The Long Good Friday

Written to Sonny Side Up by Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Stitt, and Sonny Rollins

Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy's playing blues like we play, he's in high school. When he starts playing jazz it's like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.
- B. B. King

My mother departed on March 30th after a very enjoyable two-week visit. Hopefully she will visit us again soon, and perhaps her visit will even inspire my notoriously parsimonious sister, Paula, to visit Fazenda Alfheim, too.

In 110 pots of honey, I mentioned that my mother brought a couple of suitcases full of imports. While most were rather humdrum, e.g. FoodSaver 6-Roll Packaging Rolls for packaging piglets, I did treat myself to a Kindle Wireless Reading Device (6" Display, Global Wireless, Latest Generation) by Amazon. I have already downloaded a 14-day free trial to The Atlantic and Foreign Affairs and purchased Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and ReWork, by Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson. The Kindle represents a turning point in terms of keeping us connected to the big bad world. During the weekends, when we are generally alone on the fazenda, Lone and I regularly joke about popping down to the local bakery and picking up some fresh-baked croissants and the Sunday edition of the New York Times. Well, now we can…almost. Brilliant! And while much has already been written about How the Apple iPad Could Kill the Kindle, for my money there are three powerful reasons why the Kindle will continue to thrive (this from a devoted Apple fan):

1. Price – At $259 the Kindle is much cheaper than the iPad.
2. More compact and lighter. iPad weighs 1.5 pounds and is 0.5″ thin – the Kindle is thinner and lighter (0.36″, 10.2 ounces).
3. Screen is better for reading; readable in direct sunlight.
   In a nutshell, a beautifully designed and highly recommended product.

These e-books, together with The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to The Sports Guy, by Bill Simmons, an unexpected and most welcome gift from the world's most curious orthopedic surgeon and my good friend, Tony Matan, will help me stay out of trouble during the lengthening post-Easter evenings.

And speaking of Easter, we enjoyed a three-day visit from Sophie Deram, a friend of Lone's, her husband, Pierre, and their two children, Victor (15) and Emilie (14). A thoroughly delightful weekend, which included much gratifying fodder, the highlight of which was a roasted quarter of a 20+ kg piglet, beautifully prepared -if I do say so myself- by yours truly using a paint-thick basting sauce comprised of olive oil, a fruitful rosé, red onions, cloves and more cloves of garlic, a smidgen of lemon, thyme and salt to taste. Exquisite!

All of this cookery was complemented by copious quantities of fine cheese, a commodity as hard to come by in Vargem Grande -or even São Luiz do Paraitinga or Ubatuba for that matter- as a truthful statement from Goldman Sachs about the financial crisis.

For most of the weekend, Victor and Emilie entertained themselves with Max, whose name they buttressed with the too-French trop mignon. Max Trop Mignon…who wouldn't want to be called trop mignon!

On Good Friday morning, 280 50 kg sacks of organic corn arrived from Fazenda 2M…well, almost. After almost four days on the road, the driver and his dilapidated truck got stuck on the dirt road -a few short km from Vargem Grande. Because the truck was blocking the influx of Easter traffic to Vargem Grande, I had no choice but to spend the whole of Good Friday unloading, loading and unloading nearly 15 tons of organic corn a total of three times, from the grounded lorry to a more suitably-equipped truck owned by Claudinei, a denizen of Vargem Grande, and then from Claudinei's truck into our corn deposit. Thankfully, Clair, Dirlei and João offered their assistance and spent the entire holiday helping me. And even more thankfully, the truck-to-corn deposit offloading height was more suited to a 194 cm tall man than to the height of our farm workers.

The next day, Saturday, Januara, our former neighbor and the person from whom we purchased the used beekeeping equipment, came to help Lone with the next stage of the bee project. According to Lone, everything is progressing well, but then can one really trust a women who hides her face in public (hint: that's Lone on the right).

On Monday we treated the cattle, including Mausolus, for parasites, primarily warble flies and ticks. Three weeks ago I initiated Mondays as animal treatment day, a day when we give all bovine and swine a thorough once-twice-thrice looking over. Since we started spraying the cattle weekly with Neem, also known as Nim or Amargosa, the ticks have virtually disappeared. And Bolinha, who was particularly hard hit by warble flies, and who we also treat with a cream comprised of zinc, calendula and citronella, has improved appreciably; for whatever reason, the Jerseys seem to be more resistant than the other cattle. For his part, Mausolus is behaving pretty well, despite kicking me twice, first on the left forearm and then on my twice-broken right wrist (thankfully, I did not sustain any significant damage). As long as we stay away from his head, he is somewhat amenable to treatment.

In addition to Mondays as animal treatment day, we implemented a new weekly schedule with the workers this week. The gist of the schedule change is to up our focus on planting (two days, from 07:00 until 13:00) and fencing (ditto) in an effort to achieve feed self-sufficiency by Q2 2011. We have already planted mandioca, napier, bananas and, as of today, sugar. We have also begun mapping all of the fazenda's various nooks and crannies in an effort to identify where we can plant 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 etc. of a hectare of potatoes, corn, squash etc. In short, our planting criteria are two-fold:

1. the crop has to be energy-rich, i.e. corn not lettuce; and
2. the seeds have to be both plentiful and easily collected, i.e. to facilitate saving and replanting.

Finally, tomorrow we will pick up our new intern, Mark Simpson, a second-year student at Royal Agricultural College (Esben's college), who is arriving from UK for a ten-week internship.