Road trippin 2.0

Written to FELA In Concert Starring Fela Anikulapo Kuti

“Like life, basketball is messy and unpredictable. It has its way with you, no matter how hard you try to control it. The trick is to experience each moment with a clear mind and open heart. When you do that, the game -- and life -- will take care of itself.”

- Phil Jackson

A week after breaking my collar bone and a rib, my abuser, aka Esben, and I set off at 21:30 in our Mitsubishi L200 Triton HPE 3.2 Diesel pickup from São Paulo for Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul, a 1,011 km trip, to visit Toshio Hisaeda's hog farm. We drove through the night, taking turns behind the wheel, emerging from the darkness into an endless savannah, sprinkled with an out of place feed lot, a handful of sugar cane fields and a lot of roadworks, finally checking into our room at Vânia Hotel e Lanchonete in Campo Grande at around 11:00.

We chillaxed for the remainder of Monday, only leaving our humble abode to eat at a local diner for the princely sum of R$14.00 (€6.25 or $8.16).

On Tuesday, we visited Toshio at his office, Sementes Boi Gordo, an impressive seed business employing approx. 200 people. Toshio, the iconoclast that he is, has established a garden and a chicken yard on the premises, and we spent most of the afternoon meeting with Toshio and his employees.

That evening we met Toshio and a job candidate at Toshio's restaurant, where we dined on a sumptuous array of Japanese dishes. Truly yummy!

The following morning, Wednesday, we awoke at 05:00, packed, checked out of the hotel and headed off on the first of two farm visits. Stop 1: Toshio's 900 hectare hog farm, where he raises more than 1,000 hogs. The farm is run by only two employees, who are responsible for every aspect of raising the Sorocaba and Monteiro breeds that dominate Toshio's herd.

At any given time, Toshio's hogs and their offspring can be found in one of three main areas:

1. A maternity ward that features individual pens with drip-water systems and a retractable roof. The pregnant sows are typically brought into the maternity ward 15-30 before birthing and are released into...
2. the weaning area, mother sow together with her piglets, a couple of months after birthing. From the post-maternity weaning area, the animals are placed in...
3. a common pen, where all of the adult hogs and weaners live. The hog pens, which with the exception of one, monster 30-hectare pen, are approx. two hectares in size, have been seeded with Estilosantes Campo Grande, a protein-rich legume that comprises the majority of the hogs diet together with cassava and sugar cane. Once a week the hogs receive two kg of corn, though this is more of a behavioral modification tool that the workers use to train the hogs to gather at the entry gate, thus facilitating their move when required. There are no houses in these hog pens, i.e. the hogs sleep under open sky.

It is worth noting that while in the maternity ward, the pregnant sows receive a feed consisting of corn flour, soy and ash, approx. 15% of the latter to combat parasites.

After wrapping up our visit at Toshio's hog farm, we travelled a few km down the road to visit his 2,000 hectare cattle farm, where he raises 2,500 head of Wagyu beef cattle. After the tour, we enjoyed another fabulous lunch consisting of comida mineira, topped off with the most exquisitely delicious lemon mousse, the recipe for which I asked and was given.

After thanking our host profusely for his hospitality, we jumped into our bucket of bolts and headed back to São Paulo, where I had a full schedule of meetings on Thursday and Friday.

And while Esben and I were playing Thelma and Louise, Lone, Megan (Megan's parents please see the mini Megan photo gallery here: 1, 2, 3, 4) and Rosana were busy back at Fazenda Alfheim preparing Esben's apartment, among other tasks.

Painting aside, the week's biggest news in the Vale da Paraiba, was the announcement from beekeeper Lone that she will indeed harvest honey this year, more than 100 liters in November! Amazing! We got a little taste from a small sample, and as a lifelong honey connoisseur I can assure all of my readers that I have never tasted anything quite so delicious. Book your jar today because it will be sold out in less time than it takes to count Sara Palin's IQ. Parabéns, beekeeper Lone!

Finally,

• Jennifer Chatman, of the University of California, Berkeley, conducted experiments in which she tried to find a point at which flattery became ineffective. It turned out there wasn’t one.
• And next time you feel like your style is being cramped, think of this group of brothers and sisters!

Porcupines, pain and promising plants

Written to Macire by Boubacar Traore

“There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.”
- J.R.R. Tolkien

It is not a stretch to say that it has been tough being a dog at Fazenda Alfheim of late: first there was Negão's eye piercing at the hands of a wayward twig, and shortly thereafter Muninn made the mistake of trying to play with a porcupine, with predictably painful results. Fortunately, both dogs are doing fine.

Less fortunately, I broke my left clavicle or collar bone during an amicable Sunday tussle with Esben on the lawn of the fazenda of our good friends Márcio and Heather. This is the second time our middle son has broken one of my bones while wrestling, a rib in Oslo and now a collar bone in São Paulo. Most ungrateful children suffice with writing tell-all biographies about their [choose your adjective] parents, but ours would seem to have a preference for more corporeal form of retribution: I have broken 5 bones in my lifetime, 40% of which can be traced directly to wrestling with Esben. On the plus side, the bursitis in my right shoulder will get a month of solid rest as I am required to wear a "figure-of-8" splint for 21-30 days.

Thankfully, another good friend, Paula Afrange, has been kind enough to put me up in her apartment in São Paulo during my first critical week of recovery, greatly easing day-to-day logistics as I have had numerous meetings in the Megalopolis.

In my absence, Lone lorded over Alfheim, both figuratively and literally, while thriving in her newly carved out, albeit diminished, corner of our former garden.

In parallel, phase I of planting season was executed without a hitch by Esben and the team: pasture 3 and our former garden, a total of 3 hectares, was planted with heirloom corn, a variety called Amarelão, in five-six days. Less than two weeks later, the early results are promising (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). That said, given the precarious nature of any crop activity, and the momentousness of our getting this right and producing all of our own animal feed, all prayers and positive thoughts are most welcome. Phase II of planting season will begin with the next minguante or waning moon on September 24th, when we will plant other varieties of heirloom corn, including BRS Missões, Lombo Baio and BRS Planate.

Finally, on Monday, September 13th, Esben and I will head off on a massive 2,500 km road trip to Mato Grosso do Sul, more precisely to the fazenda of Toshio Hisaeda, a free-range hog farmer that I wrote about in my blog post of June 29, A video tour of Fazenda Alfheim.

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.