I have a guest speaker today. Not really. I am just sharing an email my dad sent from his travels. Pictures and words come to you from halfway across the world! Thank goodness for the internet. It makes it seem like we are closer together than we really are...
Take it away Dad!
Saudações from Brazil.
The equivalent in Spanish is Saludos from Brazil,
literally Salutations from Brazil, or, we would say, simply, greetings! That is
about the extent of my Portuguese. It's a somewhat comical process. When I am
speaking to someone here who does not speak English, I speak slowly in Spanish,
they respond slowly in Portuguese, and, for the most part, after repeats and
shoulder shrugs, we get it done. The management team here speaks reasonable
English, so the business part is okay. We just have to get by with the
rest.
I am staying at the Guest House, a place that mostly sits empty,
but which we own and maintain for visitors, because the farm is so remote. It's
3.5 hours or so (depending on traffic) from here to the airport in Brasilia, 1:45 to
the nearest city of a reasonable size (small shopping mall, a few decent
supermarkets, a handful of hotels, restaurants and a movie theater or two), and
0:45 to the nearest small town (a couple of 7-11 size stores). I prefer to stay
here on the farm, rather than commute 1:45 at both ends of the day into the
"city." The company pays a lady to (among other duties) keep the place clean and
to cook breakfast and dinner for guests. Each room has a private bath, and, all
in all, it's hospitable.
Here is a picture of the great room (if you
will), which as you can see is principally for eating and for working at my
laptop after hours.
It's hard to get an angle on the bedroom, but they look like this....
The sometimes-remote locations of our farms present a continual challenge with
respect to finding appropriately educated people to manage things and to apply
the latest in scientific farming methods. Most folks don't go through their
college years dreaming of life in "the outback." The company stands ready to
invest significant amounts of capital in acquiring good farms in South America.
The only thing slowing the process is human capital. Do any of you know of
trained agronomists, pomologists or edaphologists who are yearning to live (for
a while) in South America?
I have mentioned before that the climate
here in Brazil is somewhat jungle like: warm and humid year round, with a wet
and a dry season, but not much other seasonal variability. We are well within
the tropics, the area between The Tropic of Cancer on the north and The Tropic
of Capricorn on the south. Our southern latitude compares to Guatemala City, in
Central America, on the north. This is not tropical rainforest. The soils are
not great. But it's a reasonable place to grow dry beans, soybeans, corn and
sorghum.
The warm, humid climate and extra vegetation (just not good,
edible food stock) provide a home to a larger variety of pests than one is
accustomed to confronting. To help, here at the guest house, there are 3 cats
(outside only). They keep the place pretty well clear of rodents and other small
animals. There are also a handful of "free range" chickens running around
outside, in the reasonably well kept yard, including a rooster who cock a
doodles (apparently something like co-co-ro-co-cooooh in Portuguese and
ki-ki-ri-ki-keyyyy in Spanish) each morning.
I asked this morning why
there are chickens in the yard. "They are here to help keep the insect and
spider populations down. In particular, they like to eat the
scorpions."
So, the subject line of this email (which was entitled "Not every "system" is perfect") alludes to the fact that
systems can and do fail from time to time. Tonight, as I finished speaking with
my (ill) sweetheart via Skype, here's what was a few inches from my foot.
The Blackberry is for scale....
I guess this one just slipped through the security perimeter. In the future I am
going to be a lot more careful about checking my bed before I climb in. (Which made me laugh out loud... Uh yeah. Might wanna do that!!!!)
That was the end of the email. I felt like it was a bit of a cliff hanger, so I responded to find out how the evening came to an end.
And, uh, thanks for the pictures of the scorpion... Not. Did you squish it
before or after you laid down your blackberry?
I chickened out on the scorpion. I put a
drinking glass over it, and was wondering what to do when the security man came
to the back of the guest house to wash his hands in the outside sink. I asked
him to come in, and showed him the scorpion. He ooo’d and ahhh’d appropriately,
and then took off the glass and pushed it around a bit with the toe of his boot
to see if he could show me how they strike (the thing didn’t, I don’t know if
it was asleep or what). Then he squished it with his boot, and graciously swept it up,
brought in a bottle of floor cleaner and made sure the spot was
clean.
Well gee. That was awfully nice of him, wasn't it.... :}
