October 6 - 12, 2008

We spent Monday and Tuesday in São Paulo, where the weather was rainy and, by Brazilian standards, genuinely cold. The rain followed us back to Alfheim late Tuesday night...and it continued to rain/drizzle almost non-stop through Friday, when at last the sun broke free from behind the thick blanket of dark-gray clouds and heavy mist to provide us with a respite and allow us to work outdoors. Prior to this we had spent all day Wednesday and Thursday liming the interior of the casa do caseiro white and painting the doorframes and windows a dark blue.

Having completed painting the interior of the casa do caseiro, it is now ready for Clair and his family to move into, which they will do on Tuesday. This is a significant milestone because it means that we can now move forward with the farm animals. Not surprisingly, until we were able to provide 24-7-365 cover, we could not begin the process of populating Alfheim with larger farm animals. In addition to 24-7-365 cover, these animals also require dogs to help herd and look after them. Fortunately, we have secured our first dog from our good friend Melissa, a lovely 16-month old black labrador named Layla, who will soon be joined by two Beauceron and two Rhodesian Ridgeback pups, all of whom will (eventually) watch over the pigs...hopefully keeping them out of harm's -and the onca's- way. While I am on the subject of pigs, I want to address a comment to last week's blog from the world's most curious orthopedic surgeon, and my very good friend, Tony Matan. Free-range pigs will not 'run away'. Provided you feed them every day at the same time you can quite literally whistle and they will come from wherever they have gotten off to and race back for chow -not unlike certain bipedal primates also known as teenage homosapiens, particular the males of the species. In sum, pigs are intelligent, social animals that form close bonds with their offspring and other pigs among their herd and seldom wander far from the group.

As to Tony's other question about isolation, thus far it has not been a problem. We typically spend two days a week in São Paulo, and farm life does not otherwise afford much time for idleness; a typical day has us up at 06:00, at work from 07:00 until approx. 17:00, with only a short coffee break at 10:30 and lunch at 12:30. After dinner and a little reading, we are typically in bed by 21:00. In the absence of TV (I am a self-admitted couch potato), I have managed to plow my way through a number of excellent books: Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell, The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town, by John Grisham, Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart, by Ian Ayres, and Blue Shoes and Happiness (No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Book 7), by Alexander McCall Smith -as well as numerous Storey's Guides, of course. While these five books share little in common either stylistically or in terms of subject matter, they all deserve a read (IMHO).

Clair and I spent the rest of Friday planting 13 rows of soja perene or perennial soybean, our first crop (more accurately the pigs' first crop) in the field in front of our house; Clair dug the rows, which are approx. 100 meters long, while I sowed and covered them. This work requires the enchadão or hoe. On any given day over the past three months I could be found pushing as many as 40 75-kg wheelbarrows full of rubble a half a kilometer up the entry road to pave it, or carrying 50 25-liter tins full of concrete up to the top of the water tower to lay the base, or unloading 20 50-kg bags of cement from the delivery truck, all exhausting tasks to be sure...but 15 minutes of digging with the enchadão reduces me to a teary-eyed, babbling cripple. In my entire life I cannot recall any task as physically demanding. Merely covering as opposed to digging 13 rows of soja perene left me feeling like someone had taken a meat mallet to my back. How Clair manages to work with this tool all day long leaves me constantly gobsmacked. If all goes well, and my back holds up, we will finish planting the soja perene next week -and should see the first fruits of our labor in another two.

On Saturday the number of entries in Alfheim's official guestbook increased by 100% when we received a visit from our very good friends Márcio and Heather Cabral Magano. More than any other person, Márcio, who owns and manages Fazenda Caetê (when he is not running his law firm in São Paulo), a magnificent ranch near Santa Branca, has provided us with constant support in preparation for this endeavor: showing us countless properties, teaching us about horse riding (with moderate success) and cattle roping (thus far with far less success) and patiently answering my innumerable questions about everything from cattle, pigs and horses to property and commodity prices. Heather for her part has always been the consummate hostess, and, not surprisingly, arrived at Alfheim with a leg of lamb and a jar of homemade Jabuticaba jam.

Speaking of Jabuticaba (the name is derived from the Tupi word Jabuti (tortoise) + Caba (place), meaning the place where you find tortoises), also called the the Brazilian Grape Tree, the Jabuticaba in front of our house is now overladen with ripening fruit -a truly spectacular site and most delicious snack.

Finally, a number of you have expressed some level of surprise regarding our decision to pack up our Old World lives and move to Alfheim. In truth, we have been working toward this goal for more than six years...the past two alone on the closing (there goes the last vestiges of my reputation as an effective negotiator). There are, of course, a myriad of considerations that go into a decision of this magnitude, but Lone stumbled across the following passage from Small-scale livestock Farming, by Carol Ekarius, that sums up most of them more eloquently than I ever could:

First, we want to live in places off the beaten track. We want to feast our eyes on spectacular views of rugged mountain vistas. We want a place with lots of sun, abundant wildlife, and minimal light pollution. We want to sit out at night lost in a sea of stars, listening for the serenade of song dogs (coyotes). Beauty is, in itself, worthy of effort.

Second, we want to be as independent as is feasible in this modern age. We want a significant portion of our energy to come from renewable sources, and much of our food to come from the work of our own hands, whether hunting, gathering, or growing. We want the bulk of our living to come from our endeavors, not jobs.

Third, we want to be honorable and honest in our dealings with each other and with other people. We want to be compassionate and respectful in our treatment of other living creatures. We want our actions on the land to be beneficial to the ecosystem; we want to understand and work with ecosystem processes. We want to be contributors, not just takers, from society and the Earth. And we want the world to be a better place for our having passed through.

Fourth, we want to do meaningful work, both physically and mentally. Our work needs to keep us in the outdoors, and to keep us surrounded by animals. We enjoy work, and take pride in it, and believe that work keeps us healthy and happy.

Finally, we have little interest in material possessions, but financial security with little or no debt is important to us. We want a small but comfortable home. More important to us than money is time: We want to make time for reading, writing, art, music, travel, and a loving relationship. We want to keep our minds open and expanding; our hearts full and content.