November 10 - 16, 2008

Lone spent Wednesday and Thursday planting various members of the genus Cucurbita, aka squashes, in the field nearest our house, where we had earlier planted soja perene, and seeding her vegetable garden. She decided to plant squashes in the part of the field where the soja perene has not yet sprouted. Clair planted this area on his own, while Lone and I were in São Paulo, and he either planted the seeds too deeply or he was too conservative with the number of seeds he sowed. Regardless, the principle of intelligent fast failure dictated that we should acknowledge our mistake and move on: the area itself is only a fraction of the entire field and the investment negligible.

This example brings to mind two of the three (rule #1 of consulting: always present the client with three options) guiding principles that I have always tried to apply in business -and now find highly applicable to farming. First, hire good people, something I am confident we have done thus far at Alfheim. Second, apply the principle of intelligent fast failure, i.e. move as quickly as possible from new ideas to new knowledge by making small and manageable mistakes — intelligent failures. Few errors are truly insurmountable, unless, of course, one fails to recognize them as such. For any number of reasons, George W. Bush comes to mind, but then as the old adage goes - people get the democracy they deserve.

For my part, I spent Wednesday and Thursday clearing more pasture. On Wednesday I got an early start and bogarted Clair's heavier scythe...very nice! On Thursday Clair got the jump on me, and I was again relegated to my Minnie Me scythe...what a bogart!

On Friday I went to Paraibuna to visit Fazenda Brasil to negotiate the purchase of 20 sows. Beto Camargo, a good friend and well-known fixture in Paraibuna, accompanied me. Fazenda Brasil is a closed production facility, i.e. one cannot visit or even view the pigs one purchases; Fazenda Brasil sells 700 pigs per day!

At present pigs are selling for approx. R$63 (€22 or $28) per arroba (approx. 15 kg), so assuming a sow weighs on average 90 kg, we will pay R$378 per sow (€133 or $168). For 20 sows, then, our total investment will be R$7,560 (€2,660 or $3,353) plus transport. We are counting on an average of 12 piglets per litter (the genetics of these particular sows should be top notch), meaning that sometime in the late first half of 2009, we should be the proud (and likely more than a little overwhelmed) owners of approx. 240 piglets, half boars and half sows. The boars will be fattened and sold, while the sows will form the basis for our production of piglets, which by 2010 should reach approx. 2,880 per year. This assumes two litters (12 piglets each) per sow per year. At today's current market price of approx. R$65 per (non-organic) piglet, this would yield approx. R$187,200 (€65,871 or $83,034) per year, more than enough to cover our monthly expenses and begin paying back our initial investments in the property (estimated payback: less than five years).

Due to heavy the rains this week, our weekend visit to Fazenda Zacarias (see Provence), an herb farm not too far from Rio de Janeiro, was canceled. Instead Lone and I spent the better part of Saturday, together with Dumb and Dumber, who we loaded into our Ford Ecosport 4WD 2.0 16V, in São Luiz do Paraitinga, where we purchased tools and materials at Deposit Cursino, our preferred DIY, to construct a bigger hen house. Why a bigger hen house? Because I purchased two hens and 28 chicks on Thursday evening from Rosana's father. In all I spent R$86.00, R$15.00 (€5.28 or $6.65) per hen and R$2.00 (€0.70 or $0.89) per chick. And he threw in a rooster for free! This brings me to the third guiding principle of business and farming, nicely summed up by George Washington Plunkitt of Tammany Hall fame: “I seen my opportunities and I took ’em.” In short, when opportunity knocks, open the door.

And knock it did again on Friday, when on my way back from hog shopping in Paraibuna, as I was driving through Pouso Alto, which takes a fraction of the time it takes Muddy Waters to make love to a woman in Mannish Boy (hint: less than five minutes), I saw him...Kong. Kong is, quite simply, the most imposing rooster I have ever seen, more than three times the size of any of the other roosters at Alfheim. As the 28 chicks are the same breed as Kong, and the ducklings continue to grow like agricultural crops after the accident at the Chernobyl NPP in 1986, construction of a new hen house has quickly risen to near the top of our short-term priority list.

In addition to getting "...a deal...a steal...the sale of the f*&%ing century!" from Rosana's father, I also learned that back when Alfheim was still known as Estância Maneco, it supported 300 head of cattle (at present Alfheim would support approx. 50). As it turns out, Rosana's father worked at Estância Maneco in a capacity similar to Clair today, and he has a wealth of information about our fazenda that will prove invaluable in connection with both the organic certification process and any topographical survey we carry out to determine the true borders of the property. Had I chosen not to purchase the chickens that evening, I likely would not have encountered her father for some time, if at all. Knowing that the property has supported a much larger number of cattle allows us to consider a range of additional business scenarios.

After purchasing all of the requisite tools and materials for the hen house, Lone and I lunched at Bar e Restaurante Familiar Comida Caseiro, our favorite restaurant in the center of São Luiz do Paraitinga, which incidentally allows dogs entry. At a total of R$14.00 (€4.93 or $6.21) for two, people not dogs, including two soft drinks and a coffee, the latter on the house, one can hardly argue with the price.

Finally, our fantastic fixed-mobile home telephone is working again and thanks to the help of a good friend, Jefferson Zanetti, we may well have cracked the code for Internet connectivity on the farm. The proposed solution involves a dual-band cell antenna, two repeaters and my Claro 3G modem. If successful, the payback will be approx. six months when compared to Embratel's more conventional satellite solution. Syv-ni-tretten.