Long day's journey into night

Written to Braveheart: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by James Horner

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

- Albert Einstein

This week was marked by the arrival of our second purchase of gilts, 15 from TOPIGS do Brasil, one of the three largest companies in the world specializing in swine genetics. The gilts were scheduled to arrive on Shrove Tuesday, aka Pancake Day, the day preceding Ash Wednesday, the first day of the season of fasting and prayer called Lent, at between 08:00 and 09:00. Clair, Dirlei, João and I cut wood all morning, not wanting to start a major project or be caught too far from the main house when the gilts arrived. Taking a lesson from the Samba schools, which recycle all usable materials for the following year's Carnaval immediately after the public blowout, we also began separating all of the wood that was fit for use as construction material. This wood will be brushed off, painted and set aside until needed. At somewhere around 11:30, the home phone rang and a driver from TOPIGS tried to explain his situation, but the line kept cutting out. After four or five aborted calls, Lone managed to gather that he was nearby and informed him that I would come and get him, which I happily agreed to do. When I ran into his truck less than two km down the road, he was headed in the wrong direction. He explained that he had been worried that his truck would not be able to navigate the final stretch and decided to turn around. After several minutes of conversation, I convinced him that the road ahead was dry, and that he would have no problem arriving at our fazenda. I also took the opportunity to inquire as to his lateness. He apologized profusely while showing me the instructions he had received from his dispatch: Distrito Bairro Alto, Natividade da Serra, 12180-000 was all that the company had sent their driver forth with. Somewhere along the way, the dispatch truncated our clear directions…

Indo para Ubatuba (Rodoviário - Osvaldo Cruz) no km 66 vira a direita para Vargem Grande. Segue placas para Vargem Grande...13 km. Ao chegar á Vargem Grande tem mais 7 km continuando na mesma estrada. Em frente da entrada da fazenda tem um mourão pintado laranja. Em total da 20 km de estrada da terra.

…to the six words and a single zip code above. As a result, he had driven through the night to Natividade da Serra, arriving there at approx. 06:30. FYI, it easily takes two and one-half hours to drive to Natividade da Serra from Alfheim.

Long story short, he informed me that he would have to turn his truck around further on down the road, where there was more room to maneuver. I subsequently reversed the car and waited. What seemed like an eternity later (probably 25 minutes if I had been counting), I decided to drive toward Vargem Grande to see what had become of the driver and his specially-designed truck carrying in excess of 100 gilts, only 15 of which were destined for our fazenda. And find him I did, stuck in the mud about two km down the road. Inexplicably, he had decided to turn his truck around by driving through a deep pool of mud without first checking its depth. To make a long story even shorter, it took us several attempts at digging out the truck, pulling it out with a Valtra 685 tractor, then two Valtra 685 tractors, before we finally managed to excavate his truck and its 10,000 kg of gilts from the morass, off-loading our 15 gilts in the process in two loads of seven and eight gilts, respectively, onto my Lego tractor.

What originally was scheduled to be a light, half-day of work turned into a triple overtime debacle in which one gilt died (TOPIGS, not ours), most likely from stress and heat exhaustion. The animals, packed seven-eight to a cage, were subjected to a grueling ordeal, despite the truck being outfitted with a sophisticated sprinkler system for watering the animals. In point of fact, the driver had neglected to top up the water tank before embarking on the dirt road and quickly ran out of water. Had it not been for the numerous 20-liter milk cans full of water that we pulled from the river and threw over the animals using a plastic water bottle we cut in half, more certainly would have succumbed under the brutal conditions; those that did survive were quite literally marked by the day.

Under the heading of all's well that end's well, our 15 new gilts are recovering well in their new digs, the elegantly and appropriately named Hogs Copse, a recently-opened, state-of-the-art housing development on the hillside to the right of the entrance road as one enters Alfheim.

That said, in spite of their remarkable physicality -they are a mere 150 days old- the new gilts are characterized by an odd combination of bulk and atrophy that comes from confinement. Fortunately, this will pass as they quite literally walk themselves into shape like contestants on The Biggest Loser.

Two hillsides away, our original herd of gilts-turned-sows are all doing well, lean and strong, prescient icons both of what is possible and inevitable for the latest additions to Alfheim's ever-growing menagerie. As evidence of their fitness, I offer photos of a game I like to call flip the sack. The sacks in question are filled with 50 kg of corn. The sows move the sack around like a pair of socks. Even Clair and João find these sacks heavy, but for the sows all it takes to get a sack airborne is a light flick of their tough snouts and strong neck muscles.

Once I have served up a tasty lunch of corn for the hogs, I turn my attention to the piglets, who for their parts have long since figured out that my presence signals a bellyful of more than just laughs.

1. Wait for him…he usually brings food
2. Only the biggest and boldest dare enter
3. And they tell two friends
4. And they tell two friends
5. And so on
   

The combination of corn soaked in fresh cow's milk for 24 hours proves irresistible -for the sows as well.

With daily temperatures consistently above 30 °C, the other irresistible treat is a mud bath. In fact, any reprieve from the sun will serve for a hog.

In other farm news, Chiquina and Pixie's after-comer, no name yet, is recovering extraordinarily well from a horrific case of miiase, which drilled three heavy-duty-nail-sized holes in her head. She is alert, strong and demanding her cow's milk five-six times a day. No question she will survive and flourish. If the size of Chiquina's behind is indicative, parasitic attacks at an early age are no impediment to the long-term health of a hog.

Finally, Lone took three National-Geographic-worthy photos this week:

• some very cute ducklings
• the eucalyptus trees in front of the entrance to our fazenda
• a spider's web that would make Shelob proud