Honestly priced food or irresponsibly priced food

Written to Dookie by Green Day

I asked Joel how he answers the charge that because food like his is more expensive, it is inherently elitist. “I don’t accept the premise,” he replied. “First off, those weren’t any ‘elitists’ you met on the farm this morning. We sell to all kinds of people. Second, whenever I hear people say clean food is expensive, I tell them it’s actually the cheapest food you can buy. That always gets their attention. Then I explain that, with our food, all of the costs are figured into the price. Society is not bearing the cost of water pollution, of antibiotic resistance, of food-borne illnesses, of crop subsidies, of subsidized oil and water—of all the hidden costs to the environment and the taxpayer that make cheap food seem cheap. No thinking person will tell you they don’t care about all that. I tell them the choice is simple: You can buy honestly priced food or you can buy irresponsibly priced food.”

The past two week's lunches at Fazenda Alfheim have been laden with pork and honestly-priced food. I returned from São Paulo last week with two exquisitely rotisseried pork quarters from one of the two-upscale São Paulo restaurant prospects. Ambrosial does not begin to do this meat justice. And judging from the feedback we received from two early taste testers, we are not alone in our assessment:

Caríssimo Rance, o leitão estava ótimo. Mais magro, com carne mais firme e saborosa.

Na terça só eu comi, o pessoal lá em casa já havia jantado. Comi a perna, excelente, ainda quente do forno. Aí o leitão repousou na geladeira até sexta no almoço, quando voltou ao forno de casa para aquecer e ser servido. Pedaços dele foram disputados “à tapa” pelos presentes, não sobrou nada, só um monte de ossinhos.

Fui intimado a voltar lá e comprar mais.
...

O leitão estava ótimo! Carne super magra…comemos à noite e foi super leve.

As an aside, pork is healthier than beef, about equal as a source of protein, but lower in total fat and saturated fat, and recently took the lead over its main competitor, chicken, in the battle to be the leanest white meat.

On Saturday, we decided to try our hand at preparing our pork, i.e. sans chef extraoridnaire. To that end Lone dug out my most-excellent apron, while I leafed through our new, not to mention only, pork cook book, Pork & Sons, by Stéphane Reynaud, to gather a sense of the possible, i.e. given the dearth of ingredients in the house. In fact, we were unable to muster the ingredients for any single dish, but after perusing a couple of recipes, I opted to roast the ham using an improvised basting sauce, which I threw together using a very, very, very cheap red wine, 5 liters for R$5.00 (€1.92 or $2.86), olive oil, mustard, thyme and basil from Provence, Lone's home-grown rosemary, sage, garlic and carrots, and salt and pepper to taste. I roasted the ham in the oven at 215 degrees Celsius for two hours, basting every 30 minutes, the first two times with fresh basting sauce and the last two with the sauce from the dish itself. While clearly biased, both Lone and I concluded that this dish ranked right up there with the pork prepared by Beto and our first São Paulo restaurant prospect, rare air indeed given the chops of the two chefs in question.

A couple of weeks ago we implemented a Friday afternoon planning session with the employees…a bit bookish, but it does give us a chance to review what we accomplish each week, our priorities for the week ahead and any other issues that might arise and/or require collective treatment. It also gives us all a little non-work face-time, and because we start at 14:00, we still finish early on Fridays, a practice that has been greatly appreciated given the relentless 34 °C daily scorching that we have experienced of late. When the temperature passes 30 °C, usually before 10:00, the daily chores really do becomes chores. The piglets certainly agree…and have taken to daily, collective jet cooling…resting until the late afternoon when they begin to act, well, piggish again.

This weekly exercise has also helped Lone and I gauge where we are and what's next. We have concluded that we need still more help if we are to meet our goals for the coming year. To that end, we have begun to look for a fourth employee, though one who commutes from Vargem Grande to Alfheim rather than lives at our fazenda. We have two potential candidates in our sights and have taken contact with the first. 7-9-13!

On Wednesday, November 25th, we gathered the cattle for their twice-annual hoof-and-mouth vaccinations. We also took this opportunity to treat them for berne or cattle grub (Dermatobia hominis). Given the sorry state of our corral (read: useless), the work required us to rope and wrestle the cattle to the ground. Once secured (my job given both my mass advantage over Clair and Dirlei and the fact that I couldn't lasso a barn door if it were two feet in front of me), we squeezed the berne from the animals' bodies (not for the feint of heart), treating them afterwards with neem, iodine and calendula cream. While tough, it was enormously satisfying to be able to take the time to treat the animals fully. Going forward we will try to spray them with neem every 21 days to reduce the number of parasites.

Finally, we had two unexpected visitors last week, the first extremely dangerous and the second quite benign -even cute. On Monday, Lone nearly ran into a cobra-coral or Brazilian Coral Snake (Micrurus decoratus), one of the most venomous snakes in Central and South America. Fortunately, Clair was nearby and he did what he does: grabbed a piece of wood and killed the snake. As this photo illustrates, this was the Mini-Me version, so naturally we couldn't help but wonder where momma snake is hiding…hopefully far, far away. In an effort to encourage her to stay away, the Head Witch of Eastwick burnt the snake, dynamized the ashes and will spread them around the farmhouse grounds. Our second visitor was a frog that somehow found its way into my underwear and sock basket in our bedroom. As I was preparing to hit the sack one evening, I found him staring back at me. While conceptually open to the idea of sharing my Alans, to paraphrase Samuel L. Jackson's character Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction, we'd have to be talkin' about one charming motherfucking frog.

Slaughterhouse-Five

Written to Bridge School Concerts, Vol. 1 by Various Artists

Makenna Goodman: In your opinion, what's the biggest problem with the food industry in the U.S.?

Joel Salatin: Wow, where do I start? Number one is that it destroys soil. Absolutely and completely. The soil is the only thread upon which civilization can exist, and it's such a narrow strip around the globe if a person could ever realize that our existence depends on literally inches of active aerobic microbial life on terra firma, we might begin to appreciate the ecological umbilical to which we are all still attached. The food industry, I'm convinced, actually believes we don't need soil to live. That we are more clever than that.

This week was dominated by two milestone events:

1. The holding of a joint, introductory training course in organic/biodynamic farming, led by Ana Maria Claro Paredes Silva, Méd. Veterinária, Instituto Oikos de Agroecologia, at Fazenda Santa Helena, Emmanuel and Filipa's hotel fazenda.
2. The slaughtering at Fazenda Alfheim of five piglets for commercial consumption (samples for a high-end São Paulo restaurant), led by Emmanuel's chef extraordinaire, Humberto Guimaraes, aka Beto.
   

On Wednesday, Lone departed Alfheim with Clair and Rosana at 06:30, picked up Direli in Vargem Grande (his house at Alfheim is an Elektro connection shy of being ready) and arrived at Fazenda Santa Helena at approx. 08:00. After meeting Ana Maria and their farm's traditional veterinarian, Milka Matos Bado Villani, who we know well from her work with our dogs, and who was keen to participate in the training day, the teams were introduced and Lone left to carry out sundry duties in nearby São Luiz do Paraitinga. I drew the short straw and stayed behind to take care of the daily chores at Alfheim. Our non-participation was by design. We wanted to allow our personnel to raise questions and concerns with Ana Maria unencumbered by the presence of the bosses. Ana Maria's approach was quite clever: she started by referencing the approach to farming taken by the previous generation, i.e. the parents of our respective employees. How they were able to grow almost all of their own food. How they used no fossil fuel-based fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides. How their soil was naturally healthy. How they collected their own seeds. Etc.

Ana Maria then contrasted these practices with how much today's rural population has to purchase in stores, the intensive use of fossil-fuel-based inputs (out of necessity rather than choice), et depletion of the soil and how most small farmers have to purchase their seeds because the hybrid varieties sold by the likes of Cargill and Monsanto cannot be saved and re-used the following season. In effect, the large agro-industrial giants have succeeded in turning seeds into the equivalent of disposable diapers or contact lens. As an aside, in high school and at university, I used the same pair of hard contact lenses for almost 10 years, only replacing them when I actually lost them! Today, I would need to build extra storage space in my bathroom to house even a month's supply of disposable contact lenses. Clearly, this is the dream of every consumer goods company: convert a one-time purchase into a recurring revenue, but as it relates to seeds the idea is abhorrent. A hybrid seed which cannot be saved is akin to a disposable wrist watch on which the time can only be read once.

According to Lone, who participated in this introductory session, the effect was very powerful. After that, the two teams, plus Alena, went on their walkabout.

Ana Maria's feedback as regards our employees was quite favorable: they appear to buy in to the organic approach and they are positive and open. In short, they have turned the corner.

Lone returned at the end of the day, playing the part of taxi chauffeur, first dropping Dirlei off in Vargem Grande and then ferrying Clair, Rosana and Alena back to Fazenda Alfheim.

Thursday was an equally inspiring day. With the help of Beto, who arrived at Fazenda Alfheim just after 09:00, and Dirlei, who it turns out has quite a bit of experience slaughtering piglets, we took the plunge into packaging our product. We started by catching five suitably large piglets, approx. 10-15 kg, and placing them in sacks, which we then placed in the shade under a tree. One by one, we killed, cleaned and butchered each piglet. We decided to produce a variety of samples for the first of the two upscale São Paulo restaurants which have expressed an interest in our leitões orgânicas. To facilitate the packaging of these samples, I had purchased a vacuum sealer from the Polishop store in Shopping Eldorado on my last visit to São Paulo, and we used this pillar of the TV shopping world to protect our valuable pork…very professional. I delivered the first of these samples, three piglets in all, halved, quartered and cut in sixths, on Sunday. Today, Tuesday, I will taste these samples together with the owner of the restaurant, an icon in the São Paulo restaurant world.

The remaining two piglets were divided between Clair and Rosana and Dirlei, half each, and Beto and us, again half each. Dirlei stopped at the market in Vargem Grande and weighed his half as we were all quite curious about the weight of the final product. Five kg without the head…probably 12 kg cleaned…a nice size in my opinion. The meat looks exquisite: firm and extremely lean. One can clearly see the difference between free-range and confined swine.

The day's other important takeaway were the lessons learned in terms of how we should build our open-air slaughterhouse:

• Construct a holding pen next to the slaughterhouse so the animals can roam freely pre-slaughter. When kept in sacks, even in the shade, some of the piglets flap about to such an extent that they end up damaging their skin.
• Construct a small, wood-burning stove to heat water, which is used to remove the piglet's hair. On this occasion we used the farm's extra stove, but it is neither effective or cost-effective out of door.
• Purchase insect-free netting, which can be placed around the piglets while they are hanging post-butchering.
• Purchase a stainless steel table to eliminate bacteria buildup.
• Purchase a top-of-the-line butchering set.
• Purchase a blow-torch to singe the hard-to-remove hair (this time around we entrusted this task to a couple of disposable Gillete razors).
  

Finally, in other far-related news:

• What Lone now refers to as my Lego tractor arrived on Friday.
• Clair finished cleaning pasture 5 (1, 2, 3, 4).
• The Head Witch of Eastwick spread he first locally-produced Horn Manure Preparation (500).
• The frogs they are a breeding.
• And Baixinho, one of the Saturday day laborers, began clearing our lagoa. Baixinho promised to return next Saturday with a team of three-four day laborers, so I expect that we will be discussing fish vs. ducks in two weeks time.

Back to the farm

Written to En Concert by Jack Johnson

A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.
- Will Rogers

With the successful handover on October 26th of Santelisa Vale to its new majority shareholder, Louis Dreyfuss Commodites, I wrapped up what turned into a nine-month interim management engagement. While an extraordinarily satisfying experience, it is one that I am nonetheless most pleased to have squarely in my rear-view mirror, allowing me once again to turn my full attention to Fazenda Alfheim. To borrow two classic lines from Sleep 'n Eat, one of the main characters in Spike Lee's Bamboozled, having secured some income coming in, it was now time for some meantime in-between time, hence my week's absence from the blogosphere. During my mini-hiatus, I finished The Five People You Meet in Heaven (not particularly profound, but very well-written), by Mitch Albom, and started The Lost Symbol (very entertaining), by Dan Brown. When I picked up Dan Brown's latest thriller, I was reminded of another classic line, this one uttered by my dear friend and the world's most curious orthopedic surgeon, Tony Matan. Back in our glory days as California Golden Bears, I chanced across a photo of him chilling on a beach with a Jackie Collins (or was it a Barbara Cartland?) novel in hand. His nonchalant response to my ribbing: If you can't read trash, you can't read.

Aside from reading, this week at Fazenda Alfheim was dominated by an outbreak of various diseases produced by Staphylococcus aureus, a bacterium that is part of the normal flora on the skin and mucous membranes of food animals and poultry. Staphylococcus species are not thought to produce disease unless there is a breakdown in an environmental or immune system barrier.

In our case, we believe the breakdown in an environmental or immune system barrier was brought on by the dramatic weather we have experienced recently. More specifically, a couple of weeks of non-stop rain, including a two-day spell which offered up in excess of 200 ml of Adam's ale.

Interestingly, neither the larger hogs nor the unweaned piglets were affected, only the weaned piglets, who reside in a separate part of the fazenda, closer to our house. Even more interestingly, the bacterium almost exclusively affected the all-white piglets, of which we sadly lost 4-5. Neither the Corinthians nor the Durocs were affected in any significant way. Considering the fact that in all cases these piglets share the same father(s) and in many others a mother, this is odd. Fortunately, the worst appears to be over, and all of the surviving piglets appear both active and strong.

The diseases produced by this bacterium led me, aided by our traditional hog veterinarian, Paulo Basetto, to rethink our breeding strategy: we have decided to focus on improving the gene pool of our sows as a way of complementing our existing plan to strengthen the offspring's offspring with another Duroc (or other-suitably robust) cross. In brief, we will replace our weaker sows with their mothers, apparently a more robust group.

To this end, we spent Thursday afternoon earmarking the keeper sows (3 thus far) and gilts (6 thus far), an exciting afternoon that involved the entire Alfheim team, Lone, me, Clair, Rosana, Dirlei and Alena. Somewhat surprisingly, the sows got whipped into a frenzy, with Hannibela the Cannibal trying to go through our bones like butter. Quite feisty, that one. Needless to say she remained unmarked, and will be getting into my belly over the Christmas holidays. Pork-chops taste good!

As for the remaining, recently born and future swine offspring, a couple of upscale restaurants in São Paulo have expressed interest in purchasing our product. All very exciting. We plan to deliver samples in the second half of November. In preparation, we are planning the construction of an open-air slaughterhouse on site. This is a growing trend in the beyond organic community, differs dramatically from what were historically referred to as a shambles and simplifies many of the hygienic challenges that a traditional cottage slaughterhouse would face. We have also invited Beto, Emmanuel's pousada-chef extraordinaire, to Alfheim on Thursday, November 12th, to give us all a course in proper slaughtering techniques. Nothing like learning from a master.

The day before our slaughtering lesson, Lone and our employees will be spending the day at Fazenda Santa Helena, together with Emmanuel's employees, and Ana Maria Claro Paredes Silva, Méd. Veterinária, UNESP Botucatu, 1985. Ana Maria is a researcher at Instituto Oikos de Agroecologia, and has agreed to spend a day with our combined staffs, teaching them the basics of organic/biodynamic farming. The day has been designed as a walk-about, during which Ana-Maria will tour the facilities together with the employees answering their questions and using these as jumping off points to discuss the basics of organic/biodynamic farming. It has taken us several weeks to get all of the requisite ducks in a row for this day, and hopefully it will be the first of many shared learning days between our respective fazendas. In our minds this is a real milestone, and fortunately Clair, Rosana and Dirlei all seem quite excited about the prospect.

In other farm-related news:

• I purchased the Agrale 4100.4 tractor and an accompanying Lavrale trailer. Delivery has been promised by November 12th. Another very exciting milestone.
• I also bought the gorgeous, three-year-old, pure Gir bull that I saw at Fazenda Santana da Serra. The bull will be delivered to Fazenda Alfheim in the second half of November, after he receives his mandatory hoof-and-mouth vaccination.
• Hog Haven is growing back nicely after reseeding, and should be more than ready to support the big hogs when they rotate back around in approx. 12 months.
• Marcos and his compadre finished our churrasqueira.
• The latest incarnation of the Witches of Eastwick eagerly dug up the 50 cow horns that were buried last March (autumn equinox) and began preparing the Horn Manure Preparation (500).
• Based on their improved quality, we have extended our pasture rotations from one day to two days. Obviously, there is still a much work still to do to improve our seven working pastures, but the Nelore have never looked better.
  

Finally, some of you will have noticed the dearth of blog photos over the past several weeks. This was the regrettable result of the early, tragic death of my Nikon D80. In the interim I was relegated to using Lone's dated Sony Cyber-shot, which has held up remarkably well since we bought it 9-10 years ago. The Sony's longevity notwithstanding, I am now the happy owner of a Canon PowerShot SX200 IS. Same 12 megapixel clarity of the Nikon for one-third of the price. So far it has not disappointed.

Die grosse Überraschung

Written to Open Road by Oli Brown

My record royalties right now are four times stronger than when I was the Madonna of my day, ... Now it's over the top. I mean the records, they all hold up through the years.
- Tony Bennett

Wanting to avoid both the specter and the reality of rising at 01:30 and hitting the dirt road by 02:00 in order to arrive at São Paulo-Guarulhos International Airport in time to pick up Lone at 05:45 on Saturday morning, I chose instead to spend Friday night at Caesar Business Guarulhos. Fortunately, Lone's plane landed early, and, after a short wait, a moderately droopy-eyed Lone, sporting new Harry Potter glasses to match my own, emerged from the behind the glass international arrivals doors looking remarkably spry.

Four hours later, after a quick grocery run in São Luiz do Paraitinga, we arrived at Alfheim, floating in on our newly manicured entrance road. A combination of the leveler from Natividade da Serra and 34 truckloads of cascalha have transformed our previously-intimidating-for-non-four-wheel drive vehicles, 1.8 km entrance road into a buttery-smooth expressway. Total cost for this transformation: R$2,500 (€971 or $1,434). Best of all, we did not have to lift a finger.

On Monday we traveled to São Paulo for die grosse Überraschung (Lone's BIG surprise): an evening with Tony Bennett. Simply unforgettable. We should all be so lucky to be grooving like Anthony Dominick Benedetto when we are 83. What charisma…the consummate performer. It is easy to understand why Frank Sinatra named him “the best singer in the business.”

The next day I flew to Ribeirão Preto to finish up some business, while Lone returned to Alfheim with our new, German intern, Alena Profit, who will spend a month at our fazenda in order to gain experience with biodynamic agriculture before beginning her degree course in psychology at Leibniz Universität Hannover. Unfortunately, as it has been raining cats and dogs (> 120 ml), Lone was not comfortable crossing the partially washed-out bridge in front of the entrance to our fazenda, so she and Alena turned the car around and spent the night in Vargem Grande, at the home of Fatima, the night-school teacher and owner of the local Internet cafe. Emboldened by the light of day, they returned this morning and crossed the bridge without incident, though Lone decided against tempting fate by crossing the stone bridge on our property as the water was knee-deep.

Today Lone took pictures of our two groups of piglets: the older ones, which seem to be suffering from an as-yet-unidentified illness (a bacteria?), and the newborns, which look marvelous, so that we can send them to a couple of our veterinarian contacts for diagnosis.

My tasks for the week include purchasing the tractor and ordering more organic hog feed (a not altogether simple task as IBD does not distinguish between producers who produce and consume their crops and those who produce and sell their crops).

Finally, two giant shout-outs:

• to Emmanuel Rengade and Filipa, whose second child, Tomas Georges, was born on October 24th;
• and to Brazil's handsomest lawyer-cowboy, Márcio Cabral Magano, who celebrated his birthday on October 27th, and is now a day older, a day wiser and none the worse for the wear.

Shopping for bull

Written to Rattle and Hum by U2

Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock.
- Will Rogers

On Saturday I visited Fazenda Santana da Serra, also referred to as Gir Leiteiro FB, a beautiful dairy and coffee farm located in Mococa à Cajuru, approx. 70 km from Ribeirão Preto. Upon arrival, I was met by the owner, José de Castro Rodrigues Netto, and his foreman, José Carlos, both of whom spent approx. three hours showing me their cattle, a combination of Gir Leiteiro and Girolando. The family has worked with these breeds since 1933, and the results are impressive. Many of their top cattle fetch prices ranging from R$40,000 to R$125,000 (€15,646 or $23,396 to €48,895 or $73,112); some of their rarer semen recently sold for R$7,500 (€8,228 or $12,304) per dose. Needless to say, these are truly exceptional animals. One of his dairy cattle produces more than 12,000 liters during a single lactation, which corresponds to approx. 40 liters per day for approx. 305 days. To put this in perspective, the average production for dairy cows in the US in 2005 was 8,800 kg (19,576 pounds). This cow definitely got milk!

Needless to say, I was not looking for anything quite so expensive, but I did find a stunning young bull, which I hope to be able to purchase in the coming weeks. The idea would be to breed this purebred Gir bull with a solid group of Girolando heifers.

In a positive coincidence, it turns out that Fazenda Santana da Serra uses the same tractor, an Agrale 4100.4, that we are thinking of purchasing. Fortunately, they rated it highly. It is always nice when you can get real-world feedback on a major purchase before taking the plunge. As an alternative, I am also considering buying a John Deere Gator™ TH 6x4 Diesel, which has the disadvantage of not being a tractor, but the advantage of costing slightly more than half as much as the Agrale. Boys and their toys...

Back at Alfheim, Clair and our newest employee, Dirlei, have begun planting the napier seedlings, and Marcos and his crew are finishing up the third house, the water troughs and our churrasqueira. If everything goes according to plan -and when does that not happen- they should complete the three projects this week.

Finally, Lone will return from her globetrotting and assorted political intrigues on Saturday, when I will pick her up at São Paulo-Guarulhos International Airport. We will relax at Fazenda Alfheim before heading to São Paulo on Monday, where we will spend Monday and Tuesday. I have a big surprise planned for Lone on Monday (which she has been unable to guess despite her considerable posturing), and she has her monthly ladies' lunch on Tuesday.

Stuck in the mud

Written to A Donny Hathaway Collection by Donny Hathaway

A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.
- Muhammad Ali

This past weekend got off to an inauspicious start when the pickup truck I borrowed to transport napier seedlings got stuck in the mud at 22:30 on Friday…approx. 4-7 km from Fazenda Alfheim. Undiscouraged by my plight, I grabbed my backpack and figured I could hoof it home in under an hour. A few steps into my journey, however, I realized that without the aid of the moon, which was nowhre to be found, or the ever-present One Earth wind-up flashlight we keep charged in the boot of our Ford Ecosport 2.0 4Wd 16V, I had no chance of making it even five meters down the road...much less home. In the end, there was nothing else to do but sleep in the pickup. After a bit of tossing and turning, I managed to get close to six hours of shuteye. In the dawn's early light, my situation looked distinctly less precarious. As it turned out, there was a house not too far back down the road. After befriending the watchdogs, I rousted two locals, and with two hoes and a shovel in hand we proceeded to dig out the truck. Less than 20 minutes later, I was on my way. Note to self: be sure to swing by and drop off a piglet to my two Samaritans…the least I can do.

In other, more positive, news, we succeeded in contracting Dirlei, a local from Vargem Grande, as a full-time farm hand. He came by with his wife and youngest child on Monday, a holiday, Nossa Senhora Aparecida, which commemorates the Virgin Mary as Nossa Senhora da Conceição Aparecida, Patron Saint of Brazil, to inform me that he will begin work at Fazenda Alfheim on Monday, October 19th. Together with Clair, who has previously worked with Dirlei for years, and Rosana, this brings team Alfheim to three full-time employees. Very exciting…and should allow us to move forward more quickly. And there is still so much work to do.

So much, in fact, that we are contemplating the purchase of a tractor, specifically an Agrale 4100.4, a small, family-farm tractor with 4WD. Will study this and other options over the next couple of weeks before making a decision. For her part, Lone informed me from Hamlet's moderland that she thinks she will make an excellent tractor chauffeur. Lone's self-assessed and self-professed expertise notwithstanding, the addition of a tractor certainly would solve a couple of gigantic logistical problems, such as how to transport more than 1,000 fence posts to the far field, approx. 3 km from the main house, and how to move a cement ring weighing approx. 100 kg to pasture 8, approx. 1.5 km from the main house, so that it can be converted into a water trough for the cattle.

Finally, on Saturday I will be visiting a couple of dairy farms that sell Gir.

Obama, Michelle, Oprah, Lula...and Lone

Written to Duets: An American Classic by Tony Bennett

We're competing against other great cities: Madrid, Rio de Janeiro, and Tokyo. That's why it's important that we all join together on the final path to Copenhagen. Having the support of President Obama is key.
- Richard M. Daley

What Richard M. Daley could not have foreseen at the time of his citation was that he was up against forces far more forceful than simply other great cities. A day after Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey descended upon the Danish capital, Lone arrived in her moderland in ample time to impact the outcome of the selection of the 2016 Summer Olympic host-city race. Beyond her many obvious charms, Lone brought with her a rare 100% success rate in Summer Olympic city selections, having been in UK in 2005 when the momentous, and unexpected, decision was taken to award London the 2012 Summer Games ahead of the then-frontrunner, Paris.

It is true that Brazil had sent its ridiculously popular President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, to Copenhagen, but Lone's influence extends to the recesses of Europe's oldest monarchy. Her brother, Jan Blichert-Hansen (far left), a frequent guest to Brazil, is afdelingsleder (Department Head) of the Kongelige Repræsentationslokaler (Royal Reception Rooms) at Christiansborg Palace. In addition to hobnobbing with the Queen of Denmark, Margrethe II (Margrethe Alexandrine Þorhildur Ingrid), on a regular basis, Jan is intimately involved in managing significant portions of most official visits as well as being responsible for all visits to the Queen's tapestries, one of the most popular exhibits in Denmark. As one Lilliputian example of Jan's Brobdingnagian influence, the Fazenda Alfheim blog has been given an international exclusive: a photo of the tea cup that Michelle Obama drank from during her recent, fruitless, visit. As if such a happening were not already sufficient to make me forget hogs for a week, Jan also provided us with two additional insider photos, both taken by Keld Navntoft Sørensen, of America's stunning First Lady. In the first photo, Michelle is seen with Margrethe II, while in the second she is together with Frederik Crown Prince of Denmark (to Michelle's left), his wife, Mary Donaldson (to Michelle's right), and the Queen's husband, Henri de Laborde de Monpézat (far right with gold tie).

Unfortunately for Chicago, the outcome was sealed as soon as Lone landed…even Oprah was helpless to alter the decision. In the end, the Marvelous City was awarded the 2016 Summer Olympics. Coming as it will on top of Brazil's ascension to its almost certain ranking as the world's fifth largest economy (and seventh or eighth leading oil producer), and Brazil's staging of the 2014 World Cup, the first time Brazil will host the tournament since 1950, it would indeed appear as though our adopted homeland is poised for a most compelling decade.