Saved by the quilt lined duck bib overall

Written to Sounds of Silence by Simon & Garfunkel

The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr.

- Abu al-Qasim Muhammad Ibn Abd Allah Ibn Abd al-Muttalib Ibn Hashim

We have recently experienced a patch of nearly 14 days of piercing sunshine and crystalline air, many of these days bookended by spectacular sunrises and sunsets. Experiencing such beauty on a daily basis is obviously immensely pleasurable, but also humbling, a gift that keeps giving with equal force almost two years after I arrived to stake my formal claim to Fazenda Alfheim in July 2008.

While a more recent arrival, Mark continues to impress us with the manner in which he dives enthusiastically into nearly every task and grips his work with drive and purpose, never more so than when he was asked to catch a piglet that we bartered with Rosana's father in return for half a month's worth of milk. Lone decided to join Mark in this endeavor…I decided to enjoy the show. The hunters approach…position themselves…and fail. For the better part of 15 minutes, the piglet ran circles around them, so much so that even the cat lost interest. Mercifully (for Mark and Lone), they finally managed to corner and secure the exhausted animal, with Mark diving and holding on for dear life until Lone could provide a second pair of steadying hands. Mark then bore the piglet sack-of-potatoes style to the waiting sack. I can say unequivocally that I thoroughly enjoyed the show.

Mark also helps us with quieter, less stressful tasks, e.g. feeding the runt of a litter of 14 piglets and spring cleaning, the latter in anticipation of our soon-to-arrive guests from Denmark, Sandra and Anella Jørgensen.

On a less quiet note, on Monday, in conjunction with the weekly treatment of the animals, we moved two sows and their 12 piglets (eight and four, respectively) from their birthing/nesting areas into our recently inaugurated, designated maternal ward, formerly knows as Hog Haven. While we have performed this particular task before, on this particular occasion the mothers were more agitated than usual, which, unfortunately for me, resulted in a badly bitten right hamstring. Thankfully, I was wearing my Carhartt Men's Quilt Lined Duck Bib Overall. I am pretty certain the lining quite literally saved my backside. Most importantly, we succeeded in moving the mothers and their respective broods and all parties are chilaxing in their new digs.

Two days earlier, on Saturday, Lone and I went for a walk to the far mandioca field, since christened pasture 10. And what a pasture it has become, approx. 10 hectares of rich grasses. Also, because of its recent history, we will be able to harvest mandioca saplings in June and replant them in September. 18-20 months down the road this mandioca will go a long way to helping us achieve our #1 priority of animal feed self-sufficiency.

While on the subject of pasture, we completed fencing pasture 8/9, a huge area (my best guestimate: approx. 5-6 hectares) midway between the main house and pasture 10. The cattle were moved there for the first time this week. Safe to say our bovines have their work cut out for them.

And under the heading of all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, Lone, Mark and I travelled to Paraty on Sunday to visit friends, Simon and Fabiola, who are building a house near the Environmental Protection Area of Cairuçu.

As if the prospect of a day out in Paraty wasn't enjoyable enough, we were joined on our outing by Emmanuel and Filipa. While Mark took advantage of our outing to reconnect with family and friends in the cloud, the five of us travelled by boat to Simon and Fabiola's house, or rather to the house they are renting while theirs is being completed. We enjoyed a tasty lunch and chilaxed until we returned, again by boat, to Paraty in the early evening.

On the reading front, I finished Riotous Assembly by Tom Sharpe, The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to The Sports Guy by Bill Simmons, and Rework, by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson -all highly recommended, albeit for very different reasons- and [BREAKING NEWS] managed to purchase Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell, the latter while lying on my sofa at Alfheim. Having previously read Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by the same author, I am eager to get started on his latest work. Long live the Kindle!

Finally, under the heading of astonishing fauna, this picture shows a group of ants transporting a dead cockroach from our house. Believe it or not, I clocked their progress and determined that, cockroach in tow, the ants maintained a pace of approx. one cm per second, which corresponds to one km every 28 hours…impressive! As if that was not enough, I will leave you with these two factoids:

• With their combined weight greater than the combined weight of all humans, ants are the most numerous type of animal.
• An ant brain has about 250 000 brain cells. A human brain has 10,000 million so a colony of 40,000 ants has collectively the same size brain as a human. Ant brains are largest amongst insects. An ant's brain may have the same processing power as a Macintosh II computer. Thousands of years ago, King Solomon wrote: "Go to the ant, consider its ways and be wise".