Planting season arrives

Written to Sigh No More by Mumford & Sons

"I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind. Some come from ahead and some come from behind. But I've bought a big bat. I'm all ready you see. Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!"
-- Dr. Seuss

As mentioned in last week's blog post, we have been waiting for:

• our heirloom seeds to arrive (√)
• for the cold to lift (√)
• for us to complete the re-clearing of pasture 3 (√)
• and finally minguante or the waning moon (√)

With all of the above boxes finally ticked, on Wednesday, August 25th, we began the slow process of planting, initially non-hybrid corn on pasture 3. Based on input from a number of reliable individuals who farm using comparable techniques, and despite Clair's misgivings, we are sowing 5 plants per linear meter, which requires 3-4 seeds per hole, each approx. 3 cm deep, and spacing of 80-90 cm between rows. This should yield approx. 50,000 plants per hectare if the Gods smile on us. We have 10 working days to plant before the moon begins to wax again, after which we will have to wait until September 24th, October 23rd and November 22nd to continue planting corn and feijão. The benefit of planting by the moon, aside from the obvious, is that it spreads our planting season over four months, hopefully ensuring that if the worst happens, bird ravaging or excessively heavy rains, we will lose only a portion of our crops…7-9-13!

It is worth mentioning that our single-digit mornings have necessitated some extreme measures -and clothing. The getup seen here is a combination of sports apparel I purchased in Norway for working out during winter in Oslo! For the better part of the past month I have needed every thread of it on my 6 km morning runs.

In other farm news:

• lots of new, healthy piglets have been born recently
  
• the calves are thriving -and too cute for words
• The prefeito of Natividade da Serra, João Carvalho, at last paid a visit to Fazenda Alfheim -no doubt prompted by my numerous exchanges with Dra. Renata Vita, Promotora de Justiça de Paraibuna- and promised to repair the road between Vargem Grande and our fazenda by mid September
  
• Esben continues to work at an impressive clip, but also appears to be enjoying himself
• our half-walled barn is progressing splendidly
• and Megan continues to contribute with equal portions of hard work and good humor
  

And in a tale worthy of a place on thatsweird.net, we removed a twig from Negão's right eye, which somehow managed to get lodged there while he was out running, penetrating his cornea, ciliary muscle and vitreous humor. I took this photo next to our home telephone to give people a sense of the twig's length…simply staggering, even more so because he appears to be recovering without a hitch. They don't make city dogs like that!

Finally, a well-deserved shout-out to Sara Geld, who recently returned from the XIII FINA World Masters (Swimming) Championship 2010 in Göteborg and Borås, Sweden, with two 8th place finishes!

Waiting for Godot…and discovering

Written to Live in Darwin, Australia by by Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu

"If you never did, you should. These things are fun, and fun is good."

- Dr. Seuss

We have been in a bit of a holding pattern recently, waiting for our heirloom milho (200 kg) and feijão (50 kg) to arrive. Frustratingly, our criolo seeds seem to have entered transport limbo; they left the União das Associações Comunitárias do Interior de Canguçu on July 28th and still have not arrived. If the transport company is on the up-and-up, I will pick them up this afternoon at Depósito Cursino in São Luiz do Paraitinga, where I am currently writing this blog post.

While waiting, Farm Manager Esben has been working on striking an appropriate balance between brain and brawn. The jury is still out, but everyone seems to be enjoying themselves - and that counts for a lot.

For her part, Megan continues to contribute in every way imaginable…one cannot say enough about her can-do attitude.

In the fascinating tradition of corn flakes, microwave ovens, Silly putty, Post-it notes, saccharin, Slinky, potato chips, fireworks and Play-Doh, we discovered that our bamboo chick feeding cages also make excellent pigeon traps…truly excellent. We have captured as many as 12 pigeons at a go. This discovery, coupled with the less surprising fact that hogs will consume pretty much 100% of a recently killed bird, has led us to consider trapping pigeons on a large scale. As a test, we recently fed 10 pigeons to our two groups of hogs...the hogs were unanimous in their approval. Using pigeons in this way would:

• provide our hogs with an excellent source of protein
• reduce their consumption of corn
• and help us manage the otherwise uncontrollable growth of Fazenda Alfheim's pigeon population

In another effort to feed our hogs, we picked up a bunch (as I am unsure of how many piglet equivalents, bunch seems like a suitable quantitive description for the time being) of freshly harvested organic feijão from Fazenda Santa Helena in Catuçaba. We will feed most of this feijão to our hogs and plant the rest.

Finally, last week's blog post was read 187 times, contributing to a record 519 visits to http://fazendaalfheim.blogspot.com/ during the month of August.

A video tour of Fazenda Alfheim

Written to Philosopher's Stone by Van Morrison

"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.

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.

Fazenda Alfheim turns two

Written to Live at the Fillmore by Derek & Dominos

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.

Raw, organic milk appears to be a great fertilizer for forages. In a University of Nebraska monitored trial on a private ranch near Page, Nebraska, an application of three gallons of raw, organic milk to irrigated pasture increased dry matter production by 1200 pounds per acre within 45 days.

University of Nebraska extension specialist, Terry Gompert, said University agronomists have no idea why plants respond so strongly to such a small amount of raw, organic milk. "It must stimulate the soil microbes somehow," he said. In contrast, Kenneth King in southeastern Kansas said he has been spraying skimmed milk and cheese whey on his pastures all summer and has seen absolutely no response. "I am pretty sure it only stimulates the microbes and that when they are working in high gear already no response will be observed. On the other hand, in a depleted or microbe deficient soil a response will be seen."

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.

10 days and counting…

Written to At Last! by Etta James

When you're finished changing, you're finished.
- Benjamin Franklin

After posting my previous blog entry, the yin and yang of life and death at Fazenda Alfheim once again swung forcefully against us, tautening us to what felt like our limit while bluntly reminding us of our own fragility, before mercifully undertaking a volte-face, washing over us with a cleansing, rejuvenating power that fuels dreams and strengthens souls. Our roller-coaster began with Sofia Sow losing all of her litter of what we think were 13 piglets to an unseen bicho, most likely a cachorro-do-mata or a suçuarana. Whatever did in Sofia's piglets certainly had to be a large predator as Sofia has a history of producing larger litters consisting of large, strong piglets. The deaths hit everyone hard…lending an extra chill to the sub-10 °C mornings at Alfheim.

Our unsentimental reaction to this sorrow was to build a maternity ward comprising three private hog pens in the old vegetable garden. Unfortunately, the first sow to give birth in this new unit had so severely injured her front legs that she was unable to stand, let alone walk, and Clair, João and I had to push/pull her under the roofing to protect her from the elements. Her first three-four piglets were stillborn, and Lone even suggested that we euthanize her to prevent her from suffering unnecessarily, something that I did not have the heart to do at the time. I also had an inkling…which thankfully turned into the hardiest of piglets…a lone live birth, and one which seems to give her great strength. I feed the sow and her little miracle three times per day, but will have to put her down in a week or so as she will not recover sufficient strength to go through another breeding cycle.

The little miracle signaled a turning point of sorts, and the next sow produced five healthy piglets, all of whom are thriving.

Next up in the birthing queue are the 3 Chiquinas.

A week later, Lone bequeathed me a pair of turkeys and geese. The Tom or gobbler is something to behold. Lone remarked that all of the new, domesticated fowl add their particular riff to the cacophony at the fazenda.

On Thursday that same week, Lone and I traveled to São Paulo, where she delivered product to our restaurant clients and then dropped off Mark at the airport (actually a taxi did the dropping off) and I took a couple of business meetings. While we were gone, Rosana called me twice, once in the morning to inform me that the eight new gilts I recently purchased from Topigs (actually I will only pay for six, the final two being the gratis compensation I negotiated for the poor logistics surrounding the delivery of the first 15 gilts from Topigs) had arrived in Vargem Grande, and later that same day to inform me that Alfheim's first calf had been born, a healthy nougat-colored Bambi, as Lone lovingly calls her. Four days later, on June 21st, our 24th wedding anniversary, our second calf was born, equally adorable and slightly larger than the first. With these two births, our modest herd of Jersey dairy cattle has suddenly grown to eight.

In other farm news, Mark spent a couple of days counting fence posts on all of the pastures, except 10, and hog pens. The tally:

• Pasture 1: 312 fence posts (3.7 hectares)
• Pasture 2: 284 (3.1)
• Pasture 3: 279 (3.0)
• Pasture 4: 275 (2.9)
• Pasture 5: 212, (1.7)
• Pasture 6: 585 (13.2)
• Pasture 7: 401 (6.2)
• Pastures 8/9: 510 (10.0)
• Pasture 10: TBD (?)
• Total: 2,858 (43.9)

• Hog Haven: 291 (3.3)
• Hog Hill A: 298 (3.4)
• Hog Hill B: 291 (3.3)
• Pasture 3: 279 (3.0)
• Pasture 10: TBD (?)
• Total: 1,159 (12.9)
  

Next I had to adjust these numbers to compensate for the inferior space efficiency of a square versus a circle (approx. -21.5%), after which we end up with approx. 34.5 hectares of pasture and 10.2 hectares of cropland. We can safely add another 10 hectares for pasture 10, five each for pasture and crops, bringing our totals to approx. 40 and 15 hectares of pasture and cropland, respectively.

We intend to plant corn on most of the cropland. In industrialized agriculture, typical yields should be between six and nine tons per hectare. Honestly, we have no idea what to expect, but we would be extremely pleased with three tons per hectare as it would be enough for us to achieve our goal of animal feed self-sufficiency by early 2011.

To this end, Clair, Dirlei and João finished liming pasture 3, using approx. three tons of lime, one for each hectare of land. With an assist from Lone, I calculated that the hogs produced and distributed between three and five tons of manure during their two months on pasture 3. The combination of manure and lime should do wonders for our crop yields…7-9-13!

The hogs are also being used to help us renovate our pastures, which we ultimately (three-four years hence) hope will support 80 head of dairy cattle, which in turn will produce somewhere north of 600 liters of milk (or > 100 kg of cheese) a day.

And to both of these ends, i.e. improved crop yields and pastures, we will no doubt benefit from our latest Lego toys, a disc plow and a till.

This week's fauna is not a moth…at least not yet.

Finally, only 10 more days until our new Farm Manager, Esben Christoffer Hesketh, arrives for duty, coming off a third straight ranking as the #1 student in his year at the Royal Agricultural College, the oldest agricultural college in the English speaking world! Not surprisingly, we can't wait.

Hitting our stride

Written to August & Everything After - Deluxe Edition by Counting Crows

Take care of your Thoughts because they become Words.

Take care of your Words because they become Actions.

Take care of your Actions because they become your Habits.

Take care of your Habits because they become your Character.

Take care of your Character because it will form your Destiny, and your Destiny will be your Life ... and ...

There is no religion higher than the Truth.

- the Dalai Lama

While things take time (TTT) is as true as ever when speaking of farming, it is also true that we are beginning to hit our stride and establish a daily routine that pushes us ever closer to our short- and medium-term goals.

Only last week I spent an entire Thursday morning walking the fazenda with Clair, Dirlei and João, planning the next critical three-four months in painstaking detail. The motivation for this hands-on planning session was the upcoming window for planting crops, which begins in the second half of July and ends in the first half of November. Before we can begin planting, of course, there are a number of critical tasks which must be completed:

• Manually clear the remaining post-hog shrubbery on pasture 3. Clair, Dirlei and João, with a couple of spirited contributions from Mark, have basically finished this job -in less than one week. √
• Treat the pastures and fields with calcium. We recently purchased 14 tons of calcium through the Casa da Agricultura in Natividade da Serra, the first seven tons of which were delivered this morning. √
• Secure the delivery of the plow, till and planter. Delivery has been confirmed by Agritech Lavrale Ltda. in Campinas for June 17th. √
• Ensure sufficient hog pens so as to avoid the need to fence during the critical weeks of planting. Hogwood is essentially ready and waiting for a new rotation, Hog Copse was emptied on June 1st and is in recovery mode (approx. six months) and Hog Weald, our latest construct, is still virgin territory…un-tread-upon and waiting. By my back-of-the-envelope calculation, our existing stock of hog pens will carry us through Q1 2011. √
• Pick and store mandioca (cassava) branches for planting in September. As the branches can be stored for approx. three months, we will begin this task next week.
• Secure untreated bean and corn seeds, mandioca branches and sugar cane and elephant grass stalks. We would like to plant sweat potatoes as well, but thus far have been unable to identify a supplier with sufficient volume. √

In sum, we are primed for a successful planting season, which in turn should allow us to achieve our goal of animal feed self-sufficiency beginning in Q1 2011. Given that feed is our second greatest expense, after wages, and unquestionably the biggest pain in the behind logistically-speaking, this would be a monstrous accomplishment. 7-9-13!

Over the past two plus weeks, when not planning the upcoming planting season, we partook in a couple of enjoyable outings:

1. Anella, Sandra, Mark, Emmanuel Cabale, another charming frog (worth reading the link) who is working with Emmanuel Rengade on his Fazenda Santa Helena project along with Jeff and Suzanna (an American couple who we hitherto had not had the pleasure of meeting) and I went for a gentle trek along the easiest of the three trails in the Parque Estadual da Serra do Mar, Núcleo Santa Virgínia, the six km, three waterfall, Trilha do Garcez.

Lone drew the short straw and stayed behind, taking advantage of a kind offer of assistance from our former neighbor, Januara, to check up on Lone's bees. In addition, Bia, Lone's former pottery teacher in São Paulo, paid us a visit, bringing with her a glorious clay salt pig as a present. After the hike, everyone returned to Alfheim for a BBQ and a chilaxing afternoon that effortlessly morphed into evening.

The following Monday Lone took the young folks to Picinguaba and Ubatuba, where Anella and Sandra, in particular, took full advantage of the opportunity to store up some Brazilian sand, surf and sun before heading back to their harsh Nordic fædreland. While Lone, Mark, Anella and Sandra were out frolicking, I stayed home to mind the fazenda.

In other farm-related news, the piglets are thriving, the first group of which will be ready for slaughter at eight weeks, essentially two months earlier than previous batches. We are definitely getting the hang of this.

And speaking of getting the hang of something, we are now officially experts at herding hogs…moving three different groups between gardens, pastures and pens in one day, in some cases more than a kilometer -and after lunch no-less (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14). Completely hassle-free. Amazing what a difference a year makes.

Lone is now officially a milk maid, though her dairy cattle herding skills leave a bit more than a bit to be desired, something she will have to work to improve as our herd of dairy cattle is set to expand by two, perhaps as early as this weekend. In preparation for the birth of the calves, the men built a stall in the corral, which they proudly displayed for the camera.

And speaking of menagerie expansion, Sofia Sow, so named by Anella, gave birth to an unquantified litter yesterday, after holding out for what seemed like forever, or at least for what looked like a physiological impossibility.

Finally, for all of you who own iPods/iPads, I would like to plug the iTunes U, Apple's collection of university content. I have started to download an eclectic collection of lectures whenever I visit the an urban center near or far, and the quality, in most cases, is nothing short of extraordinary -and free! Currently auditing: Justice with Michael Sandel.

Equally free, virtually any older work of classic literature on Amazon.com. I just finished downloading 16 works to my Kindle this morning, including The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Oliver Twist and Crime and Punishment.

What did we ever do before the internet?