Water, water, every where

Written to Rocket Man: Number Ones by Elton John

Nothing in the world is more flexible and yielding than water. Yet when it attacks the firm and the strong, none can withstand it, because they have no way to change it. So the flexible overcome the adamant, the yielding overcome the forceful. Everyone knows this, but no one can do it.
- Lao Tzu quotes

This holiday season was dominated by water…a great deal of it, in fact. December 21st marked one year to the day that Lone began collecting weather readings, i.e. temperature, humidity and rainfall, each morning at 07:00. Armed with a year's worth of data, the Imperial College physicist and his numerically-sympathetic father sat down to crunch numbers. On average, it rains 7.8 mm per day at Fazenda Alfheim, with last year's low being 0 mm and its high 138 mm -and 16 days measuring in excess of 50 mm of rain. Knowing both the circumference of the rain collection unit and the size of our fazenda, it was a hop, skip and a jump to calculate the total annual rainfall. In sum, 832,274,413 liters of water fell within Fazenda Alfheim's borders last year, the equivalent of 333 Olympic-sized swimming pools (50 m * 25 m * 2 m) or almost one Olympic-sized swimming pool of rain per day.

While Albert Szent-Gyorgyi was correct when he noted that "Water is life's mater and matrix, mother and medium", there is also a downside: we lost nine newborn piglets when it rained 188 mm between New Year's Day and January 2nd. Very, very sad, but the remaining 22 newborns seem healthy, more are on the way and the 22 existing piglets from the first round of births are flourishing. Interestingly, this second round of births illustrated with total clarity that our data set is far from complete: Betty's mother, who gave birth to a mere two piglets the first time around, produced nine in her second effort, eight of which have survived. Using any industrial benchmark, she would have been culled after her first under-performing pregnancy. Clearly, we need to improve the timing and spacing of the births to avoid the worst of the rainy season and to more evenly distribute our product. Easier said than done -a bit like timing the stock market- but without a doubt we can improve on our performance to-date. Also, we have decided to test a group of Duroc sows alongside a new group of F1 sows that we will purchase soon from Topigs in order to determine which offspring is more robust.

While on the subject of testing, I have plowed my way through most of Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine, by Edzard Ernst and Simon Singh. Highly recommended for anyone with even a passing interest in alternative medicine. This holiday season has also found me giggling my way through Riotous Assembly, by the always witty Tom Sharpe, and consuming Cesar's Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems, by Cesar Millan, star of the National Geographic Channel's Dog Whisperer, and Melissa Jo Peltier.

Less dramatic than the death of nine newborn piglets, the deluge left us without power for more than 72 hours beginning on New Year's Day. While inconvenient, we suffered far less than the town of São Luiz do Paraitinga, whence our electricity comes. Compared to their travails, we fared well.

On a more positive note, Johannes visit was the cat's meow, albeit shorter than either Lone or I would have liked. Aside from the daily farm chores, in which Johannes participated fully, we all managed to relax a great deal: Johannes, me, Lone, Muninn, Layla and the older piglets. A most enjoyable 10 days!

Finally, in a toss up for fauna of the week: we caught up with the real Spider Man a couple of nights back and the new ducklings held their coming out party.