Convalescing

Written to Chinatown by The Be Good Tanyas

Worth reading: Climate Change Deniers Without Borders

It has been a while since I last appeared in the blogosphere. Unfortunately my absence has had less to due with holiday downtime than the mother of all stomach bugs, one that has incapacitated Lone and me for the past week. Fortunately, we are on the mend, but according to Rosana, who was hit by the same bacteria/virus a couple of weeks before us, we can look forward to a very gradual recovery.

On a more positive note, Johannes arrived at Fazenda Alfheim on December 19th, his birthday, kindly agreeing to take a taxi from Aeroporto de Guarulhos to our dirt entrance road at km 66 on Rodovia Oswaldo Cruz in order to save his much-suffering parents a six-plus hour roundtrip. Johannes is in Brazil celebrating his first Christmas as a gainfully-employed Science teacher at New College Leicester. Needless to say, the rentz are thrilled to have him for a visit, if only a short one.

Prior to the onset of our personal plagues, Lone and I spent a day visiting Frigorífico Mantiqueira, a slaughterhouse in São Jose dos Campos. We were graciously hosted by Paulo Cesar, who spent two hours giving us a top-to-bottom tour of the facilities. All in all, very professionally run.

Other noteworthy events during my absence from the blogosphere:

• We enjoyed a visit from Katrine and Emil, the former the daughter of a friend of a dear friend of Lone.
  
• We planted our very own banana plantation containing almost 100 banana plants.
• We moved the hogs from Hogwood to Hog Hill. Interestingly, despite our initial, disastrous experience herding hogs, we have now discovered what appears to be a foolproof method. Seeing 2o-plus hogs moving in synch down a farm road en route to their new destination is indeed satisfying.
  

Finally, here at the dusk of 2009 it is worth remembering:

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.
- Epicurus

Alfheim & Son

Written to Graceland by Paul Simon

A father carries pictures where his money used to be.
- Author Unknown

Esben Hesketh agrees to join Fazenda Alfheim as Farm Manager

Vargem Grande, Brazil—December 10, 2009 —Fazenda Alfheim® today announced that Esben Hesketh, 21-year-old middle son of Rance Hesketh and Lone Blichert-Hansen, has agreed to join Fazenda Afheim as Farm Manager upon completion of his BSc (Hons) in Agricultural Management from Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester, UK, in June 2010.

“Esben is obviously doing a terrific job at RAC, having completed his first two years at the top of his class, and we look forward to his contributions as a member of the Fazenda Alfheim team,” said Rance Hesketh, Fazenda Alfheim's Minister of Mischief. “We think Esben’s insights and experience will be very valuable in helping to guide Fazenda Alheim in the years ahead.”

“Fazenda Alfheim is one of the organizations in the world that I most admire,” said Esben Hesketh. “I'm really looking forward to working with Rance and Lone and the Fazenda Alfheim team to help with all of the amazing things they are doing.”

Fazenda Alfheim ignited the organic piglet revolution in Brazil in 2009 with its IBD-certified Duroc/Large White/Landrace cross, and it continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning restuarant partnerships.

Yule begins...

Written to Bing Crosby Christmas Album by Bing Crosby

Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love. How on earth can you explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love? Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.
- Albert Einstein

With this blog post the winter festival of Yule has officially -albeit unceremoniously- begun at Fazenda Alfheim. I know this to be true because...

1. Lone demanded that I obtain some Christmas music for her iPod shuffle, hence the Bing Crosby.
2. Lone dug out, from where I have no idea, our kalenderlys, a Danish tradition that involves the daily burning down of one day of this special candle, beginning on December 1st and finishing on December 24th.
3. We made/had our inaugural holiday visits: the first on Saturday, November 28th, to Fazenda Santa Helena, where Beto prepared half of an Alfheim piglet, which we thoroughly enjoyed together with Emmanuel, Filipa and Filipa's mother and brother, who were visiting; the second from Leonardo, his wife, Tâmora, and their daughter, Cecília, who visited our fazenda on Sunday, November 29th. In best Saint Nicholas fashion, our guests arrived laden with gifts, including a 220 volt toaster, a real lifesaver considering that we only have one 110 volt outlet in our house. They were able to find this toaster because their city, Jundiaí, unlike most of Brazil, is 100% 220 volt. So not only did we enjoy their wonderful company, but we will be reminded of their visit every day for the next many years!
4. Lone and I finished our Christmas shopping for the boys today...ho ho ho!
5. Under the heading it is better to receive than to give, Lavrale finally delivered my trailer. My Lego tractor now has a sidekick. Despite their diminutive size, the company's deliveryman estimates their towing capacity to be in excess of 1,500 kg. If that turns out to be true, I will win my two R$5.00 (€1.96 or $2.93) bets with Clair and Dirlei, i.e. that my Lego combo will be able to deliver 30 or more fence posts to the far field. 7-9-13! On a side note, even without the benefit of the additional 10 hectares of pasture that the far field comprises, our Nelore were all lying down and chewing their cuds for the first time ever! Márcio has always told me that it is a very good sign if cattle are chewing their cuds by 11:00, so needless to say I was quite pleased.
6. Finally, under the heading it is better to give than to receive, here is the heartening story, compliments of Pelle, of an ethics professor who has vowed to give away £1 million - more than half of his future earnings - in a bid to help fight poverty in the developing world.

Honestly priced food or irresponsibly priced food

Written to Dookie by Green Day

I asked Joel how he answers the charge that because food like his is more expensive, it is inherently elitist. “I don’t accept the premise,” he replied. “First off, those weren’t any ‘elitists’ you met on the farm this morning. We sell to all kinds of people. Second, whenever I hear people say clean food is expensive, I tell them it’s actually the cheapest food you can buy. That always gets their attention. Then I explain that, with our food, all of the costs are figured into the price. Society is not bearing the cost of water pollution, of antibiotic resistance, of food-borne illnesses, of crop subsidies, of subsidized oil and water—of all the hidden costs to the environment and the taxpayer that make cheap food seem cheap. No thinking person will tell you they don’t care about all that. I tell them the choice is simple: You can buy honestly priced food or you can buy irresponsibly priced food.”

The past two week's lunches at Fazenda Alfheim have been laden with pork and honestly-priced food. I returned from São Paulo last week with two exquisitely rotisseried pork quarters from one of the two-upscale São Paulo restaurant prospects. Ambrosial does not begin to do this meat justice. And judging from the feedback we received from two early taste testers, we are not alone in our assessment:

Caríssimo Rance, o leitão estava ótimo. Mais magro, com carne mais firme e saborosa.

Na terça só eu comi, o pessoal lá em casa já havia jantado. Comi a perna, excelente, ainda quente do forno. Aí o leitão repousou na geladeira até sexta no almoço, quando voltou ao forno de casa para aquecer e ser servido. Pedaços dele foram disputados “à tapa” pelos presentes, não sobrou nada, só um monte de ossinhos.

Fui intimado a voltar lá e comprar mais.
...

O leitão estava ótimo! Carne super magra…comemos à noite e foi super leve.

As an aside, pork is healthier than beef, about equal as a source of protein, but lower in total fat and saturated fat, and recently took the lead over its main competitor, chicken, in the battle to be the leanest white meat.

On Saturday, we decided to try our hand at preparing our pork, i.e. sans chef extraoridnaire. To that end Lone dug out my most-excellent apron, while I leafed through our new, not to mention only, pork cook book, Pork & Sons, by Stéphane Reynaud, to gather a sense of the possible, i.e. given the dearth of ingredients in the house. In fact, we were unable to muster the ingredients for any single dish, but after perusing a couple of recipes, I opted to roast the ham using an improvised basting sauce, which I threw together using a very, very, very cheap red wine, 5 liters for R$5.00 (€1.92 or $2.86), olive oil, mustard, thyme and basil from Provence, Lone's home-grown rosemary, sage, garlic and carrots, and salt and pepper to taste. I roasted the ham in the oven at 215 degrees Celsius for two hours, basting every 30 minutes, the first two times with fresh basting sauce and the last two with the sauce from the dish itself. While clearly biased, both Lone and I concluded that this dish ranked right up there with the pork prepared by Beto and our first São Paulo restaurant prospect, rare air indeed given the chops of the two chefs in question.

A couple of weeks ago we implemented a Friday afternoon planning session with the employees…a bit bookish, but it does give us a chance to review what we accomplish each week, our priorities for the week ahead and any other issues that might arise and/or require collective treatment. It also gives us all a little non-work face-time, and because we start at 14:00, we still finish early on Fridays, a practice that has been greatly appreciated given the relentless 34 °C daily scorching that we have experienced of late. When the temperature passes 30 °C, usually before 10:00, the daily chores really do becomes chores. The piglets certainly agree…and have taken to daily, collective jet cooling…resting until the late afternoon when they begin to act, well, piggish again.

This weekly exercise has also helped Lone and I gauge where we are and what's next. We have concluded that we need still more help if we are to meet our goals for the coming year. To that end, we have begun to look for a fourth employee, though one who commutes from Vargem Grande to Alfheim rather than lives at our fazenda. We have two potential candidates in our sights and have taken contact with the first. 7-9-13!

On Wednesday, November 25th, we gathered the cattle for their twice-annual hoof-and-mouth vaccinations. We also took this opportunity to treat them for berne or cattle grub (Dermatobia hominis). Given the sorry state of our corral (read: useless), the work required us to rope and wrestle the cattle to the ground. Once secured (my job given both my mass advantage over Clair and Dirlei and the fact that I couldn't lasso a barn door if it were two feet in front of me), we squeezed the berne from the animals' bodies (not for the feint of heart), treating them afterwards with neem, iodine and calendula cream. While tough, it was enormously satisfying to be able to take the time to treat the animals fully. Going forward we will try to spray them with neem every 21 days to reduce the number of parasites.

Finally, we had two unexpected visitors last week, the first extremely dangerous and the second quite benign -even cute. On Monday, Lone nearly ran into a cobra-coral or Brazilian Coral Snake (Micrurus decoratus), one of the most venomous snakes in Central and South America. Fortunately, Clair was nearby and he did what he does: grabbed a piece of wood and killed the snake. As this photo illustrates, this was the Mini-Me version, so naturally we couldn't help but wonder where momma snake is hiding…hopefully far, far away. In an effort to encourage her to stay away, the Head Witch of Eastwick burnt the snake, dynamized the ashes and will spread them around the farmhouse grounds. Our second visitor was a frog that somehow found its way into my underwear and sock basket in our bedroom. As I was preparing to hit the sack one evening, I found him staring back at me. While conceptually open to the idea of sharing my Alans, to paraphrase Samuel L. Jackson's character Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction, we'd have to be talkin' about one charming motherfucking frog.

Slaughterhouse-Five

Written to Bridge School Concerts, Vol. 1 by Various Artists

Makenna Goodman: In your opinion, what's the biggest problem with the food industry in the U.S.?

Joel Salatin: Wow, where do I start? Number one is that it destroys soil. Absolutely and completely. The soil is the only thread upon which civilization can exist, and it's such a narrow strip around the globe if a person could ever realize that our existence depends on literally inches of active aerobic microbial life on terra firma, we might begin to appreciate the ecological umbilical to which we are all still attached. The food industry, I'm convinced, actually believes we don't need soil to live. That we are more clever than that.

This week was dominated by two milestone events:

1. The holding of a joint, introductory training course in organic/biodynamic farming, led by Ana Maria Claro Paredes Silva, Méd. Veterinária, Instituto Oikos de Agroecologia, at Fazenda Santa Helena, Emmanuel and Filipa's hotel fazenda.
2. The slaughtering at Fazenda Alfheim of five piglets for commercial consumption (samples for a high-end São Paulo restaurant), led by Emmanuel's chef extraordinaire, Humberto Guimaraes, aka Beto.
   

On Wednesday, Lone departed Alfheim with Clair and Rosana at 06:30, picked up Direli in Vargem Grande (his house at Alfheim is an Elektro connection shy of being ready) and arrived at Fazenda Santa Helena at approx. 08:00. After meeting Ana Maria and their farm's traditional veterinarian, Milka Matos Bado Villani, who we know well from her work with our dogs, and who was keen to participate in the training day, the teams were introduced and Lone left to carry out sundry duties in nearby São Luiz do Paraitinga. I drew the short straw and stayed behind to take care of the daily chores at Alfheim. Our non-participation was by design. We wanted to allow our personnel to raise questions and concerns with Ana Maria unencumbered by the presence of the bosses. Ana Maria's approach was quite clever: she started by referencing the approach to farming taken by the previous generation, i.e. the parents of our respective employees. How they were able to grow almost all of their own food. How they used no fossil fuel-based fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides. How their soil was naturally healthy. How they collected their own seeds. Etc.

Ana Maria then contrasted these practices with how much today's rural population has to purchase in stores, the intensive use of fossil-fuel-based inputs (out of necessity rather than choice), et depletion of the soil and how most small farmers have to purchase their seeds because the hybrid varieties sold by the likes of Cargill and Monsanto cannot be saved and re-used the following season. In effect, the large agro-industrial giants have succeeded in turning seeds into the equivalent of disposable diapers or contact lens. As an aside, in high school and at university, I used the same pair of hard contact lenses for almost 10 years, only replacing them when I actually lost them! Today, I would need to build extra storage space in my bathroom to house even a month's supply of disposable contact lenses. Clearly, this is the dream of every consumer goods company: convert a one-time purchase into a recurring revenue, but as it relates to seeds the idea is abhorrent. A hybrid seed which cannot be saved is akin to a disposable wrist watch on which the time can only be read once.

According to Lone, who participated in this introductory session, the effect was very powerful. After that, the two teams, plus Alena, went on their walkabout.

Ana Maria's feedback as regards our employees was quite favorable: they appear to buy in to the organic approach and they are positive and open. In short, they have turned the corner.

Lone returned at the end of the day, playing the part of taxi chauffeur, first dropping Dirlei off in Vargem Grande and then ferrying Clair, Rosana and Alena back to Fazenda Alfheim.

Thursday was an equally inspiring day. With the help of Beto, who arrived at Fazenda Alfheim just after 09:00, and Dirlei, who it turns out has quite a bit of experience slaughtering piglets, we took the plunge into packaging our product. We started by catching five suitably large piglets, approx. 10-15 kg, and placing them in sacks, which we then placed in the shade under a tree. One by one, we killed, cleaned and butchered each piglet. We decided to produce a variety of samples for the first of the two upscale São Paulo restaurants which have expressed an interest in our leitões orgânicas. To facilitate the packaging of these samples, I had purchased a vacuum sealer from the Polishop store in Shopping Eldorado on my last visit to São Paulo, and we used this pillar of the TV shopping world to protect our valuable pork…very professional. I delivered the first of these samples, three piglets in all, halved, quartered and cut in sixths, on Sunday. Today, Tuesday, I will taste these samples together with the owner of the restaurant, an icon in the São Paulo restaurant world.

The remaining two piglets were divided between Clair and Rosana and Dirlei, half each, and Beto and us, again half each. Dirlei stopped at the market in Vargem Grande and weighed his half as we were all quite curious about the weight of the final product. Five kg without the head…probably 12 kg cleaned…a nice size in my opinion. The meat looks exquisite: firm and extremely lean. One can clearly see the difference between free-range and confined swine.

The day's other important takeaway were the lessons learned in terms of how we should build our open-air slaughterhouse:

• Construct a holding pen next to the slaughterhouse so the animals can roam freely pre-slaughter. When kept in sacks, even in the shade, some of the piglets flap about to such an extent that they end up damaging their skin.
• Construct a small, wood-burning stove to heat water, which is used to remove the piglet's hair. On this occasion we used the farm's extra stove, but it is neither effective or cost-effective out of door.
• Purchase insect-free netting, which can be placed around the piglets while they are hanging post-butchering.
• Purchase a stainless steel table to eliminate bacteria buildup.
• Purchase a top-of-the-line butchering set.
• Purchase a blow-torch to singe the hard-to-remove hair (this time around we entrusted this task to a couple of disposable Gillete razors).
  

Finally, in other far-related news:

• What Lone now refers to as my Lego tractor arrived on Friday.
• Clair finished cleaning pasture 5 (1, 2, 3, 4).
• The Head Witch of Eastwick spread he first locally-produced Horn Manure Preparation (500).
• The frogs they are a breeding.
• And Baixinho, one of the Saturday day laborers, began clearing our lagoa. Baixinho promised to return next Saturday with a team of three-four day laborers, so I expect that we will be discussing fish vs. ducks in two weeks time.

Back to the farm

Written to En Concert by Jack Johnson

A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.
- Will Rogers

With the successful handover on October 26th of Santelisa Vale to its new majority shareholder, Louis Dreyfuss Commodites, I wrapped up what turned into a nine-month interim management engagement. While an extraordinarily satisfying experience, it is one that I am nonetheless most pleased to have squarely in my rear-view mirror, allowing me once again to turn my full attention to Fazenda Alfheim. To borrow two classic lines from Sleep 'n Eat, one of the main characters in Spike Lee's Bamboozled, having secured some income coming in, it was now time for some meantime in-between time, hence my week's absence from the blogosphere. During my mini-hiatus, I finished The Five People You Meet in Heaven (not particularly profound, but very well-written), by Mitch Albom, and started The Lost Symbol (very entertaining), by Dan Brown. When I picked up Dan Brown's latest thriller, I was reminded of another classic line, this one uttered by my dear friend and the world's most curious orthopedic surgeon, Tony Matan. Back in our glory days as California Golden Bears, I chanced across a photo of him chilling on a beach with a Jackie Collins (or was it a Barbara Cartland?) novel in hand. His nonchalant response to my ribbing: If you can't read trash, you can't read.

Aside from reading, this week at Fazenda Alfheim was dominated by an outbreak of various diseases produced by Staphylococcus aureus, a bacterium that is part of the normal flora on the skin and mucous membranes of food animals and poultry. Staphylococcus species are not thought to produce disease unless there is a breakdown in an environmental or immune system barrier.

In our case, we believe the breakdown in an environmental or immune system barrier was brought on by the dramatic weather we have experienced recently. More specifically, a couple of weeks of non-stop rain, including a two-day spell which offered up in excess of 200 ml of Adam's ale.

Interestingly, neither the larger hogs nor the unweaned piglets were affected, only the weaned piglets, who reside in a separate part of the fazenda, closer to our house. Even more interestingly, the bacterium almost exclusively affected the all-white piglets, of which we sadly lost 4-5. Neither the Corinthians nor the Durocs were affected in any significant way. Considering the fact that in all cases these piglets share the same father(s) and in many others a mother, this is odd. Fortunately, the worst appears to be over, and all of the surviving piglets appear both active and strong.

The diseases produced by this bacterium led me, aided by our traditional hog veterinarian, Paulo Basetto, to rethink our breeding strategy: we have decided to focus on improving the gene pool of our sows as a way of complementing our existing plan to strengthen the offspring's offspring with another Duroc (or other-suitably robust) cross. In brief, we will replace our weaker sows with their mothers, apparently a more robust group.

To this end, we spent Thursday afternoon earmarking the keeper sows (3 thus far) and gilts (6 thus far), an exciting afternoon that involved the entire Alfheim team, Lone, me, Clair, Rosana, Dirlei and Alena. Somewhat surprisingly, the sows got whipped into a frenzy, with Hannibela the Cannibal trying to go through our bones like butter. Quite feisty, that one. Needless to say she remained unmarked, and will be getting into my belly over the Christmas holidays. Pork-chops taste good!

As for the remaining, recently born and future swine offspring, a couple of upscale restaurants in São Paulo have expressed interest in purchasing our product. All very exciting. We plan to deliver samples in the second half of November. In preparation, we are planning the construction of an open-air slaughterhouse on site. This is a growing trend in the beyond organic community, differs dramatically from what were historically referred to as a shambles and simplifies many of the hygienic challenges that a traditional cottage slaughterhouse would face. We have also invited Beto, Emmanuel's pousada-chef extraordinaire, to Alfheim on Thursday, November 12th, to give us all a course in proper slaughtering techniques. Nothing like learning from a master.

The day before our slaughtering lesson, Lone and our employees will be spending the day at Fazenda Santa Helena, together with Emmanuel's employees, and Ana Maria Claro Paredes Silva, Méd. Veterinária, UNESP Botucatu, 1985. Ana Maria is a researcher at Instituto Oikos de Agroecologia, and has agreed to spend a day with our combined staffs, teaching them the basics of organic/biodynamic farming. The day has been designed as a walk-about, during which Ana-Maria will tour the facilities together with the employees answering their questions and using these as jumping off points to discuss the basics of organic/biodynamic farming. It has taken us several weeks to get all of the requisite ducks in a row for this day, and hopefully it will be the first of many shared learning days between our respective fazendas. In our minds this is a real milestone, and fortunately Clair, Rosana and Dirlei all seem quite excited about the prospect.

In other farm-related news:

• I purchased the Agrale 4100.4 tractor and an accompanying Lavrale trailer. Delivery has been promised by November 12th. Another very exciting milestone.
• I also bought the gorgeous, three-year-old, pure Gir bull that I saw at Fazenda Santana da Serra. The bull will be delivered to Fazenda Alfheim in the second half of November, after he receives his mandatory hoof-and-mouth vaccination.
• Hog Haven is growing back nicely after reseeding, and should be more than ready to support the big hogs when they rotate back around in approx. 12 months.
• Marcos and his compadre finished our churrasqueira.
• The latest incarnation of the Witches of Eastwick eagerly dug up the 50 cow horns that were buried last March (autumn equinox) and began preparing the Horn Manure Preparation (500).
• Based on their improved quality, we have extended our pasture rotations from one day to two days. Obviously, there is still a much work still to do to improve our seven working pastures, but the Nelore have never looked better.
  

Finally, some of you will have noticed the dearth of blog photos over the past several weeks. This was the regrettable result of the early, tragic death of my Nikon D80. In the interim I was relegated to using Lone's dated Sony Cyber-shot, which has held up remarkably well since we bought it 9-10 years ago. The Sony's longevity notwithstanding, I am now the happy owner of a Canon PowerShot SX200 IS. Same 12 megapixel clarity of the Nikon for one-third of the price. So far it has not disappointed.

Die grosse Überraschung

Written to Open Road by Oli Brown

My record royalties right now are four times stronger than when I was the Madonna of my day, ... Now it's over the top. I mean the records, they all hold up through the years.
- Tony Bennett

Wanting to avoid both the specter and the reality of rising at 01:30 and hitting the dirt road by 02:00 in order to arrive at São Paulo-Guarulhos International Airport in time to pick up Lone at 05:45 on Saturday morning, I chose instead to spend Friday night at Caesar Business Guarulhos. Fortunately, Lone's plane landed early, and, after a short wait, a moderately droopy-eyed Lone, sporting new Harry Potter glasses to match my own, emerged from the behind the glass international arrivals doors looking remarkably spry.

Four hours later, after a quick grocery run in São Luiz do Paraitinga, we arrived at Alfheim, floating in on our newly manicured entrance road. A combination of the leveler from Natividade da Serra and 34 truckloads of cascalha have transformed our previously-intimidating-for-non-four-wheel drive vehicles, 1.8 km entrance road into a buttery-smooth expressway. Total cost for this transformation: R$2,500 (€971 or $1,434). Best of all, we did not have to lift a finger.

On Monday we traveled to São Paulo for die grosse Überraschung (Lone's BIG surprise): an evening with Tony Bennett. Simply unforgettable. We should all be so lucky to be grooving like Anthony Dominick Benedetto when we are 83. What charisma…the consummate performer. It is easy to understand why Frank Sinatra named him “the best singer in the business.”

The next day I flew to Ribeirão Preto to finish up some business, while Lone returned to Alfheim with our new, German intern, Alena Profit, who will spend a month at our fazenda in order to gain experience with biodynamic agriculture before beginning her degree course in psychology at Leibniz Universität Hannover. Unfortunately, as it has been raining cats and dogs (> 120 ml), Lone was not comfortable crossing the partially washed-out bridge in front of the entrance to our fazenda, so she and Alena turned the car around and spent the night in Vargem Grande, at the home of Fatima, the night-school teacher and owner of the local Internet cafe. Emboldened by the light of day, they returned this morning and crossed the bridge without incident, though Lone decided against tempting fate by crossing the stone bridge on our property as the water was knee-deep.

Today Lone took pictures of our two groups of piglets: the older ones, which seem to be suffering from an as-yet-unidentified illness (a bacteria?), and the newborns, which look marvelous, so that we can send them to a couple of our veterinarian contacts for diagnosis.

My tasks for the week include purchasing the tractor and ordering more organic hog feed (a not altogether simple task as IBD does not distinguish between producers who produce and consume their crops and those who produce and sell their crops).

Finally, two giant shout-outs:

• to Emmanuel Rengade and Filipa, whose second child, Tomas Georges, was born on October 24th;
• and to Brazil's handsomest lawyer-cowboy, Márcio Cabral Magano, who celebrated his birthday on October 27th, and is now a day older, a day wiser and none the worse for the wear.

Shopping for bull

Written to Rattle and Hum by U2

Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock.
- Will Rogers

On Saturday I visited Fazenda Santana da Serra, also referred to as Gir Leiteiro FB, a beautiful dairy and coffee farm located in Mococa à Cajuru, approx. 70 km from Ribeirão Preto. Upon arrival, I was met by the owner, José de Castro Rodrigues Netto, and his foreman, José Carlos, both of whom spent approx. three hours showing me their cattle, a combination of Gir Leiteiro and Girolando. The family has worked with these breeds since 1933, and the results are impressive. Many of their top cattle fetch prices ranging from R$40,000 to R$125,000 (€15,646 or $23,396 to €48,895 or $73,112); some of their rarer semen recently sold for R$7,500 (€8,228 or $12,304) per dose. Needless to say, these are truly exceptional animals. One of his dairy cattle produces more than 12,000 liters during a single lactation, which corresponds to approx. 40 liters per day for approx. 305 days. To put this in perspective, the average production for dairy cows in the US in 2005 was 8,800 kg (19,576 pounds). This cow definitely got milk!

Needless to say, I was not looking for anything quite so expensive, but I did find a stunning young bull, which I hope to be able to purchase in the coming weeks. The idea would be to breed this purebred Gir bull with a solid group of Girolando heifers.

In a positive coincidence, it turns out that Fazenda Santana da Serra uses the same tractor, an Agrale 4100.4, that we are thinking of purchasing. Fortunately, they rated it highly. It is always nice when you can get real-world feedback on a major purchase before taking the plunge. As an alternative, I am also considering buying a John Deere Gator™ TH 6x4 Diesel, which has the disadvantage of not being a tractor, but the advantage of costing slightly more than half as much as the Agrale. Boys and their toys...

Back at Alfheim, Clair and our newest employee, Dirlei, have begun planting the napier seedlings, and Marcos and his crew are finishing up the third house, the water troughs and our churrasqueira. If everything goes according to plan -and when does that not happen- they should complete the three projects this week.

Finally, Lone will return from her globetrotting and assorted political intrigues on Saturday, when I will pick her up at São Paulo-Guarulhos International Airport. We will relax at Fazenda Alfheim before heading to São Paulo on Monday, where we will spend Monday and Tuesday. I have a big surprise planned for Lone on Monday (which she has been unable to guess despite her considerable posturing), and she has her monthly ladies' lunch on Tuesday.

Stuck in the mud

Written to A Donny Hathaway Collection by Donny Hathaway

A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.
- Muhammad Ali

This past weekend got off to an inauspicious start when the pickup truck I borrowed to transport napier seedlings got stuck in the mud at 22:30 on Friday…approx. 4-7 km from Fazenda Alfheim. Undiscouraged by my plight, I grabbed my backpack and figured I could hoof it home in under an hour. A few steps into my journey, however, I realized that without the aid of the moon, which was nowhre to be found, or the ever-present One Earth wind-up flashlight we keep charged in the boot of our Ford Ecosport 2.0 4Wd 16V, I had no chance of making it even five meters down the road...much less home. In the end, there was nothing else to do but sleep in the pickup. After a bit of tossing and turning, I managed to get close to six hours of shuteye. In the dawn's early light, my situation looked distinctly less precarious. As it turned out, there was a house not too far back down the road. After befriending the watchdogs, I rousted two locals, and with two hoes and a shovel in hand we proceeded to dig out the truck. Less than 20 minutes later, I was on my way. Note to self: be sure to swing by and drop off a piglet to my two Samaritans…the least I can do.

In other, more positive, news, we succeeded in contracting Dirlei, a local from Vargem Grande, as a full-time farm hand. He came by with his wife and youngest child on Monday, a holiday, Nossa Senhora Aparecida, which commemorates the Virgin Mary as Nossa Senhora da Conceição Aparecida, Patron Saint of Brazil, to inform me that he will begin work at Fazenda Alfheim on Monday, October 19th. Together with Clair, who has previously worked with Dirlei for years, and Rosana, this brings team Alfheim to three full-time employees. Very exciting…and should allow us to move forward more quickly. And there is still so much work to do.

So much, in fact, that we are contemplating the purchase of a tractor, specifically an Agrale 4100.4, a small, family-farm tractor with 4WD. Will study this and other options over the next couple of weeks before making a decision. For her part, Lone informed me from Hamlet's moderland that she thinks she will make an excellent tractor chauffeur. Lone's self-assessed and self-professed expertise notwithstanding, the addition of a tractor certainly would solve a couple of gigantic logistical problems, such as how to transport more than 1,000 fence posts to the far field, approx. 3 km from the main house, and how to move a cement ring weighing approx. 100 kg to pasture 8, approx. 1.5 km from the main house, so that it can be converted into a water trough for the cattle.

Finally, on Saturday I will be visiting a couple of dairy farms that sell Gir.

Obama, Michelle, Oprah, Lula...and Lone

Written to Duets: An American Classic by Tony Bennett

We're competing against other great cities: Madrid, Rio de Janeiro, and Tokyo. That's why it's important that we all join together on the final path to Copenhagen. Having the support of President Obama is key.
- Richard M. Daley

What Richard M. Daley could not have foreseen at the time of his citation was that he was up against forces far more forceful than simply other great cities. A day after Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey descended upon the Danish capital, Lone arrived in her moderland in ample time to impact the outcome of the selection of the 2016 Summer Olympic host-city race. Beyond her many obvious charms, Lone brought with her a rare 100% success rate in Summer Olympic city selections, having been in UK in 2005 when the momentous, and unexpected, decision was taken to award London the 2012 Summer Games ahead of the then-frontrunner, Paris.

It is true that Brazil had sent its ridiculously popular President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, to Copenhagen, but Lone's influence extends to the recesses of Europe's oldest monarchy. Her brother, Jan Blichert-Hansen (far left), a frequent guest to Brazil, is afdelingsleder (Department Head) of the Kongelige Repræsentationslokaler (Royal Reception Rooms) at Christiansborg Palace. In addition to hobnobbing with the Queen of Denmark, Margrethe II (Margrethe Alexandrine Þorhildur Ingrid), on a regular basis, Jan is intimately involved in managing significant portions of most official visits as well as being responsible for all visits to the Queen's tapestries, one of the most popular exhibits in Denmark. As one Lilliputian example of Jan's Brobdingnagian influence, the Fazenda Alfheim blog has been given an international exclusive: a photo of the tea cup that Michelle Obama drank from during her recent, fruitless, visit. As if such a happening were not already sufficient to make me forget hogs for a week, Jan also provided us with two additional insider photos, both taken by Keld Navntoft Sørensen, of America's stunning First Lady. In the first photo, Michelle is seen with Margrethe II, while in the second she is together with Frederik Crown Prince of Denmark (to Michelle's left), his wife, Mary Donaldson (to Michelle's right), and the Queen's husband, Henri de Laborde de Monpézat (far right with gold tie).

Unfortunately for Chicago, the outcome was sealed as soon as Lone landed…even Oprah was helpless to alter the decision. In the end, the Marvelous City was awarded the 2016 Summer Olympics. Coming as it will on top of Brazil's ascension to its almost certain ranking as the world's fifth largest economy (and seventh or eighth leading oil producer), and Brazil's staging of the 2014 World Cup, the first time Brazil will host the tournament since 1950, it would indeed appear as though our adopted homeland is poised for a most compelling decade.

A year in the blogosphere...

Written to Stop the Clocks by Oasis

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.
- Albert Einstein

This week's blog post will be my 51st, taking me into my second year of blogging. In the previous year, 1,908 people visited the Fazenda Alfheim blogspot. These 1,908 absolute unique visitors generated 4,883 visits (Benchmark: 203 (+2,305.42%)) from 61 countries/territories, 8,530 pageviews (Benchmark: 370 (+2,205.41%)) and spent an average of 0:02:55 on the site (Benchmark: 00:00:13 (+1,277.43%)). In terms of trending, in September 2008 an average of 97 absolute unique visitors read the blog vs. 184 in June 2009, 198 in July and 188 in August. As a rule, the blog averages in excess of 100 visits per week. To paraphrase Joe Friday from Dragnet fame: "Just the facts, ma'am."

Far more than any numerical significance, the blog has helped us maintain contact with family and friends...and to make new friends. Most recently, Lone used the blog as a calling card of sorts to set up visits at two biodynamic farms in UK, Tablehurst and Plaw Hatch Community Farm in Forest Row, East Sussex, and Grange Village in Newnham-on-Severn. On these visits, Lone and Esben were graciously hosted by Ellie at Tablehurst and David Herman at the Grange.

Tablehurst's hog production consists of 15 sows and two boars, Duroc and Large White. They feed their hogs field beans (own production), oats, wheat, barley and whey from the cheese production at Plaw Hatch Community Farm.

At Tablehurst they do not give the piglets iron injections or drops, but instead a shovelful of soil is placed in the pen where they root. We do not use iron injections or drops, either, since the iron content of our soil is very high. As a result, our piglets acquire what they need simply by rooting.

Different to Alfheim, the hogs at Tablehurst spend the winter months inside and the summer months outside. This is done to conserve the soil. Land used for pigs one year becomes cropland the next.

The hogs are castrated at seven days and slaughtered at 70-80 kg dead weight.

By contrast at the Grange, where they raise Gloucestershire Old Spots, they do not castrate their shoats, but instead eat them before they begin producing hormones (5-6 months and approx. 100 kg).

The Grange also produces goat cheese, and while visiting Lone became completely enamored with the goats. While I agree the goats are very cute, I suspect Lone's interest was stimulated by what she described as the best goat cheese she had ever tasted. Once a Hobbit...

The Grange also has a vegetable garden that is to die for...hopefully we can emulate their success in this area, and we took a huge step to that end this past Saturday by finishing the poultry-proof vegetable garden fencing.

Back at Fazenda Alfheim, Clair cleaned pasture 1 using the Husqvarna 236R brushcutter. Amazing! Pasture 1 (to the right of the dividing fence) looks like a golf course when compared to pasture 2 (on the left), which Clair will clean this week. I made the decision this weekend to ask the Saturday fencing crew to help us reseed the cleaned pastures with calopogônio, capim aruanã and soja perene. This as a supplement to the feces distribution method currently in place. In choosing this route it is my hope that we can significantly speed up the reform of our pastures...and also take advantage of the onset of Spring. In addition to an increase in rain, the temperature is heating up...32˚ Celsius on Sunday...glorious!

The new worker's house is progressing nicely and should be completed on Saturday, October 3rd, se Deus quiser (Portuguese for 7-9-13!), according to Marcos.

Finally, in addition to two biodynamic farm visits, Lone and Esben also managed to pop over to Leicester to visit Johannes and Pelle. During their visit, they visited the school where Johannes teaches, New College Leicester, and also helped Pelle move into his dorm room for year 2 at university.

Lone lands in London

Written to Life Ain't Worth Livin' by J.W. Warren

It is not legal (in Nebraska) for a tavern owner to serve beer unless a nice kettle of soup is also brewing.
- Real Funny Dumb Laws in the United States

Lone boarded a non-stop TAM flight to UK last night, and I just confirmed that she landed safely in London, was picked up by Esben and the two have already returned to Cirencester, where Esben studies.

As mentioned in last week's blog post, Lone will be away until late October. In the meantime, both Fazenda Alfheim and I will try to make do without our better half. In addition, of course, to visiting our boys in UK and her family and friends in Denmark, Lone has scheduled four visits to organic and/or biodynamic farms, two each in UK and Denmark, a couple of which produce hogs. One of the farms Lone will visit, Doves Farm, is a true pioneer of the organic movement. Amazingly, this visit came about while we were relaxing at Emmanuel Rengade's pousada. As it turned out, one of the guests, Lucy, knows the family that owns and runs Doves Farm, and she helped Lone set up a visit. Talk about synchronicity!

While Lone is away, we will begin, among other priorities, a systematic process of cleaning the pastures with our newly acquired Husqvarna 236R brushcutter. Clair loves it, but has found that using it is very demanding physically. As a result, we have agreed that he should limit this work to one pasture per week, i.e. two-three mornings per week. By comparison, this same work would take at least three times longer if he were limited to using a scythe.

In the afternoons, Clair will reseed Hog Haven, which the hogs laid bare before being moved to Hogwood, with another of our new tools. Thankfully, Hog Hill, our third giant pig pen, has recovered nicely since we first had it plowed with oxen and planted sunflowers back in March. Since then the vegetation has regenerated, and even though it is not as dense as Hogwood, it will nonetheless make an attractive scampering ground for our new gilts, who, despite their diminutive size, display an almost proportionally impressive ability to clear vegetation as their parents.

In sum, then, the grandparents, as the first generation of hogs are known, reside in Hogwood, while the next generation of producers will reside on Hog Hill. While all of this residing is taking place, we will reseed Hog Haven in preparation for a new group of gilts, or alternatively as a surplus area if Hogwood or Hog Hill should require a period of fallow. It is worth noting that Hogwood is comprised of three separate areas, each approx. one to one and one-half hectares, while Hog Hill is comprised of two separate areas, each approx. one hectare. The hogs will be rotated within these areas according to their rate of habitat destruction. After reseeding Hog Haven with milheto, soja perene and calopogônio, we will add a fence in the middle in order to create two separate areas à la Hog Hill, each approx. one hectare. As discussed in an earlier blog post, we are currently seeding our existing pastures with calopogônio, capim aruanã and soja perene, all of which we mix into the mineral salt that the horses and cows consume (distribution by feces).

And speaking of horses and cows, we discovered this weekend, much to our horror, that our gentle, old horses possess a nasty streak when it comes to sharing mineral salt with their bovine compadres. In brief, they shoo the cattle away and eat all of the mineral salt immediately. As a result, we decided to place the cattle on pasture 5, for example, while leaving the horses on pasture 4. When the cattle are moved, as they are daily, to pasture 6, 7, 8 etc., the horses are subsequently moved to pasture 5, 6, 7 etc. Hopefully in this way the cattle will get their daily requirement of mineral salt, approx. 100 gr per cow.

In other farm news, Sandra, our duck, has produced nine very cute ducklings, and the Saturday fencers have almost completed fencing the large field in front of our house. This will become Lone's new and improved vegetable garden, with a chicken-wire fence to keep out inquisitive poultry. This new garden is just under one hectare -plenty of room to grow bounteous quantities of Danish potatoes to accompany Alfheim's homemade chicken.

Finally, our new hand grain grinder arrived on Friday. While we were unable to assemble it for a test grind during the weekend, it certainly was not for lack of interest. Once properly assembled, we will have an easier time grinding organic corn for the chicks and ducklings.

An unwontedly festive evening

Written to I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got by Sinead O'Connor

The better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs.
- Charles de Gaulle

It has been 14 days since I last published a blog post. Between then and now, Lone and I enjoyed a much-needed three-day weekend at Fazenda Alfheim, which included a morning of piglet castration (more on that later), and last weekend at Pousada Picinguaba. The latter is owned by our good friends, Emmanuel Rengade and his wife, Filipa. Relaxing does not begin to describe our two days by the shore. Likewise, post-card perfect falls far short when describing the views from the pousada. Our visit to Picinguaba was extra special because on Friday morning Sr. Roberto, currently one of our contract fencers and soon-to-be Fazenda Alfheim's third full-time employee, with an assist from Clair, slaughtered our very first piglets. These were then cooked to perfection by Beto, Emmanuel's chef, who studied in Paris for three years, and shared with the pousada's guests. Beto actually deboned one of the piglets in its entirety...without breaking a single bone. He then marinated, stuffed and sewed the piglet whole before cooking it. Simply amazing! Equally amazing was the taste. Needless to say I am biased, but without a doubt it was the best pork I have ever eaten -comparable even to the finest Brazilian beef. It quite literally melted in our mouths. And as if all of this were not sufficiently marvelous, Joseph Keller, a professional photographer from New York, who was in town taking pictures of the pousada for Emmanuel, provided parents and piglets with a most honorable pictorial send-off. Truly an unwontedly festive evening!

As mentioned earlier, prior to participating in the good life, we had the unenviable task of castrating 22 piglets (on Saturday, September 5th). Thankfully, with the help of Sr. Roberto, Clair and Rosana -and a good deal of preparation by Lone and me to secure the proper equipment and homeopathic medicine- it turned out to be a straightforward affair. While I am pretty sure the affected piglets harbor another, less-positive view, what is certain is that the whole affair took less than two hours. Straightforward or not, and for what I hope are obvious reasons, I chose not to take any photos.

The fortnight's other major happening was the grand opening of Hogwood, Fazenda Alfheim's new four hectare (approx. 10 acres) pig pen. Amazingly, Lone, Clair and Rosana managed to coax the hogs from Hog Haven to Hogwood in less than one-half hour...this compared with the two-day battle we engaged in when moving the hogs 8 months ago. Maybe they had an inkling of the paradise that awaited them...or maybe not. In any event there can be little doubt about how much they are enjoying their new digs (no pun intended).

Finally, Lone will be leaving for Europe (UK and Denmark) for a month-long visit on Sunday. She is certainly thrilled, but equally certain Fazenda Alfheim will be emptier in her absence.

A day in the life

Written to Led Zeppelin IV by Led Zeppelin

You've got a lot of choices. If getting out of bed in the morning is a chore and you're not smiling on a regular basis, try another choice.
- Steven D. Woodhull

In last week's blog post, Holy holon, Batman!, I wrote that Lone and I had settled on our initial business plan. We have also recently established a schedule of chores, and subsequently fallen into a daily work routine. In brief, the day is divided into four parts, driven by the requirements of our ever-growing menagerie:

Mornings

• Let the chickens out of their houses and feed them. First we feed the smaller birds crushed organic corn, then whole kernels to the larger birds. The sequencing is important: the larger birds have to be kept in their house until the smaller birds have had their fill...after all, the larger birds are higher in the food chain.
  
• Feed the dogs and cats.
  

Middays

• Feed the hogs. In addition to the vegetation that they consume inside their pens, we supplement their diet with approx. 1.8 kg of organic corn per hog per day, again whole kernels. By soaking the kernels in a 50%/50% mix of organic milk and ent water, we improve nutrient uptake without having to go to the trouble of crushing large quantities of corn. It is not long ago that we changed from feeding the hogs twice daily, at 10:00 and 16:00, to feeding them once daily, at 12:00. This seems to work much better; hogs generally like to sleep later than other farm animals, and this practice also forces the hogs to forage prior to receiving their first meal. As feeding the hogs is without doubt the most physically demanding farm animal activity at Alfheim, it is extra nice to have it done and dusted before lunch, after which ones energy level drops noticeably. The piglets are treated somewhat differently: we feed them at 10:00 as their tiny tummies and hyper-metabolisms do not seem to lend themselves as well to a single, midday feeding. This, however, is only a temporary measure while they are growing most rapidly. While our hogs' growth rates are currently probably somewhat slower, I expect that by the time we fully implement our plan to supplement their ration of organic corn with copious quantities of organic milk and eggs, we will achieve similar or more rapid growth rates to those described below:

After three to five weeks, pigs are weaned (removed from their mother). After reaching an age of eight or nine weeks, by which time the pigs weigh an average of 23 kg (50 pounds), the pigs are moved to another area for growing until they reach roughly 54 kg (120 pounds); finally, they are finished (fattened or fed in preparation for slaughter) until they've reached the marketable weight of 100 - 113 kg (220 - 250 pounds) -at between five and six months. On average, then, hogs gain almost one kg per day every day of their existence. Remarkable!

Also of hogworthy note, we sold three of our largest shoats on Sunday to the individual who we hope will be coming to work for us in mid-October...7-9-13. He has agreed to join us in principle, but my many years of hiring people has taught me that the period of greatest risk of buyer's remorse occurs between signature and the start of a new job. Moreover, given the fact that the individual in question will be the second employee, Clair was the first, to leave the local patrão to work at Alfheim, a reaction of some sort is to be expected. That said, he brought six family members with him to choose the shoats, a very positive sign, and Lone, not surprisingly, bonded instantly with his mother, another plus.

It was also a plus that he purchased our two largest male shoats because we have not yet castrated any of our piglets...preferring to wait until after the full moon on September 4th. This is done to reduce the bleeding. While a generally accepted principle in biodynamic farming, it surprised us to no end when Clair rather than Lone or me insisted on waiting for the moon to wane. The general wisdom of our decision has been reinforced by everyone with whom we spoke about castration in Vargem Grande -noteworthy that the alternative and the traditional views dovetail so clearly.

Late afternoons

• By changing the hogs' feeding time, our late afternoons now involve nothing more than moving the cattle, which we do every day at 16:00. I am already convinced that I can see a difference in the pastures from this daily rotation, though, to be fair, Lone is less certain. She chalks it up to the coming of spring. What is indisputable is the fact that the cattle are now as easy to move as checkers...a gentle nudge and they move where they are supposed to. In most cases it is possible to migrate them from pasture x to pasture y solo.

On a related note, I began mixing soja perene into the mineral salt, together with a little organic corn, and the next day the salt trough looked like it had been cleaned by the D.I.R.T., the magical cleaning machine from Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat (2003). Can't wait to see how long it takes before soja perene begins appearing in our pastures.

Evenings

• Feed the dogs and close the chicken houses, preferably with the chickens inside. For the most part this latter task is pretty simple...the chickens begin roosting at dusk. Dan, the drake, and the other two ducks, on the other hand, loiter outside the hen house as long as possible, like smokers congregating outside an office building...probably because as the lone floor dwellers in the hen house, their early arrival only increases their chances of being shit on.
• Feeding the dogs is also pretty simple...it certainly requires no reminder: Muninn usually begins chewing on the metal kitchen door in such a demonstrative fashion as to leave little doubt about what our priorities should be, and Negão does his part, too, whipping both Muninn and Layla into a frenzy. Once fed, though, all three dogs instantly quiet down.
  

Finally, onset of spring or no onset of spring, the rainy season has not entirely left Fazenda Alfheim behind: on Tuesday we received 57 mm of rain, turning our fruit orchard into a shallow pond. While Lone worried about her ability to drop Pelle off at the airport for his Wednesday flight back to UK, the ducks celebrated à la Gene Kelly.

Holy holon, Batman!

Written to Genius of Modern Music, Vol. 1 by T.s.monk and Thelonious Monk

Thank God, I have my work, but instead of earning money by it, I need money to be able to work; that is the difficulty. I think there are no signs in my work that indicate that I shall fail. And I am not a person who works slowly or tamely. Drawing becomes a passion with me, and I throw myself into it more and more. I do not have great plans for the future; if for a moment I feel rising within me the desire for a life without care, for prosperity, each time I go fondly back to the trouble and the cares, to a life full of hardship, and think: It is better so; I learn more from it, and make progress. This is not the road on which one perishes. I only hope the trouble and the cares will not become unbearable, and I have confidence I shall succeed in earning enough to keep myself, not in luxury, but as one who eats his bread in the sweat of his brow.
- Vincent van Gogh quotes

After much study and discussion, Lone and I have settled on our initial business plan, or perhaps more accurately our proposed revenue streams. This is a process that has evolved significantly since we purchased Fazenda Alfheim in May 2008. We, too, feel that there are no signs in our work that indicate that we shall fail, but we are also clear that the path will not be without trouble.

In order to achieve our goals, financial and other, we have borrowed heavily from the revolutionary work done at Polyface Farms, Joel Salatin's beyond organic farm in Virginia. Specifically, we have recently been focusing on the following two principles, in particular:

GRASS-BASED: Pastured livestock and poultry, moved frequently to new "salad bars," offer landscape healing and nutritional superiority.

INDIVIDUALITY: Plants and animals should be provided a habitat that allows them to express their physiological distinctiveness. Respecting and honoring the pigness of the pig is a foundation for societal health.

As regards GRASS-BASED, we recently purchased a cocktail of capim-tanzânia (Panicum maximum cv. Tanzânia) and soja perene to sow in our existing pastures in order to enhance their carrying capacity. This cocktail consists of three parts capim-tanzânia and one part soja perene. The method of application is interesting, too: we will mix the cocktail into the mineral salt that our cattle consume, and they will do the work of distributing the seeds via their feces. As mentioned in Alfheim au naturale, we have already begun the process of moving our cattle frequently, though there is still much work to be done before we can say that we are offering them a salad bar.

In terms of INDIVIDUALITY, hopefully we have already established a pattern of honoring the pigness of the pig etc.

Additionally, we have developed our own holons, derived from the Greek word holos, meaning whole, and the suffix on, suggesting a particle. As defined by Michael Pollan, a holon is:

an entity that from one perspective appears a self-contained whole, and from another a dependant part. A body organ like the liver is a holon …

Our holons will consist of milk cattle and egg laying hens, which produce milk and eggs for the hogs as well as broiler chickens, which help to clean up parasites in the hog areas.

Similarly, the broiler chickens will rotate through our pastures with our cattle and sheep (still in planning), cleaning up parasites and fertilizing the pasture with their high-nitrogen droppings. They will also get 10-20% of their diet from the grass.

The milk cattle will produce approx. 200-300 liters of milk daily, a plan that seems somewhat counter-intuitive when one considers that 'The price of raw milk paid to farmers has dropped to its lowest level in 40 years.' While this is not the case in Brazil, it is still worrying that in US 4,600 dairy farms that have been closing each year for the past two decades and that the number of dairy farmers has declined from 648,000 in 1970 to 60,000 today. Lone and I tend to look at this trend somewhat differently: initially, milk is an easy way to pay our fixed costs and represents a raw material which can be transformed into a number of value-added products as we evolve as farmers. A similar logic applies to our hogs: initially we will sell live piglets, low value-add, but over time we have the option of choosing to develop more niche products, e.g. Prosciutto di Parma or Parma ham.

Lone's capim limão, which we hope to productize at a later date, will be used to demarcate all of the hog areas and act as a natural repellent.

Finally, Flora the sow has recovered so well that she will shortly be returned to the hog area, where we have recently removed the last of the piglets. During her R&R in our makeshift MASH unit, Flora formed a real bond with Chica, another of the smallish piglets that has been at hospital to bulk up.

Close to home and on top of the world

Written to Electric Ladyland by Jimi Hendrix

In the mountains, the shortest way is from peak to peak: but for that you must have long legs.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

This week at Fazenda Alfheim was characterized by more of the same: more fence posts dug down, more construction on the new house, more clearing of the lake etc. As regards the latter, Clair and Pelle braved nature's wrath -or at the very least the wrath of some very ornery wasps- in an effort to tame definitively our emerging lake...with an assist of sorts from Muninn.

Under the heading of taking advantage of that which is close to home, our good friend, Emmanuel Rengade, invited me to trek the Trilha do Corcovado in the Parque Estadual da Serra do Mar - Núcleo Santa Virgínia, 2.5 km from Vargem Grande and 9.5 km from Fazenda Alfheim, together with his friend, Nando (Fernando). When I left Berkeley, California, many, many years ago, I always regretted the fact that I never visited the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, which was located across the street from campus. Similarly, I wish I had taken a flight on the the London Eye during the five plus years we lived just outside of London. I am not entirely sure why it is that we are generally so poor at taking advantage of the riches closest to home, but this seems to be a fairly universal failing.

In an effort to redress this failing, I resolved to accept Emmanuel's invite and get to know one of the most stunning 18 km in all of Brazil. And stunning it is, but also with a grau de dificuldade alto -as clearly evidenced by the spent faces (1, 2) of my partners in crime. Three hours to the top, where the views are figuratively and literally heavenly (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), and three hours back to the base...broken up by a lunch that, for my part, consisted of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and fresh fruit, followed by a one plus hour nap. The trail is incredibly well-maintained, passing alongside the crystalline Rio Grande river for approx. 16 of the 18 km. Our guide, João, was most competent. Worth checking out the 33 pics on the Paraitinga Tourismo website. It is also worth noting that the Núcleo Santa Virgínia offers two other trekking options: the 5.6 km Trilha da Piraptinga and the 8 km Trilha do Poço do Pito, both of which are classified as grau de dificuldade leve.

Finally, on our return to Alfheim, Lone had prepared a wonderful dinner consisting of copious quantities of organic fraldinha (bottom sirloin), my all-time favorite red meat, Alfheim's own garden-fresh, mixed green salad with a mustard dressing (using an exquisite mustard from Provence Pousada & Restaurante) and Lone's freshly baked havrebrød or oat bread and goibada or guava-based variation on Jamie Oliver's apple pie. All in all a pretty incredible Saturday.

Lone's no longer latent lake

Written to Recapturing the Banjo by Otis Taylor

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore. . . .
I hear it in the deep heart's core.”
- William Butler Yeats

In last week's blog post, I neglected to mention that Gtec Topografia e Geoprocessamento completed the first draft of the topographical survey of Fazenda Alfheim that we commissioned back in June. The survey, a requirement of the organic certification process, is essentially a resource mapping of our property, outlining its borders and elevations and the location of key natural resources, e.g. forests, pastures, orchards, lakes, rivers and streams. All in all, a terrific planning resource...and the quality of the Gtech team's work has been top-notch. I mentioned that this was the first draft, and indeed the Gtech team will visit Fazenda Alfheim a second time in a month or so to finalize the mapping exercise, including mapping all of the pastures and digitalizing their locations. As well as making it easier for us to visualize and plan our work, this last touch will allow us to size all of the pastures, helping us to determine their carrying capacity.

In addition to facilitating our planning, the mapping exercise uncovered an unexpected treasure: a lake on our property, located just behind the fruit orchard. As it has been officially registered on an earlier, official aerial photo, we are free to clear the reeds etc. (Pelle seen here doing his best Matthew McConaughey impersonation) and utilize this newly discovered pearl for either leisure or fish farming, a common practice in the region. Not sure what the final outcome will be, but this decision represents what is known as a luxury problem: to swim or to fish...to fish or to swim. Sweet!

An equally festive discovery was made by an army of leaf-cutter ants, as they uncovered the corn flour in our kitchen. They even cut small 'leaves' out of the flour's plastic bag. As frustrating as this is, one cannot help but marvel at their drive and work ethic.

Equally admirable is the progress that Marcos and his crew continue to make week in and week out on the new house. With the exception of the porch, the roof has been raised. This will allow the team to begin other tasks at Alfheim and to return to the house whenever -without the fear of being interrupted by the rains.

Some of you may have noticed that over the past several weeks the blog photos have tended to be somewhat washed out. This is a combination of the winter light, which is extremely sharp (most of the photos are taken before 09:00), and my dropping our Nikon D80 from a highish altitude. I will probably have to purchase a replacement while Lone delivers it to a dealer in UK, when she travels back to visit the boys and her family and friends in Denmark for a month in late September. If anyone knows of a dealer here in Brazil, give me a holler. 7-9-13 that what ails our camera can be fixed.

With the construction of the new house taking shape so nicely, Rosana and Lone have agreed to a color scheme for all of the houses, yellow for the outside walls and gray for the windows and doors. The two of them began repainting Clair's and Rosana's house this week. While the initial results are quite nice, a second coat will undeniably be required.

Homem-Aranha or Spiderman man returned to Alfheim with Marcos this week to construct the septic tank and a gray-water filtering system for the new house, a gray-water filtering system for Clair's and Rosana's house and three water troughs for Hogwood. In order to avoid using a pump, Spidey had to tap the spring that Lone and Clair recently discovered -to raise its level to a point higher than that of the new house, the same spring which forced us to move the fencing for Hogwood and subsequently the location of the new worker's house. Quite an engineering feat.

On the hog front, we appear to have found buyers for all of the piglets that we do not want to keep. Going price, R$55.00 - R$65.00 (€21.09 - €24.92 or $29.82 - $35.24), somewhat cheaper for the smaller piglets (< 11 kg) and/or buyers from Vargem Grande, the latter in an effort to try and build a local market. At R$50.00 a piglet, our net profit margin is 49%, so no complaints, but we will need to sell a certain volume, at least 50 piglets per month, to make an absolute dent in our monthly expenses. Our target is to reach this initial level of critical mass by Q2 2010, at which time we should have eggs and milk enough to provide all of the hogs' protein requirements, approx. 10-15 liters of cow's milk and 40-80 eggs per day.

Prior to signing off, I wanted to send a shout-out to our very good friends, John Tomizuka and Paula Zandomeni, the newly-proud parents of beautiful twins. Should one or both of you become overwhelmed at any point, take a look at what this mother has to deal with on a daily basis.

Finally, under the heading of 57 channels and nothing on, TV has come to Fazenda Alfheim via Sky. Lone and I had mixed feelings about this decision, but ultimately decided that in the absence of Internet connectivity on our fazenda, for now at any rate, we needed to avoid mimicking the characters from The Throwback, by Tom Sharpe, which you should read if you haven't, but only if you are prepared to laugh until you cry. A marvelous author, the funniest writing IMHO. Whatever our misgivings, I will be only too glad to stay up late watching NBA basketball come November. Go Lakers!