Thursday, September 10, was Saint Georges Cay Day - The battle took place between an invading force from Mexico, attempting to claim Belize for Spain, and a small force of resident woodcutters called Baymen, who fought for their livelihood assisted by black slaves. After the final two and a half hour battle, ravaged by sickness, the Spaniards withdrew and the British declared themselves winners. (I copied this from Wikipedia.) The bigger villages and towns celebrate the day with parades and fireworks but in San Antonio it's just another day. I hoped to sleep in, work on my Spanish, and just enjoy a free day.
Around 8 o'clock in the morning, I heard a large truck outside the family's house and lots of men talking. When I peaked out my window, I saw them unloading bushes of plants in front of the house. By the time I dressed and got there the mound reached as high as the house - it looked like a mountain. The bushes were peanut plants ready for harvesting the peanuts...by hand! The peanuts needed to be picked before the rain or else they lose the crop. I could not bring myself to sit and study while they rushed to pick the peanuts. Yup, I boldly walked to the bushes, sat myself down on a chair, with a bucket between my legs and started to pick the peanuts - I didn't realize that peanuts grow in the ground where the roots are, just like potatoes. After a few minutes, I started to feel little stings on my toes, feet, and legs...I discovered that I situated myself on a mound of fire ants. I was hopping all over the place to rid the ants - those bites were painful! I finally got the hang of it, although I did experiment with using scissors instead of pulling the peanuts off the roots. The kids watched laughing at me...I guess I did look funny using scissors. It took the whole morning to fill a bucket while the other pickers were filling multiple buckets. It did rain in the afternoon but the peanuts were covered with plastic tarp.
Hi Sandy! Thank you for the history lesson about the battle between Mexico and the British for little Belize, even if you copied it from wikipedia, since i was totally unaware of it. well, because of you, i feel like i'm learning a little bit about Belize.
ReplyDeleteoh, those fire ants! ugh! i hope you're okay.... as for the peanuts, i sort of understand. when i was in england, i helped a friend pick black currants, which is a rather dirty and hard job. he said that i should use a fork to pull off the currants from the branches, but that was hard so i pulled off the little bits of currants that are in clusters sort of like grape clusters. then i used the fork to scrape off the currants. this whole process probably took about 2-3 times longer. but there it is.
now you take good care, barbara
Hi Sandy, by the way, do you need anything that i can send to you? if i can do it, i'd be happy to send a "care" box to you! how about chocolates? let me know! / barbara
ReplyDeleteHi Barbara, you are so sweet, thanks for the offer. I'm afraid chocolates will melt faster than ice here in this weather - my package of gum was a gooey mess when I opened the wrapper! They do sell chocolates here which is nice but you can't it for long. You definitely understand about the laborious process of picking and harvesting produce. I think currants is harder than peanuts, I'm sure your hands were stained and cut up. I'm putting pics up with my next blog - Enjoy!!
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