When the levee breaks...

Written to Kind of Blue by Miles Davis

New Year's Resolution: To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.

- James Agate quotes

Following the deluge at the turn of the year, the weather has taken a turn for the better, albeit we did suffer another 36 hours without power this week following a brief but ferocious storm featuring some of the most awe-inspiring (even a bit terrifying) lightning I have ever experienced anywhere. Lone pointed out that we have suffered more grid down time in the first 13 days of 2010 than in all of 2009. Hopefully this trend will not continue. Otherwise, the days have been lovely: a gentle warming from 20 °C at 07:00 to 30 °C by midday, followed by a tempest of limited duration sometime after 16:00. Rainfall during these weather hissy fits has ranged from 3 to 16 mm. Despite the paucity of rain, the fazenda's rivers and streams are still flush, and with the temperature daily topping 30 °C, Lone and I have taken every opportunity to enjoy a quick, refreshing dip in our favorite stream to cool off -even doing so one evening at 20:00. I realize that this may sound like blasphemy to our family and friends in the Northern Hemisphere, but as with all tough jobs, someone has to do them. Only somewhat tongue in cheek, we will be doing our part to redress the climactic injustices by hosting our good friends from Denmark, Anne and Dennis, for the next two weeks. The only downside with their visit is the fact that eles falam totalmente enrolado (they speak jibberish, i.e. no Portuguese), as Rosana so eloquently put it last week.

In addition to an improvement in the weather, 2010 brought with it two new workers to Fazenda Alfheim, or rather the confirmation that Dirlei would stay after a furious round of negotiations to thwart the recruitment efforts by his (and Clair's) former employer, Paulo, Vargem Grande's local patron, and the locking down of João, another of Paulo's employees. João was an interesting case: after hearing that João planned to accept our job offer, Paulo cut off his credit at his (Paulo's) grocery store, one of two in Vargem Grande, and refused to sell João the motorcycle that he had financed for him. Clearly this more-than-a-little heavy-handed approach required a considerably more creative remuneration package than I had originally envisioned, but in the end good once again triumphed over meanness, and the balance of power in our local backwater took another step toward equity.

With four full-time employees, our plans are being realized with a hitherto-unseen facility, and while there are undeniably more people management issues to manage, on the whole our four workers are remarkably low maintenance...and very conscientious. Without a doubt we are now positioned to bite off much chunkier chews of farm work. Over the past two weeks, we have begun fencing a new three hectare hog area, thus far sans nome, but certain to follow in the fine tradition of Hog Haven, Hog Hill and Hogwood, seeding the pasture at the fundo of the fazenda, and constructed our second proprietary piglet octagon (which in fact generally takes the shape of a quadrilateral), i.e. a cage of sorts with a Mini-me-sized entrance and sides of pig wire attached with fence staples to fence-posts that have been dug down with a fixedness matched only by the The Sword in the Stone of King Arthur's legend, allowing the piglets to enter and feed undisturbed by the otherwise dominant behavior of the sows. This should hasten both their growth and allow the sows to stop lactating sooner and therefore return to the boars more quickly. The preliminary trial of our prototype feeding octogon yielded impressive results, but as we've all heard before, the plural of anecdote is not data, so we will have to replicate our early results until we are able to determine that this method works unequivocally. If it does, the piglets should reach slaughter weight, approx. 13 kg clean, i.e. without head or feet, within 60 days.

We still haven't solved the mystery of the damp floors in Dirlei's house, but we did take a step in the right direction by landscaping the ground surrounding the house so that it falls away from the house and then building a sidewalk on two sides of the house. It seems to have helped, but we will not know if we have implemented the definitive solution for another week or two. Cement floors take approx. 21 days to dry, so if we only recently succeeded in redirecting the source of the humidity, then the 21-day countdown only just started.

Last Sunday Lone and I began a structured, weekly walk of the fazenda in order to better assess the progress of the many jobs currently underway...and also to help us prioritize the team's time. The first weekly foot tour was a goldmine of input into our planning process, and also left a little time to enjoy nature's grandness -and also to cool off…once again.

Finally, a former colleague and current high-flier at Claro, Jacques Magalhaes Benain, assisted me in restructuring my mobile voice/data plan in such a way that Lone acquired a BlackBerry 8500 for free (hitherto we had been sharing a BlackBerry Bold 9000) and we reduced our monthly spend by 20%! Lone is thrilled to have her own BlackBerry (despite her hardy denials, Lone is a prototypical CrackBerry), and when we are off farm, she can be reached on +55 11 9206-3862.