Monday, April 27, 2009

Farmer Frankie's foray into fromage

Written to Move by Yourself by Donavon Frankenreiter*

Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.
- Muhammad Ali

Farmer Frankie was at it again this week, enhancing her portfolio of farm skills to include cheese making, and not a moment to soon as Bolina is scheduled to calve sometime in May, with Alfheim's dairy production to commence shortly thereafter. On Wednesday, Lone and Marina joined our very own Parabuina cowboy, Beto, at the sitio of his wife's uncle, Sebastião, where Paulo Urbano showed them the secrets of caseiro cheese production. As the principle beneficiary of Farmer Frankie's newly-acquired talent, I, of course, fully support her commitment to further education.

When not cooking the curds, Farmer Frankie reverted to her other role as head witch of Eastwick, helped along by her trusty apprentice, Marina, and spent a day burying manure-filled cows' horns as the first step in creating Preparation 500.
Otherwise known as Preparation 500 to Biodynamic farmers worldwide, manure–filled cows' horns are buried on the autumnal equinox and carefully unearthed exactly six months later on the spring equinox, the first day of spring. The manure is removed and stirred with water in a process called "dynamization", which creates a vortex that cosmic energy can be funneled into. The homemade brew is then sprayed upon the fields to stimulate the soil, promote root activity and contribute to good bacteria growth.
Since purchasing Alfheim in late May 2008, I have repeatedly been asked to explain the distinction between biodynamic and organic farming? The short answer: there is no short answer. That said I have assembled a couple of paragraphs below which I hope will prove helpful in sketching the contours of a response:
What distinguishes a Demeter certified Biodynamic® farm from a certified organic farm is that, in its entirety, a Demeter Biodynamic farm is managed as a living organism. This is the fundamental principal of the Biodynamic farming method. The special body of knowledge, which underlies Biodynamic agriculture, is derived from Rudolf Steiner’s “Agricultural Course”, and the spiritual context of Anthroposophy, within which this Course was originally held.

The Biodynamic method dates back to 1924 and is one of the original approaches to organized organic farming worldwide. In day-to-day practice Biodynamic farming involves managing a farm within the context of the principles of a living organism. A concise model of a living organism ideal would be a wilderness forest. In such a system there is a high degree of self-sufficiency in all of the realms of biological survival. Fertility and feed arise out of the recycling of the organic material the system generates. Avoidance of pest species is based on biological vigor and its intrinsic biological and genetic diversity. Water is efficiently cycled through the system.

Over the years, Demeter certified Biodynamic® farming has maintained its expansive view of the farm as a living organism. In addition to the requirements of organic certification, Biodynamic standards include a biodiversity set aside of 10% of total land, rigorous processing standards that emphasize minimal product manipulation, and perhaps most importantly whole farm certification (versus a particular crop or area). It is the highest paradigm of sustainable farming, offering one of the smallest carbon footprints of any agricultural method.

An important environmental value of Biodynamic farming is that it does not depend on the mining of the earth’s natural resource base. Instead it emphasizes contributing to it. As such, it is a farming philosophy that results in one of the lightest carbon footprints of any agricultural method.
In other news, Marcos and his father began construction on our new (grain) storage room while Clair whitewashed the outside of the building...after hanging up the biggest banana cluster I have ever seen (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)!

Also, the constant, massive rains finally took their toll on the stone bridge that leads from the gate to the main house.

This week's fauna.

Saturday's wedding was great fun...Tatiana and Walter were radiant!

Finally, for all of us who continue to believe that we can multitask, I leave you (and me) with the following provocative observation:
In 2005, a psychiatrist at King’s College in London administered IQ tests to three groups: the first did nothing but perform the IQ test, the second was distracted by e-mail and ringing phones, and the third was stoned on marijuana. Not surprisingly, the first group did better than the other two by an average of 10 points. The e-mailers, on the other hands, did worse than the stoners by an average of 6 points [10].
- “Can’t Get No Satisfaction,” New York Magazine, Dec. 4, 2006
* If you ever get a chance to catch Donavon Frankenreiter live...don't pass it up...he is electrifying!

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Hog Haven 12140-970

Written to The College Dropout by Kanye West

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
- Albert Einstein

While the title's postal code might not carry as much panache as that of Beverly Hills 90210, for a hog there is no better place on earth: ridiculous room to roam and root...and new feeding troughs to boot. In a word, Hog Haven is dope!

The long-ago declared end of the rainy season remains little more than an abstraction. As a not-so-gentle reminder of this reality, on Thursday, April 16th, it rained in excess of 132 mm, the maximum capacity of Lone's precision, German Regenmesser -more even than the downpour of March 18th described in my blog post Let it rain. In the days after the cataclysm, the river banks were overrun with flotsam. As if to counterbalance the rain's untimeliness, the local produce manifested its positives!

In other news, Muninn appears to be on the mend. His metamorphosis over the past week was as radical as was his recent downslide.

Also, Alfheim hosted its first volunteer, Marina Carvalho, this week. In all, Marina will stay with us for two weeks and has fit right in since day 1...a very positive experience.

This week's flora and fauna.

Due to Tiradentes Day, this week's blog post is somewhat truncated.
Joaquim José da Silva Xavier, known as Tiradentes (August 16, 1746–-April 21, 1792), was a leading member of the Brazilian revolutionary movement known as the Inconfidência Mineira whose aim was full independence from the Portuguese colonial power and to create a Brazilian republic. When the plan was discovered, Tiradentes was arrested, tried and publicly hanged. Since the 19th century he has been considered a national hero of Brazil.
Finally, next week's blog post is up in the air as Lone and I will be in São Paulo all weekend to attend the wedding of a very good friend and former colleague of mine, Tatiana Yumi Vaccari.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Kager der smager

Written to Out to Lunch by Eric Dolphy

A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges.
- Benjamin Franklin

Apologies for skipping out on last week's blog post. I have been doing a bit of consulting/interim management over the past several weeks, and last week was a watershed of sorts for the business in question. Against this background, Easter's arrival was a godsend. As Clair and his family left for their sitio near Vargem Grande on Thursday, and Marcos and his father, Adelio, and with them the fencing crew, had sadly already left on Wednesday night to attend to a death in the family, Lone and I had Alfheim to ourselves for three full days. Perfect! We worked at least half of Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but still managed to chill, watch a film (Chicago) on my MacBook and go for a couple of refreshing swims in our favorite pool in the river next to the house. We also ate very well. One of the advantages to living far from a real grocery store, and hence having little or no access to store-bought sweets, is that Lone frequently bakes cakes...two this weekend to be precise: Jamie Oliver's apple pie (Jamie's Dinners: The Essential Family Cookbook by Jamie Oliver), in which the apple was replaced by the more appropriately tropical goibada or guava, and fransk citrontærte (Danish for French lemon tart) from Kager der smager og andre søde sager (loosely translated: Tasty cakes and other sweet things), Lone's quintessential, Danish, cake recipe book.

Fortunately all of this cake consumption is generally accompanied by some pretty extreme physical labor, and this weekend was no exception. I spent Saturday morning carrying fence posts to the tippy-top of the mountain field which we are fencing for the new, enhanced hog enclosure. This time I asked Lone to take pictures in order to document my hard work for my big (skeptical) sister, Paula. Check out this sequence of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 photos, sis...and never doubt your little bro again! On Sunday, Lone joined me, carrying fence posts from the bottom of the field to the middle. From the middle, I carried them to the top. As these 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 photos illustrate, I married a true viking. In sum, their is fit, and then there is fazenda fit. For fun, I have created a scale of fence post fitness...which goes something like this (at least 15 reps or trips is required to certify and move up to the next level):

Flat terrain
Level 1: 1 light fence post
Level 2: 1 heavy fence post
Level 3: 2 light fence posts
Level 4: 2 heavy fence posts

Hilly terrain
Level 5: 1 light fence post
Level 6: 1 heavy fence post
Level 7: 2 light fence posts
Level 8: 2 heavy fence posts

Mountainous terrain
Level 9: 1 light fence post
Level 10: 1 heavy fence post
Level 11: 2 light fence posts
Level 12: 2 heavy fence posts

Clair, not surprisingly, has attained a level 12 certification, while I have not gotten past level 10.

If our farming venture fails, we often joke that we can always start a fat farm...The Biggest Loser Brazil!

Speaking of biggest losers, Muninn at last seems to be recovering from whatever illness had befallen him, but not before he had lost a ton of weight. He has morphed into nothing more than skin and bones in little more than two weeks. Fortunately, he is eating again...about six times a day to be precise. Lone has expanded his culinary repertoire from Pedigree Pal to include fresh baked bread and butter, fried eggs, tuna fish, yogurt and oats and the very best of our leftovers. This is supplemented with a small drugstore's worth of medicine. We have also begun treating all of the dogs with neem. This should increase their resistance to ticks and other parasites. The veterinarian's diagnosis was inconclusive...pneumonia or maybe a tick-borne illness. Perhaps the world's most curious orthopedic surgeon and would-be veterinarian in training, Dr. Antoine, would care to take a crack at this mystery. Muninn was bleeding consistently from his nose, had a temperature, a weak heart and showed signs of anemia, He had also all but stopped eating and was completely lethargic. Happily, he slowly appears to be regaining form and again tags along on the majority of our small jaunts around the fazenda.

In other tough animal news, we lost all but one of the Galinha-d'angola or Helmeted Guineafowl when Lone forgot to close them in one evening. Needless to say, she felt terrible. Also, one of the brooding hens who decided to lay her eggs outside of the brooding house has disappeared...along with all dozen of her eggs. She had managed to lay her eggs in a patch of high grass without any of us noticing -not even Rosana. When we did discover her nest, we decided against moving her. Clearly a poor decision. Live and learn. Strangely enough, there was no sign of a struggle, not one loose feather or egg shell shard. Whatever got her was scarily efficient.

On a more positive note, the light-brown and white-speckled hen and her nine chicks are all doing extremely well. They are out and about every day -even mixing it up with the big poultry. Not even Dan dares to mess with Big Momma when she brings her young chicks to eat some of the corn I spread in front of the main hen house twice daily.

The week before last, the stone cutter arrived on Thursday (April 2nd) and spent all of Thursday and Friday cutting a huge stone in front of the entrance to the corral into 20 * 30 cm slabs. We intend to use these slabs to build a patio behind the house, complete with covered dining area and barbecue. Ironically, the stone cutter turned out to be Baiano, one of the crew of seven who helped with the construction of the houses and storage area back in Q3 of 2008. Johannes and Esben will remember him as having made a somewhat dubious impression, constantly disappearing into the then-unfinished house on very long, very unofficial breaks, except when he was tasked with repairing the foundation of the house, a task he performed expertly, cutting small, perfectly formed stones and placing them in the gaps along the foundation. His is definitely a case of right job, right man. As this sequence of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 photos documents, everyone has their calling. What an art!

In other news, hog favela is taking shape nicely, the first ten maternity houses are ready, five of which have already been placed in the field...awaiting their pregnant tenants.

Finally, if all goes according to plan, by end of May we will have readied all seven pastures. Marcos has completed construction of all of the salt troughs, and the bebedouros or drinking troughs. All that is missing is to complete the fencing. Once the pastures are complete, we will begin a process of pasture regeneration, taking each pasture in turn out of what I expect to be a 30-plus day rotation. While resting, we will re-seed the pasture and spray using the biodynamic preparations 500 and 501. Once this process is complete, we will assess the bearing capacity of each pasture, fix the respective rotations and purchase the appropriate delta of cattle to complete our herd, which I hope will be able to reach 100 head. And speaking of cattle, the Mad Hatters have indeed tempered their wild ways. This is not to say that they are calm like Bolinha, but the Nelore have mellowed significantly, so much so that moving them from pasture 1/2 to pasture 4 on Saturday took less than 30 minutes all in, from saddling up the horses to strategically positioning people along the trail between the pastures.