August 31
Life in the jungle: I started my morning chopping in the coconut field. Chopping in the coconut field has been this monthly priority. Before breakfast, I went to the village for groceries. When I returned Jill’s puppies and parrot were being picked up. That eliminates my worries about my chickens being harmed by her dogs. More importantly, I am certain this time Jill is definitely not coming back and I feel that my path will never cross with Jack and Jill again in my lifetime. I can hope anyway. [Earlier this week, and described in more detail in the last blog post Jill was moved out of her cabana due to a medical issue. Her cabana was only about 300 ft from my house.]
After lunch, I spent the rest of the afternoon chopping in the coconut field. So many seedlings are entirely buried in vines and weed growth, and that is causing me to take forever to chop around and find the seedlings.
September 1
Life in the jungle: I spent the entire day chopping in the coconut field. I am tired. Too tired to bother making dinner.
September 2
Life in the jungle: My arms are sore from so much chopping this past week. This morning, I was waiting for a load of lumber from Saul for my new chicken coop. While I waited, I gave my hen houses a cleaning. I discovered a fairly large wasp nest just inches above the open hen house roof. I have no idea how long the nest has been there, but it was a good size. So, it’s been there a while.
Those are big wasps that my hands were getting very close to.
After the lumber arrived, I spent the entire day framing my next chicken coop. I basically got the coop framed except for a door and two corners that need to be fastened together by bolts. The lumber is solid hardwood and I snapped many high-quality construction screws while framing. This evening, I set up some more Rambutan seeds in wet paper towels. [But with little success.]
New chicken coop framed
September 3
Life in the jungle: Today is my guilt-free day off. Most of my day was spent house cleaning. Evan on my day off I have to work.
September 4
Life in the jungle: I went to the village for groceries and some materials for the new chicken coop. A fallen tree blocked the road, but I could still push my bike around it. I was initially very happy about this. There has been too much traffic on the road lately. [Unfortunately, the tree will be cleared tomorrow.]
Road blocked. Road unblocked.
There was a heavy downpour during lunch. I basically finished installing the chicken wire on the new chicken coop. I mostly just have to build and install the coop door and incorporate a door into the hen house.
New chicken coop enclosed in chicken wire
September 5
Life in the jungle: Because I am nearing completion of the chicken coop, I started my morning back chopping in the coconut field. The humidity was a killer. I’m not sure why I chop in the mornings sometimes with morning humidity as high as it is. After breakfast, I worked the rest of the day finishing the chicken coop. The new chicken coop is complete.
September 6
Life in the jungle: There were heavy showers throughout the night. This caused me to sleep in a little bit and decide to go up to the village first thing. When I was in the village the other day they were out of cracked corn (for the chickens). The road has a little bit of water on it from yesterday’s rainfall but so far is holding up.
A big, old male Green Iguana on the way to the grocery store.
I also woke up to new baby chicks. After a late breakfast, I spent most of the day chopping at the ponds. I also needed to see if I could collect 100 coconuts for someone. Which I was able to do. In the last part of the day, I did a little bit of chopping in the coconut field. I’m tired.
September 7
Life in the jungle: I sensed a very hot day today. And it was. I started chopping in the coconut field and the humidity was so high even the mosquitos stayed away. I had extremely limited energy. I didn’t even bother with breakfast. Instead, I took a 3.5 hour nap. After an extremely late lunch, I spent another hour chopping in the coconut field. Someday I will get this job completed. I have a total of nine new baby chicks. Over the last week, I had slowly been releasing some layer hens I had been raising. They seem to have stunted growth and should be much bigger. I figured a more variety in their diets the more likely they start to grow. So far, no hawks have eaten them and they are all still alive.
A hot one today
September 8
Life in the jungle: Temperatures were more reasonable today. Still hot but much more reasonable than yesterday. I chopped in the coconut field first thing. I got stung on the cheek by a wasp. I had been wondering why I hadn’t run into any more wasp nests lately considering how many coconut trees I had cleaned under. After breakfast, I cut grass at the ponds. That took a good part of the afternoon. The last part of the afternoon was spent cutting grass at the house. My very last hen that has been sitting on eggs now has some baby chicks. This evening there was some unbelievably loud thunder and a heavy rain shower. I also wrote this blog post this evening.
Stung on the cheek by these buggers
Army ants visited the chicken coop today
September 9
Life in the jungle: I started my morning chopping in the coconut field. And I can finally say I am (basically) finished this round of my chopping in the coconut field. I can’t believe how overgrown the field was. If only the field was dry, I could get a bushhog in to cut all the rest of the grass/weeds/vines.
After breakfast, I chopped at the ponds and I can say I am (basically) finished this round of my chopping at the ponds also. Overall, I have to say that my seedlings in the coconut field and the ponds are growing and looking good. It’s been a lot of work to get this far.
I moved my last sitting hen and her four baby chicks and six unhatched eggs to a hen house. I fear the last six eggs won’t hatch. [And they didn’t.] This is my last sitting hen and any more chicks for quite a while. I did a rough count and I suspect that I have about 45 new assorted-sized chicks over the last three weeks or so. Which has me now close to 70 assorted-sized chicks, pullets, and chickens. Wow.
Chicken City is growing
Of Note: At this time I am currently 11 to 12 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.
Jack & Jill – These are my ex-property managers (names changed). They are Canadian, they introduced me to Belize in 1997, sold me their house in Belize in 2003, and rebuilt my house from 2014 to 2018. I have known them for over 30 years. After almost 20 years of me supporting their life here in Belize Jack decided quite unexpectedly to declare “war” on me right before Christmas 2021 after he returned back to Canada. They would end up stealing my business license and causing me a lot of grief. They live on the farm, but not on my land.
Wayne – He is the son of the original owners of the farm (both owners are deceased). The original farm was 2 – 30 acre pieces minus 2 – ¾ acre parcels for my house and 2 – ¾ acre parcels that Jack & Jill own which were all originally purchased from the original owners. In 2017 Wayne sold me 40 acres of land from the original 60 acres (30 acres plus 10 acres). Wayne lives in his parent’s house and has a few cows on his remaining 17 acres of land.
The ponds – I have 2 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 2 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 the 10 acre parcel. I plan to add various fruit trees to the same field as soon as I can.
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 2 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.
