Helianthus annuus

Written to Sweet Baby James by James Taylor

Mathematics are well and good but nature keeps dragging us around by the nose.
- Albert Einstein

This week we harvested our first home-grown hog feed...girasol or sunflowers. This is a huge accomplishment, one that was more than a little in doubt for quite some time. Our first foray into feed, soja perene, was anything but successful, and our second, feijão-guandu, likewise a flop. While we have long known that our girasol were developing well, we had no idea about the size of the harvest. When one looks at the field, and the too-far distance between each girasol plant, one could easily draw the conclusion that while healthy, the entire field would not produce more than a few meals for the hogs. Thankfully, this is not the case. A wheelbarrow full of girasol flowers translates into approx. 10 kg of girasol. Mixed with the organic wheat, it makes both yummy and nutritious feed for the hogs. Girasol are very high in protein, something that neither corn or wheat provide much of. I estimate that our field will produce somewhere in the neighborhood of two months of rations for the hogs -when mixed with the organic wheat and the organic corn that will be arriving soon, 260 60 kg sacks in all.

While on the subject of sunflowers, I stumbled across this fascinating text, entitled How Nature does its sums, which sums up some of the ideas of Ian Stewart, one of Britain's most prominent mathematicians, who has recently become interested in a new area of research at the frontier between biology and mathematics:

Physics and mathematics are capable of producing intricate patterns in non-organic constructions (for example, snowflakes and sand dunes). They can offer a range of patterns which will emerge spontaneously, given the correct starting conditions. The theory which is currently gaining support says that life operates by using DNA to create the right starting conditions, and thereafter physics and maths do all the rest, DNA is not the secret of life - hence the title of the book (Life's Other Secret: The New Mathematics of the Living World - Ian Stewart).

The strange case of the fascinating pineapple begins with the observation that its surface is covered in diamonds, which form two sets of spirals, twisting in opposite directions. There are 8 sloping to the left, and 13 sloping to the right. These numbers are special because they are part of the Fibonacci sequence (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55...), in which the next number in the series is generated by adding the two previous numbers, ie 1+1=2 and 1+2=3, and so on.

The sequence crops up in many other plants, such as in the arrangement of seeds in the head of a sunflower which usually has 34 spirals going clockwise, and 55 going anti-clockwise. So far, this is just an observation, but biomathematics seeks to find an explanation. An elegant argument in Ian Stewart's book explains that evolution encourages as many seeds as possible, physics provides the mechanism for packing them in most tightly, and mathematics leads to the Fibonacci sequence.

On Friday we had our first visit from our homeopathic veterinarian, Leslie Almeida. Fantastic: knowledgeable, practical, nonsensical and inspirational. She walked the fazenda with us and examined the chickens, hogs, cattle and horses. At every turn she had helpful, practical advice. An examples: mix pine needles, which happen to grow on our property, into barbecue salt and heat the concoction until the pine oil is absorbed into the salt. Next, mix this with the mineral salt, in a ratio of 1:5, and feed it to the cattle three times per month to prevent ticks. Furthermore, Dra. Leslie provided us with an initial list of items to help us begin stocking our own homeopathic pharmacy, specifically:

• Calendula ointment, pot marigold
  
• Zinc oxide
• Oil of Citronella
  
• Arnica montana 6cH
  
• Tincture of iodine

With these ingredients, we should be able to treat the most common animal maladies.

And speaking of animals:

• I mentioned last week that the sows (incidentally the moniker for a female badger or bear as well as a pig) were beginning to show themselves from their maternal side...literally. To illustrate this point, I have included 1, 2, 3, 4 photos. Piglets just around the corner.
• We purchased two more horses, Baronesa and Mônica, from Márcio Magano, bringing Alfheim's equine total to four.
• Elle 2's eggs hatched recently. Can you tell Who's Your Daddy? Is it rooster #1, #2 or #3?
• Lone replenished our collection of guineafowl, a development which met was met with particular satisfaction by one member of our menagerie.
• Muninn is now officially the largest dog on the fazenda -and not even five months old
• And our ex-stray kittens have definitively been tamed and are even mixing with their feathered friends.
  

Finally, if you have not read The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan, which was recommended independently to me by two very good friends, Jon Ziarnik and Melissa Mann, it is a must read.