June 8
Life in the jungle: First thing this morning I was back to digging the new cabana septic hole. I noticed my first baby green iguana of the season. I finished the septic hole (4ft x 4ft x ft). In the last part of my day, I chopped at the ponds. I saw another baby green iguana at the ponds. Arriving home Saul dropped a huge load of lumber off. At 9:30 PM the Rainy Season officially started on the farm.
June 9
Life in the jungle: No rain today. But thank goodness for last night. Our drinking water vat has about an inch and a half of water in it now. We have been out of drinking water for quite a few weeks now. This morning, I learned that ducks create a lot of mud. As much as I wanted to start building with all the lumber Saul delivered yesterday, I restrained myself. Today is my day off. Though I did sort through some of it.
I did some laundry, and some house cleaning but most importantly I took a nap. In the evening, I sorted through my photos from the last few months. My computer is too full and I need to get files into the cloud and off my computer.
Poke in the boy fruit
June 10
Life in the jungle: Today was a trip to the city and was one of my least hectic trips in recent memory. The day was hot, with no rain. Arriving home, I sealed in one of two remaining walls in the greenhouse yet to be built. The end walls that are the back of the dirt bike shed and the front entrance to the greenhouse were framed but no exterior materials had been added to close in the walls. I used planks of hardwood. I also sorted and cut up much of the remaining lumber for tomorrow’s projects. Today Andy finished installing his apartment toilet. The main job remaining is for me to build a kitchenette and do some painting. [The kitchenette would be completed in September.]
June 11
Life in the jungle: I spent the day working on outstanding assorted projects with all the lumber Saul brought me the other day. I built the second wall in the greenhouse. I put a double shelf in Andy’s bike shed. I finished the shelves for the herb greenhouse. I built Andy a fairly large shelf unit for outside his apartment. Originally, I thought I was going to have tons of lumber left over. Now I am not sure I will have enough lumber for the chicken coops. One thing is for sure, I will be out of lumber tomorrow.
Chicken egg production has been pathetic for well over a month. While it gets dark just before 7 PM which overall is late for Belize. Tonight, I am turning on the chicken coop lights in the evening until 8 PM every night to see if production gets any better.Today was wickedly hot with no breeze. We had about five to ten minutes of light rain. Perhaps the rainy season hasn’t started yet.
Some type of bug
June 12
Life in the jungle: There was rumbling thunder first thing this morning. I lingered in bed until I realized that I better tend to the chickens before the rain came. And it started to rain for a bit and then it passed us over. So, we got cheated out of rain today.
I spent the entire rest of the day working on the compost chicken coop. It’s still not complete as I ran out of lumber but the coop is now useable. I also used a little of the lumber to work on a new duck house.
June 13
Life in the jungle: At 2:30 AM this morning there was a trenchant downpour. I’m not sure how long it lasted, but our empty 250 gallon drinking water vat got half filled. My morning was very unproductive. I seem to be pretty tired these last few mornings.
After breakfast, I headed to the village for groceries. I couldn’t believe that I discovered a new culvert in the village. I believe this culvert to be 100% useless. This new culvert also means the road crew was in the village again, and again they did no work on my road after repeated requests. How desperately those resources of materials and time and effort were needed only a few more hundred feet further down the road. I am extremely frustrated.
I spent the afternoon preparing a walkway along the side of my house that I was going to make with my leftover patio stones.
The government put an unnecessary culvert plus lots of stone down on the road.
If they had only dumped the material a few hundred feet straight ahead!
June 14
Life in the jungle: First thing while feeding my chickens I heard a commotion that caused me to take a walk in the area of the commotion. It didn’t take long before I heard the flapping of wings through the bush. That told me a chicken was doing a death flap. I did some searching and found him with a pretty bloodied head. I am not sure what killed her. I skinned and gutted her and pulled an egg out of her body cavity.
I continued to work on my walkway from yesterday until mid-afternoon when we had a heavy downpour for the rest of the afternoon. Until that rain came, it was wickedly hot and humid today.
A new walkway around the backend of the house to deal with mud during the rainy season
June 15
Life in the jungle: Since seeing my first baby iguanas of the season I have been keeping a close eye on my iguana eggs. On April 18th I accidently dug up a nest of green iguana eggs in my cement gravel pile. This morning, I discovered the first two baby iguanas with more to come throughout the day.
I started the morning working on my new walkway until I got a call from the village about tilapia fish fillets. So, after racing up to the village and before breakfast, I had to portion out 6 lbs of fillet for the freezer. After breakfast, I finished up all my patio stones on my new walkway. I still need 84 more stones to finish the walkway. I spent the rest of the afternoon studying chicken and duck keeping. I need to be getting better returns on my chicken coop investment. I spent a pile of money on my various coops but I am not monitoring or doing everything I could be doing to get a better return on the work and daily expenses involved.
Hatchling Green iguanas
Belize Part 122 (May 31 to June 7)
Belize Part 121 (May 18 to 30)
Of Note: At this time I am currently 8 months behind in posting my Belize blog posts due to having no internet for the first 18 months of living in Belize.
Glossary of Terms
Glossary of words or people that may or may not be part of this blog post. This glossary will be at the bottom of every blog post for Belize.
Wayne – He is the son of the original owners of the farm (both owners are deceased). The original farm was two – 30 acre parcels minus two – ¾ acre parcels for my house. In 2017 Wayne sold me 40 acres of land from the original 60 acres (one 30 acre parcel plus 10 acres from the second parcel). Wayne lives in his parent’s house and has a few cows on his remaining 18 acres of land.
The ponds – I have two large (300ft long x 50ft wide x 10ft deep) ponds on my 30 acre parcel of land which is basically a jungle. I have about 60 coconut trees (mostly mature) around the ponds. In my first two years of living in Belize, I also planted about 250 assort fruit tree seedlings (Lime, jackfruit, custard apple, pomegranate, and avocado).
The coconut field – I have about 400 coconut trees planted (various growth states) on about 3 acres of cleared land of my 10 acre parcel. I have planted about 350 assorted fruit trees (lemon, starfruit, mango, soursop, cashew, lime, orange) all raised from seed since my arrival in Belize in 2021.
The river lot – my house sits on an ¾ acre lot. I have a second joining ¾ acre lot that allows me river frontage on the Belize River. I call that my river lot.
The dry – Belize has two main seasons. The rainy season and the dry (no rain). The wet is obviously the rainy season.
Chopping – using my machete to clear brush, vines, weeds, and unwanted trees. Generally, when I chop I am removing unwanted vegetation around my baby fruit trees.
Andy – A fellow Canadian who rode his dirt bike from Canada to Belize. When I offered him the use of an apartment that I recently built and the use of my greenhouse Andy decided to stay in Belize permanently and start a hot sauce company here.
