I have a large tree by my pool.  It makes a tiny fruit, that the Maya (and myself) like.  It's not very fruity, because it's so tiny.  But it has a soft shell on the outside that peels away easily, and then you pop it in your mouth, and suck the fruit off, and spit out the pit.  The Maya enjoy them more like a piece of candy than a piece of fruit. In Maya it is called Huayum and I'm not sure what it is in Spanish. I noticed about the first of March, I started getting tiny pieces in my pool that I'd have to clean out every couple of days.   5 or 6 or 7 pieces.   The birds like them and would fly into the tree, peck a little at them, and knock them off the tree into the pool.   Day by day, the quantity increased, I suppose as the fruit was getting mature and ripe.   Besides knocking them into the pool, they knocked many more to the ground.   About 2 weeks ago, April 15th, there started to be forty or fifty pieces a day in the pool and it was getting filthy.   So I draine

My helpers had gotten off and I expected to see them leave to go home.  Instead, a few minutes later, Salvador and 2 of the others, Diego and Pedro, came walking past my house with something that had smoke coming out of it, and my 9 meter extension ladder. Click here for video I asked Salvador what they were doing and he said they were going to get 2 big wasp nests down from trees, to take home and eat.  I had heard of this before, because Liborio showed me a small nest he knocked out of a tree and he told me that he loved to cook and eat the larvae. I decided to go and watch this and wondered how on earth they'd get them down out of a tree that needed a 9m ladder.

Sometime yesterday, or perhaps the night before, a small snake about 30 cm got on my front porch, with its rough surface, and sloughed off its skin.  I didn't pay any attention to the old skin laying there when I walked out yesterday, but my dog saw it.  And he was not happy about it.   I guess Logan can pick up the scent of a snake from the old skin, and he thinks it is still a snake.  I imagine he's spent a total of 4 or 5 hours staring at it yesterday and today. Click here for 3 minute video It's one of the funniest reactions I've seen between a dog and a piece of dead flesh.   I am happy though to know that he at least knows what a snake smells like, so if one gets in the house, he can alert me to it.  I can't imagine what his response would be if the snake was alive and started slithering around. Fortunately, I've got a very good feral cat, Patricio, who does a splendid job of keeping the area around my house free of snakes and mice.  Apparently he missed o

I've posted before about what a nuisance the iguanas are to me here on the farm.  They are a predator to many of the vegetables I'm trying to grow and I wish I didn't have any here.  I don't want to just kill them and considered trapping them and carrying them away.  But then I discovered that a couple of my workers really like to BBQ them and eat.   So I started paying my guys a bounty of 10 pesos (about 55 cents) for everyone they catch and kill.  That's worked pretty good and they've probably removed 20 or 30 in the past few months. I also got 2 plastic decoy owls from Home Depot to mount on a tall post.  Those didn't work.  I think the Iguanas figured out they weren't real.  But the heads are mounted on a swivel spring to help them appear alive.   The problem was they head just didn't move that much or often. I had an idea about how to remedy that and cut a big plastic coke bottle and mounted a large clear plastic sail on the back of the head.  N

I posted earlier about when we planted this corn in the middle of January.  For corn it is possible to have 2 crops per year here, since there is no frost or winter.  This corn will be ready to harvest about the end of April.   Click here:  Here's a short one-minute video I made this morning while watering. The Mayans will plant their corn in June, because that is the start of the rainy season and they need the rain to water the plants.  I have free electricity and unlimited fresh water and an irrigation system, so we are able to plant in January and keep it watered with the sprinkler towers I had built. When we harvest this corn, we'll clear the stalks and fertilize the ground well with cow manure and then the last week in May, we will plant more. Also, very interesting to me this lesson.  About 3 weeks ago, I had to go to Merida for the day.  On the way home there was a severe storm with 50kph winds and heavy rain.   When I got back to the ranch at 5:00 Salvador was still her