Long day's journey into night

Written to Braveheart: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by James Horner

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

- Albert Einstein

This week was marked by the arrival of our second purchase of gilts, 15 from TOPIGS do Brasil, one of the three largest companies in the world specializing in swine genetics. The gilts were scheduled to arrive on Shrove Tuesday, aka Pancake Day, the day preceding Ash Wednesday, the first day of the season of fasting and prayer called Lent, at between 08:00 and 09:00. Clair, Dirlei, João and I cut wood all morning, not wanting to start a major project or be caught too far from the main house when the gilts arrived. Taking a lesson from the Samba schools, which recycle all usable materials for the following year's Carnaval immediately after the public blowout, we also began separating all of the wood that was fit for use as construction material. This wood will be brushed off, painted and set aside until needed. At somewhere around 11:30, the home phone rang and a driver from TOPIGS tried to explain his situation, but the line kept cutting out. After four or five aborted calls, Lone managed to gather that he was nearby and informed him that I would come and get him, which I happily agreed to do. When I ran into his truck less than two km down the road, he was headed in the wrong direction. He explained that he had been worried that his truck would not be able to navigate the final stretch and decided to turn around. After several minutes of conversation, I convinced him that the road ahead was dry, and that he would have no problem arriving at our fazenda. I also took the opportunity to inquire as to his lateness. He apologized profusely while showing me the instructions he had received from his dispatch: Distrito Bairro Alto, Natividade da Serra, 12180-000 was all that the company had sent their driver forth with. Somewhere along the way, the dispatch truncated our clear directions…

Indo para Ubatuba (Rodoviário - Osvaldo Cruz) no km 66 vira a direita para Vargem Grande. Segue placas para Vargem Grande...13 km. Ao chegar á Vargem Grande tem mais 7 km continuando na mesma estrada. Em frente da entrada da fazenda tem um mourão pintado laranja. Em total da 20 km de estrada da terra.

…to the six words and a single zip code above. As a result, he had driven through the night to Natividade da Serra, arriving there at approx. 06:30. FYI, it easily takes two and one-half hours to drive to Natividade da Serra from Alfheim.

Long story short, he informed me that he would have to turn his truck around further on down the road, where there was more room to maneuver. I subsequently reversed the car and waited. What seemed like an eternity later (probably 25 minutes if I had been counting), I decided to drive toward Vargem Grande to see what had become of the driver and his specially-designed truck carrying in excess of 100 gilts, only 15 of which were destined for our fazenda. And find him I did, stuck in the mud about two km down the road. Inexplicably, he had decided to turn his truck around by driving through a deep pool of mud without first checking its depth. To make a long story even shorter, it took us several attempts at digging out the truck, pulling it out with a Valtra 685 tractor, then two Valtra 685 tractors, before we finally managed to excavate his truck and its 10,000 kg of gilts from the morass, off-loading our 15 gilts in the process in two loads of seven and eight gilts, respectively, onto my Lego tractor.

What originally was scheduled to be a light, half-day of work turned into a triple overtime debacle in which one gilt died (TOPIGS, not ours), most likely from stress and heat exhaustion. The animals, packed seven-eight to a cage, were subjected to a grueling ordeal, despite the truck being outfitted with a sophisticated sprinkler system for watering the animals. In point of fact, the driver had neglected to top up the water tank before embarking on the dirt road and quickly ran out of water. Had it not been for the numerous 20-liter milk cans full of water that we pulled from the river and threw over the animals using a plastic water bottle we cut in half, more certainly would have succumbed under the brutal conditions; those that did survive were quite literally marked by the day.

Under the heading of all's well that end's well, our 15 new gilts are recovering well in their new digs, the elegantly and appropriately named Hogs Copse, a recently-opened, state-of-the-art housing development on the hillside to the right of the entrance road as one enters Alfheim.

That said, in spite of their remarkable physicality -they are a mere 150 days old- the new gilts are characterized by an odd combination of bulk and atrophy that comes from confinement. Fortunately, this will pass as they quite literally walk themselves into shape like contestants on The Biggest Loser.

Two hillsides away, our original herd of gilts-turned-sows are all doing well, lean and strong, prescient icons both of what is possible and inevitable for the latest additions to Alfheim's ever-growing menagerie. As evidence of their fitness, I offer photos of a game I like to call flip the sack. The sacks in question are filled with 50 kg of corn. The sows move the sack around like a pair of socks. Even Clair and João find these sacks heavy, but for the sows all it takes to get a sack airborne is a light flick of their tough snouts and strong neck muscles.

Once I have served up a tasty lunch of corn for the hogs, I turn my attention to the piglets, who for their parts have long since figured out that my presence signals a bellyful of more than just laughs.

1. Wait for him…he usually brings food
2. Only the biggest and boldest dare enter
3. And they tell two friends
4. And they tell two friends
5. And so on
   

The combination of corn soaked in fresh cow's milk for 24 hours proves irresistible -for the sows as well.

With daily temperatures consistently above 30 °C, the other irresistible treat is a mud bath. In fact, any reprieve from the sun will serve for a hog.

In other farm news, Chiquina and Pixie's after-comer, no name yet, is recovering extraordinarily well from a horrific case of miiase, which drilled three heavy-duty-nail-sized holes in her head. She is alert, strong and demanding her cow's milk five-six times a day. No question she will survive and flourish. If the size of Chiquina's behind is indicative, parasitic attacks at an early age are no impediment to the long-term health of a hog.

Finally, Lone took three National-Geographic-worthy photos this week:

• some very cute ducklings
• the eucalyptus trees in front of the entrance to our fazenda
• a spider's web that would make Shelob proud

A day in the life a half year on...

Written to Hello Love by Be Good Tanyas

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.

- Will Rogers

Slowly but surely we are coming to grips with the additional labor resources we have had at our disposal since October (Dirlei) and January (João), respectively. Since January, we have had four full-time employees. As I noted in a recent blog post, this has ratcheted up significantly the speed at which we can complete work -by an order of magnitude, actually. It has also required us to rethink how we use our own time. The result of this rethink is that Lone divides her day as follows:

• 05:30 - 07:00: yoga, meditation and breakfast
• 07:00 - 09:30: farm work
• 09:30 - 10:00: break
• 10:00 - 12:30: office hours, e.g. paperwork, phone calls, e-mails
• 12:30 - 13:30: lunch
• 13:30 - 16:30: farm work

While my day shapes up as follows:

• 06:00 - 07:00: pilates and farm work
• 07:00 - 09:30: exercise the dogs (aka me pretending to be Cesar Millan), breakfast (while watching ESPN SportsCenter) and office hours
• 09:30 - 10:00: break
• 10:00 - 12:30: farm work
• 12:30 - 13:30: lunch
• 13:30 - 16:30: farm work

Typically, we meet with the workers every morning at 07:00 to discuss the day's activities, and again at 16:30 to wrap up.

Lone works with Rosana much of the time, and this contact is invaluable.

I generally work alone from 10:00 to 12:30, which includes feeding the hogs, and then with either Clair, Dirlei or João from 13:30 to 16:30. This gives me a chance to spend some quality time with each of the men. Beginning next week, Rosana and her potent powers of observation will be joining me for the midday hog feeding.

In addition, there are a number of activities, such as slaughtering and treating the hogs for miíase or berne, that require a team effort. On those occasions, we all pitch in.

Thus far, everyone seems to work well together, and each one of our employees brings something complementary to the table that enhances Alfheim. Clair brings a joy to his work which is contagious. He sings from morning to early evening: A estrada longa que é a vida. Rosana is the brains of the operation: she sees all, knows all and her intuition is True North. Dirlei is exceedingly calm and knows a great deal about both animals and the maintenance of everything from chain saws to tractors (he also has a great deal of experience driving a tractor, something that proved most useful a couple of weeks back when I managed to get my Lego tractor stuck in the mud). João is simply a machine. If Clair is a cross between Paul Bunyon and John Henry, then João is a cross between the Hulk and Iron Man. He simply does not tire. Even Rosana expressed concern that he works too hard, not a reaction one would normally expect from her.

In other farm news, the ducks have taken to our recently-cleared lake, and we purchased 36 bee hives, enough to produce approx. 720 kg of honey per year, and assorted equipment from Januara, until recently, when she moved to Taubaté with her husband, a neighbor from down the road.

The purchase of the bee hives is integral to our goal of testing all of the farm's business models prior to Esben's arrival in July. Thus far, we have successfully tested the production and sale of organic piglets. Milk, a guaranteed sale to the local Associação in Vargem Grande, is next (April), followed by pasture-raised broilers (May), which we hope to sell locally for R$9.00 (€3.51 or $4.86) live and finally honey (?). We have two Danish visitors, Sandra and Anella, who will spend May cleaning and preparing the bee hives, so hopefully we will bee operationally sometime in June.

Finally, we visited São Luiz do Paraitinga this morning to place an order at Depósito Cursino, our local DYI. Both Lone and I were struck by how much the town had recovered since our last visit with Dennis and Anne in late January. All of the debris and mud have been removed from the streets, many shops are operating at 100% and people everywhere are busy repairing and painting their houses and businesses. When evaluating their progress, it is critical to remember that the Paraitinga River rose eight to ten meters in the town center; everything was submerged. The owners of Depósito Cursino found a freezer full of ice cream on their roof (interesting side note: the owner still has not come forward)! When I compare these developments with those in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward, which almost five years on is still mostly empty, devoid of schools, businesses, even people, the contrast is shocking. Without a doubt any number of caveats can be applied to such a comparison. Nonetheless, it is arresting to consider that Brazil might actually be better equipped to deal with a natural disaster of magnitude than the world's richest country.

The value of swine

Written to Noventa Anos Do Samba by Jamelão

Thou shall not kill. Thou shall not commit adultery. Don't eat pork.

I'm sorry, what was that last one? Don't eat pork. God has spoken.

Is that the word of God or is that pigs trying to outsmart everybody?

- Jon Stewart quotes (American Comedian and Actor, b.1962)

Since November we have been dabbling in the sale of organic piglets to a handful of upscale restaurants in São Paulo. This has given us an invaluable opportunity to test and fine tune our organic piglet business model. Fortunately, the initial analysis looks very promising. The key numbers:

REVENUE

price per kg: R$17.00

average weight per piglet (kg): 13

average revenue per piglet: R$221.00

FEED

# of sows: 30

# of piglets per litter: 6 (we are currently achieving closer to 8)

# of piglets per year per sow: 12

piglet mortality: 10%

total piglets per year: 324

kg. of feed per sow per day: 2

# of days: 243

kg. of feed per day (during lactation): 5

# of days per lactation: 122

total kg of feed per year: 1,095

cost of feed (per kilo): R$0.55

total cost of feed per year per piglet: R$55.87

LABOR

# of days per year: 365

# of hours per day: 1

# of hours per week (slaughter): 19

total labor hours per year: 1,337

total labor hours per piglet: 4

net labor costs (per hour): R$5.80

total gross labor costs per piglet: R$23.92

TRANSPORT

total km per week: 426

km per liter: 8

liter per week: 53

price per liter (gasoline): R$2.49

total cost per week: R$158.24

piglets transported per week: 6

cost per piglet: R$25.40

TOTAL COST PER PIGLET PER YEAR: R$120.18

NET MARGIN PER PIGLET (R$): R$100.82

NET MARGIN PER PIGLET (%): 46%

Clearly, we will be quite pleased if we can continue to maintain a net margin per piglet of 46%.

As important, however, is to make certain that our partners are successful. In other words, our profits will be short-lived if we overcharge our restaurant customers. Therefore, before setting prices, I produced a simple, back-of-the-envelope analysis to test whether we were creating a win-win scenario. Without all of the desired data points, I applied the following simple logic:

• At approx. 33%, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (NYSE: CMG) has the highest food costs in the fast-food industry (only data point I could find).
• A high-end restaurant should have higher food costs as a percentage of revenues than a fast-food restaurant.
• Our restaurant customers charge approx. R$140.00 (€54.37 or $75.57) for a portion of piglet (defined as a quarter or sixth of a piglet). This works out to between R$10.77 (€4.18 or $5.81) and R$16.15 (€6.27 or $8.72) per person -proving beyond any doubt that eating exceptionally well does not have to be expensive.

Given these inputs, and assuming that our restaurant customers divide a 13 kg piglet into 6 pieces (a pretty reasonable assumption considering that each sixth of a piglet would produce 9 servings of 250 gr), their food costs as a percentage of revenues would be 26%, less than a fast-food restaurant. It is our humble hope that this particular win-win strikes a righteous balance between what Joel Salatin refers to as making a white collar salary from a pleasant life in the country and what Mohandas K. Gandhi would refer to as commerce with morality.

A travel letter from the Lazy Tourist

Written by Anne E. Holm aka the Lazy Tourist

Being a lazy tourist is tough:

• One has to concentrate on doing absolutely nothing for several days in a row – which can be quite exhausting if one is taking a break from a life where one is used to doing something all the time.
• It takes a lot of effort to constantly ignore the fact that there are people, non-tourists, around you who are actually trying to live their life and do their jobs.

Fortunately, the circumstances under which one is practicing the lazy tourist life are such that, after a whole day of not doing anything at all – and energetically ignoring those who are doing something – one is in a position to enjoy a good night’s rest. Considering all of this, one must say that Fazenda Alfheim is an almost perfect place to be a lazy tourist.

First, there are numerous spots – like the churrasqueira – where one can sit and do nothing for hours, not being interrupted by anything other than three itchy dogs that prefer lying on top of your toes (as all dogs do), nine pigs on the run searching for something to eat (which obviously must be buried under at least a half meter of soil...pigs are really pigs when it comes to eating), a duck mother with her 17 ducklings walking by ("Look, here my little ducklings...this is grass...yes, you can eat that. Oh, you found a worm, well, just eat that, too."), 25 chickens and a hideous rooster with a shoddy toupee on its otherwise naked, red head, and four guineafowl who are strutting along, extremely satisfied with themselves – a fact which they communicate to the world (just in case we hadn’t discovered this) by crying constantly, sounding like an old, squeaky bicycle passing by.

Second, there are numerous people working who one can spend quite a lot of time ignoring.
Rance is feeding the pigs, moving the cattle, patting the dogs (and Lone), driving to Vargem Grande for supplies and giving instructions to the employees. Lone is alternately busy chasing the pigs out of the storage room (where the corn is stored), trying to get the hens to lay on their eggs (as opposed to their neighbors' eggs) , planning the kitchen garden, walking the dogs, cooking, doing the wash and getting up much to early in the morning to practice yoga. And then of course there is Clair, Rosanna, Dirlei and João, who are all busy digging in the garden(s), building fences, slaughtering piglets and hens and ducks and cleaning the house.

All in all there are lots of things for a lazy tourist to do at Fazenda Alfheim...one doesn’t easily run out of tasks.

And as one sits in the churrasqueira -being as lazy as best one can, watching the sun shine from a clear blue sky onto the green, green grass, or onto the crown of dark-green jungle on top of a hill, or gazing at the flowering trees and the many-colored birds and butterflies, or tracking the mist as it comes crawling down the hillsides as day enters on night- one can’t help but think that the Good and Almighty Gardener must have had a pretty good day the day he decided to create this little piece of heaven on earth.

It may not be perfect –there are a few too many bugs, mosquitoes, flies, parasites and other bloodthirsty creatures jumping and flying around if you ask this tourist– but it comes close. And what an ingenious idea to place it somewhere where it on one not-too-rainy day could be bought by a Canadian executive and his lovely, Danish wife, who had a dream of turning this piece of pure nature into a piece of pure, producing nature...that later could be visited by one lazy Danish tourist and her husband, who insist on doing nothing –except maybe the dishes.

You see, this is really the lazy tourist's dilemma: on top of all of the aforementioned trials and tribulations, one has to work extra hard to persuade oneself not to feel obliged to do at least something to help somebody.

And I must admit, our self discipline faltered at times: we have been caught washing up on several occassions, baking breads, boiling eggs, making coffee and carrying as many as two buckets of water during the slaughtering of four piglets. As punishment for our lack of discipline, we spent two days by the coast at Pousada Picinguaba doing nothing more than saying "no" or "yes" when one of the staff kindly asked us if we wanted anything –adding "please put it on the bill" if the answer was ”yes”, thereby upgrading ourselves from lazy tourists to lazy, rich tourists.

Well, on Friday evening the fun is over, and we will be downgraded again –from lazy tourists to monkey class. We are going home, back to Denmark, back to work and in all likelihood back to snow and sub-zero temperatures.

And what have we learned:

• Happy pigs do indeed have long, curly tails.
• There is no chance of Dennis and I going native peasant like our friends in Brazil; we are much too happy living our suburban life in Birkerød. That said we would definitely like to come back and enjoy another farmhouse holiday with Loni and Hansi, settlers on the edge of the jungle (but please, remove the pigs from the garden first).

When the levee breaks (2)...

Written to For Everyman by Jackson Browne

Into each life some rain must fall.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Last Friday Dennis and Anne arrived from Denmark via Zurich, none the worse for wear, that is until we subjected them to a four-five hour car ride in a very, very cramped Ford Ecosport 4WD 2.0 16v, stopping along the way from São Paulo-Guarulhos International Airport to Fazenda Alfheim to assess the damage in São Luiz do Paraitinga (gut-wrenching: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13), check for mail (arriving intermittently via a temporary, mobile post office established at the home of one of the São Luiz do Paraitinga postal workers), pick-up milk and purchase a Queijo Minas from our neighbor, João. Admirably, the people of São Luiz do Paraitinga are getting themselves back on their feet. We stopped and spoke with the owner of the feed store that we frequent, and he was busy cleaning the empty shell of his building. During our brief chat, he informed us that he expected to be up and running in another 20 days. Also, while walking the streets of the town, we happened across the driver from Depósito Cursino, where we purchase all of our building supplies. He told us that they lost 50% of their inventory, but that Nazaré, the brains behind the operation, had already moved into one of their deposits and everything was pretty much business as usual. He insisted that we should not hesitate to order anything at all. Funnily, just a few days before Lone and I had discussed the probability that Nazaré would be the first business person to bounce back from the floods. This is the same woman who once told one of her employees that os mortos não pagam (the dead don't pay) when asked if it mattered whether a certain customer paid his invoice (from which I surmised that the gentleman in question was no spring chicken).

Back at Alfheim, Dennis and Anne relaxed, ate well and read to the hearts' content…all of which led to a speedy recovery from their arduous journey.

On Sunday we continued our new tradition of walking the fazenda. We inspected our lagoa, fed the chickens on pastures 3, 4 and 5, walked the fence line of the new, and still as-yet unnamed, hog area and fed the hogs and inspected the piglets. All 22 are doing well, and the feeding octagon is a big success, though the sows are pretty upset that they are prohibited access.

On Monday we ear-tagged 5 of the 15 sows that have yet to give birth for a second time. The first three were lassoed and tagged in less than 20 minutes, the last two took us more than an hour. Clearly hogs are capable of learning. We agreed to divide the tagging over three (or more) days...7-9-13!

On Tuesday we spent the day in Taubaté shopping for odds and ends, e.g. tractor motor oil, a bicycle pump (for the wheelbarrow tires), aluminum siding (for hog and chicken houses) and also registering our Fazenda Alfheim at the local Casa da Agricultura. All in all a productive day.

Finally, I wrote this blog post in the car on the Marginal Tietê (Lone was driving)…after spending four and one-half hours stuck on the NovaDutra. The traffic jam was the result of a particularly heavy rain which hit São Paulo on Wednesday, January 20th, killing at least eight people. Mother Nature seems to have awoken in 2010 in a foul mood.

When the levee breaks...

Written to Kind of Blue by Miles Davis

New Year's Resolution: To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.

- James Agate quotes

Following the deluge at the turn of the year, the weather has taken a turn for the better, albeit we did suffer another 36 hours without power this week following a brief but ferocious storm featuring some of the most awe-inspiring (even a bit terrifying) lightning I have ever experienced anywhere. Lone pointed out that we have suffered more grid down time in the first 13 days of 2010 than in all of 2009. Hopefully this trend will not continue. Otherwise, the days have been lovely: a gentle warming from 20 °C at 07:00 to 30 °C by midday, followed by a tempest of limited duration sometime after 16:00. Rainfall during these weather hissy fits has ranged from 3 to 16 mm. Despite the paucity of rain, the fazenda's rivers and streams are still flush, and with the temperature daily topping 30 °C, Lone and I have taken every opportunity to enjoy a quick, refreshing dip in our favorite stream to cool off -even doing so one evening at 20:00. I realize that this may sound like blasphemy to our family and friends in the Northern Hemisphere, but as with all tough jobs, someone has to do them. Only somewhat tongue in cheek, we will be doing our part to redress the climactic injustices by hosting our good friends from Denmark, Anne and Dennis, for the next two weeks. The only downside with their visit is the fact that eles falam totalmente enrolado (they speak jibberish, i.e. no Portuguese), as Rosana so eloquently put it last week.

In addition to an improvement in the weather, 2010 brought with it two new workers to Fazenda Alfheim, or rather the confirmation that Dirlei would stay after a furious round of negotiations to thwart the recruitment efforts by his (and Clair's) former employer, Paulo, Vargem Grande's local patron, and the locking down of João, another of Paulo's employees. João was an interesting case: after hearing that João planned to accept our job offer, Paulo cut off his credit at his (Paulo's) grocery store, one of two in Vargem Grande, and refused to sell João the motorcycle that he had financed for him. Clearly this more-than-a-little heavy-handed approach required a considerably more creative remuneration package than I had originally envisioned, but in the end good once again triumphed over meanness, and the balance of power in our local backwater took another step toward equity.

With four full-time employees, our plans are being realized with a hitherto-unseen facility, and while there are undeniably more people management issues to manage, on the whole our four workers are remarkably low maintenance...and very conscientious. Without a doubt we are now positioned to bite off much chunkier chews of farm work. Over the past two weeks, we have begun fencing a new three hectare hog area, thus far sans nome, but certain to follow in the fine tradition of Hog Haven, Hog Hill and Hogwood, seeding the pasture at the fundo of the fazenda, and constructed our second proprietary piglet octagon (which in fact generally takes the shape of a quadrilateral), i.e. a cage of sorts with a Mini-me-sized entrance and sides of pig wire attached with fence staples to fence-posts that have been dug down with a fixedness matched only by the The Sword in the Stone of King Arthur's legend, allowing the piglets to enter and feed undisturbed by the otherwise dominant behavior of the sows. This should hasten both their growth and allow the sows to stop lactating sooner and therefore return to the boars more quickly. The preliminary trial of our prototype feeding octogon yielded impressive results, but as we've all heard before, the plural of anecdote is not data, so we will have to replicate our early results until we are able to determine that this method works unequivocally. If it does, the piglets should reach slaughter weight, approx. 13 kg clean, i.e. without head or feet, within 60 days.

We still haven't solved the mystery of the damp floors in Dirlei's house, but we did take a step in the right direction by landscaping the ground surrounding the house so that it falls away from the house and then building a sidewalk on two sides of the house. It seems to have helped, but we will not know if we have implemented the definitive solution for another week or two. Cement floors take approx. 21 days to dry, so if we only recently succeeded in redirecting the source of the humidity, then the 21-day countdown only just started.

Last Sunday Lone and I began a structured, weekly walk of the fazenda in order to better assess the progress of the many jobs currently underway...and also to help us prioritize the team's time. The first weekly foot tour was a goldmine of input into our planning process, and also left a little time to enjoy nature's grandness -and also to cool off…once again.

Finally, a former colleague and current high-flier at Claro, Jacques Magalhaes Benain, assisted me in restructuring my mobile voice/data plan in such a way that Lone acquired a BlackBerry 8500 for free (hitherto we had been sharing a BlackBerry Bold 9000) and we reduced our monthly spend by 20%! Lone is thrilled to have her own BlackBerry (despite her hardy denials, Lone is a prototypical CrackBerry), and when we are off farm, she can be reached on +55 11 9206-3862.

Water, water, every where

Written to Rocket Man: Number Ones by Elton John

Nothing in the world is more flexible and yielding than water. Yet when it attacks the firm and the strong, none can withstand it, because they have no way to change it. So the flexible overcome the adamant, the yielding overcome the forceful. Everyone knows this, but no one can do it.
- Lao Tzu quotes

This holiday season was dominated by water…a great deal of it, in fact. December 21st marked one year to the day that Lone began collecting weather readings, i.e. temperature, humidity and rainfall, each morning at 07:00. Armed with a year's worth of data, the Imperial College physicist and his numerically-sympathetic father sat down to crunch numbers. On average, it rains 7.8 mm per day at Fazenda Alfheim, with last year's low being 0 mm and its high 138 mm -and 16 days measuring in excess of 50 mm of rain. Knowing both the circumference of the rain collection unit and the size of our fazenda, it was a hop, skip and a jump to calculate the total annual rainfall. In sum, 832,274,413 liters of water fell within Fazenda Alfheim's borders last year, the equivalent of 333 Olympic-sized swimming pools (50 m * 25 m * 2 m) or almost one Olympic-sized swimming pool of rain per day.

While Albert Szent-Gyorgyi was correct when he noted that "Water is life's mater and matrix, mother and medium", there is also a downside: we lost nine newborn piglets when it rained 188 mm between New Year's Day and January 2nd. Very, very sad, but the remaining 22 newborns seem healthy, more are on the way and the 22 existing piglets from the first round of births are flourishing. Interestingly, this second round of births illustrated with total clarity that our data set is far from complete: Betty's mother, who gave birth to a mere two piglets the first time around, produced nine in her second effort, eight of which have survived. Using any industrial benchmark, she would have been culled after her first under-performing pregnancy. Clearly, we need to improve the timing and spacing of the births to avoid the worst of the rainy season and to more evenly distribute our product. Easier said than done -a bit like timing the stock market- but without a doubt we can improve on our performance to-date. Also, we have decided to test a group of Duroc sows alongside a new group of F1 sows that we will purchase soon from Topigs in order to determine which offspring is more robust.

While on the subject of testing, I have plowed my way through most of Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine, by Edzard Ernst and Simon Singh. Highly recommended for anyone with even a passing interest in alternative medicine. This holiday season has also found me giggling my way through Riotous Assembly, by the always witty Tom Sharpe, and consuming Cesar's Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems, by Cesar Millan, star of the National Geographic Channel's Dog Whisperer, and Melissa Jo Peltier.

Less dramatic than the death of nine newborn piglets, the deluge left us without power for more than 72 hours beginning on New Year's Day. While inconvenient, we suffered far less than the town of São Luiz do Paraitinga, whence our electricity comes. Compared to their travails, we fared well.

On a more positive note, Johannes visit was the cat's meow, albeit shorter than either Lone or I would have liked. Aside from the daily farm chores, in which Johannes participated fully, we all managed to relax a great deal: Johannes, me, Lone, Muninn, Layla and the older piglets. A most enjoyable 10 days!

Finally, in a toss up for fauna of the week: we caught up with the real Spider Man a couple of nights back and the new ducklings held their coming out party.