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.