We decided to establish our headquarters on the Janbeiro farm, at the Yellow House. The house we found had been uninhabited for more than ten years. We had to reform it and today she still serves as our base. She is very comfortable and full of memories from many years of struggle at the farm.

Next to the Yellow House runs a graceful creek with no name and so we baptized it as the Peralba Creek. A small dam gave us fish and prawns. From our veggie pad we got plenty tomatoes, all sorts of green vegetables, cucumbers, beans and a host of other fruit. From the Citrus orchard came the Persia limes, the pecans mandarins and the Bahia navel oranges. Eggs from the chicken shed daily and ‘galinha caipira’ every now and then. And bananas, cajus, mangos, jacas, cacao… all from planted trees all over the farm. The abundance on the table made farm life less primitive.

There was no electricity! For two years, we worked with candles and lamp light. We tried the “Luz para Todos”, a government program, with no success. Life was bucolic, but a little uncomfortable: sunset in this latitude is fast and at 6 pm is already pitch dark. Our dinner ended up at 7 pm. A hand of cards and at 8 pm. everyone was asleep.

During this period, we remodeled two more large houses, one in Peralba Sucupira and one in Peralba Ocean. This last one dates form the end of the 19th century and was the abode of the Colonel Vianna, the warlord that owned all these lands: more than 450,000 hectares of it!

600 hectares were allocated to pastures for cattle.
The open spaces were already there. With an (apparently) low investment to recuperate the pastures, a market that was paying well at that time, Salvador at 68 Km with easy access and great demand … the business model was very attractive.

In 2010 we had 412 heads, including 111 calves born during that year. Assisted over by an experienced veterinarian and by our manager-cowboy, the livestock business thrived for several years. Surprising though, always with very narrow margins. We were reaching breakeven in 2010, when we got hit by a 98 days drought. That reduced the growth of grass and forced us to reduce drastically the herd.

We lowered to the minimum the expectation of sustainability to 0.8 head per hectare, and that gave us a goal for feeding a herd of around 500 adult animals, being the break-even point around 422 heads.

This also led us to also change the focus in the livestock business: instead of fattening, we moved to creating new stock from selected cows, as females are less demanding for food. We realized that if the hot weather would continue, the grazing pastures would be barely enough to feed 300 cows with their calves. Artificial insemination too was to be abandoned due to the high costs of genetic material and the difficulties in retaining highly specialized cowboys.
By the end of 2010 we were down to 236 cows and 104 calves… and three enormous bulls: slowly it was becoming evident that such a business would become uneconomical due to the changes in the weather patterns. (And 2012 proved our forecast: 148 days of drought! As the farm was already trailing a new direction away from livestock, the core competency of the team finally moved to agriculture. In 2014, we finally closed down the livestock project.)

According to our observations and with the orientation of our agricultural engineer, Dr. Matiello, considered the Pope of coffee in Brazil at that time, we nursed and then planted in two years 54 hectares of coffee in super dense regimen: 280,000 of genetically selected trees. We grew our seedlings in our nursery. We innovated: 28% of Arabica strain and 72% of Connilon, also called Robusta.

All the ‘experts’ knew, and repeated ad nauseam, that the gene of Arabica coffee need altitude, cold and dry climate. However, we did not have these features. Our micro climate has a very high humidity level (85%+) and the weather is warm and at a very low altitude close to the ocean. Impossible, was the repeated word you could hear when we exposed our plans. However, Dr. Matiello, selected genetic material able to produce Arabica coffee at low altitudes and in hot, moist climates, and we planted and it worked.

In 2010 each hectare produced per hectare is around 36 bags of 60 kg of green coffee!

Convinced by an NGO, The Gaia Way (TGW) of California, led by Dr. James Gardner, in 2006/7 we planted 3800 feet of PAU BRASIL (Ibira Pitanga in Tupy/Guarany language or known by the scientific name of Cisalpina Echinata) in various parts of the Atlantic forest, its original habitat. The initiative of this planting came from the visionary initiative of Dr. Gardner and his wife, Mrs. Annemarie Breuer-Gardner, in response to the International Association of musicians of Violins and Cellos (IAM) concerns.

This program, conceived by the IAM, aims to prevent the extinction of the Pau Brazil. Such event would force musicians to use other types of wood and that would change the sound of all string instruments and thus erase the fidelity of the original sound that the artist or composer sought. The contract established with the CEPLAC and authorized by the Brazilian Government, states that 50% of planting may be marketed with the industry of bows for violins and cello, 30% will remain as a genetic Bank and 20% used for educational purposes in schools, gardens, orchards, or other places that advertise the wood that gave name to our country.

This NGO supplied the seedlings, technical support from a researcher at Ceplac, and ongoing monitoring over the years. All the seedlings were planted with protection against ants, sorted into groups of star shape, composted at the base and geo-referenced. Every single one of the trees. It was a magnificent and interesting project! The Pau Brazil tree will not become extinct.
And this we own exclusively to the visionary support of Dr. Gardner and Mrs Breuer/Gardner, who provided a continuous stream of funds to the project to date and for the years to m come. Thanks you Dr. Gardner! Thanks Anne!