A few days earlier, I decided to get serious about starting a Belize jungle lifestyle and a new to bike touring consulting, coaching business. I am currently giving my website the appropriate updates and edits.
July 9
Life in the jungle: There was a bit of rain in the night. I decided to spend my day working on my website. I added my Belize consulting button to all my keynote-content jungle lifestyle blog posts and did a quick scan through them for edits.
After lunch, I made a new landing page for bike touring consulting. The process was fairly easy as I just used the Belize landing page and website code as a template.
The priority is to simply start sharing keynote blog posts to Facebook groups with the coaching links in them, to both the Belize Facebook groups and the bike touring Facebook groups, to start.
My biggest issue is now replacing my phone ASAP. My camera lens is cracked for video calls. Not very professional. I had a replacement phone lined up four months ago, but like everything in Belize, nothing can be easy.
In the afternoon, I got four keynote-content bike touring blog posts edited for coaching landing page links, along with a quick proofread through.
A few days ago, I expressed frustration with Andy about the lack of success with the watermelon greenhouse. I built it shortly after I arrived in Belize almost four years ago. There has been almost no success with it. I made a few attempts, and Andy made a few attempts, but every time the plants get sick. So, the last few days, Andy has been digging out and replacing all the dirt with healthier dirt. So, fingers crossed.
Hopefully, moving forward, the watermelon greenhouse can be more productive
July 10
Life in the jungle: First thing I filled seed bags with dirt for a bunch of ziricote seeds I collected from my tree. Ziricote is a highly prized hardwood used for furniture, musical instruments, and decorative items. I have one mature tree next to my chicken coops. I also organized a bunch of papaya seedlings for planting tomorrow.
After lunch, I put a coat of paint on the new (kitchen) cabana floor from the paint I picked up on Tuesday. While washing the paint brush, I heard crack, cracked, crack, and then crash. A fairly large tree between the new pond and (kitchen) cabana crashed down into the edge of the new pond, fortunately missing the kitchen. I figured someday a hurricane might blow the tree over, but I didn’t expect today.
I did a little chainsaw work to cut it up a bit, as a branch had pushed over the Buddha Belly bamboo stalk I had planted the other day. Fortunately, no damage was done. Today I noted that the two stalks and most of the bamboo cuttings are starting to grow new shoots.
I also bagged and planted about 30 “soft” Bukut seeds. Bukut trees are also known as stinking toe. They are a fairly common tree that becomes covered in pink blossoms early in the dry season. The seeds have many uses, but most of the trees are not the “soft” variety.
Andy went to Belmopan and visited Central Farms, and came home with 20 young Suriname Cherry and 8 mulberry seedlings. No rain today.
A massive tree fell unexpectedly
July 11
Life in the jungle: This morning, I planted 24 replacement papayas at the ponds. After lunch, I planted five Malley apples and five Calamondin citrus seedlings in the coconut field.
I finished cleaning up yesterday’s fallen tree to the best of my abilities. The rest of the trunk, or I should say the whole trunk, is left to rot. Eventually, once the trunk is rotted enough, it will be easier to cut up what little can be cut up with the chainsaw, with the remainder to rot and disintegrate in the pond.
July 12
Life in the jungle: There were rain showers throughout the night. I prefer to be in front of the computer on mornings like this. I continued working on my consulting and coaching business. I also worked on 20 bike touring and camping blog posts. Adding the coaching landing page, buy me a coffee, follow me on Facebook button to each post, along with a quick grammar edit to each as per the grammar mistakes that Grammarly displayed automatically to each post. During the quick review and edit process, I came to the obvious conclusion that virtually every bike tour and camping post needs a thorough update before I can start sharing them on Facebook groups again.
I also used ChatGPT to write me the code to greatly improve the visual links to other blog post links I share at the bottom of each blog post. It’s a little time-consuming, but I feel it’s worth the effort. So, all the bike tour and camping posts received those improvements as well.
I was thinking I should do a little work outside in the afternoon, but a few random showers kept changing my mind. I did plant 45 ziricote seeds into plant bags that I filled with dirt on the 10th. It took a little bit of work as each ziricote seed needs to be scarified, which I do with a hacksaw blade. [Scarification is the process of nicking or cutting a seed coat to encourage germination.
Another rain shower passed through at bedtime.
Over a month later, most of the Ziricote seeds germinated and are doing quite well.
July 13
Life in the jungle: First thing this morning, I planted 16 more papaya replacement plants at the ponds. There were birds, baby iguanas, bird nest discoveries, and the mother Morelets crocodile watching over her recently discovered nest did a swish and splash. These are the reasons I live here.
Morelets crocodile & bird nest at the ponds
I also planted a bunch of palm seeds in planting cups that Andy happened to come by. He didn’t know what type of palm tree other than it was exotic-looking. [A month later, they don’t seem to want to germinate.]
I ended up taking a nap before lunch, which lasted into the afternoon. There were a few random showers. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed with my workload.
July 14
Life in the jungle: This morning, I mixed half a bag of cement and finished the last two footings of the passion fruit trellis, which I have recently been working on.
I installed the sheep fencing on the recently framed passion Fruit trellis. In the afternoon, I started framing this new passion fruit trellis, and I finished the footings this morning.
No rain today. Pepper and Saucy discovered the taste of mulberries from a mulberry tree in the yard. Which means I can’t eat anything from the lower branches anymore.
I caught a Black-tail Cribo snake coming from underneath the house this afternoon. It’s been a while since I caught one.
A Black-tail Cribo snake
Glossary of Terms
Glossary of words or people that may or may not be part of this particular 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 parents’ 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 assorted 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 a 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 season (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 at the end of 2023. When I offered Andy 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.
