This little piggy...

Written to Afro by Novalima

The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Our first litter of eight (organic) piglets was born on May 27th. A day later, another litter of two piglets was born. Unfortunately, the third birthing went haywire, and the gilt savaged and cannibalized her piglets. Apparently, this is not an entirely uncommon phenomenon:

Occasionally sows will attack their own piglets – usually soon after birth – causing injury or death. In extreme cases, where feasible, outright cannibalism will occur and the sow will eat the piglets. The development of this behaviour is often complex and difficult to stop and can cause significant losses.

Savaging of piglets most commonly occurs in gilt litters (but is not always restricted to them). This tends to mean that major problems are restricted to new herds where all farrowings are gilts. There are a number of particular factors that may trigger gilts to savage.

Based on the articles' recommendations, there does not appear to be a whole lot we could have done to avoid this tragedy.

1. Adopt a quiet approach to management of farrowing houses
   
2. Ensure gilts are crated 3 or more days prior to farrowing
3. Provide bran as a substitute to high level compound feed prior to farrowing
4. Induce and supervise farrowing and box piglets away during the farrowing process
5. Cull any sow which savages more than one litter
6. Avoid cross fostering litters on to gilts
   

To be honest I was more than a little surprised to learn that the National Animal Disease Information Service (NADIS) in UK only recommends culling sows which savage more than one litter. One has to be extremely careful about reacting too strongly without sufficient data, particularly with an issue that is this emotionally charged. Lone and I speculated about what we would have done had the first litter rather than the third gone wrong. Thankfully, that did not happen and Esben, our virtual Assistant Farm Manager, was able to research the issue and send us the very helpful article referenced above.

I am happy to report that the first two litters are doing splendidly, eight and two piglets, respectively.

In non-hog-related news, we finally received our Carta de Certificação – Produção vegetal Ref.: CC 5076 and our Notificação de Não-Conformidade – Ref.:NNC 269. These documents are the formal report from the inspection undertaken at Fazenda Alfheim on February 6th by IBD, the Instituto Biodinâmico for Rural Development. In sum, the Carta de Certificação – Produção vegetal specified 11 non-conformities, all minor, while the Carta de Certificação – Produção animal listed eight non-conformities, one major and seven minor. We have one month to document appropriate corrective actions. On the whole we are very pleased with this starting point, i.e. only one major non-conformity, the absence of individual identification of the animals, which, thankfully, is easily corrected. In fact, in the case of our cattle, we have already taken corrective action. The hogs are next. 7-9-13!

Since we first began down the road to organic certification, a process which has been anything but smooth, Lone and I have struggled to reconcile our view of organic with that of the certification organizations. One aspect of our discomfort stems from the current, more limited definition of the word organic:

But the word "organic" around 1970 connoted a great deal more than a technique for growing vegetables. The movement's pioneers set out to create not just an alternative mode of production (the farms) but of distribution (the co-ops and health-food stores) and even consumption. A "countercuisine" based on whole grains and unprocessed ingredients rose up to challenge conventional industrial "white bread" food. ("Plastic food" was an epithet you heard a lot.)

This difference of approach is best illustrated by a theoretical debate which took place in the 1990s and engulfed the organic food world as it grew from a movement into an industry: Could a Twinkie be certified organic?

One group of industry-minded partisans argued, "yes." If the ingredients were produced organically then the Twinkie - or anything else - could be organic. Others, who looked to organic food as inherently whole and nutritious, argued, "no." Even if the ingredients were organic, the Twinkie would be so far from what "organic food" meant that the product would render the word meaningless. So who was right? Technically, the first camp. If a food manufacturer could substitute organic ingredients for the conventional ones in a Twinkie, then indeed the Twinkie could qualify for the USDA Organic label.

Our other principle misgiving relates to the missing local element in today's definition of organic, a position articulated in a new book, Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller, by Jeff Rubin.

First the fish is taken to port in Norway, where it is frozen and transferred to another vessel, which will take it to a larger port, probably Hamburg or Rotterdam, where it will be transferred to another ship and schlepped to China — most likely Qingdao, on the Shandong Peninsula, China's fish-processing capital. There the whole salmon will be thawed and processed on a sprawling, neonlit factory floor where squads of young women with nimble fingers skin, debone and fillet the fish. It will then be refrozen, packaged, stowed on another container ship and sent to a supermarket in Europe or North America. Two months after it was caught, the salmon will be thawed, displayed on crushed ice under gleaming halogen lamps and sold as "fresh."

Since my last blog post we also acquired another horse, Gargalo or Bottleneck, from Márcio Magano. R$400 (€144.95 or $205.88)...a bargain for a very solid, albeit elderly, 7/8 quarter horse. We took advantage of Gargalo's arrival to have all of the horses shoed. Makes all the difference when riding on still-muddy-after-the-recent-rains trails.

Finally, Marcos and his father are making beautiful progress on the extension to our storage rooms. The week-on-week advancement, outside and inside, is very encouraging.

Helianthus annuus

Written to Sweet Baby James by James Taylor

Mathematics are well and good but nature keeps dragging us around by the nose.
- Albert Einstein

This week we harvested our first home-grown hog feed...girasol or sunflowers. This is a huge accomplishment, one that was more than a little in doubt for quite some time. Our first foray into feed, soja perene, was anything but successful, and our second, feijão-guandu, likewise a flop. While we have long known that our girasol were developing well, we had no idea about the size of the harvest. When one looks at the field, and the too-far distance between each girasol plant, one could easily draw the conclusion that while healthy, the entire field would not produce more than a few meals for the hogs. Thankfully, this is not the case. A wheelbarrow full of girasol flowers translates into approx. 10 kg of girasol. Mixed with the organic wheat, it makes both yummy and nutritious feed for the hogs. Girasol are very high in protein, something that neither corn or wheat provide much of. I estimate that our field will produce somewhere in the neighborhood of two months of rations for the hogs -when mixed with the organic wheat and the organic corn that will be arriving soon, 260 60 kg sacks in all.

While on the subject of sunflowers, I stumbled across this fascinating text, entitled How Nature does its sums, which sums up some of the ideas of Ian Stewart, one of Britain's most prominent mathematicians, who has recently become interested in a new area of research at the frontier between biology and mathematics:

Physics and mathematics are capable of producing intricate patterns in non-organic constructions (for example, snowflakes and sand dunes). They can offer a range of patterns which will emerge spontaneously, given the correct starting conditions. The theory which is currently gaining support says that life operates by using DNA to create the right starting conditions, and thereafter physics and maths do all the rest, DNA is not the secret of life - hence the title of the book (Life's Other Secret: The New Mathematics of the Living World - Ian Stewart).

The strange case of the fascinating pineapple begins with the observation that its surface is covered in diamonds, which form two sets of spirals, twisting in opposite directions. There are 8 sloping to the left, and 13 sloping to the right. These numbers are special because they are part of the Fibonacci sequence (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55...), in which the next number in the series is generated by adding the two previous numbers, ie 1+1=2 and 1+2=3, and so on.

The sequence crops up in many other plants, such as in the arrangement of seeds in the head of a sunflower which usually has 34 spirals going clockwise, and 55 going anti-clockwise. So far, this is just an observation, but biomathematics seeks to find an explanation. An elegant argument in Ian Stewart's book explains that evolution encourages as many seeds as possible, physics provides the mechanism for packing them in most tightly, and mathematics leads to the Fibonacci sequence.

On Friday we had our first visit from our homeopathic veterinarian, Leslie Almeida. Fantastic: knowledgeable, practical, nonsensical and inspirational. She walked the fazenda with us and examined the chickens, hogs, cattle and horses. At every turn she had helpful, practical advice. An examples: mix pine needles, which happen to grow on our property, into barbecue salt and heat the concoction until the pine oil is absorbed into the salt. Next, mix this with the mineral salt, in a ratio of 1:5, and feed it to the cattle three times per month to prevent ticks. Furthermore, Dra. Leslie provided us with an initial list of items to help us begin stocking our own homeopathic pharmacy, specifically:

• Calendula ointment, pot marigold
  
• Zinc oxide
• Oil of Citronella
  
• Arnica montana 6cH
  
• Tincture of iodine

With these ingredients, we should be able to treat the most common animal maladies.

And speaking of animals:

• I mentioned last week that the sows (incidentally the moniker for a female badger or bear as well as a pig) were beginning to show themselves from their maternal side...literally. To illustrate this point, I have included 1, 2, 3, 4 photos. Piglets just around the corner.
• We purchased two more horses, Baronesa and Mônica, from Márcio Magano, bringing Alfheim's equine total to four.
• Elle 2's eggs hatched recently. Can you tell Who's Your Daddy? Is it rooster #1, #2 or #3?
• Lone replenished our collection of guineafowl, a development which met was met with particular satisfaction by one member of our menagerie.
• Muninn is now officially the largest dog on the fazenda -and not even five months old
• And our ex-stray kittens have definitively been tamed and are even mixing with their feathered friends.
  

Finally, if you have not read The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan, which was recommended independently to me by two very good friends, Jon Ziarnik and Melissa Mann, it is a must read.

Tonight we're gonna party like it's 2009!

Written to Californication by Red Hot Chili Peppers

If I were invited to a dinner party with my characters, I wouldn't show up.
- Dr Seuss

Admittedly, it could well appear as though Lone and I are doing less farm work these days, and I had to laugh when our oldest son, Johannes, recently commented -in fairness while studying for his final, pre-graduation exams at Imperial College London (BSc in Physics), that the rentz, as presently configured, have more of a life than he does. Objectively speaking, we do...or rather we certainly have had over the past several weeks. As if to add insult to his injury, this past week we were able to carry the momentum from our dovetailing birthdays into a weekend party at our friends', Emmanuel Rengade and his wife, Filipa, fazenda, Fazenda Santa Helena. Lone and I showed up expecting a do, but nothing could have prepared us for the extravaganza (notice the pineapple parrot) we experienced.

The day started at noon with drinks and appetizers by the pool and then moved down to the outdoor riding ring for a sort of Festas de Cavalhadas, the commemoration of the medieval victory of Iberian Christian knights over the Moors.

The Festas de Cavalhadas feature a parade beginning with a bugle fanfare announcing the knight's pages, then the mounted knights displaying their colors.

24 riders are divided into two groups to play the old fight. The men in red represent the Moors, the blue represent the Christians. Among the combatants, there are the characters of the king, the ambassador and the warriors.

Ironically, this historic victory over the Moors in many ways marked the culmination of the “the great age of translation”, the revival of Renaissance Humanism, where the intellect of Greece reemerged from the culture of those who had preserved it, the Arabs.

The transfer of Greek works from the Byzantines to the Latin West took place in two main stages:

The first occurred in Babylon, when Greek works were translated into Arabic in the 8th and 9th century during Abbasid rule.

One night in Baghdad, the 9th century Caliph Al-Mamun was visited by a dream. The philosopher Aristotle appeared to him, saying that the reason of the Greeks and the revelation of Islam were not opposed. On waking, the Caliph demanded that all of Aristotle’s works be translated into Arabic. And they were. And it wasn’t just Aristotle. Over the next 200 years Greek philosophy, medicine, engineering and maths were all poured and sometimes squeezed into Arabic. It was a translation movement of extraordinary depth and scope so that, hundreds of years before Aristotle reached the West, the intellect of Greece was woven into the tapestry of Arab thought.

The second is “the great age of translation” in the 12th and 13th centuries as Europeans conquered formerly Islamic territories in Spain and Sicily. Scholars came from all over Europe to benefit from Arab learning and culture. About the same period, after the Fourth Crusade, scholars such as William of Moerbeke gained access to the original Greek texts that had been preserved in the Byzantine empire, and translated them directly into Latin.[6] There was a later stage when Western knowledge of Greek began to revive in Renaissance Humanism, and especially after the Fall of Constantinople when there was an influx of refugee Greek scholars in the Renaissance.

The Cavalhadas was followed by a barbecue...not a US-style barbecue, or even by a Brazilian churrasqueira...but a B * B * Q (vegetarian readers are herewith warned). More precisely, a whole cow was slaughtered and cooked over an open fire for 24 hours before the party. Lone, not surprisingly, was first in line to taste the exquisite beef, displaying her Viking roots, though she was quickly followed by about 200 other guests.

The guests included the Prefeita of São Luiz do Paraitinga, Ana Lúcia Bilard Sicherle, a city run by women (Mayor, City Council President, Judge, Prosecutor, Commissioner and Captain of Military Police) and affectionately referred to by its inhabitants as the 'pink city'.

Paraitinga tem prefeita, presidente da Câmara Municipal, juíza, promotora (são as únicas da cidade), delegada, capitã da Polícia Militar, assessoras de secretarias municipais (como são chamadas as titulares das pastas), gerentes de banco, donas de pousada, de lojas e por aí vai. Os moradores brincam que é a "cidade cor-de-rosa".

In farm-related news, the Nelore appear to be enjoying pasture 5...pasture 6 is on its way and will hopefully be finished by the end of next week.

Also, we had to purchase six cubic meters of stones to shore up our entry road after the many rains...the first three truckloadfuls arrived this week. We also bought two more horses from Márcio; the latter arrived today.

Finally, many of the hogs are looking VERY pregnant...we hope to have big news soon.

Happy birthdays to us!

Written to Tchamantché by Rokia Traoré

Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss.
- Benjamin Button

Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday to Lone
Happy birthday dear Rance and Lone
Happy birthday to us!

Whichever week ends up comprising April 30th (my birthday) and May 3rd (Lone's birthday) inevitably and invariably goes down in my myopian world as the best week of the year! When the calendar gods demonstrate their munificence by blending these two big-league dates with an International Workers Day that falls on a Friday, thus delivering a three-day weekend, the trifecta is complete. Add to all of this bounty a visit from our very good friends Paula and Leo, and the long weekend was nothing short of perfect.

Before celebrating, however, we had to do a little work, more specifically tagging the heifers' ears. Because our corral is somewhat primitive (read: really, really primitive), Wilson and Clair had to lasso the heifers, as opposed to running them into a chute, after which we all helped to wrestle them to a standstill before tagging them. Once again, man bested beast, but the beasts put up a respectable struggle, and certainly earned our respect. In my wildest fantasy I would never have guessed that a cow could jump over a nearly two-meter tall fence...surprise, they can. All things considered, we managed to complete the job with surprising ease -and thankfully without incident.

In other work-related news, Marcos and his father finished constructing the walls of the new storage room, which is looking very good...from any angle. All this progress in less than two weeks!

While Marcos and his father focused on the construction of the new storage room, Wilson, Agenor and I began dismantling the old pig pen. While we were working, the happy hogs were busy rooting up their new digs.

On Saturday morning, after a delicious breakfast, we took Paula and Leo for a long walk aound Alfheim...culminating in a visit to our magnificent waterfall.

Big news on the brooding hen front: dwarf hen mother is at it again, together with her full-sized sister. Combined these batches should produce more than 20 chicks. Together with light-brown and white-speckled hen and her nine rapidly-growing chicks, our poultry production is more than on track. Equally exciting, Sandra, Alfheim's lone duck, and Dan the drakes better half, is starting to lay eggs...two at last count and increasing daily.

Finally, on our last trip to São Paulo, Lone and I saw W., Oliver Stone's unusual and inescapably interesting George W. Bush biopic. Josh Brolin's arresting turn in the leading role is scary good...a doppelgänger. Richard Dreyfuss's (one of my favorite actors) portrayal of Dick Cheney is also a treat. Lone called it one of the scariest movies she has ever seen.

And lest we never forget, I will leave you with 3 Bushisms from the Top 10 Bushisms of 2008:

• "I didn't grow up in the ocean -- as a matter of fact -- near the ocean -- I grew up in the desert. Therefore, it was a pleasant contrast to see the ocean. And I particularly like it when I'm fishing." --Washington, D.C., Sept. 26, 2008
• "And so, General, I want to thank you for your service. And I appreciate the fact that you really snatched defeat out of the jaws of those who are trying to defeat us in Iraq." --to Army Gen. Ray Odierno, Washington, D.C., March 3, 2008
• "I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office." --Washington, D.C., May 12, 2008

To quote Monty Python...Say No More!

Farmer Frankie's foray into fromage

Written to Move by Yourself by Donavon Frankenreiter*

Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.
- Muhammad Ali

Farmer Frankie was at it again this week, enhancing her portfolio of farm skills to include cheese making, and not a moment to soon as Bolina is scheduled to calve sometime in May, with Alfheim's dairy production to commence shortly thereafter. On Wednesday, Lone and Marina joined our very own Parabuina cowboy, Beto, at the sitio of his wife's uncle, Sebastião, where Paulo Urbano showed them the secrets of caseiro cheese production. As the principle beneficiary of Farmer Frankie's newly-acquired talent, I, of course, fully support her commitment to further education.

When not cooking the curds, Farmer Frankie reverted to her other role as head witch of Eastwick, helped along by her trusty apprentice, Marina, and spent a day burying manure-filled cows' horns as the first step in creating Preparation 500.

Otherwise known as Preparation 500 to Biodynamic farmers worldwide, manure–filled cows' horns are buried on the autumnal equinox and carefully unearthed exactly six months later on the spring equinox, the first day of spring. The manure is removed and stirred with water in a process called "dynamization", which creates a vortex that cosmic energy can be funneled into. The homemade brew is then sprayed upon the fields to stimulate the soil, promote root activity and contribute to good bacteria growth.

Since purchasing Alfheim in late May 2008, I have repeatedly been asked to explain the distinction between biodynamic and organic farming? The short answer: there is no short answer. That said I have assembled a couple of paragraphs below which I hope will prove helpful in sketching the contours of a response:

What distinguishes a Demeter certified Biodynamic® farm from a certified organic farm is that, in its entirety, a Demeter Biodynamic farm is managed as a living organism. This is the fundamental principal of the Biodynamic farming method. The special body of knowledge, which underlies Biodynamic agriculture, is derived from Rudolf Steiner’s “Agricultural Course”, and the spiritual context of Anthroposophy, within which this Course was originally held.

The Biodynamic method dates back to 1924 and is one of the original approaches to organized organic farming worldwide. In day-to-day practice Biodynamic farming involves managing a farm within the context of the principles of a living organism. A concise model of a living organism ideal would be a wilderness forest. In such a system there is a high degree of self-sufficiency in all of the realms of biological survival. Fertility and feed arise out of the recycling of the organic material the system generates. Avoidance of pest species is based on biological vigor and its intrinsic biological and genetic diversity. Water is efficiently cycled through the system.

Over the years, Demeter certified Biodynamic® farming has maintained its expansive view of the farm as a living organism. In addition to the requirements of organic certification, Biodynamic standards include a biodiversity set aside of 10% of total land, rigorous processing standards that emphasize minimal product manipulation, and perhaps most importantly whole farm certification (versus a particular crop or area). It is the highest paradigm of sustainable farming, offering one of the smallest carbon footprints of any agricultural method.

An important environmental value of Biodynamic farming is that it does not depend on the mining of the earth’s natural resource base. Instead it emphasizes contributing to it. As such, it is a farming philosophy that results in one of the lightest carbon footprints of any agricultural method.

In other news, Marcos and his father began construction on our new (grain) storage room while Clair whitewashed the outside of the building...after hanging up the biggest banana cluster I have ever seen (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)!

Also, the constant, massive rains finally took their toll on the stone bridge that leads from the gate to the main house.

This week's fauna.

Saturday's wedding was great fun...Tatiana and Walter were radiant!

Finally, for all of us who continue to believe that we can multitask, I leave you (and me) with the following provocative observation:

In 2005, a psychiatrist at King’s College in London administered IQ tests to three groups: the first did nothing but perform the IQ test, the second was distracted by e-mail and ringing phones, and the third was stoned on marijuana. Not surprisingly, the first group did better than the other two by an average of 10 points. The e-mailers, on the other hands, did worse than the stoners by an average of 6 points [10].
- “Can’t Get No Satisfaction,” New York Magazine, Dec. 4, 2006

* If you ever get a chance to catch Donavon Frankenreiter live...don't pass it up...he is electrifying!

Hog Haven 12140-970

Written to The College Dropout by Kanye West

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
- Albert Einstein

While the title's postal code might not carry as much panache as that of Beverly Hills 90210, for a hog there is no better place on earth: ridiculous room to roam and root...and new feeding troughs to boot. In a word, Hog Haven is dope!

The long-ago declared end of the rainy season remains little more than an abstraction. As a not-so-gentle reminder of this reality, on Thursday, April 16th, it rained in excess of 132 mm, the maximum capacity of Lone's precision, German Regenmesser -more even than the downpour of March 18th described in my blog post Let it rain. In the days after the cataclysm, the river banks were overrun with flotsam. As if to counterbalance the rain's untimeliness, the local produce manifested its positives!

In other news, Muninn appears to be on the mend. His metamorphosis over the past week was as radical as was his recent downslide.

Also, Alfheim hosted its first volunteer, Marina Carvalho, this week. In all, Marina will stay with us for two weeks and has fit right in since day 1...a very positive experience.

This week's flora and fauna.

Due to Tiradentes Day, this week's blog post is somewhat truncated.

Joaquim José da Silva Xavier, known as Tiradentes (August 16, 1746–-April 21, 1792), was a leading member of the Brazilian revolutionary movement known as the Inconfidência Mineira whose aim was full independence from the Portuguese colonial power and to create a Brazilian republic. When the plan was discovered, Tiradentes was arrested, tried and publicly hanged. Since the 19th century he has been considered a national hero of Brazil.

Finally, next week's blog post is up in the air as Lone and I will be in São Paulo all weekend to attend the wedding of a very good friend and former colleague of mine, Tatiana Yumi Vaccari.

Kager der smager

Written to Out to Lunch by Eric Dolphy

A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges.
- Benjamin Franklin

Apologies for skipping out on last week's blog post. I have been doing a bit of consulting/interim management over the past several weeks, and last week was a watershed of sorts for the business in question. Against this background, Easter's arrival was a godsend. As Clair and his family left for their sitio near Vargem Grande on Thursday, and Marcos and his father, Adelio, and with them the fencing crew, had sadly already left on Wednesday night to attend to a death in the family, Lone and I had Alfheim to ourselves for three full days. Perfect! We worked at least half of Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but still managed to chill, watch a film (Chicago) on my MacBook and go for a couple of refreshing swims in our favorite pool in the river next to the house. We also ate very well. One of the advantages to living far from a real grocery store, and hence having little or no access to store-bought sweets, is that Lone frequently bakes cakes...two this weekend to be precise: Jamie Oliver's apple pie (Jamie's Dinners: The Essential Family Cookbook by Jamie Oliver), in which the apple was replaced by the more appropriately tropical goibada or guava, and fransk citrontærte (Danish for French lemon tart) from Kager der smager og andre søde sager (loosely translated: Tasty cakes and other sweet things), Lone's quintessential, Danish, cake recipe book.

Fortunately all of this cake consumption is generally accompanied by some pretty extreme physical labor, and this weekend was no exception. I spent Saturday morning carrying fence posts to the tippy-top of the mountain field which we are fencing for the new, enhanced hog enclosure. This time I asked Lone to take pictures in order to document my hard work for my big (skeptical) sister, Paula. Check out this sequence of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 photos, sis...and never doubt your little bro again! On Sunday, Lone joined me, carrying fence posts from the bottom of the field to the middle. From the middle, I carried them to the top. As these 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 photos illustrate, I married a true viking. In sum, their is fit, and then there is fazenda fit. For fun, I have created a scale of fence post fitness...which goes something like this (at least 15 reps or trips is required to certify and move up to the next level):

Flat terrain
Level 1: 1 light fence post
Level 2: 1 heavy fence post
Level 3: 2 light fence posts
Level 4: 2 heavy fence posts

Hilly terrain
Level 5: 1 light fence post
Level 6: 1 heavy fence post
Level 7: 2 light fence posts
Level 8: 2 heavy fence posts

Mountainous terrain
Level 9: 1 light fence post
Level 10: 1 heavy fence post
Level 11: 2 light fence posts
Level 12: 2 heavy fence posts

Clair, not surprisingly, has attained a level 12 certification, while I have not gotten past level 10.

If our farming venture fails, we often joke that we can always start a fat farm...The Biggest Loser Brazil!

Speaking of biggest losers, Muninn at last seems to be recovering from whatever illness had befallen him, but not before he had lost a ton of weight. He has morphed into nothing more than skin and bones in little more than two weeks. Fortunately, he is eating again...about six times a day to be precise. Lone has expanded his culinary repertoire from Pedigree Pal to include fresh baked bread and butter, fried eggs, tuna fish, yogurt and oats and the very best of our leftovers. This is supplemented with a small drugstore's worth of medicine. We have also begun treating all of the dogs with neem. This should increase their resistance to ticks and other parasites. The veterinarian's diagnosis was inconclusive...pneumonia or maybe a tick-borne illness. Perhaps the world's most curious orthopedic surgeon and would-be veterinarian in training, Dr. Antoine, would care to take a crack at this mystery. Muninn was bleeding consistently from his nose, had a temperature, a weak heart and showed signs of anemia, He had also all but stopped eating and was completely lethargic. Happily, he slowly appears to be regaining form and again tags along on the majority of our small jaunts around the fazenda.

In other tough animal news, we lost all but one of the Galinha-d'angola or Helmeted Guineafowl when Lone forgot to close them in one evening. Needless to say, she felt terrible. Also, one of the brooding hens who decided to lay her eggs outside of the brooding house has disappeared...along with all dozen of her eggs. She had managed to lay her eggs in a patch of high grass without any of us noticing -not even Rosana. When we did discover her nest, we decided against moving her. Clearly a poor decision. Live and learn. Strangely enough, there was no sign of a struggle, not one loose feather or egg shell shard. Whatever got her was scarily efficient.

On a more positive note, the light-brown and white-speckled hen and her nine chicks are all doing extremely well. They are out and about every day -even mixing it up with the big poultry. Not even Dan dares to mess with Big Momma when she brings her young chicks to eat some of the corn I spread in front of the main hen house twice daily.

The week before last, the stone cutter arrived on Thursday (April 2nd) and spent all of Thursday and Friday cutting a huge stone in front of the entrance to the corral into 20 * 30 cm slabs. We intend to use these slabs to build a patio behind the house, complete with covered dining area and barbecue. Ironically, the stone cutter turned out to be Baiano, one of the crew of seven who helped with the construction of the houses and storage area back in Q3 of 2008. Johannes and Esben will remember him as having made a somewhat dubious impression, constantly disappearing into the then-unfinished house on very long, very unofficial breaks, except when he was tasked with repairing the foundation of the house, a task he performed expertly, cutting small, perfectly formed stones and placing them in the gaps along the foundation. His is definitely a case of right job, right man. As this sequence of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 photos documents, everyone has their calling. What an art!

In other news, hog favela is taking shape nicely, the first ten maternity houses are ready, five of which have already been placed in the field...awaiting their pregnant tenants.

Finally, if all goes according to plan, by end of May we will have readied all seven pastures. Marcos has completed construction of all of the salt troughs, and the bebedouros or drinking troughs. All that is missing is to complete the fencing. Once the pastures are complete, we will begin a process of pasture regeneration, taking each pasture in turn out of what I expect to be a 30-plus day rotation. While resting, we will re-seed the pasture and spray using the biodynamic preparations 500 and 501. Once this process is complete, we will assess the bearing capacity of each pasture, fix the respective rotations and purchase the appropriate delta of cattle to complete our herd, which I hope will be able to reach 100 head. And speaking of cattle, the Mad Hatters have indeed tempered their wild ways. This is not to say that they are calm like Bolinha, but the Nelore have mellowed significantly, so much so that moving them from pasture 1/2 to pasture 4 on Saturday took less than 30 minutes all in, from saddling up the horses to strategically positioning people along the trail between the pastures.