A tailess whip scorpion – harmless
October 28
Life in the jungle: I started the morning editing and reviewing a recent blog post called The Fer-de-Lance Snake of Belize: A Complete Guide. Since posting this post earlier in the month, I have researched and learned about a dozen new SEO and AI optimization improvements I can use to improve the post. I worked on this post as it’s the post that I am going to share with various Facebook groups this week.
I have close to twenty key jungle lifestyle blog posts now. I plan to rotate through each one over the next twenty weeks in the Belize Facebook groups. Each week, a new post, and that post I will take the time to properly SEO optimize prior to sharing.
I’m also noticing that I’m finally getting some traction from sharing blog posts with groups. For some reason, Facebook marked my website as spam, likely from sharing to, too many groups in a single morning. For most groups, I now post a photo and a link to click instead of just a link.
After breakfast, I headed to the village to pick up a dozen layer chicks. The chicken and duck plan moving forward is to slaughter off all local chickens and ducks and have no more “livestock” running free. I will raise layer chickens in all the coops for eggs and raise broiler chickens (as I have for a long time now) for meat.
This dozen chicks will mean that I now have 32 layers, which will produce about 32 eggs a day. The local grocery store takes all my surplus eggs. By having the chickens cooped up, I get to collect all the fertilizer and lose no chickens to predators, not to mention maximum production.
After returning home, I set the chicks up, I painted a bit of trim, and I cut some grass. Specifically, around the piles of materials (cement mix, black dirt, and compost). Things were getting overgrown around the piles. In the evening, I discovered six new baby ducklings.
New layer chicks & ducklings
October 29
Life in the jungle: I headed to the city today. I had to walk out to the village because I was picking up my bike in the city.
A few amusing moments in the city. The bike mechanic’s assistant asked me if I was the guy who made videos of turtles on my road. Amusing as my face is never in those videos.
When I dropped my bike off at the bus at 10 AM, the young driver and a friend had a bag of beers and cracked one open. At 11:45, when the bus leaves, then stops and waits at a bus depot until 12 PM, he was still drinking. The big boss didn’t even blink when he stopped by prior to the bus leaving. After reaching the bus depot, the driver disappeared, and we left 15 minutes late. That wasn’t until a customer pulled the bus’s air horn multiple times in frustration.
This is the bus company that twice (while I was a passenger) scraped (hit) a competing bus company while in motion on the road. The scraping was intentional as the driver kept driving.
I did a little bit of trim painting when I finally reached home. Andy finished wiring the new cabana.
A Cane toad hiding in one of the hen houses
October 30
Life in the jungle: A cool morning of 18°C. First thing after finishing sharing my Fer-de-Lance post to groups, and then I started to work on a new blog post called The Jungle Runs on Its Own Clock, Understanding Time in Belize (yet to be finished).
After feeding the chickens, I headed to the village to pick out lumber. Now that the new cabana is wired up, I need to build a bunk bed and a kitchen counter.
After breakfast, I painted primer paint on the cabana floor, but only where the bed will be placed.
I then worked on my watermelon greenhouse. It’s an 8ft x 10ft raised floor box with trellises designed to grow watermelons. I built the thing over three years ago. When Andy arrived two years ago, I put him in charge of growing watermelon and vegetables. It has been a dismal failure. I don’t have a green thumb and only seem to grow tree seedlings. But moving forward, I’m determined to make growing watermelon and vegetables a priority. I planted it out, and I planted six 20-gallon cloth pots with cherry tomatoes. [The cherry tomatoes didn’t germinate, and insects ate the baby watermelon plants that came up.]
A Blue Morpho butterfly
October 31
Life in the jungle: Another cool morning. I worked on my new month-2 post. Last month, I posted a highly SEO optimized blog post called A Day in the Life of Living in the Belize Jungle. This month’s post will be called How to Set Up Your Home in the Belize Jungle. This is part of a 12-month posting plan to post a highly SEO and AI optimized post to my website more for AI and Google than my readers.
After the chickens were fed, I slaughtered my last rooster (no more rooster crows at all hours of the day) and a hen. I’m on a bit of a mission to slaughter off all my local chickens.
I then did a tiny bit of painting of the new cabana floor and the cabana door. After lunch, I started building a bunk bed for the new cabana. Generally, when I build something, I screw something up. With this bed, I lost track of how many times I had to rebuild it. By dark, it was mostly done. It should have been completed today with time to spare.
November 1
Life in the jungle: I didn’t sleep great last night. Another cool morning this morning. I worked on my newest blog post again, but didn’t get far.
After feeding the chickens, I finished building the bed and did a small interior trim job, cleaned up, and did a tiny bit of painting. Later in the afternoon, I headed to the ponds with the lawnmower. I got mound-1 and a half of mound-2 completed.
November 2
Life in the jungle: I worked some more on my blog post. After feeding the chickens, I spent a few hours digging dirt into trenches. It’s been quite a few weeks since I moved dirt. I still have open trenches from the electrical, waterline, and septic trenches dug back in June. I can only move dirt when the dirt is dry enough to shovel.
I got in my Sunday morning nap and, after lunch, decided to do a little housework. After feeding the chickens at the end of the day, I dug a little more dirt.
Filling trenches
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.
