Here an oink. There an oink. Everywhere an oink oink.

Written to Let's Stay Together by Al Green

The best way out is always through.
- Robert Frost

7-9-13 it seems as though our new birthing strategy is working. Since we began releasing the expectant gilts into the wild, so to speak, we have experienced a 100% success rate. As noted in last week's blog post, The sons of his seed and his blood, gilt 8 gave birth to seven piglets, and now gilt 9 has given birth to 12, gilt 10 to 11 and gilt 11 to eight piglets...bringing our haul thus far to 60 piglets! And there are still nine gilts who have yet to give birth. That said there are a couple of these remaining gilts that do not appear to be pregnant. Nevertheless, if this pattern continues, we should handily reach our goal of producing 60 producer gilts, who in turn should produce somewhere just north of 1,000 piglets a year, allowing us to cull the grandparents to a manageable four sows and one boar.

In a related development, the weekday fencers have almost completed fencing the new hog pen, henceforth dubbed Hogwood. Compared to Hog Haven, Hogwood is an exclusive, gated community. The flora is rich and diverse...the views stunning.

Other milestones reached this week:

• Lone produced Alfheim's first butter, from milk which we purchase from Rosana's father for R$1.00 (€0.37 or $0.51) per liter, which is a win for him (wholesale price: R$0.60 or €0.22 or $0.31) and for us (retail price: R$1.50 per liter or €0.55 or $0.77). Lone is also producing yogurt.
  
• Alfheim has its first, very own, homegrown duckling, proudly displayed here with her mother, Sandra. Officially, this would make Sandra, Lone's good friend from New York and Sandra's namesake, a godmother.
• Esben, Brian and Pelle arrived to much joy, celebration -and a little goofiness.
• We broke ground on the new house...and it will be spectacular. It's location is the result of the accidental discovery of a spring, a spectacular spring, which forced us to change the planned route of Hogwood's fencing to accommodate the strict environmental legislation. In brief, all animals and buildings must be offset 30 meters from any source of running water and respect a 50 meters diameter from any spring.
• The black and white-spotted hen is the proud mother of 19 chicks! That's right...19 chicks!
  

Otherwise, the week went with the moving of fence posts. The boys have a daily quota of 90 fence posts, and to satisfy my big sister, Paula, who has raised completely unsubstantiated suspicions about my self-proclaimed work exploits, I joined in the fun -even doffing my broad-rimmed hat so that she could see the photo was, in fact, of me. Brian and I did our quota on foot, while Esben and Pelle utilized horsepower.

The boys also harvested mandioca from the far field that I recently bought back from Paulo, the owner of one of the two markets in Vargem Grande. Paulo had been renting the land from me for the past year. Amazingly, Chiquina, who now shows up unprovoked at our kitchen door a couple of times a day for feeding, followed the boys all the way to the far mandioca field and back, a round trip of approx. six kilometers. Pretty awesome for such a tiny creature.

Finally, Esben brought us a collection of essentials from UK: 20 pairs of work gloves, a Recta DT 420 Global System compass (most compasses work in either the northern or southern hemisphere), more One Earth Emergency Wind Up Lights, a Garmin eTrex Vista HCx handheld GPS device, lots and lots of Green & Black's organic chocolate, an engraved Leatherman and these very hip his & her t-shirts.