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By pigwhisperer, June 2, 2010

Mona gave birth to 16 little ones, which was more than any of us expected. But many have died. (Three were stillborn, four died soon after birth from weakness, and Mona sat on one.) Now we are left with 8 and are trying hard to keep them healthy. We’ve learned that large births are sometimes more a curse than a blessing. Mona has only 14 teats, so there isn’t enough milk for more piglets than that. But hopefully these 8 will stay strong.

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By pigwhisperer, May 29, 2010

“When you smoke the herb, it reveals you to yourself.”
Bob Marley

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By pigwhisperer, May 28, 2010

We’re on high alert tonight. Our lovely (and very pregnant) sow Mona will probably give birth in the next 12 hours. I’ve whispered in her ear to please try to push those piglets out sooner (how about 7 PM?) rather than later. But Mother Nature doesn’t care about my bedtime, and the piglets will arrive whenever they please.

How do we know that it’s Mona’s time? First, she lost her appetite. Next, she started breathing heavily. Milk began to leak from her teats today and (read no further if you’re squeamish–this is a farm blog, folks!) her vulva is really swollen and red. (The picture above says it all, really.) We’ll check her periodically to see if her water has broken. If it has, that means piglets are on the way. Births can last anywhere from 1-5 hours. Sometimes there’s a long wait between piglets, and sometimes they slide out one after the other. I’ll let you know how Mona’s birth goes. Hopefully we’ll have 8-12 new additions by morning.

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By pigwhisperer, May 27, 2010

Maria, Tamires, Frederic, James, me & Yacob on the farm

In preparation for an essay I wrote for an upcoming edition of Real Simple Magazine, photographer Frédéric Lagrange and his assistant Yacob Vincent visited the farm to shoot some photos of all of us. It was a great shoot, and the dogs (especially Lorenzo) were top-notch models. Lorenzo (who literally trembles and then hides in the bushes when we tell him it’s bath time) decided to swim in our pond (???!!!) for Frédéric. He performed some water ballet, waving his paws and flicking his tail, as if this kind of thing was perfectly normal.

Many thanks to Real Simple, Fréderic, and Yacob for the photos. I hope they turn out well!

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By pigwhisperer, May 22, 2010

Mary Oliver is one of my favorite poets. Here’s a nice one from her.

“Starlings in Winter” by Mary Oliver

Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly

they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,

dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can’t imagine

how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.
Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,

even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard, I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

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By pigwhisperer, May 14, 2010

May means the beginning of winter here, and winter means rain. We’ve gotten some good rainfall lately and have started to plant coffee seedlings in open areas of the farm. Our coffee is Arabica typica, a variety that grows long and spindly and likes shade. It also takes five years for a seedling to mature a produce coffee cherries. We have two methods of getting coffee seedlings:
1) Planting coffee beans in our nursery
2) Taking young seedlings that naturally grow under adult trees from the ground and planting them in other areas.

Lorenzo managing the 2010 planting

We’ve planted 9,948 coffee seedlings so far and hope to plant more next week. After we plant coffee, we’ll plant more hardwood trees in open areas. We’ve got hundreds of tree seedlings in our nursery ranging from Jatobá to Brazil Nut trees. (I’ll write more about the Brazil Nut trees in a separate post; this is the first year we’ve attempted to propogate them from seed, and they are amazing little things!)

Português

Maio é início do inverno aqui, e o inverno significa chuva. Começamos a plantar mudas de café em áreas abertas da fazenda. Nosso café é arábica typica, uma variedade que cresce longa e fina e gosta de sombra. Leva cinco anos para um pé de café produzir cerejas. Temos dois métodos de obter mudas de café:
1) Plantação de café em nosso viveiro.
2) Arrancando mudas jovens que crescem naturalmente de baixo de árvores adultas.

Nós já plantamos 9.948 mudas de café e espero poder plantar mais na próxima semana. Depois que plantar café, vamos plantar mais árvores em áreas abertas. Nós temos centenas de mudas de árvores em nosso viveiro, variedades como Jatobá, Castanha do Pará, e Tamboril. (Vou escrever mais sobre Castanha de Pará em outro post. Este é o primeiro ano que tentamos propagá-los a partir de sementes, e eles são incríveis!)

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By pigwhisperer, May 9, 2010

Considering the Snail
by Thom Gunn

The snail pushes through a green
night, for the grass is heavy
with water and meets over
the bright path he makes, where rain
has darkened the earth’s dark. He
moves in a wood of desire,

pale antlers barely stirring
as he hunts. I cannot tell
what power is at work, drenched there
with purpose, knowing nothing.
What is a snail’s fury? All
I think is that if later

I parted the blades above
the tunnel and saw the thin
trail of broken white across
litter, I would never have
imagined the slow passion
to that deliberate progress.

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By pigwhisperer, May 8, 2010

Rich Chocolate Cake made with Lard

I found this recipe in a 2000 New York Times article. It’s probably the best chocolate cake I’ve ever had–rich, moist, and not too sweet. If you use good lard (not burnt or with a piggy flavor) you’ll never be able to tell this cake was made with pig fat and not butter. We ate the cake so fast, I didn’t have time to take a decent picture!

2 egg yolks
6 tablespoons lard
1 cup brown sugar
4 oz unsweetened chocolate
1 egg white
1.5 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla

Beat egg yolks. In another bowl, cream lard with sugar. Add yolks until smooth. Melt the chocolate in a banho maria (hot water bath) and let it cool to room temperature. Stir your room temperature chocolate into the lard-egg yolk-sugar mixture. In another bowl, beat the egg white until it’s frothy. Gently fold the egg white into the batter.

Mix the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt) together. Add half the dry ingredients into the wet mixture. Then beat gently while pouring in half of the milk and vanilla. Repeat with the other half of the dry ingredients, milk, and vanilla.

Prepare a cake pan with butter and flour. Pour the cake batter into prepared pan. Bake at 350 degrees checking every 20 minutes or so, until a toothpick comes out clean from the cake’s center. While you’re waiting for the cake to bake, lick the leftover batter from your spatula and mixing whisks. (My mom says that a good cook doesn’t lick, but I can’t help myself.)

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By pigwhisperer, April 29, 2010

Ithaca

As you set out on the way to Ithaca
hope that the road is a long one,
filled with adventures, filled with understanding.
The Laestrygonians and the Cyclopes,
Poseidon in his anger: do not fear them,
you’ll never come across them on your way
as long as your mind stays aloft, and a choice
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Laestrygonians and the Cyclopes,
savage Poseidon; you’ll not encounter them
unless you carry them within your soul,
unless your soul sets them up before you.

Hope that the road is a long one.
Many may the summer mornings be
when—with what pleasure, with what joy—
you first put in to harbors new to your eyes;
may you stop at Phoenician trading posts
and there acquire fine goods:
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and heady perfumes of every kind:
as many heady perfumes as you can.
To many Egyptian cities may you go
so you may learn, and go on learning, from their sages.

Always keep Ithaca in your mind;
to reach her is your destiny.
But do not rush your journey in the least.
Better that it last for many years;
that you drop anchor at the island an old man,
rich with all you’ve gotten on the way,
not expecting Ithaca to make you rich.

Ithaca gave to you the beautiful journey;
without her you’d not have set upon the road.
But she has nothing left to give you any more.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca did not deceive you.
As wise as you’ll have become, with so much experience,
you’ll have understood, by then, what these Ithacas mean.

By CP Cavafy, born April 29, 1863
Translated by Daniel Mendelsohn

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By pigwhisperer, April 28, 2010

We heard shifting and rattling in the roof tiles and assumed it was mice. There’s always a nest or two in the beams and we have to ask someone to remove the tiles and kill the mice. Or we use a common mouse trap with a bit of banana in it. Last week, instead of finding mice we found this lovely lady on our roof. She’d eaten the mice. (Probably the best exterminator in town. Ever.) But, alas, we weren’t sure if she was poisonous so we had to remove her from the roof and set her in the bushes. I wanted to keep her around but James had a good point: after she’d finished with the mice, would she then find a big toe appealing? Best not to find out. People here said she was a salamanta, which is a kind of boa constrictor. My biggest question is, how did she slither onto our roof? With this post I’m perpetuating the tedious, worn-out stereotype of Brazil as jungle-nation, with boas dangling from every roof beam. You know that’s really not the case! OK, I’m off to feed my jaguar now.

Ouvimos barulho nas telhas e pensamos que era ratos. Há sempre um ou dois ninhos no telhado e nós temos que pedir a alguém para remover as telhas e matar os ratos. Também usamos uma ratoeira comum com um pouco de banana dento dela. Na semana passada, em vez de encontrar ratos, nós encontramos esta senhora encantadora no nosso telhado. Ela tinha comido todos os ratos. (A melhor exterminadora da cidade.) Infelizmente, a gente não sabia se ela era venenosa, então tivemos de removê-la do teto. Eu queria mantê-la em casa, mas James falou o seguinte: quem sabe se, quando ela terminar com os ratos, ela iria achar um dedão atraente? Melhor não dar essa tentação a ela. As pessoas aqui disseram que era uma salamanta que é uma espécie de jibóia. Eu só quero saber: como é que essa danada subiu no nosso telhado? Com este post estou perpetuando o estereótipo do Brasil como nação selva–uma gigante Amazonas–com cobras caindo dos telhados. Claro que isso não é o caso!

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By pigwhisperer, April 24, 2010

Some Alice in Wonderland creatures found on the farm. The first, mushrooms. The second, caterpillars. (The caterpillars are not smoking hookahs, unfortunately.)

Algumas criaturas de Alice no País das Maravilhas foram encontradas aqui na fazenda. A primeira foto, cogumelos. A segunda, lagartas. (Infelizmente as lagartas não estão fumando hookas).

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By pigwhisperer, April 23, 2010

My friend Aryn’s amazing collection of short stories was released on Wednesday.

Aryn Kyle, whose first novel was hailed as “reason for readers to rejoice” (USA TODAY) turns her gift for storytelling to the lives of girls and women in this spectacular collection. In “Nine,” a young girl given to exaggeration escapes a humiliating ninth birthday celebration with the help of her father’s new girlfriend. The dubious benefits of sleeping with one’s boss are revealed when a bookstore manager defends an employee from an irate customer in the hilarious “Sex Scenes from a Chain Bookstore.” A raid on a neighbor’s meth lab strengthens the unlikely friendship between a solitary woman and the goth teenage girl who lives in the apartment below her in “Boys and Girls Like You and Me.” And in a notable exception to the rule, “Captain’s Club” features a boy whose devotion to a lonely woman transforms his cruise vacation.
In moments electric with sudden harmony or ruthless indifference, the girls and women in this collection provoke, beguile, entertain, and reveal a poignant and searingly accurate portrait of the female heart. With her keen eye for character, her humor, and her uncanny grasp of the loneliness, selfishness, and longing that permeate the female experience, Kyle has secured her reputation as a major young talent.