Thursday, October 14, 2010

On the map…quite literally



"Two of the greatest gifts we can give our children are roots and wings."

I just received word that Lone arrived safely in Denmark, with my Amazon Kindle in tow, after more than 24 hours of travel. She will be visiting her faderland until October 28, when she returns to São Paulo, just in time for cowboy Magano's birthday celebration at Fazenda Caetê -and her first official Fazenda Alfheim honey harvest.

Prior to Lone's departure, we had the pleasure of a three-day visit from some new friends, Jeff and Suzanna Jones, who we met through Emmanuel Rengade. Great, great fun!

In actual fazenda news...
  • I am at last comfortable in stating that we have a herd, defined by Merriam-Webster, Incorporated as a number of animals of one kind kept together under human control, of cattle, in all 10 Jerseys plus Mausolous and Bolina. We brought all 12 cattle together for the first time in a long time, the kickoff of our plan to keep the cattle off of the pastures for the next approx. six weeks, the beginning of the critical spring growth period.
  • Esben, Clair and João planted various types of gourds between all of the rows of milho criolo, so now we just have to sit back and hope for the best. 7-9-13!
  • The 30 sows and 3 boars that we purchased from Toshio Hisaeda arrived on Friday, October 8th, but thus far they are somewhat camera shy, so photos will have to wait. Most importantly, all 33 arrived in terrific shape, even after traveling the more than 1,000 km from Mato Grosso do Sul. In all, we now have 75 sows and five boars…a ratio of 1:15, which we have learned, thanks to a bit of research by Esben, is ideal for free-range hog farming.
  • Fazenda Alfheim has officially been located and tagged (see attached *.kmz file in my e-mail) on Google Earth. Hopefully this will help those readers who have yet to visit our magic kingdom to get to know the property better…and also encourage them to stop by and see it for themselves in the non-virtual world.
Finally, in a somber note, and one which is far more likely to impact us in the medium term than Global Warming, the FDA is only now awakening to the threat posed by antibiotic resistance:

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Road trippin 3.0


“No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.”
- Lin Yutang

No quote could better sum up the past weekend, which began on Friday, when Lone and Esben picked me up in São Paulo and we headed out of town toward Porto Feliz (Happy Haven in English) to visit Carson and Ellen Geld. We arrived at Fazenda Pau d'Alho at around 16:30 on a cold, drizzling day. Not long after we arrived, Ellen, Lone and Esben went for a walk, together with the dogs, a trek which culminated with Ellen and Lone filling the bed of our Mitsubishi L200 Triton HPE 3.2 Diesel pickup with half a fazenda worth of saplings. After a lovely dinner, we retired relatively early.

The next day we enjoyed a huge family lunch with a large percentage of the Geld clan…delicious food and delightful company. Just after 16:00 we headed off, decorative clothing in tow to Catanduva for the wedding of Daniel Teruo Famano and Daniella de Grande Curi, which was slated to begin at 20:45. After a quick stop at a local luncheonette (note to any and all: do not mess with a hypoglycemic woman, especially when she doubles as your wife), we changed clothes on the fly and metaphorically-speaking transformed from road-weary ugly ducklings into swans (1, 2, 3) for an evening. While Lone was taking the first photo of a Bossed-out Esben and me, I leaned over to my middle son and quoted Kanye:
The Goyard so hard man I'm Hugo's boss
Why I gotta ask what that two door cost?
Esben's retort was breakneck: the reenactment of this scene from Men in Black.

At somewhere south of 01:00, we departed the festivities and climbed back into our trusty pickup and headed back to Taubaté, where we arrived in the parking lot of Carrefour at 07:00…and waited until the metal roller shutters were lifted at 08:00 to do a little grocery shopping. A couple of hours later, we arrived back at Fazenda Alfheim, more than slightly worse for the wear. Suffice it to say it was a quiet Sunday -despite the fact that it was election day in Brazil.

While I did all of the driving on our road trip, Esben and Lone bore the brunt of the farm work, which involved more sowing of heirloom corn and feijão, caring for our two beautiful new Jersey calves, one male and one female, and the all-important task of picking Jabuticaba! Vidunderligt!

While somewhat cold during the weekend and Monday, the weather cleared today, Tuesday, and with the sun brought hope that our milho criolo will continue to prosper...7-9-13!

Finally, in a blow to The Man, Monsanto appears to have fallen on hard times in the past year, its stock falling 42% since the beginning of the year, shortly after Forbes named it “company of the year” back in December. While normally not one to gloat over others' misery, I admit to having trouble hiding my glee over these developments. The New York Times article is well worth a read.