September 8 - 14, 2008

I returned to Alfheim on Tuesday afternoon after spending an extended weekend in São Paulo. On the way home, I stopped in São Luiz do Paraitinga and purchased a rooster and a hen, a casal or couple. When I arrived at Alfheim, I asked Clair to cut some fresh bedding, which we placed on the floor of the henhouse. We then introduced Alfheim's newest residents to their digs and proceeded to secure any remaining construction vulnerabilities. Once inside, the chickens immediately perched themselves on the bamboo roosting pins.

Thus far, the chickens have not ventured out much, choosing instead to spend almost all of their time in their house. Initially I wanted to chalk this up to my brilliant design and construction skills; however, after locking them out for a couple of hours twice this week and watching them plant themselves, respectively, under a table and in the rubble of the empty fruit tree containers, I have since concluded that it is more likely a combination of the weather, unseasonably hot, and their getting used to their new environs. I hope to add three-four more hens to the mix soon.

On Wednesday morning we again dug out the two leafcutter ant colonies and applied the Macex. We applied the Macex both inside the underground chambers, in the nurseries and along the paths where they travel. It is too early to conclude anything definitive (ants dominate most ecosystems, and form 15–20% of the terrestrial animal biomass), but it does seem to have helped; I have not seen any of the leafcutter ants on one of the main paths since we applied the remedy.

The rest of Wednesday and significant parts of both Thursday and Friday were spent applying the first coat of tar to the foundation of the main house. Beyond the esthetic impact, the tar will seal the foundation against moisture. Because of the very poor state of the foundation, we were advised early on by two architects to raze the main house and start from scratch. Instead we chose to apply two greener principles to our restoration project: 1) If it ain't broke, don't fix it and 2) If it is broke, try to fix it...or use it somewhere else. By applying this latter principle, in particular, we have been able to reuse/recycle almost everything from the existing structures. This manifested itself most comically when a delivery man from Paraibuna expressed the hope that he could pagar algums dos seus pecados or pay off some of his sins by donating a piece of the house's discarded furniture to his local church, where it would be auctioned off. More concretely, the original roof on the main house, which was leaking in a few spots and whose tiles are no longer manufactured and therefore nearly impossible to find and/or prohibitively expensive, have been reused to roof the casa do caseiro, which previously had an Eternit roof. The joists from the main house were reused to the same end. All of the cinder block and brick rubble from the construction site has been reused to pave the kilometer plus of road which runs from the main house to the front gate of the property...to facilitate access during the rainy season. We are also transforming the old septic tank into a graywater recycling system by adding first sand and then the concrete rubble, which we could not place on the road because it contains razor-sharp steel threads, and diverting our dish washing, laundry and bathing water through it. Needless to say a great deal of the discarded lumber has been used by the construction crew for everything from scaffolding to forms for the many concrete pillars to every manner of make-shift tool. Whatever wood is ultimately left over will be used to fuel many a good churrasco or barbecue. Even the Eternit panels which we removed from the casa do caseiro, an open-air storage shed and the corral will be reused by one of the local residents to roof his corral.

The week's other major accomplishment was a quick visit on Thursday to Ubatuba, where I purchased all of the household appliances: two refrigerators, two gas stoves and one washing machine, at the local Casas Bahia. Delivery is scheduled for September 25th.

Finally, in a nod to a comment to last week's blog entry from my very good friend, Tony Matan, here are a few 'facts' about Fazenda Alfheim:

• Fazenda Alfheim is 131.86 alqueires paulistas or 319.12 hectares (788.56 acres).
• It is located in Vale do Paraíba, approx. three and one-quarter hours from Sao Paulo and just over an hour from Ubatuba, a city located on the southeast coast, in the state of São Paulo, which boasts 74 different beaches.
• Our plans for developing the property are still very much a work in progress, but current areas of research include pigs (Duroc and Piau), sheep (Dorper), cattle (Brahma and Chianina) and medicinal herbs (Lone's domain).
• We are fortunate to have abundant, clean water in the form of streams, brooks, springs, all of which originate on the property -and even waterfalls. I have had the water tested in Taubaté and am considering commercializing it.
• The property is on-grid; Elektro is our service provider. That said, we hope to install a water wheel sometime in 2009 to begin generating some of our own electricity.
• Poisonous snakes (or a really, really hungry onca or jaguar), rather than Malaria or Chagas disease, are probably the biggest health risk we face. As soon as Lone arrives we plan to visit the Butantã Institute Snake Farm in São Paulo.
• No, I do not yet own a gun, but will soon be a candidate for NRA recruiters as I will need to be able to put down seriously injured animals.
  

Hope this helps.