November 24 - 30, 2008

Written to Derek and the Dominos, Live at the Fillmore [Disk 2]

Funny Quote of the Day - Lily Tomlin - "The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat."

Apologies for the delay in publishing this week's blog entry. I had to pick up Chico and his crew of one this morning and deliver them to Alfheim to begin fencing. As a result, Lone and I had to delay our weekly trip to São Paulo by 24 hours.

While on the subject of arrivals, our return to Alfheim on Tuesday evening brought another surprise...this time of the positive variety: Casas Bahia had at last delivered our two guest beds (Lone commented that she would have made up our bed before taking a picture, but when the only covers one has is a sleeping bag, I am not sure it makes a huge difference). Finally, an end to the dual-occupancy single bed after nine weeks! And my first taste of a sleeping unit larger than a single bed since July! Now that's progress!

Despite the upgrade, I nonetheless awoke on Wednesday morning very tired and unable to gain traction on much of anything. Thankfully the hog truck arrived in the afternoon, hardening my focus. What a sight! The first order of business was constructing a ramp on which to guide the gilts down into Lone's garden-to-be. No way were any of us going to attempt to carry 20 gilts (young females, usually under 12 months of age, that have not reproduced) weighing an average of 90 kg each. A couple of scrap doors later, and we were ready for descent. Step 1: push/pull gilt onto ramp. Step 2: guide gilt into center of ramp. Step 3: slide gilt down ramp. Step 4: repeat 19 times. Step 5: close the gate. Step 6: enjoy the moment.

Following successful delivery, I went in to examine the animals and ended up administering a cooling hand-bath to one of the gilts that seemed to be suffering from overheating (a true All Creatures Great and Small moment). She recovered quickly and was soon on her feet and enjoying her new surroundings with the rest of her crew. The breed we purchased has been described as uma salada or a salad, a mix of many breeds: Duroc, Large Whites, Nilos, Piau. The result: lean, beautiful animals. Most amazing of all has been how quickly these closed-production hogs have adapted to their enhanced indpenedence in Lone's garden-to-be. Almost as soon as they de-ramped, they began to root. They are quickly transforming Lone's garden-to-be, rooting and preparing the soil for planting. They are also extremely social animals, rarely passing one another without what I have dubbed the snout shake, a quick, ever-so-subtle bump of their snouts along with a quick sniff. They also enjoy sleeping in large groups, in some cases very large groups. And if any of you ever doubted whether a hog could drink from a hose, you can now rest easy knowing that they can.

On Thursday I had to travel to Natividade da Serra, my first visit, to give testimony in a fatal car accident that I only barely avoided becoming a part of some months back on Rodovia dos Tamoios. Lone was kind enough to accompany me. Natividade da Serra is well-organized, clean and quiet, an altogether lovely small town. While waiting for me, Lone managed to pick up a stray dog, Negona, from the local padaria or bakery. After running a few other errands, we put Negona into the back of our car and traveled back to Alfheim. She is still a bit too much of a puppy, but within 24 hours her tail moved from its then-permanent position between her hind legs to its natural position of high and wagging. It is obvious that she had been badly mistreated, so the speed of her transformation was remarkable.

Somewhat ironic that within a period of less than two weeks we lost Negão and gained Negona. As if to underscore the irony, on Saturday who should show up as though he had barely been away but the Rambling Man himself, Negão...nothing more than a jaunt of nine km separating us. Layla was, of course, ecstatic, even working through her briefly injured paw to limp along on three and one-half paws whenever we went for a walk. The three knuckleheads seem to enjoy each others company. Now we will just have to see for how long the prodigal son stays put.

Thursday and Friday were also used to construct the Burj Al Arab of hen houses, complete with walk-in door (Lone's engineering contribution) and three bamboo roosting pins. The 20 mm plywood is buried 50 cm into the ground, so if something does happen to any of the chickens, it won't be from a subterranean assault. The ducks were moved in first, followed by Kong, Elle, the two mother hens and their respective broods and finally Rosanna's slightly larger chicks, which are, in fact, Elles, though she no longer recognizes them as such, having been separated from them very early on. The dwarf chickens joined the brood the following evening.

We feed the gilts every day at 16:00, approx. 3% of their body weight or 2.7 kg of feed per animal. We have begun training them to come to the sound of a bell, a trick that took all of two days. This will be important when they begin living free range in the forest. The advantage of the bell is that it has the same sound regardless of who is feeding them on any given day. As you will see from the sequence of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 photos, they respond very well to this trick. My hope is that we can also use this trick to transfer them from Lone's garden-to-be to their next pig pen, a way station before their final stop in the forest, a part of the farm that we refer to as Lothlórien.

While Clair and I were building the hen house, Lone and Rosana readied the apartment for the arrival of Chico and the man (on Monday, December 1st).

On Saturday, our king-sized mattress arrived...almost. The truck that delivered it had gotten stuck in the mud on Friday somewhere en route. That morning one of the two delivery men arrived on foot as close to our front door as the dogs would allow and informed us that their truck was outside the entrance to the fazenda and was unable to enter because of the poor condition of the dirt road. I took the dogs and went to investigate. After a little back and forth, I convinced them that the three of us could carry the mattress on foot to the house, 1.8 km of one of my less brilliant ideas, but we succeeded.

Finally, we spent Sunday marking pastures with the markers from the orange graveyard. Already excited to return to Alfheim and see the progress on the fencing.