Carnaval 2009

Written to Bowie at Beeb: Best of BBC Radio 68-72 [BOX SET] [LIVE]

The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame it on.
- Robert Bloch

Carnaval was R * E * L * A * X * I * N * G, a well-deserved break from the day-to-day of farming. As mentioned in the previous blog post, we visited our new friends, Emannuel and Filipa, at their magnificent fazenda near Catuçaba on Saturday, where we enjoyed a wonderful day, which culminated with a three-hour tour of the fazenda on horseback. I broke every rule of cowboy by horseback riding in shorts and Crocks, and boy was it fun! Emmanuel plans to establish a hotel fazenda on the property, not hard to understand given both the awesome beauty of the place, the infrastructure and his background as a successful pousada owner.

We returned from Catuçaba on Saturday evening, enjoyed a light dinner of fresh farm eggs (these not found at your local Tesco) and then woke up on Sunday morning to a relaxing, two-day visit from our good friends Melissa, Layla's previous owner, Patrícia and Patrícia's son, Alexandre. Melissa and Patrícia brought us a beautiful needlework from Mexico, which has quickly become Alfheim's official dining table centerpiece. In sum, Carnaval offered a lot of rest and rehabilitation all around: Clair and Rosana were given Monday, Tuesday and Ash Wednesday off. Even the two day-workers who plow with oxen got into the spirit of Carnaval...Bahian style, i.e. they went AWOL for the entire week. I finally called their boss, Lei, who, after a bit of back and forth, assured me that they would be back bright and early on Monday, March 2nd. We'll see...initially he told us that they would return to work on Monday, February 23rd. While it is nice, and very Northern European, to be able to count on the precise whenabouts of people who work for you, it is far from the end of world in this case...they are paid per alqueire (2.42 hectares or 5.98 acres) plowed and sowed.

In other animal news, the Galinha-d'angola or Helmeted Guineafowl suffered two casualties last week: one was sick and had to be euthanized and Lone accidentally guillotined another when she shut the door of the hen house...ouch! Yet another has what appears to be a broken leg, but for the time being seems to be doing well enough by flying whenever walking is too troublesome. Also, Dan and Sandra, our newly-dubbed duck couple, named after friends of Lone's who live in New York, and who sent us a children's book entitled Make Way for Ducklings, by Robert McClosky, are doing well and have returned to swimming in the river. And on Sunday Lone bought two new roosters, three hens and 13 fertilized eggs for our two brooding hens from Rosana's father. In another 21 days or so we should have enough chicken power to establish hen houses on each of the pastures and in the pig pen -at which point we will be ready to farm Polyface style.

On Saturday we moved the 20 Nelore heifers and the eight plowing oxen from pasture 4 to pasture 3, not an altogether easy task as far as the Nelore were concerned; the heifers are extremely skittish. One got tangled up in the barbed wire fence when passing into pasture 4. After Clair and I freed her, she was so wound up that she attempted to charge us, coming close on a couple of occasions. It is quite self-assessing to stare an almost 200 kg animal in the eyes that, because of fear, is intent on harming you. Nelore are known to be bravo, but they will settle down as they mature and acclimatize. The company of the oxen has already helped in that regard, and pasture 3 offers far fewer places to hide, so the two groups of bovinae mingle more often than on pasture 4, where the Nelore basically remained in self-imposed exile, out of site in the top left-hand corner for the first week.

On Monday, March 2nd, Bolinha, our recently-purchased, pregnant dairy cow, a Hollandaise-Jersey cross, will arrive. We will begin milking her in May, shortly after she gives birth. Historically, this will be her third calving, Bolinha has produced approx. 15 liters of milk per day, more than enough to supplement the hogs' feed of organic wheat, which we recently purchased from Fazenda 2m, and which should arrive, all 3 tons of it, on Wednesday, March 4th. Each hog should consume approx. 1.8 kg per day (75% carbohydrates and 25% protein), though because they are free range this number is, in fact, much lower. When lactating, however, their daily ration will increase to approx. 6 kg.

This week Lone and Rosana will be testing peppering to combat ants. Peppering involves burning ants, pulverizing their ashes -followed by dynamization, and then applying the pepper for three consecutive nights to the affected plants when the sun or the moon is in Taurus. It all sounds pretty voodoo, but Maria Thun, a pre-eminent expert in biodynamic cultivation methods, and others have achieved good results using this method. Simply put, the concept involves treating like with like, similar to the way most vaccines work -or venom and anti-venom. I will let you know what the Alfheim witches discover.

Finally, we have reached two critical inflection points: the first involves the need to purchase some horses, mules and donkeys to help with herding and transporting of heavy materials. The second is the need for more farm help. To the latter end we have decided to begin constructing another worker's house. I believe I mentioned that Marcos has already produced a detailed budget on his last visit. Therefore, I expect us to break ground sometime this month. In parallel we will have to get serious about recruiting more help, a process that involves a delicate trifecta of identifying a solid, hard-working individual, convincing him to come and work for the Alemanzão and making certain that he meets with the approval of Rosana and Clair...should be an interesting local journey.