Thursday, July 29, 2010

A video tour of Fazenda Alfheim


"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself, any direction you choose."
- Dr. Seuss

Esben recently completed directing his second, much improved, video of life at Fazenda Alfheim, with me playing the role of Executive Producer, editing the video on my MacBook using iMovies, very intuitive and powerful software. The results of our artistic collaboration can be seen here.

Other noteworthy farm news:
  • Our hen (female turkey) successfully brooded two duck eggs. It sounds complicated, and it was, but the results are delightful. The ridiculously cute pair are holed up in a plastic tub in our kitchen and doing splendidly.
  • Our first Topigs' gilt gave birth, officially making her a sow, to seven healthy, pink piglets.
  • Megan, our first WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms WOOF) volunteer, arrived at Fazenda Alfheim on Saturday, July 24th, and immediately rolled up her sleeves and lent a hand with all types of farm work: from counting fence posts to treating piglets to herding hogs to slaughtering...and we could not be more pleased with her work…she is a real asset.
Finally, a massive thanks to Ralph Wehrle, a regular reader of the blog and President of the Advisory Board of Axial, for sending us this inspiring video of a large-scale, free-range hog production in Brazil. A lot of similarities to what we are doing at Fazenda Alfheim…and clearly a lot we can learn, too.

Also worth watching: Chocolate: The Bitter Truth, by BBC Panorama reporter, Paul Kenyon, an investigation into the supply chain that delivers much of the chocolate sold in the UK.

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Patronzinho

Written to Dusk by The The

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.”
- Dr. Seuss

Esben has gripped his new role of Farm Manager with both hands...already managing day-to-day operations with only minor input from me. In less than three weeks he has become the fazenda's best, non-Brazilian milker (though he has yet to prove himself head-to-head against Sandra), learned how to chop Pennisetum purpureum (Napier Grass or Uganda Grass), managed the building of a chick house with capacity for 1,000 chicks and helped me repair the main source of water to the fazenda after six days of intensive rain last week. In best Matthew McConaughey style, he took advantage of every opportunity to take his shirt off. All of these exploits have earned him the title of Patronzinho from the employees -and he still found time to chilax.

Shortly after Esben arrived, Clair and Rosana went on vacation. We are, therefore, running shorthanded, but Esben's presence has accelerated the cadence of work considerably. He spends virtually all day in the trenches with the employees, which inevitably speeds things along. And there is certainly a need for speed; we are busy preparing the soil for planting, which we will begin in the first week of August, during minguindo or the waning moon. Thus far, we have prepped pasture 3 (2.4 hectares), half of Hog Hill (2.7 hectares) and our former garden (approx. 0.8 hectares). The Fazenda Brazil hogs are busy clearing half of Hog Haven, so we hope to add another 1.3 hectares of cropland within the next two-three weeks. All three areas have been plowed, either by tractor or by hand, limed and tilled. Next week we should receive our plantadeira and the heirloom corn and feijão seeds, after which the sky is the limit, and its byproducts, sun and rain, will seal our harvest's fate.

What is certain, however, is that we have begun harvesting Fazenda Alfheim's very own homegrown, organic mandioca, a milestone of great significance. We harvested the first four sacks a week or so ago, and this initial yield earned 3 Michelin stars from our hogs.

With the help of João Getulio, a local pedreiro or bricklayer, we have also started building an 80 m2 half-walled barn to house the tractor, plow, till, planter, hay and other non-perishables. João was recommended to us by Rosana's father, Antonio, and thus far he is proving a real asset. The only minor issue was having to wait a couple of months for him to finish all of his other projects so that he could dedicate himself (almost completely) to our needs; he will spend four days a week working at Alfheim, giving him a little leeway to assist his other customers. Also, since João the pedreiro does not have a motorcycle, our João gives him a carona to work each day, something that will cost me a two new tires for João's motorcycle, a R$184.00 investment (€80.99 or $104.50)…and well worth every centavo.

Something else worth every centavo is our new Mitsubishi L200 Triton HPE 3.2 Diesel, which we recently purchased at Virage Mitsubishi in Taubaté, where we got a very fair price for our Ford Ecosport 4WD 2.0 16v. So nice to be driving a truck again, though for legal reasons I am obliged to inform my readers that this is Lone's truck; I am but the payee and her humble chauffeur.

Finally, in another sign of the resurgence of São Luiz do Paraitinga, our old internet café has returned to the town square after a half-year's absence...bigger and better than ever. Very uplifting to see the old crew back on their feet again in such grand fashion.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Fazenda Alfheim turns two


A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
- Oscar Wilde

Anella and Sandra departed Alfheim, and Brazil, on Monday, June 28th. Lone dropped them off in São Paulo, where she spent the week visiting with friends in anticipation of Esben's arrival on Friday, July 2nd. And arrive he did -despite a terminal mixup between mother and son which resulted in our jovial middle son spending the morning chatting up the Polícia Federal at Guarulhos International Airport in order to kill time while waiting to find Lone- bigger (6' 5" or 195.6 cm and now officially taller than his father) and badder than ever.

While Lone was away, we cracked on back at Alfheim with this season's priorities:
  • preparing croplands
  • improving pastures
  • building the infrastructure to fatten up 1,000 chicks
Along the way, we added 18 beautiful piglets from the 3 Chiquinas, who interestingly all gave birth within the same 24-hour period, and to identically colored piglets, all of whom are doing extremely well. These 18 piglets are also the first from our own producers, i.e. they are the offspring of sows born at Alfheim. In other words, Biggy is now officially a grandfather. Fortunately, we managed to finish construction of our eight-pen hog maternity ward the morning of the day on which the 3 Chiquinas gave birth. We are excited about the positive impact that we expect this new birthing area at the base of Hog Haven to have on our hog production.

In addition to these 18 new piglets, we are fattening another 19 piglets for slaughter over the next couple of months, two sows are well advanced in the birthing queue and another seven are on deck.

On July 1st we moved the remaining Fazenda Brazil hogs from Hog Hill to pasture 6, where we added a house and a simple feed storage area so they could begin clearing and fertilizing the pasture. During what I anticipate to be their four-month stay, they will produce and distribute 5.6 tons of manure on the 13.2 hectares of pasture. When their work is complete, we will add 13 tons of lime and 317 liters of raw milk.

We have begun applying raw milk to our pastures after reading a fascinating article in the Stockman Grass Farmer, which recounted the experience of Spalding, Nebraska, dairyman, Bob Bernt, who applied three pounds of raw organic milk to a portion of his corn crop.

We began applying raw milk to pasture 5, which we limed last week, and we will monitor the results closely over the coming weeks and months.

I also managed to source milho criolo or heirloom corn, i.e. non-hybrid corn, placing an order for 200 kg of five different varieties, the largest portion of which is called Amarelão. We will be able to harvest this corn and save seeds for planting in 2011 and beyond. I would rather cut off my right hand than pay a royalty to Monsanto!

We could afford to take pasture 6 out of production for clearing and fertilizing (powered by hogs) because pasture 2 will be brought back into rotation on August 1st, approx. five months after placing our hogs on it to clear and fertilize the pasture.

By moving the group I hogs, Hog Hill is now also freed up to be prepared for planting, and we will begin doing so immediately. When complete, this will add another 2.7 hectares of cropland to pasture 3's 2.4 hectares, giving us 5.1 hectares on which we can plant our milho criolo.

After moving the group I hogs, we moved the 23 Topigs gilts + Betty from our vegetable garden, which we have recently decided instead to use for planting crops, to Hog Weald, our newest, four-hectare, state-of-the-art free range hog pen. In all, we now have five hog pens, Hog Haven, slightly reduced from its original size due to the newly inaugurated maternity ward, Hog Hill, half of which will be used for crops and half which has been fallow since February, Hogwood, which has been fallow since February, Hog Copse, which has been fallow since May, and Hog Weald, which we recently took into production. Esben will be measuring these areas over the next couple of days, but I am comfortable asserting that each hog pen is between three and five hectares -each consisting of two-four chambers equipped with housing, running water, feed storage shelters and treatment pens. Suddenly we have oodles of space for our herd of 60 sows, two boars and 700 plus piglets -the latter as temporary residents spread across the year- a far cry from where we found ourselves a year ago.

So we celebrate our two-year anniversary where we began, with Esben working at Fazenda Alfheim, though thankfully this time for a period of (at least) three years as opposed to two months. He is now taller than Mausolous, weighs more than a gilt of 150 days and brings with him three years of schooling from The Royal Agricultural College. We are indeed lucky to have him. Esben will transition with me over the coming month, after which I will turn the day-to-day management of Fazenda Alfheim over to him.