A sort of homecoming

Written to Kanye West: Late Registration

A girl phoned me the other day and said... Come on over, there's nobody home. I went over. Nobody was home.
Rodney Dangerfield

Before leaving São Paulo, we added two new members to Alfheim's ever-growing menagerie, Huginn and Muninn. Huginn (~2 months old), is a bit high-strung, still very much a puppy, but quite sweet. Muninn (~3 months old) is fearless, very well-behaved, a quick study and as gentle as a deer. Fortunately, Huginn and Muninn get along very well, and Huginn can say no when she has to; she is tougher than she looks. Muninn is not only a big dog, he is a big Rottweiler. According to Cassio, who sold Muninn to us, he was one of only four puppies in his litter. Despite the reduced attention she is receiving, Layla is pretty happy with the new recruits...she has found herself a new play pal; Muninn loves to throw down. For his part, Negão finds the infusion of youth a little more pain than gain. Every time Huginn hops on his head, I hear in my inner ear Danny Glover's Sergeant Murtaugh telling Mel Gibson's Sergeant Riggs 'I'm too old for this shit'. Our plan is to breed Huginn and Muninn: Doberman + Rottweiler = Beauceron. We will probably keep two of the puppies and sell or give away the rest. Six dogs certainly sounds like critical mass.

Thursday started slowly...neither Lone nor I was feeling overly dynamic after so many days on the road -away from Alfheim. Fortunately, it was raining, and Clair had earned a day off, so we all played hooky for the day. Lone helped me set up my new Concept 2 ergometer, the world's best piece of exercise equipment, in the guest bathroom. Not exactly a Reebok Sports Club, but it does the job.

As it turned out, taking time off on Thursday was prescient. On Friday, Lone and Rosana left Alfheim and headed first to Taubaté and then to Jacareí to participate in the kick-off meeting of the group of small producers of organic herbs in Vale do Paraíba which I wrote about in If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then...

While the ladies were away, the men played...sort of...played at moving more than 100 fence posts from the recently delivered pile of 500 (delivered by two trucks with Brazilian 'snow' tires, i.e. chains to provide traction on the very muddy dirt roads), up one of the steepest hillsides at Alfheim. After we completed our Sisyphean task, I gave myself the rest of the day off. Lone arrived later that evening, energized and with the car trunk full of 3,500 lemon grass seedlings.


On Saturday Lone, Clair and Rosana -with help from the chickens, Negão, Layla, Huginn and Muninn- worked until lunch planting two-thirds of the lemon grass seedlings. I can't remember precisely what I was doing, but I am certain it was crucial. When not working on crucial stuff, I took a few minutes to bounce a chicken from the smaller of Lone's vegetable gardens. We will harvest the first crop of lemon grass in June -before the onset of winter- in order to prevent rust. At that time, we hope our lemon grass will look something like this.

On Sunday Lone worked in her garden all day...though she did not seem overly pleased with the results.

Finally, several readers have asked about the many snake photos appearing on the blog recently. Over the past month or so, we have had several close encounters with snakes. Most alarming was Clair's recent meeting with a Bothrops jararaca, which as it turned out worked out better for Clair than it did for the jararaca).

This species is often abundant within its range, where it is an important cause of snakebite. It is the most well-known venomous snake in the wealthy and heavily populated areas of southeastern Brazil, where is was responsible for 52% (3,446 cases) of snakebite between 1902 and 1945 with an 0.7% mortality rate (25 deaths).

Lone also managed to secure a driver, one of our good friend Beto Camargo's (from Paraibuna), many, many, many cousins, Abilio, to transport the two Duroc boars which we purchased on our recent road trip, from Jabucabal to Alfheim. Abilio will transport the boars to Alfheim on Thursday...a big day for our fazenda! For his part, Beto is working on the purchase of a herd of cattle for short-term fattening on our now hip-high pastures in order to earn us a few Benjamins while we continue to invest heavily in...well, everything.

And finally (this time for real), for all of you Weather Channel junkies out there: since December 22nd, Summer Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere, Lone has been taking daily measurements of the temperature, atmospheric pressure and rainfall. On January 21st, it rained 98 ml! Month to date -through Sunday, January 25th- it has rained 272 ml, this in spite of 11 rainless days! Now all we need is an arc.

Road trippin

Written to Duane Allman: An Anthology

“To travel is to live” (At rejse er at leve)
Hans Christian Andersen (1805 - 1875)

Using Hans Christian Andersen's philosophy and favorite phrase as a yardstick, we lived a lot last week: 1,568 km in five days! Fortunately, we had some well-timed and thoroughly enjoyable downtime in between each of our three destinations.

Our road trip began in earnest on Wednesday, when we departed São Paulo at approx. 17:15. We arrived three hours later in Jaboticabal, near Ribeirão Preto, where we were met by Paulo Basetto, our friendly neighborhood veterinarian (seen here together with Sr. Antonio, a fixture on the hog farm we visited for the past 45 years), who had very generously arranged the first leg of our road trip. Following a quick but enjoyable dinner and a visit to an estimable local ice cream parlor, we checked into the Hotel Municipal, a charming, old hotel in the center of town. Our twin room cost R$80.00 (€26.09 or $34.30) for the night, including a scrumptious breakfast.

The next morning we drove a short distance to a local hog farm, which, unlike most modern confinement productions, still allows visitors and each adult hog has access to a grass paddock.

Confinement hog production consists of raising hogs in closed buildings with concrete floors. The floors had special slots in them so that urine and feces could drain down into a pit below. All this liquid manure had to be pumped out and disposed of. Such a system was bad for the stressed-out animals (they fought each other and required lots of antibiotics) and the environment (liquid manure often finds its way into waterways), as well as members of the Frantzen family (they had to work in facilities full of dust and toxic gases). In short, says Frantzen, this system treated animals as machines, manure as waste, and farmers as barnyard janitors.

We were very fortunate to be given the guided tour of the hog farm by Edson Gazoto, the son of the owner. Edson was an extraordinarily gracious host, who spent several hours with us patiently answering all of our many questions. His family's hog farm consists of approx. 450 sows and can best be described as a hybrid production. Their farm is extremely well-organized and clean and the animals very well-cared for; remarkably (given the size of the operation) we saw only two animals with small injuries during our nearly four-hour visit. Being able to spend so much time viewing the animals and infrastructure at close quarters will prove invaluable as we ramp up Alfheim's hog production from its current level of 20 gilts to 100 and finally 200 sows.

The most striking feature of the animals was the sheer size of the mature hogs...ENORMOUS...some weighing in at close to 200 kg! It is one thing to intellectually acknowledge, as we have from the beginning, that our hogs will reach this size, quite another to appreciate this in the flesh, so to speak. What surprised me most was how tall they are. A lot of bacon! Fortunately, we will only have to deal with approx. 200 animals of this size. It was also both interesting and helpful to obtain real-world figures for how much feed hogs consume: approx. 1.8 kg once daily per mature hog and up to 6 kg daily for nursing sows (nursing lasts between 14 and 56 days).

News flash: Today we learned that Edson and his father have agreed to sell us two Duroc boars...one just over a year old and the other approx. six months old! Breeding to commence shortly at Alfheim.

A final, fluky factoid from our visit to the hog farm, where we also encountered a handful of water buffalo grazing peacefully. To produce one kilogram of cheese requires approx. eight liters of milk from a dairy cow but only four from a water buffalo (mozzarella di bufala).

We departed the hog farm just after noon on Thursday and drove eight and one-half hours until we arrived in Rio de Janeiro, aided in the final half kilometer by a kindly taxi driver who drove ahead of us at no charge, leading us with certainty to the hitherto elusive Rua Carlos Góis on Leblon -the best beach in Rio de Janeiro- where we spent the next two nights at the lovely home of my very good friend, Artur Hintze, and his wife, Alessandra, and their two young sons, Guilherme and Rodrigo. To say that their apartment is close to the beach is like saying that America is moderately excited about the inauguration of Barack Obama. On Friday morning I managed to squeeze in a run on the beach, and later that evening Lone and I found time to go to the cinema, where we saw The Curious Case of BENJAMIN BUTTON, which we both enjoyed thoroughly.

On Saturday morning we traveled two hours west of Rio de Janeiro to Brejal, where we visited Provence Pousada & Restaurante, a herb farm owned by Joaquim Aurelio Nabuco, whose great grandfather, Joaquim Aurelio Nabuco de Araujo (1849-1910) was a Brazilian abolitionist, statesman, and author, and his wife, Maria Lúcia, a pioneer in her own right, who started producing fresh herbs back in 1976. As if this wasn't enough, we were joined at Provence by our very good friends, Márcio and Heather Magano, and Márcio's mother, Marlene.

We left Provence at noon on Sunday, full of inspiration, insight and abundant stomachs. Between our New Year in Maresias and our visit to Provence, the time is ripe for a few weeks of intense farm work to burn off our excesses.

Five and one-half hours later, we arrived at Alfheim, where "The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise...so great, that I thought I was in a dream."
- Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 1, Ch. 7

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then...

Written to The Doors: Live at the Aquarius Theatre: The First Performance [LIVE]

Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine.
- Fran Lebowitz (1950 - )

This week began with us receiving ten, fertilized Galinha-d'angola or Helmeted Guineafowl (Numida meleagris) eggs from Paula Zandomeni's mother, Fatima. In need of immediate incubation, we quickly and carefully placed them under the remaining dwarf hen, who went broody on us a couple of weeks back. A full clutch for a normal-sized hen is usually about 12 eggs, but considering that each of these eggs is an order of magnitude larger than her head and neck combined, packing in all ten eggs was a tall order. To her credit, she boldly met the challenge and all ten roundish reproductive bodies quickly disappeared beneath her maternal feathers. It will be something to see her reaction if the eggs hatch. Dwarf hen...Helmeted Guineafowl...the elephant of a question in the room is sure to be: Who's Your Daddy?

Our lone, remaining drake (Duck is the common name for a number of species in the Anatidae family of birds...drake is the adult male) had begun following the chickens around for company. On the one hand, it was good to see him out and about. On the other hand, he clearly missed the company of his own kind something awful. Thankfully, Clair was kind enough to bring a duck (the adult female) back from his mother's sitio. The newest addition to our ever-growing menagerie was most welcome. He is a drake reborn. The two have been inseparable since her arrival Sunday morning.

And while on the subject of integration (of sorts), we have begun leaving the door to the storeroom open a bit so that the kittens can begin to get used to the great outdoors. Needless to say their first view of the outside world was a bit overwhelming. Talk about Barbarians at the Gate. In fairness, it is no surprise that the chicks want to raid the larder...loaded as it is with 60 kg sacks of corn! More surprising was the cool displayed by the kittens -even when the better looking but less brainy half of Dumb and Dumber showed up to welcome her new neighbor to the bairro.

And in this week's crowning example of identity confusion, it is now official: I am referred to by most of the locals as Alemãozão or the big German. Because Johannes translates easily to João (think Johannes the Baptist...João Baptista or Batista or João, o Baptizador), Esben has been dubbed Alemão, leaving Pelle with the moniker of Alemãozinho or the little German. Lone is alternately known as Sra. Lone or Dona Lone.

Thanks to Lone's excellent legwork, Fazenda Alfheim's nascent medicinal herb production has been put on the map, literally and figuratively. As a result of her two meetings several weeks back with Professor Marcos Roberto Furlan, an expert on herbs and phitotherapy at Universidade de Taubaté – UNITAU and Faculdades Integradas Cantareira - São Paulo-SP, she was introduced to Sandra Pereira and Stela Vilhena, both of whom work at Pólo Vale do Paraíba - Pindamonhangaba (try saying Pindamonhangaba three times quickly!). Following their meeting in Pindamonhangaba, Sandra and Estela and two of their colleagues, Amira and Vinícius, visited us on Friday. As a result, Sandra was literally able to provide us with the GPS coordinates for Fazenda Alfheim (see below).

Point: 57
23 K 0471127
UTM: 7404635
Elevation (m): 726

Far more importantly, though, Sandra, Stela and Amira are leading an innovative project whose objective is to create a group of small producers of organic herbs in Vale do Paraíba. Fazenda Alfheim will now join this project. As a direct result of these meetings, Lone was able to secure 3,000 organic lemon grass seedlings, which she will pick up from one of the group's small producers on Friday, January 23rd. Like organic feed, organic seedlings are nigh on impossible to procure, so this is a real coup for our medicinal herb production. Moreover, the group is trying to acquire an essential oil distiller. Lastly, Amira has been hired by a cosmetics company, Suyra, which is interested in purchasing product from members of the group. In short, an entire value chain is underfoot after only four meetings spanning less than two months!

Another three days, another 150 fence posts with four-strands of Belgo Motto® Farpa Vermelha barbed-wire from Chico and Martins. Two more weeks and we will have four fully-fenced pastures, complete with gates and drinking troughs.

In addition, Martins returned on Sunday with his compadre, Ronaldo, who plows with oxen (arado de boi). I showed him the relevant fields, and we quickly reached agreement on terms and conditions. He will start work on Monday, January 19th. This will speed things up considerably as he both plows and sows. And because the oxen plow horizontally on the hillsides, unlike a tractor, they build up natural barriers to erosion.

Next week will be unusually busy, replete with two farm visits. The first in Jaboticabal, near Ribeirão Preto, which was set up by Paulo Basetto, the veterinarian, is at a medium-sized hog production (approx. 500 sows). The second is in Brejal, near Petropolis, which again is near Rio de Janeiro, at an herb farm, Provence, owned by friends of our very good friends, Márcio and Heather Magano, who will be joining us. A lot of driving (approx. 1,568 km), but a small price to pay for access to this level of know-how.

This week's flora and fauna photos are quite stunning. No idea about the flora, but the fauna is a Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura). And while on the subject of birds, a shout out to Jan Blichert-Hansen, Lone's older brother and avid amateur ornithologist. Over the past three plus months, we have sighted several birds not on his (alleged) list of 102 Brazilian birds that he (claims to) have counted while on vacation with us -interestingly always when the rest of us were sleeping, including:

• the Bare-Throated Bellbird;
• the Red-Legged Seriema;
• the Savanah Hawk;
• the Scissor-Tailed Nightjar;
• the Lined Seedeater; and
• the the Golden Winged Cacique, which sings like a blackbird.

And finally, again on the subject of birds, an example of the power of an individual's idea (borrowed from the January 3rd - 9th 2009 edition of The Economist):

In 1900, when it was common for hunters to bag a Christmas bird for dinner and enjoy a competitive 'side-hunt' for sport at the same time, Frank Chapman, an ornithologist, suggested a count instead of a kill at Christmas time. Only 27 observers in 25 places in the United States and Canada took part in that first count. In the 2007-08 three-week count, now in its 109 year and run by the Audubon Society, 59,918 people took part and 57,704,250 birds were tallied.

Christmas 2008 & New Year 2009 continued...

Written to Public Enemy: Universal Masters Collection [IMPORT]

New Year's Day--Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever. We shall also reflect pleasantly upon how we did the same old thing last year about this time. However, go in, community. New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls, and humbug resolutions, and we wish you to enjoy it with a looseness suited to the greatness of the occasion.
- Mark Twain, Letter to Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, Jan. 1863

It has indeed been a busy holiday. It took the Organizator a little more than 72 hours to dispense with a half container worth of boxes and bring order out of chaos. In fact, despite receiving our furniture late on Friday, December 19th, we were ready to receive guests, Leonardo da Cunha Pinheiro and his family (wife, daughter and mother), on Christmas day. To celebrate, Lone set a lovely table and I cooked dinner. Leonardo's wife, Tamora, brought an INCREDIBLY tasty turkey and a number of other dishes, and together we all spent a most enjoyable evening at Alfheim.

On Saturday, December 27th, I picked up Pelle, our youngest son (19 years old tomorrow, January 6th), from São Paulo-Guarulhos International Airport. He was arriving from London via Washington, D.C. after completing his first semester at the University of Leicester, where he is studying Geography.

After a relaxing weekend, Clair, Pelle and I began the week by moving all 21 gilts to their new digs. An arduous undertaking. Unlike cattle or sheep, hogs do not herd easily. In fact, there is nothing easy about moving hogs. We tried every manner of leading, cajoling...you name it...all equally futile. In short, if a hog does not want to move, there is little one can do short of dragging it kicking and screaming to the disputed destination. And hogs can emit the most bone-chilling of screeches. To paraphrase Brick Top in Snatch, the sound goes through 'bone like butter'. From 07:30 to 16:30 we roped, lassoed, dragged, pushed, bullied, walked and even carried the gilts one by one to their new pen. The next day we were all very tired, people and hogs alike, but both factions recovered nicely after another 24 hours and the hogs seem to be enjoying their new, larger surroundings and expanded housing.

With the hogs gone, Lone's garden-to-be is now ready to be sowed -when we return from São Paulo later this week. In the meantime, the chickens have been enjoying their own holiday treat, feasting on whatever insects and larvae that previously made their home in our makeshift hog pen.

After Monday's exertions, we decided to leave a day early for the beach. Most fortunately for us, our very good friends, John Tomizuka and Paula Zandomeni, had kindly invited us to spend New Year at their beach house in Maresias. After three and six months, respectively, in less than opulent conditions, Lone and I decided that a few days of holiday were warranted. Therefore, we packed up after lunch and departed Fazenda Alfheim on São Paulo state's most recently named road (Any similarities to real people or events, other than those specifically cited, are unintentional and are for purposes of illustration only).

Miraculously, we managed to arrive in Maresias -avoiding any significant holiday traffic- in just under three hours. The term “maresia” literally means “the strong sea-smell when the tide is out.” The term has acquired a slang meaning that refers to the pot smoke that is known to drift through certain public gatherings like rock concerts.

After a wonderful New Year's eve dinner, the core of which was a magnificent Red Snapper (fish is the only animal that does not move backward and so is a New Year's eve tradition in Paula's family), we celebrated the arrival of 2009 with 7 Waves and 7 Wishes. Both the weather and the company were perfect.

Besides jumping into the New Year, Lone and I decided to skip the otiose activity of making New Year's resolutions and concentrate instead on evaluating our progress towards meeting our fourth-quarter farm objectives. In sum, we did pretty well. We managed to complete all of the pending construction tasks from the Q4 and establish the core of our future hog production. We also managed to fence the first two pastures and are, therefore, ready to purchase both cattle and sheep. And finally, after moving the gilts, Lone's garden is ready to be sowed. I expect that we will have wholly ticked off these objectives by the end of January.

In parallel, we worked through our Q1 2009 farm objectives:

• Animals: Breed all 20 gilts (and Miss Massey) with Duroc boars.
• Plants: Sow the first two-three hectares of medicinal herbs, probably citronella.
• Administration: Schedule first visit from Instituto Biodinâmico (Biodynamic Institute - IBD) to formally commence the process of organic certification, establish basic accounting processes for Fazenda Alfheim Ltda., hire one additional farm laborer and identify a slaughterhouse to partner with for organic slaughter activities.
• Beautification: Landscape the gardens around both houses.
• Complete our few pending objectives from Q4 2008.
  

Based on progress from the first two quarters, it appears that a four-month planning cycle might be more appropriate than a quarterly, though we will wait to collect more data before making any changes. TTT: Things Take Time and/or Too early To Tell.

Just as I was putting this draft blog entry to bed on Sunday evening, Clair and Rosana returned to Alfheim and informed us that a day earlier Clair had been bitten by a snake while working at their sitio near Vargem Grande. Being Clair, he, of course, managed to kill the snake that bit him and thus could take it with him to the hospital in São Luiz do Paraitinga. Without doubt this reptilian evidence aided the doctors immeasurably in determining the precise anti-venom to administer. Nonetheless, they kept him overnight for observation, but other than a swollen right foot it thankfully appears that he will make a swift recovery (note to self: NEVER work outdoors without boots or Wellington boots).

That same night, our electricity went out. After an hour or two we called Elektro and inquired as to whether the outage was local or specific to Alfheim. We were informed that it was not local, and that we should wait for Customer Service to contact us. To our surprise, our phone rang within the hour and the rep inquired about directions to Alfheim. Even more astonishing, she informed us that they would be sending a truck out shortly -at approx. 23:00 on Sunday evening! And indeed, two very helpful service reps showed up and fixed the problem. Now that's customer service!

Finally, we are constantly amazed at the variety of flora and fauna we encounter on an almost daily basis at Fazenda Alfheim. One can only marvel at the latest and most spectacular example (hint: it's a moth not a butterfly).