2,000,000 bees...none in my bonnet

Written to This Desert Life by Counting Crows

There are certain pursuits which, if not wholly poetic and true, do at least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The keeping of bees, for instance. 

- Henry David Thoreau

Seven months to the day of publishing Bees in my Bonnet, my ode to suffering 100+ bee stings back in March, I made my inaugural debut as Fazenda Alheim's new bee caretaker, together with our energy-bomb of a neighbor, Izilda, this time clothed in an Ultra Breeze® beekeeping suit, a ventilated and sting-resistant beekeeping suit and gloves, courtesy of my sister Paula, who doubles as my personal shopper (non-pejorative). The work, which took a couple of hours, and involved checking each bee box and even rebuilding an empty bee box with bees from a particularly robust box, was very interesting, though hardly peaceful, as Lone described it. Boxes 11-20 have recovered well since Izilda last visited, and the bees were quite aggressive. In total, I suffered only a handful of stings, primarily when I bent my arm and the suit clung too closely to my bicep. I will also have to remember to wear a ski cap next time in order to avoid the protective hat touching the nape of my neck when I bend over to inspect the boxes. Considering that each box can contain as many as 100,000 bees, we were surrounded by approx. 2 million bees…awe-inspiring and almost incomprehensible, but also pretty cool. Izilda and I will return on October 30th to harvest six-eight boxes of golden honey. Yummy!

I would have liked to take pics of my debut as Fazenda Alfheim's beekeeper in residence, but given that my hands were otherwise occupied, not to mention about twice their natural size and half their natural nimbleness owing to my protective gloves, you will have to settle for this YouTube reference (part 1 & 2).

On a related note, the massive amount of sugar cane, which Esben planted on pasture 3, together with our workers, of course, is growing well, providing us with a natural option for feeding the bees next winter if feed proves limited for whatever reason. We figured this out when we noticed that a handful of bees descends each morning on the feed troughs where we feed Mausolus and the ladies a tasty blend of shredded sugar cane and napier or elephant grass (Pennisetum purpureum) after milking (not Mausolus, of course…that would be more than a little awkward).

In addition to my amazing bee suit and gloves, my sister Paula also recently sent me 1 lb of Ethos tea, a blend of Organic Fair Trade Chamomile, Organic Fair Trade South African Rooibos, Organic Mint and Organic Honeybush, from my favorite online tea shop, Art of Tea. Can't wait to try it as it combines three of my favorite teas: chamomile, mint and rooibos.

In that same package Paula also sent me a couple of pieces for our replacement ice cream maker (to replace the one whose motor burned out when persons who shall remain nameless, a bit like Lord Voldemort, plugged the brand new 110 volt machine into a 220 volt plug). The whole process is like something out of a John le Carré spy novel (I will receive the complete ice cream maker over 3-4 shipments). She also included the coolest little pig pen drive with another couple of hundred photos from the Hesketh family reunion, including our own special Welcome to Rio de Janeiro for our Canadian and American guests -all of whom decided to skip the Marvelous City this time around- replete with our very own nearly two meter tall Christ the Redeemer, aka Johannes, Joho, Chicken Boy and Bro. Needless to say, you had to have been there...

And while our extended family returned to their respective homes, general direction north, Jeff (caught here scarfing some delicious Fazenda Alfheim piglet prepared by Suzanna) and Suzanna returned to Brazil to work for a couple of years! Yeah! Lone met them first on a Friday, September 30th, and then we all went to dinner the next day, Saturday, at Rodeio (always good…and, yes, Johannes, Esben and Pelle, that's why my job is SO MUCH BETTER than yours…SO MUCH BETTER!), followed by a marvelous free concert on Sunday at Sala São Paulo. An altogether spectacular weekend. Best of all, Jeff and Suzanna will join us at Fazenda Alfheim for Christmas 2011!

Ronja Rövardotter, our house cat, has taken to advanced exploration and challenging far larger mammals than dumb (Negão), dumber (Muninn) and dumbest (Layla…sorry, Melissa).

My various body parts appear to be recovering well from surgery, particularly my clavicle. That said my doc has told me not to expect a full recovery before the six-month mark, but I have begun exercising gently on an elliptical cross-trainer. In a word: encouraging.

On Monday, Lone departed for Denmark, where she will spend 18 days visiting family, including our boys, who will make a weeklong cameo, this time accompanied by her new iPod Touch, on which I installed Skype and SkypeAccess. Should be fun.

Finally, I wanted to share the following two videos of George Carlin: the first, The American Dream, a raw, uncensored routine dealing with the suddenly-again-topical theme of class warfare. The second, Modern Man, a cleaned-up-for-network-television, four-minute routine of pure genius that has to be seen to be believed. Both are must-see TV.

Two reunions and two surgeries…followed by my 100th blog post

Written to Mumford & Sons - iTunes Festival: London 2009

An ounce of blood is worth more than a pound of friendship.

- Spanish Proverb

Well, since I last posted, I have attended/hosted two reunions, the first my 30th San Marcos High School Reunion in Santa Barbara, California, on July 30th, the second the much-written-about Hesketh family reunion, at which three generations and 14 members of the Hesketh clan from Brazil, Canada, UK and US joined forces for three weeks of pancake making (with 100% Canadian maple syrup), consuming roasted marshmallows, cigar smoking, volleyball, good food and better conversation and the obligatory family portraits (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Unsurprisingly, the next generation of Heskeths could not resist hamming it up (1, 2, 3).

Both reunions were awesome!

In between reunion 1 and reunion 2, on August 12th to be precise, I had surgery to repair my clavicle, which my ungrateful, malicious middle son, Esben, broke when he attacked me without provocation (or at least that's my story…and I'm sticking with it) back in September 2010. The bone never consolidated, and while it did not prevent me from practicing yoga, it was a constant discomfort, so I decided to get it sorted. My orthopedic surgeon, Dra. Andrea Arruda, inserted a titanium plate and six screws, so hopefully that will do the trick. While I was being cut up, we decided to clean up my right knee, specifically the meniscus.

Three weeks later, my knee is feeling much better. Can't wait to start running again.

My clavicle, on the other hand, will take a while longer to heal…45 days to six months. So there is plenty of time for me to plan my revenge on Esben. When he is least expecting it…

And speaking of Esben, he has returned to UK to take on a job as Trainee Certification Coordinator and Auditor (UK and Ireland) at NEPCon. NEPCon’s mission is to promote sustainable forest and nature management and use, in cooperation with local stakeholders such as individuals, business enterprises, NGOs and government institutions. Naturally, we are sorry to lose a most excellent Farm Manager, not to mention an all-around great guy, but our loss is tempered by our excitement at his embarking on this next, exciting chapter in his life.

Johannes and Pelle, too, are thrilled to have Esben back in UK, and the three knuckleheads are already planning a manly, multi-week, bro outing in 2012.

In farm-related news, Lone has sold off all but two of our F1s, so we are down to our Sorocaba/Monteiro breed…but there is no shortage of piggies at Fazenda Alfheim.

We finally got our shredder/grinder working, much to the delight of the workers…no more manual chopping of sugar cane and elephant grass.

Lone also recently purchased a sugar cane grinder, which allows us to produce sugar syrup…yummy! We can now produce our own sugar and honey. This will facilitate bottling all of our various fruits…and not a moment to soon, what with Jabuticaba season just around the corner.

Also, imagine the ice cream we will be able to produce with our Jersey milk, organic, raw honey and Jabuticaba once my sister delivers our new ice cream maker.

Ronja Rövardotter, our house cat, has now been taken off house arrest, or rather, it is impossible to keep her in, so she comes and goes pretty much as she pleases, though this was not always a simple task for her.

Finally, after so much fun and games, I will end my 100th blog post with an interesting comment on the West and its work ethic:

Has the West lost its work ethic? Economic historian and Harvard professor Niall Ferguson counts the work ethic as one of "six killer apps" responsible for the "great divergence," the centuries-long dominance of the West over the East in economic, political and military power. (The other five "apps" are competition, the scientific revolution, property rights, modern medicine, and the consumer society.) Today the average Korean works 1,000 hours more per year than the average German, he said. Although he said the decline of the West isn't inevitable, the rise of the East is incontrovertible: "The great divergence is over, folks."

1, 2, 3…3 * 2:1

Written to Live Forever: The Stanley Theatre, Pittsburgh PA September 23, 1980 by Bob Marley

Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.

- Epictetus

Before diving into the latest goings on at Fazenda Alfheim, I wanted to take a minute to congratulate our youngest son, Pelle Martin Hesketh, for graduating yesterday with a 2:1 classification in Geography from the University of Leceister. A 2:1 is also known formally as an upper second-class honors and is sought by many employers and academic institutions. Both his grandmother, Mette (see previous photo), and Johannes attended the graduation ceremony. We could not be more proud or pleased for Pelle...and for Johannes and Esben; all three graduated with upper second-class honors from first-rate UK universities.

And while neither Lone nor I could attend Pelle's graduation, we will have every opportunity to celebrate his grand accomplishment when he arrives in Brazil on Tuesday, July 19th, for a six-week visit, long enough to participate in the Hesketh family reunion in the second half of August, and to join us on August 6th to watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 with our dear friends Vivian and Luciano…can't wait!

When he arrives, he will be welcomed into our newly painted house (after much searching Lone managed to find an ochre color that passes the Skagen, Denmark test). Lone's joy at successfully transposing a tiny bit of her moderland‏ to Fazenda Alfheim clearly shone through in her work. And while she certainly earned a gold star for creativity, I am not sure that we can entirely overlook the productivity implications of her artwork.

In addition to newly-painted houses, Pelle will enjoy the privilege of traveling along our newly repaired entry road. Esben and the workers installed four drains to help keep our 1.8 km entry road high and dry during the rainy season. Esben also oversaw the repair of our crumbling bridge, which has never looked better.

And while on the subject of bridges, the bridge in front of our property (the one about which we have been fighting with the mayor of Natividade da Serra) continues to progress.

In addition to house painting and road repair, Esben and Paulino, our newest worker, who also happens to be João's brother, dug out one of our biggest ant colonies (supervised, naturally, by a peep of hungry chickens).

Paulino also helped Clair and Dener cut wood to fuel our newly installed wood-burning stove.

The wood-burning stove is intended to ensure that we survive what to date has been an unusually cold winter. We also hope that our survival extends to our ten guests during the Hesketh family reunion. Despite the fact that five are traveling from Canada, I am pretty certain that they are not used to housing sans insulation.

In anticipation of the arrival of our many guests, Lone has been busy stocking up on food. Thankfully Jamie dropped by for a week, time enough to lead the slaughter of a 70+ kg sow and the making of bucketloads of sausages!

Not wanting to be limit our diets to pork, we are also fattening (on oat pastures) approx. 100 chickens for the two-week event. Double yummy!

As busy as this made the ladies, they did not limit themselves to preparing meat, picking and juicing a small ton of lemons. Add this to our existing stock of winter honey, guava and roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa) as well as the daily production of milk and eggs and we should be well-prepared to feed a small army.

Finally, a startling example of how far the US has declined and Brazil has prospered over the past several years:

In Rio’s exclusive Leblon enclave, near the city’s Ipanema district of bossa nova fame, apartments sell for an average $1,058 a square foot ($11,388 a square meter), according to Sindicato da Habitacao do Rio de Janeiro, or Secovi, the city’s real estate association. In Miami’s South Beach, the average condominium price was $354 a square foot during this year’s first quarter, said Condo Vultures LLC, a Bal Harbour, Florida, real estate brokerage and consulting firm. “Five years ago, it was the other way around,” Craig Studnicky, president of International Sales Group LLC, an Aventura, Florida, property- marketing firm, said in a phone interview. “Miami was trading for $500 to $1,000 a foot. Rio was trading for $300 to $500. It has absolutely switched.”

Live in New York City

Written to Across A Wire: Live In New York City by Counting Crows

It isn't like the rest of the country - it is like a nation itself - more tolerant than the rest in a curious way. Littleness gets swallowed up here. All the viciousness that makes other cities vicious is sucked up and absorbed in New York.

- John Steinbeck

Lone and I just returned from a whirlwind, 4-day trip to New York, NY to celebrate our silver wedding anniversary (June 21st, the summer solstice, the 172nd day of the year (173rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar). We have now been married for more years (25) than we were single (22 and 24, respectively) -mind-boggling, but in a good way, of course.

We flew via Bogota, Columbia with Avianca (saving approx. $2,000), and despite the long layovers, approx. ten hours each way, the planes were new and comfortable and the staff very helpful. Not quite Korean Air, but then what airline is.

And with the exception of our run-in with TSA agent O'Gara in JFK, the trip was pretty uneventful...as any good trip should be. Mr. O'Gara let me pass through the fingerprint reader only to inform me, after Lone had passed through, of course, that my fingerprints had not registered. In truth, he asked me if there was a reason that I was trying to avoid registering my fingerprints, i.e. if I had something to hide (because his job was to protect the citizens of America), this despite the fact that I had registered my fingerprints on my previous trips to US, a fact of which he was aware. What I wanted to respond was: "Yes, because I just had a double hand transplant", but my wife's clam nature, and our ability to let off steam by joking about it in Danish real-time, prevailed. Once through customs, we proceeded to take the AirTrain JFK into Manhattan, an excellent value at only $5 per ride as well as a quick and stress-free form of transport.

We stayed at On The Avenue Hotel, a Manhattan Boutique Hotel offering excellent value-for-money and, quite possibly, the best location (2178 Broadway at W 77th Street) on all of Manhattan's Upper West Side, walking distance from the Museum of Natural History, Central Park and the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts, not to mention from the Apple Store on Broadway, Zabar's, Big Nick's (2175 BROADWAY) and the Shake Shack (366 Columbus Ave, New York).

And yes, I did purchase a new MacBook Pro (I purchased my current MacBook, which Lone will inherit, in 2007), $1.199 (R$ 1,907.85) in New York vs. R$ 3,500 in São Paulo! Also, to my suddenly-Apple-doubting-Android-loving-planet-awesome-ÜberGeek-friend John Tomizuka: go visit an Apple Store..any Apple Store! People just walk in and buy tons of stuff. It's like there is no economic crisis whatsoever! I have never seen so much money change hands so quickly…and this during the store's least-busy hours. Steve Jobs must have put something in the water! And the Broadway store is one of four Apple Stores in New York! It's simply staggering!

Anyway, in spite of an awful cold, Lone braved a day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Simply spectacular…the equal of any museum in the world, the Louvre, the British Museum. In fact, it blows away the British Museum and that is saying something. While Lone went downstairs to ogle the Greek statues, I saw exhibits from Ancient Near Eastern Art, Arms and Armor, European paintings, European Sculture and Decorative Arts, Modern Art. Incredible!

Finally, back at Alfheim, Esben, who like Lone is suffering from a terrible cold, held down the fort while we frolicked in New York, NY. Hysterically, one of our hens has decided to take home delivery to a whole new level.

Return Of The Grievous Angel

Written to Led Zeppelin II by Led Zeppelin (Original recording remastered)

At home I serve the kind of food I know the story behind.

- Michael Pollan

It has been almost two months since my last blog post…the longest break since I published my first blog post back on September 8th, 2008. There has not been any one particular reason for my caesura...maybe I just needed a thinking pause after 102 blog posts...or maybe not.

During my mini-sabbatical, I turned 47 on April 30th -as always the best day of the year. Lone and I spent the weekend in São Paulo, where she treated me to a massage at Amanary Spa at the Grand Hyatt São Paulo…awesome! We also took advantage of São Paulo's incredible culinary buffet, eating like kings and queens. And we saw ‘How Do You Know’…great company, terrible movie. I also received many, many well wishes…so thank you all! In truth, 47 does not feel any different than 46 or 45 -or 44 for that matter, perhaps other than a troubling right knee, which has as yet failed to responded to treatment, but I am optimistic that it will get sorted.

Back at Fazenda Alfheim we said goodbye to Jamie (our hearts and stomachs are in mourning, but she will be visiting again soon with her parents…how cool is that!) and Danni (on the left...we will have to get two volunteers to replace her energy and workload), so things have quieted down considerably. Julie (on the right) will be leaving later this month, and then we will take a voluntary volunteer break until we have held the Hesketh family reunion in late August. Thus far, we have confirmations from a grand total of nine family members, so with the five of us, we will be at least 14 people at the fazenda. Hopefully we will add a couple more before all is said and done. 7-9-13!

Aside from my birthday, April's biggest news would have to be the arrival of internet service at Fazenda Alfheim. This monumental breakthrough is 100% the result of the hard work and utter brilliance of my ex-colleague and friend Jefferson Zanetti.

In farming-specific news, we are working on a plan to move more aggressively down the path of self-sufficiency. We genuinely enjoy producing top-flight food for restaurants, but we also feel strongly that we could/should be producing 100% of our own food. We are regularly reminded of this fact when we more-and-more-frequently cook a meal that consists solely of ingredients from our fazenda.

Along these same lines, Lone cleaned the pantry this weekend and rightfully boasted that we have the following Alfheim-produced goodies in stock:

• 6 kg of organic beans
• 9 pots of raw, organic honey
• 15 jars of guava
• 8 glasses of Rosella (Hibiscus sabdariffa).

We are also producing all of our own eggs, milk and yogurt, and it is a rare meal indeed when our meet or poultry does not consist of an animal produced onsite, including lots and lots of sausages (follow the step-by-step tutorial here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12). In short, we are close, though there is still work to be done in our vegetable garden. Lone has a great deal of gardening experience, but she is up against a formidable foe in the leaf cutter ants.

We are also keen to explore some form of renewable energy generation, but since all of these efforts take time, we have decided to downsize our animal production over the coming 12 months.

In other news, it appears that our good friends Jeff and Suzanna will be returning to Brazil shortly…YEAH! We like to think they missed us so much that they had to return, but in truth their homecoming of sorts probably has more to do with a really interesting hotel project they will be working on in São Paulo. Either way, we are thrilled!

Finally, I recently read something by Mike Geary, a Certified Nutrition Specialist and Certified Personal Trainer, that both encapsulates an observation I have made since I was a pre-teen and also qualifies for the less-than-humble moniker of the #1 rule for eating healthy.

First, we need to come to the realization that food science and marketing in recent decades has crowded all of the REAL food out of our grocery stores to the point that at LEAST 90% of everything in a modern-day grocery store is NOT true food anymore.

The so-called "food" that lines our grocery store shelves nowadays is better termed -- "Edible Food-Like Substances", as the highly respected nutrition journalist Michael Pollan calls it.

Our food supply has become so overly processed, that it's not uncommon for a simple snack food to contain a list of 20-30 ingredients of additives, chemicals, flavorings, colorings, high fructose corn syrup, MSG, artificial sweeteners, and more.

However, it CAN be easy to avoid ALL of this junk by following my 1 simple rule of eating healthy... and that is: Eat only foods that are 1 ingredient (and follow this rule 90-95% of the time).

Bees in my Bonnet

Written to Catch a Fire by Bob Marley & Wailers

There is no fire like passion

No crime like hatred,

No sorrow like separation,

No sickness like hunger,

And no joy like the joy of freedom.

- Buddha

Where to begin…a lot has transpired in the past couple of weeks. We have had a myriad of visits, by Jeff and Suzanna on a couple of occasions, once with their friends, Patty and her younger brother Jonathan, and again to help with the honey harvest, and also from Márcio and Heather.

Nonetheless, it probably makes sense to start with our stomachs, which have been treated to a series of delights from our very own chef-in-residence, Jamie, Paxton, not Oliver, though the latter has nothing on the former. Jamie is nothing short of brilliant. We have consumed a figurative ton of our own piglets and chickens recently...very yummy! And best of all, Jamie's culinary skills run the gamut from entrees to main courses to deserts.

Not wanting to keep Jamie locked in the kitchen all of the time (actually, we did, but our better judgement got the better of us), Esben and the volunteers spent a day at the modestly well-known Carnaval in São Luiz do Paraitinga, where they met up with Jeff and Suzanna. That there even was a Carnaval 2011 in São Luiz do Paraitinga is remarkable when one remembers that it was only slightly more than a year ago in January 2010 that the town was devastated by floods. Amazing! A testament to the great leadership and management of the town's all-female cadre of executive civil servants.

In spite of all of the festivities, we have actually made a fair amount of progress with our farming. Esben has been working hard with the team, and although at times it can seem like one step forward and two back, the fact of the matter is we are really getting close to breaking through. We will be selling our first chickens this week…at R$30.00 (€13.10 or $18.08) a pop! On average, the chickens weigh between 1.4 - 1.8 kg cleaned. To put this in perspective, if we sell 20 chickens per week, we will generate enough revenue to cover nearly all of our workers' salaries, or pay for two-thirds of the organic corn we still purchase from third parties. Add in the revenue from a handful of piglets, which are always in demand and typically cost R$180.00 (€78.59 or $108.47) per head, and we are getting close to operational break-even. Most importantly in this regard, our piglet production is showing signs of reaching the tipping point: we are currently fattening up close to 50 piglets and have 12 pregnant sows in the queue.

No doubt we still have a ways to go, but a bit of shoulder slapping is also in order.

Before that can happen in completely good conscious though, we have to see if we can't cure what ails Noel, the youngest of our calves. She is beautiful but also weak. Diagnosis undetermined at this point, despite a great deal of back and forth with the vet.

We also have to avoid mistakes like the one we made during our recent honey harvest: we forgot to close the boxes after retrieving the honey, and the bees took back approx. 75% of the harvest. Chalk this up as the kind of mistake one only makes once. Pretty sure no one at Fazenda Alfheim will be forgetting this lesson anytime soon. The good news: we still managed to harvest approx. 20 kg. of Lone's amber-hued raw, organic honey. Can't wait to taste it.

For my part, I learned that my zen approach to bee-human co-existence only works with bees that are not pissed off because their honey is being stolen. Needless to say, I learned this the hard way. On Saturday, I was on my way to my favorite watering hole for a cool dip when Esben was passing by with a bee box full of honey (and bees). In his defense, he did warn me to leave, but being __________ (fill in the blank) I thought I would slip by unnoticed by remaining calm while Esben passed by a few meters away. Big mistake! Not able to take their aggression out on the protective-suited Esben, the bees turned their attention to me, first attacking my head, then my ears, then my neck. Despite the frenzy, I managed to remain pretty calm and decided to head for the water, an emergency plan that I had cooked up when we first acquired bees. As I made a break for the stream, I fell into an overgrown ant hole that Clair and I dug out during our first year at Fazenda Alfheim. Thankfully there were no ants inside (and even more thankfully I didn't break my leg), but considering that the hole is more than a meter deep, it took me more time than the bees needed to intensify their brutalizing of yours truly to climb out and continue towards destination agua. When I finally reached the stream, still accompanied by a swarm of now festering, seemingly insatiably angry bees, I dived straight into the water, believing, falsely it would turn out, that my misery would subside as my head submerged. Not so. The bees simply waited until I came up for air to continue their vengeful attack. Again and again I dipped under, only to find them waiting for me each time I came up for air. Inglorious bastards! After five-six deep dives, I finally decided that I would have to make a run for the house, and that I did, first tying my wet towel around my head. During my dash to safety, I am pretty certain I resembled something akin to the best cartoon characters from Disney's Golden Age of Feature Animation. Long story short, I made it to safety, drank a boatload of water, took a couple of 6 mg antihistamines, rested quietly for the remainder of the day and was basically myself by the end of the day. Remarkable...and good to know that I am not allergic to bees…though this, too, is a lesson I will not soon forget.

And finally, I would like to pay tribute to my lovely Hobbit Lone, who has mastered a myriad of new skills over the past year plus that it is worth taking a moment to recap. After less than 18 months at Fazenda Alfheim, Lone has learned how to (in no particular order):

• Butcher a piglet
• Butcher a chicken
• Make guava jam
• Raise bees and harvest honey
• Grow vegetables in the tropics
• Treat sick piglets
• Plant, harvest and produce roselle (makes very yummy jam)
• Milk dairy cows
• Work with jussara
• Make yogurt
• Not to mention growing what has to be the world's largest sweet potato , teaching Clair & Rosana's youngest son to knit and even finding time to make Christmas handicrafts

This partial list amounts to adding a completely new skill to her repertoire every six to eight weeks….remarkable! So while I am tempted to quip that this only proves that you can teach an old Hobbit new tricks, I will close instead by saluting Frankie Four Fingers from Fazenda Alfheim.

Order restored

Written to Mozart: Ave Verum Corpus - Exsultate Jubilate - Coronation Mass by Camerata Academica Salzburg

Bill O'Reilly: Let me be very bold and fresh again, do you believe that you are smart enough, incisive enough, intellectual enough to handle the most powerful job in the world?

Sarah Palin: I believe that I am because I have common sense and I have I believe the values that I think are reflective of so many other American values, and I believe that what Americans are seeking is not the elitism, the uhm, the ah, a kind of spineless, spinelessness that perhaps is made up for that with some kind of elite, Ivy league education and, and a fat resume that is based on anything but hard work and private sector, free enterprise principles. Americans are could be seeking something like that in positive change in their leadership, I'm not saying that that has to be me.

Enough said!

Fazenda Alfheim's testosterone war has ended (or at the very least been reduced to an uneasy cease fire), Esben has returned from a well-deserved four-day break in São Paulo and life at the fazenda is slowly rounding back to normal.

The Sorocaba/Monteiro boars and their many, many ladies have been moved to a new maximum security pen, albeit one with bountiful space and vegetation. A far cry from the Administrative Maximum (ADX) facility in Florence, Colorado. Who would have thought that so much chaos would ensue just from lowering the boar:sow ratio from approx. 1:15 to 1:10. Can't learn this stuff from books.

Farm Manager extraordinaire Esben is back, with a smile on his face and a bounce in his step.

Jamie arrived as planned, a little worse for wear, or rather she came down with a nasty flu-like illness upon arrival. Thankfully she seems better now and is back at work.

Jamie and Julie's (pictures forthcoming) arrival necessitated us moving all of the volunteers to the third house closest to the entrance to the fazenda. Good to finally put that wonderful house to proper use. And again thanks to Pierre and Sophie for furnishing our house with some of the surplus from their recent move to an apartment in Jardins.

And speaking of Sophie, our PhD-toting friend also turns out to possess a dominant sales gene. She quickly became the single largest distributor of Lone's raw, organic honey on the planet, moving several cases to the French community in São Paulo in a matter of days. We will be dropping off the last few jars of December's harvest to her this week. If any of you would like to purchase some of Lone's golden syrup, please shout oui now or forever hold your peace -at least until March, when we will harvest another 100-plus kg.

We have also started delivering samples of our inconceivably delicious free-range chickens to our São Paulo restaurant customers. These chickens have to be tasted to be believed, and even then it is hard to reconcile: tender, succulent and bursting with flavors our taste buds have not been programmed to associate with even the highest-quality store-bought chicken. Delightful, and a treat that we will happily share with any and all guests to the fazenda.

Finally, in a tragic reminder of the real, human cost of financial malfeasance and poor education (personal finance is the only subject we are not taught in school), the Wall Street Journal recently ran a data-filled article entitled Retiring Boomers Find 401(k) Plans Fall Short:

The difficulties have been worsened by the 2007-2009 financial crisis. Since the housing and financial markets began to collapse, about 39% of all Americans have been foreclosed upon, unemployed, underwater on a mortgage or behind more than two months on a mortgage, says Michael Hurd, director of the Rand Corporation's Center for the Study of Aging.