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.