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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.)