Lone's no longer latent lake

Written to Recapturing the Banjo by Otis Taylor

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore. . . .
I hear it in the deep heart's core.”
- William Butler Yeats

In last week's blog post, I neglected to mention that Gtec Topografia e Geoprocessamento completed the first draft of the topographical survey of Fazenda Alfheim that we commissioned back in June. The survey, a requirement of the organic certification process, is essentially a resource mapping of our property, outlining its borders and elevations and the location of key natural resources, e.g. forests, pastures, orchards, lakes, rivers and streams. All in all, a terrific planning resource...and the quality of the Gtech team's work has been top-notch. I mentioned that this was the first draft, and indeed the Gtech team will visit Fazenda Alfheim a second time in a month or so to finalize the mapping exercise, including mapping all of the pastures and digitalizing their locations. As well as making it easier for us to visualize and plan our work, this last touch will allow us to size all of the pastures, helping us to determine their carrying capacity.

In addition to facilitating our planning, the mapping exercise uncovered an unexpected treasure: a lake on our property, located just behind the fruit orchard. As it has been officially registered on an earlier, official aerial photo, we are free to clear the reeds etc. (Pelle seen here doing his best Matthew McConaughey impersonation) and utilize this newly discovered pearl for either leisure or fish farming, a common practice in the region. Not sure what the final outcome will be, but this decision represents what is known as a luxury problem: to swim or to fish...to fish or to swim. Sweet!

An equally festive discovery was made by an army of leaf-cutter ants, as they uncovered the corn flour in our kitchen. They even cut small 'leaves' out of the flour's plastic bag. As frustrating as this is, one cannot help but marvel at their drive and work ethic.

Equally admirable is the progress that Marcos and his crew continue to make week in and week out on the new house. With the exception of the porch, the roof has been raised. This will allow the team to begin other tasks at Alfheim and to return to the house whenever -without the fear of being interrupted by the rains.

Some of you may have noticed that over the past several weeks the blog photos have tended to be somewhat washed out. This is a combination of the winter light, which is extremely sharp (most of the photos are taken before 09:00), and my dropping our Nikon D80 from a highish altitude. I will probably have to purchase a replacement while Lone delivers it to a dealer in UK, when she travels back to visit the boys and her family and friends in Denmark for a month in late September. If anyone knows of a dealer here in Brazil, give me a holler. 7-9-13 that what ails our camera can be fixed.

With the construction of the new house taking shape so nicely, Rosana and Lone have agreed to a color scheme for all of the houses, yellow for the outside walls and gray for the windows and doors. The two of them began repainting Clair's and Rosana's house this week. While the initial results are quite nice, a second coat will undeniably be required.

Homem-Aranha or Spiderman man returned to Alfheim with Marcos this week to construct the septic tank and a gray-water filtering system for the new house, a gray-water filtering system for Clair's and Rosana's house and three water troughs for Hogwood. In order to avoid using a pump, Spidey had to tap the spring that Lone and Clair recently discovered -to raise its level to a point higher than that of the new house, the same spring which forced us to move the fencing for Hogwood and subsequently the location of the new worker's house. Quite an engineering feat.

On the hog front, we appear to have found buyers for all of the piglets that we do not want to keep. Going price, R$55.00 - R$65.00 (€21.09 - €24.92 or $29.82 - $35.24), somewhat cheaper for the smaller piglets (< 11 kg) and/or buyers from Vargem Grande, the latter in an effort to try and build a local market. At R$50.00 a piglet, our net profit margin is 49%, so no complaints, but we will need to sell a certain volume, at least 50 piglets per month, to make an absolute dent in our monthly expenses. Our target is to reach this initial level of critical mass by Q2 2010, at which time we should have eggs and milk enough to provide all of the hogs' protein requirements, approx. 10-15 liters of cow's milk and 40-80 eggs per day.

Prior to signing off, I wanted to send a shout-out to our very good friends, John Tomizuka and Paula Zandomeni, the newly-proud parents of beautiful twins. Should one or both of you become overwhelmed at any point, take a look at what this mother has to deal with on a daily basis.

Finally, under the heading of 57 channels and nothing on, TV has come to Fazenda Alfheim via Sky. Lone and I had mixed feelings about this decision, but ultimately decided that in the absence of Internet connectivity on our fazenda, for now at any rate, we needed to avoid mimicking the characters from The Throwback, by Tom Sharpe, which you should read if you haven't, but only if you are prepared to laugh until you cry. A marvelous author, the funniest writing IMHO. Whatever our misgivings, I will be only too glad to stay up late watching NBA basketball come November. Go Lakers!