Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Saved by the quilt lined duck bib overall


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

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 approachposition 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:

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Herbal medicine and grease


The sun, with all those plants revolving around it and dependent upon it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

Mark (yes, he is wearing a cricket hat), our new trainee, is settling in well -despite suffering a mild heat stroke the other day after hoeing with the workers for an hour at midday. As he politely reminded us, when he was again able to utter words that is, "I haven't seen the sun since…well, like August." Aside from his two hours of silence, Mark has already proven himself a real asset: he is hardworking, helpful and easy to be around.

So easy, in fact, that last week the three of us traveled to Lorena, to visit Ana Maria Claro Paredes Silva, Méd. Veterinária, Instituto Oikos de Agroecologia. It was a fruitful visit: Ana Maria was able to help us understand more clearly how she uses a variety of herbal remedies with her dairy cattle. She also provided us with a real guldkorn, Danish for gem. Turns out she uses Maizena, or cornstarch, instead of zinc-oxide as a thickening agent in many of her herbal remedies...much, much cheaper, though minus the anti-septic qualities of zinc-oxide. She also cautioned us against using neem too frequently. Aparently it can affect the hormone balance in animals. Following this latter advice, my favorite witch of Eastwick mixed up a batch of alcohol and lemon grass to spray the animals with this week.

And speaking of spraying the animals, we can unequivocally see the effects of the herbal remedies at Alfheim. Bolinha, the worst hit by berne or warble flies, took almost two hours to treat when we began our program four short weeks ago. Yesterday, we counted less than 10 warble flies, and we finished her treatment in approx. 15 minutes. The Jerseys continue to exhibit strong resistance to parasites, and Mausolus becomes easier to treat each time. Yesterday, he allowed us to treat one of his ears, albeit with his head bound, but had he not wanted to be treated, there is NOTHING we could have done.

On the whole, we are coming to the conclusion that, in spite of some of the limitations of our current feed (no organic source of protein until the Jerseys begin producing milk in the next 60 days…7-9-13!), our animals are remarkably healthy when compared to those at the farms we have visited. They are active, robust and resistant. This does not mean that we do not have our fair share of challenges, or that we still don't have a long way to go before we reach what we consider to be an acceptable, minimum plateau for their welfare, but overall the signs are positive.

And speaking of positive, two of the pregnant sows gave birth last week, 12 piglets each, though we did lose two from the first litter. In sum, 22 new piglets. Our nascent piglet enterprise has reached the point that it pays for all of the feed and approx. three months of worker's salaries. Not bad for a couple of greenhorns!

While on the subject of animals, two of Lone's beehives were attacked by ants this week. On the same day that Lone and I were struggling with the dilemma of what to do, basically to poison or not to poison (and risk losing all of the bees), I phoned our dear friend, Luciano Bonachela, to discuss my Kindle. Long story short: in the course of our conversation, Luciano asked me about the bees, I told him about the ants, and he suggested using grease on the fence posts supporting the beehives to keep the ants from ascending. Lightning strikes! I ended our conversation and ran out to tell Lone. She quickly applied all of the grease we had at Alfheim. While too late to save the first box, thankfully a freebie that Lone gained when a swarm found its way into our corn deposit, hopefully it was soon enough to save the others...7-9-13! Today we purchased 10 liters of grease at the gas station on Rodoviária Osvaldo Cruz. Turns out the grease is absorbed by the fence posts, so Lone will have to apply it regularly. That said, it beats any alternative we could come up with. Thanks again, Luciano!

On a sad note, Max Trop Mignon suffered an early demise. Lone is convinced that Max's becoming late is the work of Muninn, but there were no teeth marks, so I say innocent until proven guilty. Might have to look into a muzzle, though…but I am not conceding anything until there is enough evidence to make a case against our gentle Rottweil Metzgerhund. If anyone has a kitten that needs a home...

Finally, a flora or fauna of the week question: take a look at this photo: what appears to be a leaf is in fact a moth that we found one morning on our living room floor. Galileo was spot on.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

The Long Good Friday

Written to Sonny Side Up by Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Stitt, and Sonny Rollins

Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy's playing blues like we play, he's in high school. When he starts playing jazz it's like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.
- B. B. King

My mother departed on March 30th after a very enjoyable two-week visit. Hopefully she will visit us again soon, and perhaps her visit will even inspire my notoriously parsimonious sister, Paula, to visit Fazenda Alfheim, too.

In 110 pots of honey, I mentioned that my mother brought a couple of suitcases full of imports. While most were rather humdrum, e.g. FoodSaver 6-Roll Packaging Rolls for packaging piglets, I did treat myself to a Kindle Wireless Reading Device (6" Display, Global Wireless, Latest Generation) by Amazon. I have already downloaded a 14-day free trial to The Atlantic and Foreign Affairs and purchased Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and ReWork, by Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson. The Kindle represents a turning point in terms of keeping us connected to the big bad world. During the weekends, when we are generally alone on the fazenda, Lone and I regularly joke about popping down to the local bakery and picking up some fresh-baked croissants and the Sunday edition of the New York Times. Well, now we can…almost. Brilliant! And while much has already been written about How the Apple iPad Could Kill the Kindle, for my money there are three powerful reasons why the Kindle will continue to thrive (this from a devoted Apple fan):

  1. Price – At $259 the Kindle is much cheaper than the iPad.
  2. More compact and lighter. iPad weighs 1.5 pounds and is 0.5″ thin – the Kindle is thinner and lighter (0.36″, 10.2 ounces).
  3. Screen is better for reading; readable in direct sunlight.
    In a nutshell, a beautifully designed and highly recommended product.

These e-books, together with The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to The Sports Guy, by Bill Simmons, an unexpected and most welcome gift from the world's most curious orthopedic surgeon and my good friend, Tony Matan, will help me stay out of trouble during the lengthening post-Easter evenings.

And speaking of Easter, we enjoyed a three-day visit from Sophie Deram, a friend of Lone's, her husband, Pierre, and their two children, Victor (15) and Emilie (14). A thoroughly delightful weekend, which included much gratifying fodder, the highlight of which was a roasted quarter of a 20+ kg piglet, beautifully prepared -if I do say so myself- by yours truly using a paint-thick basting sauce comprised of olive oil, a fruitful rosé, red onions, cloves and more cloves of garlic, a smidgen of lemon, thyme and salt to taste. Exquisite!

All of this cookery was complemented by copious quantities of fine cheese, a commodity as hard to come by in Vargem Grande -or even São Luiz do Paraitinga or Ubatuba for that matter- as a truthful statement from Goldman Sachs about the financial crisis.

For most of the weekend, Victor and Emilie entertained themselves with Max, whose name they buttressed with the too-French trop mignon. Max Trop Mignon…who wouldn't want to be called trop mignon!

On Good Friday morning, 280 50 kg sacks of organic corn arrived from Fazenda 2M…well, almost. After almost four days on the road, the driver and his dilapidated truck got stuck on the dirt road -a few short km from Vargem Grande. Because the truck was blocking the influx of Easter traffic to Vargem Grande, I had no choice but to spend the whole of Good Friday unloading, loading and unloading nearly 15 tons of organic corn a total of three times, from the grounded lorry to a more suitably-equipped truck owned by Claudinei, a denizen of Vargem Grande, and then from Claudinei's truck into our corn deposit. Thankfully, Clair, Dirlei and João offered their assistance and spent the entire holiday helping me. And even more thankfully, the truck-to-corn deposit offloading height was more suited to a 194 cm tall man than to the height of our farm workers.

The next day, Saturday, Januara, our former neighbor and the person from whom we purchased the used beekeeping equipment, came to help Lone with the next stage of the bee project. According to Lone, everything is progressing well, but then can one really trust a women who hides her face in public (hint: that's Lone on the right).

On Monday we treated the cattle, including Mausolus, for parasites, primarily warble flies and ticks. Three weeks ago I initiated Mondays as animal treatment day, a day when we give all bovine and swine a thorough once-twice-thrice looking over. Since we started spraying the cattle weekly with Neem, also known as Nim or Amargosa, the ticks have virtually disappeared. And Bolinha, who was particularly hard hit by warble flies, and who we also treat with a cream comprised of zinc, calendula and citronella, has improved appreciably; for whatever reason, the Jerseys seem to be more resistant than the other cattle. For his part, Mausolus is behaving pretty well, despite kicking me twice, first on the left forearm and then on my twice-broken right wrist (thankfully, I did not sustain any significant damage). As long as we stay away from his head, he is somewhat amenable to treatment.

In addition to Mondays as animal treatment day, we implemented a new weekly schedule with the workers this week. The gist of the schedule change is to up our focus on planting (two days, from 07:00 until 13:00) and fencing (ditto) in an effort to achieve feed self-sufficiency by Q2 2011. We have already planted mandioca, napier, bananas and, as of today, sugar. We have also begun mapping all of the fazenda's various nooks and crannies in an effort to identify where we can plant 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 etc. of a hectare of potatoes, corn, squash etc. In short, our planting criteria are two-fold:

  1. the crop has to be energy-rich, i.e. corn not lettuce; and
  2. the seeds have to be both plentiful and easily collected, i.e. to facilitate saving and replanting.
Finally, tomorrow we will pick up our new intern, Mark Simpson, a second-year student at Royal Agricultural College (Esben's college), who is arriving from UK for a ten-week internship.