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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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