Going Home for the Holidays!

This is a picture of Village Farm, the organic homestead that I grew up on in Belize, and where I am going for two weeks this holiday season. See the two rivers? Our farm is nestled between them. The little white specks are buildings. This picture was taken from the window of one of the Cessna Twin Otters that fly between southern Belize, where our farm is, and Belize City (where I'll be flying in on Friday).

A bromiliad in our front yard.


Our woodshed and some clothes drying. And below, a heliconia.

I can't wait to get home. My Mom says that we should have a decent cacao harvest this year (that's right, the same cacao that ends up in those 70% cacao solids chocolate bars that we greedily chop into morsels for baking or surreptitiously nibble on before breakfast), and the oranges and tangerines are ripe already, just waiting to be plucked off the tree and squeezed into some fresh juice. Have you ever had tangerine juice? Its bright and sprightly and dances on the tongue, not to mention being a full-on orange that puts the eponymous fruit to shame.

I will be making marmalade and fruit cake (I make our fruitcakes every year, although they unfortunately wont get to rest very long this season), and stuffing myself with carambolas and apple bananas (stubby little yellow bananas with the best banana flavour, perfect for eating out of hand).

As you can probably guess from the first photo, I don't actually have Internet access on the farm, so my posting will be limited to any trips that we make to town during my stay. In other words, I may not be posting at all for the next two weeks, although if I can I will try to put something up after Christmas and before my return to DC in January. Either way, I will of course be bringing my camera and will take some pictures to share with you when I get back.

I hope that everyone has a wonderful holiday season, I know I certainly will:)