruits are ripe in the trees above our house we have seen four at a time up there feeding.

These are just the animals that we have personally seen on our property, we know there are a lot more out there that we just haven’t seen yet. We have neighbors who have seen Jaguars, Deer, Peccaries, and Monkeys all around this area. Most of these animals are very active at night and that’s when we should be out looking for them. It’s just that neither one of us has got the guts to take a walk in the dark, dense jungle in the middle of the night.

It’s hard to believe that it has already been two years this June that we have been living in the jungles of Belize. I guess time really does fly by when you are very busy and squeezing in a little fun too. Anyway, we were looking back at some pictures of how the Toucan Hideaway has evolved over the past couple of years and we thought we would like to share them with you.

The Driveway

The first thing we had to do was to get a road cut into the property. Once we found a spot where the house could go, a good solid road had to be laid down. Lots of cutting, burning, scraping, and solid material going down, but finally, there was an all-weather road that we could drive on. Eventually, it was finished up with an entry gate and fence.

The Guest House

Next on the list was to build a small house where we could live while they were building our home. We ended up living in the guest house for 6 months until our place was done. Now that we have moved out, it’s a great guest house for family and friends when they come for a visit.

Our Jungle Home

The spot we chose for the house turned out to be perfect. We wanted it set between two big Cohune palm trees, plus be back in the shade a little to help keep the house cool on the inside.

The Garage

Of course, we had to have a garage of some type to store our stuff and to work on projects. The original plan was for it to be a little bigger, but we downsized it a little and it turned out perfect.

The Garden

We needed a big garden but didn’t want to clear too much land. When they cleared along the road to install our power poles they cut a bunch of big trees along it. So we went in and cleared that section up and left a buffer of smaller trees to grow along the roadside. That way we ended up with a nice garden section that is not visible from the road.

The Outdoor Kitchen and Bar

Our original plan was to build the BBQ into the porch so that we could still cook when it rained. Then we thought about how much we loved our big outdoor palapa kitchen in Mexico and decided why not build something like that here. So that’s when we got carried away and decided that it might as well have everything we’ve ever wanted. Once it was done there was a big built-in BBQ grill with rotisserie, a brick pizza oven, a smokehouse, a sink, and a big deck with wood slab tables where everyone could hang out.

Of course, there were many problems and setbacks along the way. Such as, when we were ready to build the main house there was no wood available, or a 3-hour drive for materials sometimes two or three times a day. Anyway, It’s been a very busy two years for us to create our own little piece of paradise in the Belizean Jungle. We say we are done building and doing stuff around here, but with ten acres and crazy ideas, you never know what we’ll do next.

Hope we see you at the Toucan Hideaway soon.

Okay, so here are a few of the more colorful birds that we have seen around here. All the bird pictures were taken within 100′ or so from our front door. With the exception of the Scarlet Macaw that was taken on our recent trip up to a lake and the Roseate Spoonbill that was taken on Ambergris.

 

Kelley is constantly going out with her camera every time she hears birds or noises in the bush. Which is great because she is getting some wonderful pictures for us to share. Hope you enjoyed them.

Belize is home to around 600 different types of birds, which makes it fairly easy to spot a different bird almost every day. Of course, everyone wants to see a big colorful Toucan, Scarlet Macaw, or Parrot, but there are many other smaller and less colorful birds all around also. This time I will post pictures and hopefully names of other birds that usually get no attention. All these pictures are taken by Kelley using a Nikon camera with a 70-300mm lens. There is also some editing on the computer to help with cropping and light conditions.

That’s just a few of the not so flashy, but beautiful birds we have seen around the house so far.

 

Well it has now been 51 days without an active case of the covid virus in Belize. They reevaluated our State of Emergency plan on June 1st and relaxed some of the current laws. At this point, businesses are starting to open back up and we are now free to travel around the country. Of course, social distancing and wearing a mask in public are still a requirement, but at least we don’t need to wear our mask in private vehicles anymore. On Friday and Saturday nights they gave us an extra hour of curfew, so we can now be out until 9:00pm. They are really trying to promote local tourism and some of the deals at the resorts are amazing. So, it looks like this year we will be doing some mini vacations in Belize since the borders and airport are still shut down. There is talk about opening up the airport in July, but we’ll have to see how that goes. Once the airport does open, it’s unclear what carriers will be heading back here. I have heard that Southwest will not be flying here until next year, but then again that could also change. As soon as we know anything about the airport opening and who will be flying here we will let you all know.

We’ve got a few squirrels around here and they will come down and get a drink out of the birdbath every so often. The other day as the squirrel was coming down the tree, the cat that adopted us decided to take a shot at him. The squirrel was too fast and for the next 20 minutes he sat up in that tree hollering at that cat.  Speaking of hollering one night that cat must have gone into heat and would not shut up for two nights straight. Somehow it attracted another cat (we have no idea where he might have even come from). So since we do not need a bunch of stray kittens around here, we had to stop feeding the cat and started scaring it away. It’s been over a week now with no sign of it, so hopefully, it wandered over to its baby daddy’s place and is shacking up there.

The road past us through Mountain Pine Ridge that leads to Caracol (the tallest Mayan site in Belize), Rio On Pools, many waterfalls, and caves, is getting widened and paved. These are all major tourist sites and the hour-plus dirt road drive up to them gets very rough at times. So the government decided it would be better for tourism if there were a better road to the sites. Personally, I would prefer it if it stayed a rough dirt road, but I guess you can’t stop progress.

The neighbor who stopped by a few weeks ago and asked if we were interested in some beef, came through with some nice cuts for us. He came by with a bone-in rib roast, that we aged for a couple of weeks before cutting it into some nice steaks. He also had some ribs, a shoulder roast, and a brisket. The brisket and shoulder roast immediately went into a brine for a couple of weeks (using Uncle Jer’s recipe) to make corned beef. Once it came out of the brine, the roast was boiled up with some potatoes and cabbage. It was a little late for our St Patty’s day meal, but it was well worth the wait.

After the brine, the brisket got heavily seasoned, thrown in the smoker, and thin-sliced for some great tasting pastrami. We tried to round up some marbled rye bread from our local bakery, but they were out so we settled on a french roll. Still toasted in the oven with some Swiss cheese, and brown mustard, that was the best sandwich we’ve had since we’ve been here.

The rainy season has started and what a difference some rains make. During the recent rains, every plant has had a huge growth spurt. And the timing couldn’t have been better, because the day before the first rains started we’d spread fertilizer around every plant. The coffee plants have burst out with tons of blossoms on most of them. Out of the 35 or so coffee plants, 3/4 of them currently have blossoms on them and some are just loaded. We should have a decent coffee crop this year, Now we’ll just have to figure out the proper way to roast them.

All of our citrus trees have new blossoms on them as well, with the exception of the kumquat tree. On the other hand, the kumquat tree seems to be growing faster and taller than all the rest. Once all the citrus starts coming in, we are so looking forward to some fresh grapefruit, oranges, lemons, and limes.

Last year we only had one cocoa tree that got blossoms and only three of the pods took. Currently, most of the trees have blossoms on them, and if we can get even half of them to take then we should actually have enough to make some good chocolate for something good and tasty.

We are finally getting a little road time on the Jeep and working out all the bugs. We haven’t gone very far yet, but small steps at this point until I’m more comfortable with it. Overall it has been a lot of work, but I think it will be a good Jeep once it’s completely done.

Since we can now move around the country and we have some great resort deals in Hopkins, we’re ready for some beach time. Of course, we had to postpone this week’s trip for a couple of weeks due to a good tropical storm dumping water everywhere. We were hoping to get there and get in some Tarpon fishing, but the river is just too muddy at this point. Besides, if we wait a few weeks lobster season will open up and there’s a good chance we could bring back an ice chest full of lobsters.

That’s about it for now, hopefully, they will open up the airport soon so we can all get back to traveling around again.

 

After a couple months of isolation and not being able to do anything, we finally got the opportunity to go on a new adventure. A friend of ours invited us to come along with him up to a secluded lake for the day. It was a  beautiful 2 1/2 hour drive on a dirt road up into the jungle. Of course the farther in we got, the rougher the road got, but nothing our truck couldn’t handle. The Jeep would have been fun, but it hasn’t been road tested enough yet.

As we approached the lake, the road ended and down in the water tied to a tree was a boat. We packed all our gear onto the boat and headed out onto the lake for some fun.

It’s a good size man-made lake that we were told is about 20 miles or so long with lots of side arms that go deep into the jungle. It’s a very interesting lake with one shoreline being all pine trees and the other shore just raw, dense jungle.

Around every corner of the lake there was something new and interesting to see. There were shale cliffs, old mahogany trees sticking up, palm trees growing in the water and even a place where there was calcium formations where water was dripping out that they called ‘whisky water’.

There were so many different types birds on the lake that day and they didn’t really care how close you got to them. That could be because we were in the only boat that’s on that lake.

The good news down here this week is that there are currently no active cases of the COVID-19 virus in Belize, marking 27 days without a new case. We are still on heavy restrictions as our neighboring countries of Guatemala and Mexico are still reporting new cases. Our State of Emergency is still in effect until June 1st and masks must be worn whenever you leave your home, but this is a sign of hope that maybe we can start to slowly get back to some sort of normality.

The week started out very smokey around here because of the fires still burning. The rain last week did help, but not enough to completely put them out. We haven’t had any more ash falling around us so that’s a good thing, but the smoke is still lingering. Halfway through the week, the rains started to come and they are forecast for a least another week. So hopefully, we’ll get enough rain out of these storms to finally put these fires out and start greening everything back up.

You never realize how much we take things for granted until those options aren’t there anymore. Such as running to the store for a simple bag of ice, going to the market once a week for produce, having selections at the grocery store, or eating out whenever you felt like it. I’m sure like everyone else, we had to adjust and come up with alternative ways of doing things. So we now have a bigger garden that provides a lot of our produce, and we have been making a lot more things at home that in the past we would have just gone to the store and bought. Such as bread, ice cream, tortillas, and many other things.

Another thing we have been making is a topical tea from a plant that is used for insect bites, cuts, fungus, burns, rash, or any other skin problems. The plant is a Polly Red Head or Ixcanan that grows wild around our property. You boil the leaves, stems, and flowers, and then strain it and keep it in the fridge. Just dab a little on an insect bite and it immediately takes the sting and itch away, and since we are in the garden a lot more now, we are getting a few more bites than before. This is just one of many natural remedies that are derived from the plants that are growing all around us.

We are definitely seeing more birds around here lately. I don’t know if it’s because there are a lot less people moving around, there’s fruit in the trees, or because the trees have lost most of their leaves and we can actually see them better. This week we had a lot of Collared Aracari’s in the yard. At one point we counted seven in the tree by the house. The Aracari’s are considered a toucan, they’re just not as big as the Keel-billed toucan that you associate with what a toucan looks like. Speaking of Keel-billed Toucans, they have been here every day now for a while and the other evening there were 10 all at once in the tree above the small casita. Usually, we see only a couple at a time, but 10 at once was a beautiful sight.

Woody Woodpecker, Pale-billed Woodpecker, and the Thrush Muffler Woodpecker. No DNA test needed to prove they’re all related.

Kelley has been busy in the kitchen again making use of some of our harvest from the garden. This week she was busy making more banana bread and some zucchini bread. She hasn’t made zucchini bread in many years and we forgot how good it really is. She even suggested making zucchini cupcakes with some cream cheese frosting, I can’t wait for those.

Since there was still a bunch of bananas left I decided that a banana smoothie sounded good. Put some bananas, milk, and ice in the blender and it was ready to go… well almost. Not too long ago we made some chocolate liqueur that was delicious. So, of course, some of that had to go into it too, a chocolate banana smoothie with a kick, wow that was good! If you like frozen chocolate-covered bananas like I do, then this is a drink for you.

Well, I didn’t think that little Mexican restaurant would last. It’s changed hands again and is now a BBQ joint. We ordered the pork ribs and they were tender and juicy and the char on the corn was just right. The beans although tasted as if they came out of a can. The beers were cold and hot sauce was great plus there was country music playing in the background. After filling up on BBQ we just couldn’t resist getting up and doing a little country square dancing. Of course, once again I didn’t get any pictures of us dancing, but I’m sure you can imagine us swinging our partners doh-si-doh.

I really hope the BBQ joint stays in business and doesn’t turn into a Thai restaurant. We love Thai food, it’s just that we don’t know how to Thai dance.

It’s a really good thing that we can cook around here because we have eaten every meal at home for the past seven weeks now. There are restaurants in town that are offering just pick-up or delivery, but that doesn’t really work for us. It’s at least a 30-40 minute drive each way for us to get to town and by the time we would get back everything would be cold or soggy and it’s just not worth it. I’m sure everyone is becoming much better cooks during these times when going out for a meal is not really an option at this point.

The Toucan Hideaway is now set up for outdoor movies. We put together a 9′ screen for the projector to shine on, along with an amp and extra speakers for better sound. The other night we had dinner outside and enjoyed a movie under the stars. Hopefully, soon we will be able to share this with other people and not just with all the animals in the trees. One movie that will not be showing outside is Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, we don’t want to give them any ideas.

It seems that a cat has now adopted us. He or she has been hanging around for a few weeks now eating scraps that we have been throwing out for other animals. It won’t come near us yet but has been getting closer to Kelley when she feeds it (yes we bought cat food for it). It doesn’t come up on the porch or anything so I guess it’s a good thing to have a yard cat.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been two years since we moved from our home in Cholla Bay, Mexico to start our new adventure in Belize. It was on Cinco de Mayo that we pulled out of that driveway for the last time, ironically 24 years prior to that we bought that house in Mexico on Cinco de Mayo. Yes, we miss friends and family, but we do make it back a couple times a year to see them. Plus a few friends are starting to come down here now and share in some of our experiences. When we decided to move, we were looking for new adventures in our lives and we are definitely fulfilling that here. We have seen, learned, and experienced more things in the past two years that we only could have imagined, and we love it.

If you are like us, I’m sure you are thinking about taking a trip once we are able to start doing that again. If the Toucan Hideaway is on your list of places, please check with us before making your airline reservations. That way we can make sure no one else will be staying here at that time and that we will also be here. Because once travel restrictions are lifted we will also be traveling places.

Take care and hope to see you down here soon!

 

 

 

As of May 1st, the government has come up with a new set of guidelines during our Covid lockdown. Our state of emergency is now in effect for another 60 days. A few more non-essential businesses are allowed to open back up. You must wear a mask anytime you leave your home or face a $5,000 fine or 2 years in jail. There is still a curfew in effect along with social distancing laws that both carry big fines. And you are still not allowed to travel outside of your district.

There are a few positive things happening here during our state of emergency. Out of the 18 total cases of the virus in Belize, there are only 3 that are still active and there has not been a new case in 19 days now.  The price of fuel has dropped $3 a gallon, but that really doesn’t matter because we can’t drive anywhere. And it looks like Belikin will not close, so beer will still be available.

In case anyone was still hoping to get down here for Lobsterfest this year, you’ll have to wait till next year. Lobsterfests in San Pedro and Placencia have been canceled for now. So I’m thinking once the season opens and we can move around the country again, we’ll make a run to the coast for an ice chest full of lobsters. Maybe we could start a new tradition… Lobsterfest in the jungle!

This is the time of year when farmers burn their old crops in preparation for the next planting. This year it has been extremely dry and very hot during our dry season and a lot of these fires have gotten out of control. The government said no more burning of any kind or you could face a  $5,000 fine and up to 2 years in jail. Yet on our trip to town the other day, we still saw people burning leaves or trash in their yard and an active fire on the roadside. At this point, there are still some big uncontrolled fires burning around Belize. It’s just so sad to see this beautiful landscape taken away by careless people.

For the past couple of weeks, we have had high temps and the air is just filled with smoke from all the fires. Some days there is ash falling all around us, and that’s had us a little concerned. So over the weekend, I rigged up a pump that can go into our 750-liter water tank. The tank can then go into the back of my truck and be filled, that along with a generator and a few hundred feet of hose will give us a portable water supply. Hopefully, we will never need to use this, but it’s better to be ready just in case.

This past weekend our little Brazilian restaurant changed hands and is now a Mexican restaurant, but I don’t expect that to last long. The good thing was that we were able to get our Margaritas and Chimichangas. The only problem was that they were out of tortillas. So Kelley jumped in and made some great flour tortillas (with lard of course). And since there was no one else at the restaurant, Kelley ended up making the whole meal while I made the margaritas, after all, it was an open bar. After dinner, the music was playing and we just couldn’t resist doing a little salsa dancing till the early morning light. Of course, once again I forgot to get pictures of us dancing, but I’m sure you can imagine it.

The garden is still doing great and it is giving us something just about every day now. Currently, we are getting kale, zucchini, chili peppers, and a few raspberries. The other day we picked our first head of Romaine lettuce, Caesar salad here we come.

The pequin peppers are also doing well. Just because they’re small (3/4″), doesn’t mean they don’t have a kick to them. These tiny peppers are very, very hot, even for me!

The Kale is doing amazing. We have constantly been harvesting kale off the same plants since November and they are showing no signs of slowing down. We finally got the dehydrator out and Kelley made a couple big batches of kale chips. She put a little olive oil, salt, and some pequin pepper dust on them and they turned out great! It’s a perfect salty, spicy snack that goes great with an ice-cold beer.

In the next month, we should start seeing tomatoes, broccoli, bell peppers, okra, peas, and cantaloupe. It seems like we are spending all of our time in the garden, but at this point what else do we have to do.

The people and the farmers in our village are wonderful. They are doing what they can to get their products out to the public.  We now have a regular market of people stopping by our gate. There is the guy with the truckload of fresh veggies, the guy across the way with pork, the kid who delivers coconut water once a week, and now a beef guy. The other night a neighbor stopped by and asked if we were interested in any beef as he will have some ready this weekend. We told him a few cuts we would be interested in and he said if not this week then the next.  This is great that we can help support our neighbors, and it keeps us from going into town. Now if we could just get beer delivered here we would never have to leave, and actually I’m working on that.

The new bird picture around here this week is the Pale-billed Woodpecker. These are really common around here and we have seen and heard quite a few of them. This is just the first time we have gotten a good close up picture one.

Last night we had an unexpected and much needed heavy rainstorm. It lasted for well over an hour and knocked out our power for a few hours. The much-needed rain really helped to put out some of the fires in and around our area. Of course, the power outage started around 5:30 so we had to readjust our dinner plans. Dinner went from a nice steak and fresh salad to whatever we could find in the cupboard. There wasn’t a whole lot in there so we settled on some mac cheese made with box milk and a can of sardines. We finished it up with a couple beers and a game of Yahtzee, all under the glow of a Coleman lantern. The gourmet meals we come up with during a power outage and a lockdown are just amazing.

That’s all my rambling for this week, be safe.

 

There is a never-ending list of things to do around here, but I think our big “someday” projects are dwindling down. One of the last big things to do was to get our bedroom closet doors on. About a year ago we had two mahogany doors made for our bedroom closet and they have been sitting in the container ever since. Last year I put two similar doors on the laundry room and it was a nightmare. Doors not square, door frames not square, and a lot of cutting, shimming, and frustration. We figured it was time to just suck it up and finally get the closet doors on. After some measuring, cutting, sanding, and finishing it went pretty well. So that’s one more thing off the list.

There are a lot of smaller projects we’d like to do around here, but with only the essential businesses open it makes it impossible to get materials.

Since we missed out on our 36th Anniversary trip to Columbia we thought we would do a little pretending we were somewhere else for dinner. We found this little Churrasco (Brazilian barbecue) restaurant out in the middle of the jungle (it’s in our backyard) that served Pacanha. You know, the steak of Brazil (Not Belize) that is famously served on the swords table-side. Our chef (me) cooked it up perfectly and our waitress (Kelley) brought us over a nice bottle of red wine from Argentina. It was a great relaxing meal and afterward, we even danced the tango. Sorry, there was no evidence of that dance, so you’ll have to take my word on that one.

It wasn’t exactly our Colombian vacation we were hoping for, but Brazilian style steak and a bottle of Argentina wine was about as close as we could actually get to a South American experience. All this and we didn’t even have to leave a tip, but we did end up having to do the dishes. Maybe next week we will pretend to go to Mexico for margaritas and chimichangas.

Plants of the week.

Lobster season is here! Well not the crustacean that you are thinking, that doesn’t happen till June. It’s our lobster claw plants, they are blooming like crazy. There are at least 20 different blooms on them right now with more to come. We saw these beautiful plants years ago and said that if we ever get a place where they would grow, then we would need some. They definitely grow well here and now we have a yard full of them.

Our pineapples are starting to get some good size to them. Out of the 65 or so pineapple plants we have 9 pineapples that will be ready fairly soon… if the animals don’t get to them first. Of course, when we pick them we will cut the tops off, put them back in the ground and start the cycle all over again.

The last bunch of bananas that were ready Kelley made some banana-pineapple jam. That along with the homemade peanut butter on a piece of warm banana bread. Well… that’s just good stuff! And the main ingredients for this came from our garden, so that’s pretty exciting.

I don’t know if you have ever tried lemongrass before, but it makes a great tea. We have a few big plants and a couple of times a week Kelley will cut some and make a gallon or so of tea. It has a very lemony taste to it, plus there are a lot of health benefits that go along with it. Besides just making a tasty tea it is also used in Thai cooking and the plant itself helps repel insects. I’m sure if you looked around where you live you could find some at the nurseries and start making your own healthy tea.

Even though we are avoiding going to the big market in town, it doesn’t mean we can’t have fresh fruits and veggies. A local farmer came by the other day with a pickup full of fresh stuff from his farm. We got cantaloupe, tomatoes, carrots, bell peppers, and okra for $1 a pound (that’s 50 cents US). We already have this same stuff planted, but ours won’t be ready for a while, so this worked out well.

This week’s wildlife.

The lightning bugs are back! These are very cool insects that have what looks like two green LED’s for eyes. Once you catch one, if their eyes start to go dim all you have to do it touch their back and they are back on at full power. Plus they look really cool flying around out in the jungle at night when there are a bunch of them.  (I know… we really need to get out and socialize).

It has now been 11 days now without a new Covid case reported in Belize. So far there have only been 18 cases reported and five have totally recovered. Hopefully, soon they will open the whole country back up to interior travel, of course, the borders will still be locked down for a while, but at least we’ll be able to move around. As soon as this happens we are going to get in the truck and head over to Hopkins for some fishing and beach time.

Speaking of Hopkins, we just found a deal for a three-night stay at a beachfront resort for $200, usually, this place goes for $200 per night. It is a killer deal, totally refundable, you don’t need to pick your dates yet and it’s good till December. We grabbed 3 of the three-night deals, so we will definitely be going to Hopkins for some R & R.

We love and appreciate everyone’s comments, but there has been some problem with the blog. Some comments are coming across as “anonymous” for the name and we don’t know who you are. If you think your comment is coming across as anonymous then please at least put your initials at the bottom. That way when you say you will see us later in the year, we will know who you are.

Have a great day and be safe.

 

We have been in self lockdown for about 10 days or so. We haven’t even unlocked the front gate and the only person we have seen is Ruben when he came by one day to do some weed wack’n. Belize has had two cases of the virus so far and they were both contained to Ambergris which has the island on total lock-down. We hear that both cases are doing well and nothing new to report. Then we heard of a third case in Belize City from someone who flew in from New York a week ago but immediately went into self-isolation. Belize is pretty much on lockdown and has a curfew in effect for 30 days. With Belize being such a small country and only 3 cases so far, hopefully, it will all end there until they get this thing figured out.

Like everyone, we can’t go out to restaurants, shopping or any other social gatherings like we used to. So this is the perfect time for everyone to get those projects done around the house that they have been putting off till “Someday”. Guess what, “Someday” is here and if all those projects get done now then there will be no excuses to not start doing all the fun stuff and traveling again once this is all under control.

Since we have had a little more free time around here, we have been getting stuff done like crazy. First of all, I’ve got the Jeep rolling. The Jeep has not been out of the garage since September when we bought it. It still needs some more little things done to it, but for the most part, it is ready. One thing that needs to be fixed is that when you turn on the lights the stereo goes off. Nothing major, but you’ve got to have music.

Since we have not been going to town on the weekends to eat out or socialize, we have had time to give the smoker a test run. For the first smoking, we put in some homemade sausage, a couple of chickens and some pork ribs from the neighbor who recently butchered a pig.

Everything turned out great! There are a couple of little things that need tweaking next time, but for a first run it was a big success and we would not hesitate to serve this to anyone. Of course, it’s all for us this time because we are not supposed to socialize with anyone, sorry people.

For the wood, we used Allspice and Oak for a smoke time of around six hours. Just the right amount of smoke flavor and everything turned out tender and juicy. In the future, I can picture a whole pig hanging in there smok’n away while we sit around with friends enjoying a few cold beers. That is once we can all socialize again.

Other “Someday” projects included finally getting our AC unit in our bedroom. We have had it sitting in the garage for over a year now and thought it was finally time to install it. Since we are up in the hills and our house is under the canopy of trees, it really stays nice and cool. There were about ten days or so last year when we could have used a little extra cooling off at night, but for the most part, the house stays pretty cool.

Other projects included taking out a few more trees that are too close to the house. They are predicting an above-average hurricane season this year, so better to be safe than sorry. I’ve been putting this off for a while now because the trees that needed to be removed were leaning towards the house. The good thing is that the cut trees are being used for borders around the yard and we think they are looking pretty good.

Since we now have more time around here and it’s probably a good idea, we are expanding the veggie garden. We have about 400 more seedlings started in trays right now. They include Tomatoes, Bell Peppers, Poblano Peppers, Okra, Yellow Squash, Cantaloupe, Basil, Romaine and Arugula. Between that and the stuff already in the garden, we should be good on fresh veggies for a while.

Kelley spent a lot of time roasting, shelling and skinning our peanuts so that we could make some peanut butter. We figured that if we just ate handfuls of peanuts they would only last a few days. By making peanut butter it would last a lot longer, and besides that, we love peanut butter. Especially peanut butter and mayonnaise on a cracker. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, right Darren?

All I know is that we are kicking ass on all of our “Someday” projects and as soon as it is safe to travel and socialize again we are going places. Hopefully, everyone else can do the same. Be safe!

Kelley and I are determined to be positive and look past this current situation and into the future when everyone is safe and free to travel again. Since everyone is self-isolating we thought we’d send out some pictures we’ve taken in Belize and maybe inspire some of you to come on down for a visit once this whole pandemic is under control. We hope you enjoy these pictures and can someday come and experience them for yourselves.

Welcome to Belize, the land of adventure and natural beauty.

Caye Caulker where their motto is “Go Slow”.

Big Rock Falls is right up the road from us.

Of course there’s lobster in Belize!

A pontoon cruise on a secluded jungle lake.

Lots and lots of wildlife everywhere.

A quiet beachfront cabana in Hopkins.

River tubing through underground caves.

Enjoying a cold one while waiting for the daily catch to come in.

Always the freshest fruits and vegetables.

Waterfalls are everywhere around our place.

Imagine sitting here with a tropical drink with a tiny umbrella in it.

Beautiful purple passionfruit flower.

Jaguar just seeing what I taste like.

Rio Pools is a great spot to cool off.

Lots of Mayan sites to explore, and they are all so different.

A natural heart-shaped vine growing on our property.

Even the fish are happy to be here.

The Toucans will greet you at our front porch.

I don’t know about other airlines, but Southwest is having some great sales for future travel right now. And keep in mind, we do have a guest house.

With everything going on in the world we have had a lot of people asking us how we are doing down here in Belize. When we decided to move here that was already a choice for us to “Social Distance” and live a more productive and better life for ourselves. As of this Monday, Belize just reported its first case of the virus from a Belizean who flew in from California last week. As soon as Belize said there was one reported case of the virus, they decided to shut down all bars, restaurants, night clubs, casinos, and archaeological sites countrywide. Even a few of the bus lines have stopped operating in the country. The borders here have been shut for all travel (except for cargo). There are a few grocery stores still open in town, but inventory is starting to look pretty slim.  Our village is completely shut down of all businesses. Just like everywhere else they are limiting the size of gatherings, requesting that everyone just stay home, stressing the importance of washing your hands and of course social distancing. We are fine up where we are, with plenty of food and other supplies, plus there’s a lot of work around here to keep us busy.  If we choose not to leave the property there’s a good chance we won’t even see another person until we do. Hopefully, they can contain this first case of the virus and stop it before it spreads. We are very grateful to be living out in the jungle away from the mass population and being able to raise some of our own food.

Speaking of food, here are a few more pictures of things that we are currently growing down here.

This was our first time growing peanuts and it won’t be our last. There wasn’t as many as we thought we would get, but who cares, we grew our own peanuts!

This is our first harvest of Turmeric. That should be enough to keep us going for a while.

Our Italian Oregano is doing pretty well and keeps us in fresh oregano when needed.

This is another type of herb that’s called Cuban Oregano or Spanish Thyme. It has the scent and flavor of regular oregano and is commonly used as a herb to flavor meats and stews. It is a great herb when used fresh or even dried.

We still like to take walks through our property in search of Oyster Mushrooms. We don’t always find them, but when we do it is a great treat!

Our first cocoa (chocolate) pods will be ready to pick real soon.

We have even had good luck growing our own toilet paper. Talk about going green!

We have always had a garden no matter where we have lived, just growing all your basic vegetables. The fun and exciting thing about gardening in Belize is that we can grow all kinds of tropical fruits and other stuff that we never even would have considered growing elsewhere. For instance, we currently have caper berry seeds in the fridge for two months to simulate a “fake winter”. When they are ready to come out of their “chill”, we will get them in the ground and see if we can get any to grow. Wouldn’t that be great to be able to make our own capers!

We see all the news feeds and realize how bad this situation really is for everyone. We know times are tough and we will all get through this, it’s just going to take some time. In the meantime, be patient and stay safe, because we would love to see all your smiling faces down here someday.

Since we are all pretty much confined to our own spaces, what’s better than a good road trip movie. And what better way to see sights across the US than a Griswold family road trip to Wally World! So find that copy of Vacation, pull up your favorite chair, grab your favorite beverage and get on that Holiday Road.

Just when we thought we were done building around here, we came up with another idea. We really need to stop doing this!!! The area between the BBQ and the back of the house has a good slant to it. Which meant that when we had friends over and we set up tables and chairs it looked like everyone was about to fall over. So we came up with the idea of building a nice big wooden deck between the BBQ and the house. That way it would give a nice level surface and tie everything together. Besides, we already had some credit at our favorite lumber store from that silent auction we won. So come Monday morning we were off to order all the wood, cement and other materials needed to build this deck. The crew started digging the footers first thing Monday morning and by Thursday afternoon it was completely done. This addition really helped bring the outdoor kitchen altogether.

Since we now had this big wooden deck it was time for me to get to work making some more tables. First on the agenda was to build a bar or serving area out of that big Cabbage Bark plank we recently acquired. A lot of sanding, some resin to fill in the big cracks and a nice clear coat finish and it was looking good. Now it just needed a good base, so it was off to the metals shop to get the materials needed to build a sturdy base for this heavy piece of wood.

The next two tables were easy, just a lot of sanding, a good clear coat, the same type legs as the one I made for the front porch and we were in business. Some people are asking if we are building a restaurant or even a small resort. Hell, we don’t know, we are just building what we like and what makes us comfortable.

The pizza oven was finally cured and ready to get the big fire going to see how well it works. We did have it fired up a few days earlier, but Kelley got a real bad headache and was hallucinating so we decided to postpone it for a few days. It turns out that she was in the garden and touched a mushroom and she either accidentally inhaled some or wiped her mouth or something. So we ended up eating leftover lasagna that night and I just told her it was pizza (just kidding). Anyway, a few days later we decided to give it another go. This time we made a few small pizzas just so I could have a little practice cooking them. They turned out great and only took about three minutes each to cook. We think the pizza oven is a success.

Just another picture from the garden. The two fruits in the picture below seem very similar, it’s just that one is a lot bigger than the other. One is a very sweet Surinam cherry and the other is a very hot habanero pepper.  This Surinam cherry is actually pretty small and that habanero pepper is on the large size. When they get similar in size they are sometimes very hard to tell apart. The last thing you want to do is to bite into a habanero thinking it’s a nice sweet treat. It is a good thing we know which plants they come off of.

It has been a few months already and the peanuts are now ready to harvest. This is the first time we have ever grown peanuts and it was pretty exciting to pull the plant out of the ground and see a bunch of peanuts hanging there. When the locals here harvest their peanuts, they place them on a big tarp out in the sun to dry. After they dry for a few days then they get roasted. This is the route we are going to take, the other option would be to boil them. Years ago while driving through Florida we stopped at a roadside stand for some boiled peanuts and decided that was not our thing. So we will be drying and roasting our peanuts and with 200 plus plants may be making a little (lot) peanut butter.

Kelley has been having a lot of fun with her new camera and with all this beautiful nature around us, who wouldn’t? The other evening there were six of the Aracaris in the trees across from the garage. They were there for a good fifteen minutes or so just hopping from branch to branch and eating stuff off the trees. It’s great to see all these different types of birds around the property. We don’t always have the chance to get a photo of them, but sometimes we get lucky.

There are a lot of big squirrels around here and they love to eat the Cohune nuts that fall off the palm trees. The other day there was this really small baby one (that would fit in the palm of your hand) attempting to carry a nut away. The nut was a little big for him, but I’m sure in no time at all he will be dragging those back to his home.

Living in the jungle there are lots of bugs around and you expect to get the occasional bite. We are very lucky to not really have many mosquitoes or other flying, biting bugs around the house and immediate area. Granted we do end up with a few small bites here and there, but nothing major. In the time we have been here there have been very few days around the house and yard where we have needed to apply insect repellent. And believe me, we brought a lot of it with us. The other morning was the exception when I was unlocking the gate. I pulled open the big hasp on the front gate and not looking I put my hand on top of the gate to open it. That was my mistake, always look before placing your hand somewhere. That’s when it got me, a big black scorpion, right in the palm of my hand. The pain was instant but only lasted about an hour or so before it went away, no mark, soreness or anything. I’ve been stung by bark scorpions in Arizona and Mexico before where the numbness will last for up to a week or more. Even though the big black scorpions look more scary and dangerous, I’d rather be stung by one of them than a small bark scorpion any day. According to the locals a scorpion sting is good for your joints and it’s good to be stung every so often they say. I’m not too sure about that.

On Darren’s property next to ours, there was a small cave opening that was discovered where it looks like water rushes through in the wet season. I don’t think anyone had ever been down there, as the opening is very small. We finally had the time to drop a camera down and see what might be in there. It was too dark for the camera to see anything and the opening was too small for any of us to fit, but a local that was with us said that he could fit. So after tieing a rope to him and giving him a good flashlight, he was off to the underworld. It didn’t take long before he was out of sight. He did say that it was muddy down there, but it was big enough for him to stand up and turn around. He said there was another passage inside the cave that headed towards our property (which is only about 20’ away), but the opening was only about a foot in diameter and way too small for anyone to fit through.  I guess we will never know what’s through that next passage, but maybe that leads to another opening somewhere on our property. There are always new things to discover down here and a lot of them are right in our back yard.

Next week we’re headed back to the beach for a little R&R and exploring. This time we would not be going to any of the beaches in Belize, we were off to Cartagena, Columbia. Obviously, because of the COVID-19 Virus, our trip got canceled. Fortunately, there have been no reported cases of the virus in Belize and with a lot of precautionary measures they are trying to keep it that way.

Everyone be safe and hopefully, this will all be behind us soon and we can all get back to normal.

I know that in most parts of the states and such, spring is just around the corner, and if you are a gardener you are thinking about what to plant for the upcoming season. Down here in Belize it’s always the season for planting and we are very lucky to have it that way. We spend a lot of time in the yard taking care of the plants, putting new ones in and cutting back the jungle. It’s all starting to pay off because everything is looking good and we are regularly getting food from the garden. It’s a lot of work but we both truly enjoy doing it. Plus it’s exciting to see how fast the plants grow here and then produce some delicious food.

We love all the fresh fruits and vegetables that are available in Belize, and the fact that knowing they were more than likely harvested a day or two earlier makes it even better. Anyway being from the states we grew accustomed to certain fruits and vegetables that we would regularly eat. Not everything we commonly ate is available here, but we have tried many new fruits and vegetables that we didn’t even know existed. Sometimes though you have a craving for that certain fruit or vegetable that was once a part of your regular meals. We can usually find Granny Smith apples from Washington (my favorites) and rarely find peaches, but artichokes are almost impossible to find along with kale, raspberries, and asparagus. You can find asparagus, but it is literally a dollar a stalk. Whereas in Mexico where we lived they grew it and it was about a dollar a bundle.

A couple of weeks ago we were very excited to find someone online who was selling asparagus crowns from his garden, he only had eight of them so we told him we’d take them all. The crowns are the bare root asparagus plants that have already been growing for a couple of years. If you plant asparagus from seed it will usually take a few years before it starts producing. With these crowns hopefully within a year or so we will start harvesting our own asparagus. It was an hour and a half drive each direction to get these crowns but we know it will be worth it if we can get an asparagus patch going. Asparagus update… they are all growing like crazy, and are already about 2’ tall. I think we might actually have an asparagus patch going!

Artichokes are impossible to find here and we really love them. Last year we planted some seeds and a few of the plants survived and are doing well, but still, no chokes yet. We do have a few more seeds that have sprouted that we are babying right now, so hopefully, they will take off and we can finally have some fresh artichokes.

The kale we had no problem growing and it seems to like its environment. So that’s going to be a regular crop in the garden as long as we can keep finding the seeds. Our raspberries are starting to take off and of course, our green chilis are doing well. At this point, we are just trying to grow things that are not readily available here, because all the other common vegetables are very good and plentiful at the markets.

Out of the 65 or so pineapple plants we have going at least 7 have pineapples on them right now. Not too bad considering that all the plants were started from the tops of other pineapples. We usually eat a pineapple once a week and then plant the tops, at this rate we should always have a constant supply of pineapples. Plus we just picked our first guava off our tree. I bet a pineapple, guava colada might be pretty good. Try saying that really fast a few times.

The last big bunch of bananas we managed to use all but about 6, which is pretty good considering there were 86 in that bunch. This week our first bunch of plantains was ready to cut. Since plantains are not great for eating raw, Kelley decided to turn some into plantain chips. A little salt and some chili and they made the perfect snack, especially with an ice-cold beer. The thing is, that this tray of chips is only from one plantain, and we’ve got a whole bunch. I guess it’s time to look up some more recipes for plantains.

The pizza oven is done! The guy who made it is making all his own blocks and bricks. For the dome on the oven, he is making interlocking lego type blocks with finely ground up glass that he fires in a heat chamber to create a ceramic type block. After the dome was built it was coated with a layer of clay and then some mesh wire and two layers of fiberglass cloth to help retain the heat. Then it is finished off with more layers of clay. For the tunnel and floor, he used bricks that he makes and then added a chimney and a custom door to finish it off.

We have been having fires in the oven for about a week now and I think it’s about ready for a trial run. The outdoor kitchen is now complete with running water, a BBQ, a smoker, and a pizza oven, so now we are ready to cook up just about anything and everything.

Last year we managed to pick up a few nice rounds of wood for tables etc. I’ve used one already to make a table for the front porch and still have a few left. The other day we saw this nice piece of cabbage bark at a friends place and we managed to work out a trade for a round we had. It worked out perfectly because he was looking for something to make a table out of. We’re not sure what we’re going to do with this nice plank, but we have a few ideas. Since this picture was taken I have sanded it all down and it is a beautiful piece of wood and can’t wait to get a finish on it.

About a month ago we noticed a hummingbird sitting on a nest that had two eggs in it. Well, it has been a while, so we thought we would check and see how she’s doing. As soon as we got close she flew away and up popped two baby hummingbirds. Kelley managed to get a quick picture and then get out of there so mama bird could get back on her nest. It won’t be long before they will be regulars at our feeders.

It is a lot of work around here, but we do manage to still have a lot of fun. Last weekend we went to a benefit concert for the Raptor Center. The Raptor Center is where they educate the public on different birds of prey of Belize and also rescue and rehab injured birds. The benefit was held at “The Bluffs” which made a great outdoor venue for the afternoon.

Great music, lots of sunshine, cold beer and all for a good cause. Plus there were silent auctions where we won a certificate to our favorite lumber store. Maybe there are plans in the works for that big wood slab of Cabbage Bark we acquired.

That’s about it for now, maybe we’ll see you down here sometime.

Recently we did a post about colorful plants around our house, well this time it’s all about the insects. Moths and butterflies seem to be the most colorful insects around here, but there are many others that also are very colorful. I know a lot of people don’t like “bugs”, but there really are some beautifully colored insects around us. Kelley takes pictures of almost every insect that looks interesting. This is just a small collection of some of the colorful insects around us, hope you enjoy.

Some friends of ours from where we used to live in Mexico (Steve & Kathy) were on a two week trip to Belize and stayed with us for a few days. They checked out the ruins, caves and a few other of the tourist sights, but there was something right near us that we hadn’t even seen yet.

About two miles from us on private property there is a cave that is not really open to the public. We’ve gotten to know the kid who owns it and he invited us up to check it out. He told us that about 30 years ago his dad was hunting and saw something run under this rock into a small hole. The hole was covered by a big rock, and once they moved the rock the hole went deep into the ground. Later when they explored the hole they found that it was a big cave about 180 feet long with a 30-foot ceiling and full of stalactites. Not only that, it was full of pottery, spears, grinding stones, and human remains. Eventually, they had some archaeologists come and give them a little more insight into what they had. I guess this was a place where sacrifices were done and you were prepared for the afterlife.

Anyway, we met our guide and hiked up to the cave entrance where there was a metal grate locked over this small hole going into the ground. There was a ladder that went 14 feet straight down this hole to the floor of the cave, I was not sure I would fit, but I did.

Once inside the cave, our eyes adjusted and our flashlights came on and it was spectacular. The stalactites were everywhere and were still dripping wet making it very slippery in some spots.

After climbing down some slippery mud in the dark holding onto ropes we came to the spots where they had gone through and gathered and displayed the artifacts in different areas of the cave. There was a lot of broken pottery, spearheads, jewelry, and other items, but to me, the most impressive were the whole pots. Some of these were huge and still intact after more than 2,000 years.

Then there were also some human remains. There were two skulls, a male and a female, and a bunch of bones. One of the skulls had a tall flat forehead. I guess when the babies were very young they would tie a piece of wood to the baby’s head to reshape it. A tall flat forehead was considered to be a thing of beauty in the Mayan culture. You can see how tall and flat the forehead is on the skull on the right.

It was amazing to get to see this cave that very few people have ever seen before. In the future after some more work, there are plans to open this cave up to the general public. In the meantime, he told us that there are still a lot more artifacts to be discovered inside the cave before it can really be open to the public. This kid is very proud of what his dad discovered and the Mayan culture and is willing to share it with you. So if you are here and feeling adventurous I’m sure we could set something up so you can see this cave that very few people have ever seen before. Besides, it’s only a couple of miles from our place.

Belize is a country that is very colorful, in more ways than one. First of all from all the people, (believe me we have met some very colorful people here). Then there are all the different colorful plants and animals up in the jungle all the way down to the beautiful turquoise waters and colorful beach houses along the coast. This time I’m going to focus on some of the colorful plants up and around our property.

In the jungle surrounding us everything is green, and I mean every imaginable shade of green you can think of. From the palm trees, hardwood trees, wild vines and even the local crops, everywhere you look it’s green.

Besides all the greenery, the jungle plants will surprise you with some amazing colors at different times of the year. For example there are vines that will have the most beautiful yellow, red, white, orange or purple flowers on them at different times of the year. The problem is that once the flowers are gone they look like every other plant out there and you won’t know which one it was until it blooms again next time around.

Then there are trees that will just seem to change color over night. One day you will be driving and see nothing but green trees and then next time you go by it is like “WOW” where did that tree come from. They just seem to burst out with color overnight. Sorry at this point we don’t know the names of these trees and flowers, but we are working on that.

Around the house we have planted a lot of colorful plants to help break up some of the green and they are starting to bloom and show their colors. The Heliconia or Lobster Claws that we planted last year are starting to get shoots regularly now, as well as all the bird of paradise.

We have also planted a few of the Belizean Torches around the yard and they seem to be pretty fast growing with a lot of big red flowers that last a long time. This bush here is well over six feet tall and was only about a foot tall when we planted it not too long ago.

There are also some Cordylines we planted near the stairs by the porch which seem to be doing great and growing very fast. One of them is even starting to bloom with a lot of little white flowers. Here the locals say that they are “good luck“ plants, they must be working for us.

We also put in about 30 Crotons along the driveway that will some day form a very colorful hedge. In the meantime, they are about two feet tall and seem to be growing well. We do have other colorful plants and flowers around but, I thought this would be enough for now.

I know this is not a plant, but it does have to do with color and there are plants in the painting. We finally got around to putting some color inside our house. When we had it built we had all the walls painted white with the intention that we would add color where we thought it would work. Well, It’s been a year since we bought the paint, but we finally had some spare time to get it on the walls. We only painted one wall in the bathroom (blue) and one wall in the bedroom (yellow) as accent walls and chose to keep the others white to help keep a bright and open feeling in there.

Belize is home to over 4,000 flowering plants, 250 species of orchids and 700 different types of trees. There is a lot of colorful beauty hidden in all the greenery if you just slow down and look for it.

One thing we love about Belize is that we can be sitting at our home up in the jungle and 3 1/2 hours later be sitting on an island in the Caribbean, and that’s even with a 15 minute plane ride. We have made this trip out to Ambergris many times before with friends, but this time it was just us for five days of music. It’s actually a two week event called Camp Belize put on by Jerry Jeff Walker for the past 20 years or so. It’s an open-mike venue hosting musicians from all over, some who have been coming from day one and others who were first timers. Every day a different bar would host the music, which meant a lot of bar hopping and day drinking. That’s ok though, because this was a little vacation for us.

A lot of the places they played were out on dock bars such as The Palapa Bar which makes for a great venue. Sitting out above the Caribbean, watching the boats, listening to great music and enjoying a cold beer. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

The highlight for us was getting to see Jerry Jeff Walker. Last year he did not make the show because of some throat cancer issues, but he made it this year. His voice was a little raspy, but he still put on a great show with his songs and story telling. He was joined on stage by his son Django Walker who is also a great musician and song writer.

After the show Jerry Jeff was even kind enough to stop for a quick picture with Kelley.

In San Pedro on Ambergris, the main mode of transportation is golf carts. Everybody rents them and it is a great way to explore the island and get around. Since the music didn’t start until the afternoon we decided to take a couple mornings and head as far south as we could and then as far north as we could. We went at least six miles south of town and were amazed at all the construction of new homes and big resorts we saw. In one of the lagoons there were a bunch of birds feeding and one was a Roseate Spoonbill. Its a beautiful big bird with a pink body white neck and a red stripe. We have only seen a couple of these in the wild and this time we actually got a decent picture of one.

Another day we decided to head north. We must have gone 10 miles or so seeing new homes and more big resorts. It wasn’t too many years ago that there wasn’t even a road up there. The road finally started getting a little bad so we decided we had gone far enough and should head back. Ironically we turned around right in front of this totem pole that was full of old flip flops with a sign that read “Lost Soles”. We figured we’d gone far enough and this must be a sign for us to head back.

We did stop in to talk to our realtor on the way back and he told us that there are some good deals on beach front lots 20 plus miles up the coast. There are no roads or utilities there yet, but as fast as the island is growing who knows how long before they will be there.

After we got back up to the jungle it was time to wander around the yard and garden to see how everything was doing. There was a big bunch of bananas that we needed to harvest before the animals started to get to them. They were pretty high up on the plant so I had to get a ladder and a machete ( I know that sounds real safe) to cut them down while Kelley was holding the bottom of the stalk to catch them. We have learned that you have to wear old clothes when you cut or trim banana plants because of the liquid that comes out of them. If it gets on your clothes it will stain and NOTHING will take it out.

This stalk weighed about 35 lbs. and contained 86 bananas, so that means it’s time to dehydrate some, make everything banana and eat 2 or 3 a day for awhile. The bunch is green when we cut them, but it only takes a few days before they will all start turning yellow and be ready to go. And like I’ve said before, if you have never had a fresh banana you don’t what you’re missing. In the few days we were gone another banana plant got it’s blossom, so we have more bananas on the way.

Our coffee plants have been in a little over a year now and a few have been producing a little here and there. We finally had enough to roast and brew some coffee. This is our first time growing and roasting coffee so we are only going by what we have read on how to do it (because we know everything you read on the inner-web is true).

The roasting went okay as far as we know. If and when we start getting a good amount of coffee we will take it somewhere and have it roasted by someone who actually knows what they are doing. In the meantime I’m sitting here eating bananas with a cup of decent coffee that all came from our garden, not a bad breakfast. Kelley absolutely hates coffee even the smell, but I did get her to try a sip and she didn’t gag on it. Although I did see her in the bathroom washing her mouth out with soap. That just leaves more coffee for me.

We’ve got a friend staying here this week, but no one else is scheduled until June. So If you are considering a visit down here, the casita is waiting for you. Hope to see you soon.

We started off the new year by buying more trees. This time we got 5 more coffee plants which now brings us up to around 36 or so. We also got a guava tree which is already bearing fruit, but we found out that as the guavas ripen you need to put a plastic bag over them to keep the insects away. Also we acquired a Star Apple, Malay Apple and a Velvet Apple. Theses are not apples like you would find in most stores in the states, but are still very tasty fruits.

This time we are defiantly out of places to plant any more trees, but then again we do have ten acres. Oh and I guess we do have 9 more mango trees and 2 avocado trees that we found growing in the yard. It seems that when we throw our seeds out in the yard they just grow. At this point we do not have room for these, so not sure yet what we will do with them. Maybe Darren will get some mangoes trees around his property once his house is done.

The other day we learned an interesting gardening technique from Ruben. He recently planted a field of beans, but there are certain birds that will come down and eat all the fresh shoots as they emerge. So what he does, is when he cleans a chicken he saves all the feathers. Then he spreads the feathers on the ground around his crop. This will attract the vultures that think there is something dead there to eat and with the vultures around there are no more pesky birds tearing up his crop. We thought it was pretty ingenious.  We just planted a bunch of spinach, broccoli, cauliflower and chili peppers. I guess if we have a problem with birds we’ll have to find some chicken feathers.

WE HAVE TV! We have gone a year and a half without any live TV, just watching programs we download when we have good internet or DVD’s. We found a guy from Guatemala who set us up with a satellite dish. We have most of the basic channels plus a few movie channels. Some are in Spanish, but most of the ones that we like to watch are in English. We got a really good deal on the unit and our monthly programming fee is only $17 usd a month, you can’t beat that. So now in the evenings or on those rainy days we can actual watch some TV. Even though we will mostly be watching the English channels the commercials are still in Spanish so this should help us with our Spanish. The good thing is we will actually get to watch the Super Bowl this year, but not sure we will understand all the commercials.

Finally we’ve got the pizza oven in the works. Currently our bricks for the oven are being made and once they are cured it should take only about a week to get it built. It will go next to the BBQ in an area we had designated for it. One reason we have taken so long to get it started was that we wanted to see how one of his other ovens were doing. He had built one for a restaurant and we just wanted to see how it worked over time with every day use. The one at the restaurant is working great and it only takes 2 1/2 minutes to fully cook a pizza. Once ours is done I will post some pictures of the oven and some of the pizzas. The picture is the design we came up with. It will be made of bricks, plaster and plenty of insulation in between. The chimney will be stainless steel that will go up through the roof that covers the BBQ area, plus there will be a metal door on the oven with “Toucan Hideaway” plasma cut into it. It should be pretty cool when it is all done.

The smoke house is now up and ready to go. It took a few burns to get it all seasoned and to get the temperature up to where it needed to be, but now it’s good to go. The first couple of burns the temp was not getting hot enough. So after drilling a few more air holes in the belly of the pig and a little more wood, it’s now working just fine and ready to start smoking all kinds of meats.

I’m still working on the Jeep just about every day, it’s coming along quite nicely and should be ready to hit the jungle trails real soon. At this point I still need to replace the clutch master, change all the fluids, replace a u-joints and a few other little things. It could be ready for the trails now, but I want to make sure everything is good or has been checked before we head out into the jungle. The jeep has not been out of the garage since we started this project back in September, so this is the cleanest you will ever see it.

While Ron and Rhonda were here we seemed to have had this dog that adopted us. Since he showed up around Christmas we named him Santa’s Little Helper. With the exception of him being black, he did look like the dog from The Simpson’s. He had a problem with his back leg as if he got hit or something and was really in need of some food and care. He was a sweet dog that seemed very good around people. At this point we didn’t have time for us to keep a dog, so we reached out to CAWS the local animal rescue to see if they could help. We agreed to pay for a vet to look at him as long as they could get him into a good home. Of course we asked all around the village first to see if anyone recognized him. After about a week or so we had an appointment with the vet and they found someone that could foster him until someone would adopt him. This was great news as now we had hope that he will go to a good home. After about a week of us fattening him up, he was moving better and I guess he thought it was time to be on his way, we haven’t seen him since. Hopefully he will find his way back home to where he belongs or to someone that will take care of him.

Over the past week or so we have had a lot of rain, which is great for all the plants. It seems to be a strange storm as it will pour down rain for a good half hour and then clear blue skies for a couple hours and then rain again. Some times it will pour all night long but clear up by morning. With all the rock we have spread around our place it’s not really muddy, but the road getting in and out of our place, there are days you need four wheel drive. It is suppose to clear up in a couple day and with temps in the 70’s – 80’s it doesn’t take long for everything to dry up again.

The last few months we have been very busy around here, so next week Kelley and I are going to the island to take a little beach break for a few days. We realize it’s only January, so stay warm wherever you are.

We hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year! For the week leading up to Christmas, there was a cold front that brought a lot of rain over Belize (we’re talking 5-6” of rain and 56°-75° temps) which made it seem a little more like Christmas down here. By Christmas eve and Christmas day everything cleared up nicely with lots of sunshine and temps in the 80’s, which made for a wonderful Christmas day.

As some of you know, Kelley always bakes a lot of cookies around Christmas and we usually have prime rib on Christmas eve and Kelley’s famous eggs benedict on Christmas morning. This year was no exception!

Kelley started making cookies about a week before Christmas, making four different kinds plus peanut brittle. Once the cookies were done we played Santa and delivered plates of cookies and candy to Ruben’s family and to Antonio’s family. We also gave them each a ham and some of our homemade bacon and sausage for them and their families to enjoy.

We usually have our Christmas dinner on the 24th because we never really know what will happen or who will stop by on Christmas day. This year our friends Ron and Rhonda (from Mexico and the states) joined us for the holidays. Of course, Kelley cooked up a wonderful feast consisting of a seven bone prime rib with horseradish and au jus, potato artichoke gratin, homegrown green beans wrapped in homemade bacon and for dessert a key lime pie made with fresh Jamaican lime juice and some homemade Rum Popo to top it off. And yes there was also some wine, what would a meal like this be without a couple bottles of wine.

After letting all that good food settle and a good night’s sleep it was Christmas morning which meant eggs benedict and mimosas. This year we managed to round up all the right ingredients for eggs-b, right down to some Thomas English muffins. This is a once a year treat for us and it is well worth the wait every year.

On Christmas day about a dozen of us got together at our place for food, drinks, and a white elephant gift exchange. Everyone brought desserts and appetizers and I cooked up a big pot of lobster-clam chowder with sourdough bread. I usually make just a clam chowder, but clams are hard to find here sometimes. I didn’t have enough clams to make it clammy enough so I added a couple of lobster tails to make up for it. There was nothing wrong with that.

While I was making the chowder, Kelley was busy making her very cute penguin appetizers. The penguins are black olives stuffed with cream cheese and carrots for their beak and feet. They seemed to be the star of the day as everyone had to have a picture of them. Of course, there was some day-drinking going on, after all, we started with mimosas and it was Christmas day.

It was a great way to spend Christmas day in the jungle with friends, good food and plenty of sunshine.

Ron and Rhonda have been driving all over Belize checking out different beach towns in search of a piece of property that they can someday call their own. We’re not sure how their search is going, but they are definitely getting a good feel for all the different areas of Belize.

One of the days while Ron and Rhonda were here we took a quad ride up to Pacbitun ruins which is just about a mile from our house. Every year archaeologists come out for about three months and excavate a little more and document it. Once they leave they have to bury everything they have uncovered and return it back the way they found it. I was up there about six months ago when they were working on it and there were a lot of sections exposed. This time it just looked like no one had ever been there, but they should be back in May and start all over again.

After checking out Pacbitun, it was on to the Malfunction Junction for a couple of cold beers. It has been almost two years since the Junction had closed, but now there is someone else running it and they say they will always be open and possibly even start serving a little bit of food. This is great for us because it is only a couple of miles from us and we can take the bikes up there and have a couple cold ones.

While we were at the junction, a truck came by selling homemade cheese, so of course, we had to get some. They had two types, regular and pepper, of course, we chose the pepper. It was a crumbly cheese loaded with habaneros and it was so good, especially with a cold beer. Each round of cheese was about a half pound and the price was…….$3.00 BZ that’s $1.50 US. Now that we know that they sell this delicious cheese we will be stopping them on the road every time we see them.

New Year’s eve was the chance for one last hoorah of the decade. Our neighbors decided that we should have a party, that way no one wouldn’t have to drive all the way into town to celebrate. This was great for us because we didn’t have to drive anywhere. Everyone brought food and drinks and we had the grill going with some sausages on a stick. Most roadside grills here serve sausage on a stick and it’s just like it sounds, a sausage on a wooden stick and then grilled.

After a while, we all wandered over towards the garage and broke out the Jungle Jenga game, which kept us entertained until we rang in the new year. It was a fun evening and a great way to bring in a new decade.

Now that the holidays are over and all the desserts, rich foods, and drinking has stopped we have vowed to only eat bananas and other things that come from our garden until we feel good and healthy again. But, like most other New Year’s resolutions, I’m sure that will last about a week or so and then there will be a big ole steak or something back on the grill. What can we say, we will have tried.

We had a great time with Ron and Rhonda here and we hope they will be back again real soon.

We hope everyone had a great Christmas and here’s wishing everyone a happy, healthy and prosperous 2020.

If you are still looking for a New Year’s resolution, resolve to check out Belize this year. We’ll be waiting for you.

 

Kelley and I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas from Belize! We hope Santa was good to you, even if some of you were a little bit naughty.

It’s impossible to find any snow or snowmen around here so instead we thought we would send pictures of different Christmas trees we have seen around Belize. It goes to show it doesn’t matter what your tree is made out of as long as you have the Christmas spirit. Hope you enjoy!

Poles, chicken wire, lights and snowmen.

Painted sticks and pine cones.

Beautiful tree with a parrot for a topper.

Tires, a pole and some lights.

Colorful lights around a palm tree.

5 gallon water bottles at the beer distributor.

Driftwood, pine cones and balls of vines.

A resort Christmas Tree.

As simple as garland and lights.

Our first artificial tree ever.

The monkeys are helping decorate.

Merry Christmas on painted coconuts.

Once again, Merry Christmas!

Sorry this was a day late, but for some reason we had no internet yesterday.

We got the bacon and sausage all finished up and put away in the freezer. After all said and done, we ended up with 87 good size links of spicy Italian sausage plus a small bag of non-stuffed sausage for pizzas and such. This sausage recipe we have made quite a few times in the past, adjusting the spices each time just a little. We have finally got it where we think it needs to be, at least for our taste.

We also finished up 13 lbs. of hickory-smoked bacon with heavy black pepper. The other 12 lbs. of bacon we did a little lighter with applewood smoke and just a touch of black pepper. Of course, there was also a lot of brown sugar and a few other things that went into the bacon. It’s really not a whole lot cheaper to make your own sausage and bacon. Although, once you compare the quality and the flavor of the stuff you just made to the store brands, it makes it all worth it.

The new crop of the month is peanuts. I guess the soil, elevation, and climate are perfect here which is why everyone grows peanuts. That’s why our village of San Antonio is called the “Peanut Capital of Belize”. Ruben brought over a bag of peanuts that were ready to be planted, and since the squash was done it was a perfect place to plant them. We planted them around the full moon and then there were a few light rains and within a week the plants had already grown a few inches tall. All the farmers here say to plant around the full moon for the best crop, maybe there is something to this because those peanuts are growing fast.

It should take three months before they are ready to harvest and if all goes well we will be making some homemade peanut butter by springtime. We have made peanut butter from scratch before, some with honey, some with coconut oil and another with a little chocolate and they were all very good. Maybe some of our fruit trees will have something ready by then and we can make some jellies for some awesome PB & J’s (which are one of my favorites).

One vegetable that is hard to find down here is kale and when you do it is fairly expensive. Since we love it, we thought we should try growing it. It’s doing pretty well as long as we keep the caterpillars away from it and when we do, we are getting enough to have it once a week.

Our first bunch of bananas was finally ready to harvest. From what we were told you cut the bunch when they are green and then hang then until they ripen. This way you can eat them as they ripen, which is working out well because there are a couple ripe every day. These are small apple bananas and are very sweet, creamy and delicious. So far, our hanging bunch of bananas has attracted no monkeys to the porch. Ironically though, a few days after we hung them we could hear the Howler Monkeys in the distance.

Darren came down for a visit and to check on the progress of his property (which is right next to ours). Last year he got Ruben started on clearing an area in the middle of his property where a house will go. The clearing is done so it was time to get a road up into his property. There was already an old road there from years ago and it didn’t take a whole lot to get it back in shape. Now that there was a road cut in it was only obvious that there needed to be a gate across it. A couple of weeks ago we got them started on building a gate across the road entrance and they did a great job.

He also had a power meter pole set and is working on getting a connection, plus he got a water hookup to the mainline and is having it run to his house site. Besides all that, he also got them started on a foundation where his house will be going. Darren’s place is really starting to shape up, who knows how long before we might have another neighbor.

While Darren was here we headed down to Hopkins for a couple of days of relaxing beach time. I know it’s December and cold almost everywhere, but it was 85 degrees on the beach in Hopkins. Hopefully, the above picture sends you warm thoughts and has you thinking about warmer days.

On our way down to Hopkins, we stopped at St Herman’s Blue Hole and Cave. This is considered the inland Blue Hole, not to be confused with the Great Blue Hole which is just offshore from Belize and is a major dive destination. St Herman’s Blue Hole is part of an underground river system that got exposed from a collapse not too long ago. The hole itself is about 25’ deep and is a great spot to swim and cool off.

St Herman’s Cave is supposed to be quite spectacular with water, stalagmite’s, stalactites, bats and everything else that a cave has to offer. Unfortunately, when we hiked to the entrance and started our way down into the cave our flashlight batteries gave out so we could not continue in very far. We will definitely check this out again in the future and bring a few flashlights with new batteries.

Of course, a trip down the Hummingbird Highway towards the coast would not be complete without a stop at Bertha’s tamales. Like I’ve said before, these are some of the best tamales you will ever eat. They are wrapped in banana leaves and are a creamy masa with chicken inside, very different from the tamales we would get back in Mexico or the states.

A few months back we went fishing on the Sittee River in Hopkins and fished only about a mile upriver from where the Caribbean Sea and the river come together. This time we decided to just take a cruise upriver just to check it out. The Sittee River we were told is navigation able about seven miles upstream. It’s a beautiful river with lots of wildlife along its shore and some pretty cool houses right on the river. We went in the afternoon so we didn’t see a whole lot of animals except birds and a lot of really big orange iguanas. We were on the lookout for crocodiles and manatees but didn’t spot any this time. Our guide told us that not too long ago they saw two big jaguars right on the shoreline and as they got the boat in closer for some pictures the jaguars started hissing and growling. That would have been pretty exciting to see, especially knowing that jaguars are very good swimmers.

Here are just a couple more pictures from our trip down to Hopkins. There were some local kids that came by the pool and were offering to play the drum and sing us a song. So, of course, we said yes, let’s see what you got. They started beating on the drum and singing and it was pretty cool. It was great to see young kids out trying to earn money and not just asking for it.

Of course, there was fun to be had at some of the local happy hour spots. The Dock Bar which is over the water has swings which are not that uncommon for bars. But these swings were also on tracks which allowed you to spin and slide 8’ or more from the bar towards the edge of the railing. It was another great trip down to Hopkins and with it only being a 2 1/2 hour drive from our place it makes for a great quick getaway.

Being December means that it is once again time to watch for the Belikin beer calendar release parties. This is where Belikin models come out to sign calendars and give you a chance to meet them and get some pictures with them. This year we lucked out because there just happened to be a release party on the last night Darren was here. It was a great evening meeting all the models, they were very personable and of course all very beautiful.

We hope everyone is having a great holiday season and looking forward to some time off around Christmas and spending time with friends and family.

We just got back from a trip to Arizona to catch up with family and friends. We had hoped to go a little closer to the holidays, but the airfares were outrageous, even with free miles. We got to spend some good quality time with the kids and grandsons as well as see a few friends plus take a quick trip to Tucson to see Kelley’s sisters. This also gave us a chance to get our grandsons Christmas shopping done, so at this point, we feel as if we are ahead of the game. We also did a little pre-Christmas shopping for ourselves. Kelley got a nice Nikon digital camera with a good size zoom and I got some night vision binoculars with a built-in camera. So now Kelley can get better close up pictures of the animals during the day and I can actually see what roams around in the dark. At least I think I want to see what roams around in the dark. It also gave me a chance to order a bunch of little parts for the Jeep that I couldn’t get here. It was a great visit seeing everyone and hopefully, we will be back up that way come springtime.

The day we got back it was a beautiful sunny 75-degree day. We knew there was suppose to be some cooler weather for the next few days and we welcomed it, after all, how cold could it really get in the tropical jungle. So when we got here we opened up all the windows to get some fresh air into the house that had been closed up for almost two weeks. We were thinking this should be a nice cool sleeping night, well we were wrong. The temp in the middle of the night kept dropping and dropping until it bottomed out at 57° outside, which meant it was 62° inside with all the windows open. It was by far the coldest night we have had down here. Everything is back to normal now, high 60’s in the evenings and 70’s–80’s during the day.

The other day we had a couple of toucans stop by for a visit. Kelley only had her Olympus Tough camera with her at the time and not the new Nikon. This would have been some great photos with the new camera, but we know there will be many more opportunities with all the wildlife around here.

Our third banana plant is starting to produce, and this time they are plantains. Fried plantains are served with most national dishes such as stew chicken with rice and beans. When halved and fried to a golden brown they are so sweet and delicious. Another way to prepare plantains is to thinly slice them and deep fry them into chips with a little salt and spice. We buy these whenever we can as snacks and they are delicious. So now besides our local bananas and apple bananas that we will eat fresh or use in recipes we now have plantains to make some salty crunchy chips with. We originally had seven banana plants, but now with all the new plants that are growing around them we probably have 25 plants or more and some are getting taller than the original ones. Now we just have to keep the monkeys away.

It’s been a while since we have made bacon, so it’s time to make some more. This time we are doing 25 lbs of pork belly, only 20 lbs is for us and the other 5 lbs are for a friend who we’ve done some for before. Over this holiday weekend, we will also be making 15-20 lbs of Italian sausage. I haven’t got the big smoker dialed in quite yet so, for now, we will still be using our small electric one to finish up the bacon. Hopefully this weekend I’ll have time to get the new smoker all dialed in and ready for next time.

We hope everyone is having a great Thanksgiving Holiday Weekend. We were invited to a few big thanksgiving parties, but we decided to stay home and do our own, that way we get leftovers. You know what I’m talking about, turkey sandwiches, turkey noodle soup and all the other good things that come with Thanksgiving leftovers. Thanksgiving seems to be a pretty big thing here, all the restaurants offer traditional turkey dinners with all the trimmings, including pumpkin pie. Of course, there are a bunch of restaurants that put their own spin on it using local favorites. Kelley cooked a 13 lb turkey with all the fixing’s and it was delicious, and yes they do commercially raise turkeys here in Belize. Now that Thanksgiving is behind us you know it is officially the Christmas season and time to put up lights, trees and all that other festive stuff. So come Sunday we will be stringing up Christmas lights on our little jungle home and decorating our little fake Christmas tree, ’tis the season.

Since the Christmas season is upon us, Ruben brought over a couple of poinsettias for us, or as they are known locally as “Nochebuena”. Poinsettias here grow into big trees and you will see them planted around houses as regular landscaping. A couple of months ago Ruben cut a couple branches off his tree and put them in containers and now they are growing like crazy. They are just getting their red leaves and yellow flowers and should be brilliant just in time for Christmas. For now we will keep them in pots until after the first of the year and then we will find a place around the yard to plant them. We never thought we’d be growing poinsettias. We thought we’d be just like everyone else, buy one at Christmas, keep it till it dies, throw it away and repeat next Christmas.

With the holidays here it is time to start thinking about those special drinks you only get once a year such as eggnog. Here in Belize they have their own version of eggnog called Rum Popo, that is only made during the Christmas season. Here is a recipe of one that we have been making for a few years now and it is delicious.

Ingredients:

8 eggs

4 nutmegs

1 oz. cinnamon sticks

4 cans evaporated milk

3 cans condensed milk

1/2 pound raisins

1 pint white rum

Directions:

1. Soak the cinnamon and raisins in rum for 3 days.

2. After the rum is ready, beat eggs well until all lumps are gone.

3. Add evaporated milk and  beat again.

4. Add the condensed milk.

5. Add the grated nutmeg.

6. Remove the cinnamon sticks and the raisins from the rum and add the rum to the egg, milk mixture.

7. Blend well and store in bottles in the refrigerator.

8. Enjoy, I know you will!

One week from now Darren will be back for another visit. The only plans we have is a trip over to Hopkins for a few days. We will definitely get in a little beach time, maybe do a little fishing and for sure try to round up some lobsters to bring back.

That’s about what’s happening around here. We hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and are now getting ready for the Christmas season.