Story Up On Hartford Ridge
- Thread starter Kathy in FL
- Start date
Last one of the night. I'll get more to you after I get some business taken care of in the morning. Bon Appetit.
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Chapter 103
“Burt, I want you to ride this down to the basement and then crawl through the special door.”
“The one that Uncle Sawyer made.”
“Yes. Jolene needs to stay quiet. There’s bottles down there that already have the powder measured out in them. You know how to fill them up with the water that I’ve sterilized and keep down there. As soon as you’re down in the basement get out so I can pull this back up and I’ll send down what I wasn’t able to move earlier today. You pull that in and …”
“I know what to do Aunt Kay-Lee. We’ve done it all before.”
It broke my heart but he was right. I wouldn’t do it this time, but I don’t have much choice. I have to glean as many apples off the trees as I can before the harvesters come. The only time I can do it in relative safety is at night when the moon is dark. Tonight is about as dark as it is going to get. Not even the drones will run tonight because there isn’t enough light up here on the ridge for their night vision to work and they tend to have unexplained accidents if not disappear all together.
I sent Burt down with Jolene down into the now hidden and enlarged root cellar and did the rest of what I could do as I thought. I wanted to send Barbara with them, but she has thus far refused to go. Maybe tonight she’ll listen to reason.
Things have been such a nightmare. Sawyer isn’t here half the time, more than half the time. He isn’t here most of the time anymore. He was sent so far away during the last work cycle that he was gone over two weeks with no word from him the entire time. He was only home a couple of days this time and he was all but dragged off again yesterday. Huely with him. At least they are working on the same crew this time. Or at least I pray they are. They can cover each other’s backs.
# # # # #
All because some people couldn’t control their feelings.
That’s basically what started it. A lack of self-control. That and they thought they could use the government for their own purpose without there being any consequences. Like that old movie says, “Stupid is as stupid does.”
I still don’t know who all agreed to it. I don’t even know who started it or who or how many made the calls. I do know that too many agreed with it. And not all of them were Hartfords. A few families out in the community bumped their gums on the subject. What I know most though is that no one tried to stop it. At least not until it was too late. And by that morning in July, the day after my big blow up with Linda, it was already way passed too late. The government had been looking for any excuse to get up here on the Ridge and really look around. We weren’t the only place where it happened in this country but we were the first it happened to around here. There was a terrible wake up call for some. I don’t take any satisfaction in that though I’m given to understand that some people think I do.
Tommy manages to come around once a week or so. Depends if he can get away. It is a long walk to get from his father’s place to ours. I get a little bit of gossip about the family but remembering Sawyer’s caution the night Delly and the others were killed, I give nothing to Tommy beyond we are surviving. Nothing at all. And all he sees, all I allow him to see, is that we are barely getting by the same as everyone else, maybe a little worse off. I really don’t know if he sees through my lack of information or not. If he does, he is clever enough not to ask further questions or anything else.
I’ve only seen Uncle Mark twice since the big blow up. First time was late at night. He and Sawyer did a lot of talking and they struggled to get a safe I’d never seen before down and hidden in the root cellar. Second time was midmorning and he was grayfaced.
“Uncle Mark?”
“They took ‘em. They were working in the tobacco field and they just rounded ‘em up and took ‘em off.”
“Who?”
“The boys. All of ‘em. Just took ‘em off. They were drafted for the work crews. Said if they didn’t go willingly they’d go to a federal detention center and there’d be penalties the family would have to pay.” He was shaking. I pulled him into the house and insisted on pouring him the coffee that I’d held back for Sawyer to come home to. The ration he allowed himself. But Sawyer wasn’t coming home that day. In fact it was three days before he came back. He hadn’t gone far that time, just three counties over.
Uncle Mark did his best to make sure I knew that he wasn’t like the others, that none of what had happened had been with his knowledge.
“I know that. Are you okay? Are the others?”
“You can ask that?”
I sighed. “Yes. I can ask and mean it. I might be angry but that doesn’t mean I agree with what is being done as a result.”
It didn’t take much for him to believe me. Out of all the other uncles and aunts Uncle Mark, initially an enemy, had turned out to be an ally. I insisted on feeding him, not that he could eat much. We talked of other personal things, ironed out the few wrinkles there still were between the only Baffa left and the Hartford that had suffered the most at their hands. He said he had to get on, that he’d make sure as best he could to get word to me of what he could. He also warned me that I needed to hide what I was able to, warned me of the inspectors and harvesters that were coming. Warned me that I should likely even hide it from the family in general, especially if any of them showed up unexpectedly asking for help or handouts.
“Out of all of them you’re likely the most that will understand how rough things are going to get. I don’t even think Dad expected this.” Uncle Mark shook his head. “None of them did. They’re all sitting around in shock. The girls are all crying.” He snorted. “You’re not. You got that notepad out and are making lists and I can see your brain running zero to ninety. It's making smoke.”
Ignoring most of that I asked, “That's just the beans that scorched. Is this happening to other families?”
“Good question, ask another. It hasn’t happened to Cindy’s family yet, but I can’t say any more than that. Davis is home with them busted hands where the tractor implement came loose and the fool boy tried to stop it from coming around on me.” He shook his head. “He coulda been killed.”
“And you would have been if he hadn’t done it. Look, if worse comes to worse you send them this way. We’ll figure things out from there. That’s what Sawyer would expect.”
He snorted again. “You can’t save ‘em all.”
“No so people better start pulling their heads out of their backsides and dealing with reality and making their own lists and plans. But just remember what I said …”
He finally nodded and before he stepped off the porch, he hugged me of all things. I didn’t know whether to pass out or cry. All I did know though was that I could hope for the best, but I had to prepare for the worst. Just like with every operation I had. I knew the pain was coming and I needed to be ready for it.
# # # # #
The idiots in the government tried to get us once through Tommy but if I have no other skill with people in this life, I know how to deal with bureaucrats. They’d used a drone to follow him and thought they were going to sneak up on us and catch us at something.
“So you’ve been holding back. I suspected as much when I was told there was nothing but rednecks and hillbillies in this area and no one with the balls to deal with you the way they should.”
“Excuse me?” I asked calmly.
“You’ve been holding back. You have a garden.”
“I have a personal garden so we aren’t a burden on society. There are two young children and a pregnant woman living here full time. If we didn't have a garden, they would get government commodities. My permit is stapled to that signpost over there as is required. The inspector was just here this morning taking samples. And he and his team will be back in the morning for more samples.” What they took was a few things out of my garden to “sample” during their own private mealtimes.
“I’ll check that so you better not be lying.”
I just kept ladling out small cups of lukewarm green broth to those I had sitting on the porch. Burt, Jolene in her sling on my back and thankfully sleeping. She’s now old enough for table food so long as it easily digestible which helps immensely if you want to know the truth. Huely was just back and suffering with a pulled tendon in his arm and was in a sling and excused from work crews for another week. He was sitting beside Barbara who was starting to show proving I hadn't been lying about the pregnant woman living here. And Tommy who had walked up just in time to be offered what was passing for our mid-morning break. The heat was fierce. It was either take a break or pass out on that August day.
“I called it in,” a man said running up to the guy in charge. “The inspection stamp is legit. And the Inspector said he wants a word with you when you get back to base.”
I took from the tone being used the word wasn’t going to be a blessing, but more likely a blessing out.
Mr. I’m-In-Charge-And-Don’t-You-Forget-It demanded to know, “What’s in that soup?”
“It isn’t a soup. It is a green broth. It’s got dandelions, chickweed, onion grass …”
“The hell you say,” he barked in some Yankee sounding accent. “You think I'm stupid? Those are lawn weeds. I asked you what is in that soup.”
Primly I said, “It isn’t a lie. We aren’t permitted to lie. The ingredients are what we are allowed. And the Inspector tested it the first time he saw us eating it to make sure we were keeping to the regulations.”
“Are you telling me all you people are allowed are lawn weeds?! The hell you say.”
The other men with him looked like they were sorry they asked. “The regulations may be different where you are from. I don’t know and we aren’t supposed to ask. I do know the regulations are different for those living in town. Up here, these are the regulations we live with. They are posted beneath the highway signs and on all county road signs if you weren’t given a copy.”
“The hell you say. I’ll be checking so you better not be lying.”
For the few weeks the man was around to make a nuisance of himself I learned that was one of his favorite phrases, used often and for all types of situations. It took the Inspector “having a word” with him to get him to understand he was temporarily overseeing an area already well under the heel of government oversight. And he was not to rock the boat or create an environment that might cause the cooperation of this area to … end. The kidnappings done by the terrorists were creating enough problems as it was.
Hmph. Terrorists. Right. Ghosts and haunts and hobgoblins more likely. They populate the Ridges and mountains around here in good numbers. Ask anyone and they’ll tell you that. Not a lot, but not just a few, inspectors and harvesters have come up to the Ridge never to be found again. Or maybe they’ve just run off and gone AWOL. It happens. Ask anyone and they’ll tell you that too.
July was the last real harvest of anything people up on the Ridge would have. At least of the domesticated type of crops that we were allowed to keep. In a rush I stripped all our blueberry bushes with Barbara’s help. My herb patches looked like weeds to most of the so-called inspectors that have come this way and still do. But I’ve also made herbal beds out in the woodlots in an attempt to save them just in case some hothead turns nasty which I’ve heard has happened on a few places.
If a blackberry was even approaching ripe I picked it when the dew was barely dry on the brambles. And even before then if I had the time. I marked and then picked the mayapples out in the wooded areas. Other things I harvested were wineberries and elderberries. I’m glad I got what elderberries I did because one idiot group of harvesters came through and took the remaining ones … proceeded to eat them without processing like any other berry, and several in that group wound up dead. As horrifying as it was to many, I had to fake my sympathies. That’s when the inspectors decided to stick to the domesticated gardens and foods and let us poor ignorant hillbillies graze like goats and wild pigs for our provender. That’s a quote in case you didn’t know.
Now I still don’t throw caution to the wind. I have a few plots of “weeds” near the house that I tend to keep the inspectors as ignorant as I can, but by and large I do most of my harvesting by the dark of the moon these days. Sawyer doesn’t like it, but he understands it. Especially when he isn’t around to protect us.
It was July when the Inspectors first came. All of that keeping the gardens small and mixed together only slowed them down long enough for someone to get the bright idea to bring harvesters in. Most of them were migrants caught on this side of the border. Most of those have since run off if they aren’t bivouacked on large commercials farms further west. Bivouacked without choice I might add. Now what they do is draft men, and some women as well, to do the harvesting. They learned real quick not to assign harvesters to the area they live. You’d think at that point they would have thought of everything. I’m not sure how it is in other places, but we go on ahead and let them think that around here. It’s easier just to grant them a level of ignorance than enlighten them and hurt their egos.
There are different levels of inspectors. There’s the local inspectors that have learned to be cautious. They’ve got the most to lose because they are known, and so are their family members. And to put it bluntly one of these days their side will go out of favor, lose, and paybacks will ride down on them. So local inspectors tend to tread as lightly as they are allowed to with most sticking to the town and refusing to come up here to the Ridge at all. Because they also believe in ghosts, and haunts, and hobgoblins that lie in wait for unwary travelers. They've been taught the wisdom in believing in those spooks since no one has been able to prove they don't exist.
Then there are the State inspectors. They are middle of the road types that try and be moderate and keep all that is confiscated and harvested within their own state. Too bad that's not the way it happens because that’s where the feds come in. Those boogers have military escorts, real federal troops. I’ve seen videos of tanks rolling through towns and across farms during a riot making a bigger mess than the destruction the rioters themselves create. We don’t have that around here that I’m aware of. There might be propaganda in the videos, probably is but impossible to determine how much. We are required to watch them ever so often when there is power which is usually only two or three days a month. I’m cautious. I’ve found I have a wide streak of rebellion in me, but I am not a fool. Though … I do let people think it on occasion. People tend to believe what they want to anyway.
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Chapter 103
“Burt, I want you to ride this down to the basement and then crawl through the special door.”
“The one that Uncle Sawyer made.”
“Yes. Jolene needs to stay quiet. There’s bottles down there that already have the powder measured out in them. You know how to fill them up with the water that I’ve sterilized and keep down there. As soon as you’re down in the basement get out so I can pull this back up and I’ll send down what I wasn’t able to move earlier today. You pull that in and …”
“I know what to do Aunt Kay-Lee. We’ve done it all before.”
It broke my heart but he was right. I wouldn’t do it this time, but I don’t have much choice. I have to glean as many apples off the trees as I can before the harvesters come. The only time I can do it in relative safety is at night when the moon is dark. Tonight is about as dark as it is going to get. Not even the drones will run tonight because there isn’t enough light up here on the ridge for their night vision to work and they tend to have unexplained accidents if not disappear all together.
I sent Burt down with Jolene down into the now hidden and enlarged root cellar and did the rest of what I could do as I thought. I wanted to send Barbara with them, but she has thus far refused to go. Maybe tonight she’ll listen to reason.
Things have been such a nightmare. Sawyer isn’t here half the time, more than half the time. He isn’t here most of the time anymore. He was sent so far away during the last work cycle that he was gone over two weeks with no word from him the entire time. He was only home a couple of days this time and he was all but dragged off again yesterday. Huely with him. At least they are working on the same crew this time. Or at least I pray they are. They can cover each other’s backs.
# # # # #
All because some people couldn’t control their feelings.
That’s basically what started it. A lack of self-control. That and they thought they could use the government for their own purpose without there being any consequences. Like that old movie says, “Stupid is as stupid does.”
I still don’t know who all agreed to it. I don’t even know who started it or who or how many made the calls. I do know that too many agreed with it. And not all of them were Hartfords. A few families out in the community bumped their gums on the subject. What I know most though is that no one tried to stop it. At least not until it was too late. And by that morning in July, the day after my big blow up with Linda, it was already way passed too late. The government had been looking for any excuse to get up here on the Ridge and really look around. We weren’t the only place where it happened in this country but we were the first it happened to around here. There was a terrible wake up call for some. I don’t take any satisfaction in that though I’m given to understand that some people think I do.
Tommy manages to come around once a week or so. Depends if he can get away. It is a long walk to get from his father’s place to ours. I get a little bit of gossip about the family but remembering Sawyer’s caution the night Delly and the others were killed, I give nothing to Tommy beyond we are surviving. Nothing at all. And all he sees, all I allow him to see, is that we are barely getting by the same as everyone else, maybe a little worse off. I really don’t know if he sees through my lack of information or not. If he does, he is clever enough not to ask further questions or anything else.
I’ve only seen Uncle Mark twice since the big blow up. First time was late at night. He and Sawyer did a lot of talking and they struggled to get a safe I’d never seen before down and hidden in the root cellar. Second time was midmorning and he was grayfaced.
“Uncle Mark?”
“They took ‘em. They were working in the tobacco field and they just rounded ‘em up and took ‘em off.”
“Who?”
“The boys. All of ‘em. Just took ‘em off. They were drafted for the work crews. Said if they didn’t go willingly they’d go to a federal detention center and there’d be penalties the family would have to pay.” He was shaking. I pulled him into the house and insisted on pouring him the coffee that I’d held back for Sawyer to come home to. The ration he allowed himself. But Sawyer wasn’t coming home that day. In fact it was three days before he came back. He hadn’t gone far that time, just three counties over.
Uncle Mark did his best to make sure I knew that he wasn’t like the others, that none of what had happened had been with his knowledge.
“I know that. Are you okay? Are the others?”
“You can ask that?”
I sighed. “Yes. I can ask and mean it. I might be angry but that doesn’t mean I agree with what is being done as a result.”
It didn’t take much for him to believe me. Out of all the other uncles and aunts Uncle Mark, initially an enemy, had turned out to be an ally. I insisted on feeding him, not that he could eat much. We talked of other personal things, ironed out the few wrinkles there still were between the only Baffa left and the Hartford that had suffered the most at their hands. He said he had to get on, that he’d make sure as best he could to get word to me of what he could. He also warned me that I needed to hide what I was able to, warned me of the inspectors and harvesters that were coming. Warned me that I should likely even hide it from the family in general, especially if any of them showed up unexpectedly asking for help or handouts.
“Out of all of them you’re likely the most that will understand how rough things are going to get. I don’t even think Dad expected this.” Uncle Mark shook his head. “None of them did. They’re all sitting around in shock. The girls are all crying.” He snorted. “You’re not. You got that notepad out and are making lists and I can see your brain running zero to ninety. It's making smoke.”
Ignoring most of that I asked, “That's just the beans that scorched. Is this happening to other families?”
“Good question, ask another. It hasn’t happened to Cindy’s family yet, but I can’t say any more than that. Davis is home with them busted hands where the tractor implement came loose and the fool boy tried to stop it from coming around on me.” He shook his head. “He coulda been killed.”
“And you would have been if he hadn’t done it. Look, if worse comes to worse you send them this way. We’ll figure things out from there. That’s what Sawyer would expect.”
He snorted again. “You can’t save ‘em all.”
“No so people better start pulling their heads out of their backsides and dealing with reality and making their own lists and plans. But just remember what I said …”
He finally nodded and before he stepped off the porch, he hugged me of all things. I didn’t know whether to pass out or cry. All I did know though was that I could hope for the best, but I had to prepare for the worst. Just like with every operation I had. I knew the pain was coming and I needed to be ready for it.
# # # # #
The idiots in the government tried to get us once through Tommy but if I have no other skill with people in this life, I know how to deal with bureaucrats. They’d used a drone to follow him and thought they were going to sneak up on us and catch us at something.
“So you’ve been holding back. I suspected as much when I was told there was nothing but rednecks and hillbillies in this area and no one with the balls to deal with you the way they should.”
“Excuse me?” I asked calmly.
“You’ve been holding back. You have a garden.”
“I have a personal garden so we aren’t a burden on society. There are two young children and a pregnant woman living here full time. If we didn't have a garden, they would get government commodities. My permit is stapled to that signpost over there as is required. The inspector was just here this morning taking samples. And he and his team will be back in the morning for more samples.” What they took was a few things out of my garden to “sample” during their own private mealtimes.
“I’ll check that so you better not be lying.”
I just kept ladling out small cups of lukewarm green broth to those I had sitting on the porch. Burt, Jolene in her sling on my back and thankfully sleeping. She’s now old enough for table food so long as it easily digestible which helps immensely if you want to know the truth. Huely was just back and suffering with a pulled tendon in his arm and was in a sling and excused from work crews for another week. He was sitting beside Barbara who was starting to show proving I hadn't been lying about the pregnant woman living here. And Tommy who had walked up just in time to be offered what was passing for our mid-morning break. The heat was fierce. It was either take a break or pass out on that August day.
“I called it in,” a man said running up to the guy in charge. “The inspection stamp is legit. And the Inspector said he wants a word with you when you get back to base.”
I took from the tone being used the word wasn’t going to be a blessing, but more likely a blessing out.
Mr. I’m-In-Charge-And-Don’t-You-Forget-It demanded to know, “What’s in that soup?”
“It isn’t a soup. It is a green broth. It’s got dandelions, chickweed, onion grass …”
“The hell you say,” he barked in some Yankee sounding accent. “You think I'm stupid? Those are lawn weeds. I asked you what is in that soup.”
Primly I said, “It isn’t a lie. We aren’t permitted to lie. The ingredients are what we are allowed. And the Inspector tested it the first time he saw us eating it to make sure we were keeping to the regulations.”
“Are you telling me all you people are allowed are lawn weeds?! The hell you say.”
The other men with him looked like they were sorry they asked. “The regulations may be different where you are from. I don’t know and we aren’t supposed to ask. I do know the regulations are different for those living in town. Up here, these are the regulations we live with. They are posted beneath the highway signs and on all county road signs if you weren’t given a copy.”
“The hell you say. I’ll be checking so you better not be lying.”
For the few weeks the man was around to make a nuisance of himself I learned that was one of his favorite phrases, used often and for all types of situations. It took the Inspector “having a word” with him to get him to understand he was temporarily overseeing an area already well under the heel of government oversight. And he was not to rock the boat or create an environment that might cause the cooperation of this area to … end. The kidnappings done by the terrorists were creating enough problems as it was.
Hmph. Terrorists. Right. Ghosts and haunts and hobgoblins more likely. They populate the Ridges and mountains around here in good numbers. Ask anyone and they’ll tell you that. Not a lot, but not just a few, inspectors and harvesters have come up to the Ridge never to be found again. Or maybe they’ve just run off and gone AWOL. It happens. Ask anyone and they’ll tell you that too.
July was the last real harvest of anything people up on the Ridge would have. At least of the domesticated type of crops that we were allowed to keep. In a rush I stripped all our blueberry bushes with Barbara’s help. My herb patches looked like weeds to most of the so-called inspectors that have come this way and still do. But I’ve also made herbal beds out in the woodlots in an attempt to save them just in case some hothead turns nasty which I’ve heard has happened on a few places.
If a blackberry was even approaching ripe I picked it when the dew was barely dry on the brambles. And even before then if I had the time. I marked and then picked the mayapples out in the wooded areas. Other things I harvested were wineberries and elderberries. I’m glad I got what elderberries I did because one idiot group of harvesters came through and took the remaining ones … proceeded to eat them without processing like any other berry, and several in that group wound up dead. As horrifying as it was to many, I had to fake my sympathies. That’s when the inspectors decided to stick to the domesticated gardens and foods and let us poor ignorant hillbillies graze like goats and wild pigs for our provender. That’s a quote in case you didn’t know.
Now I still don’t throw caution to the wind. I have a few plots of “weeds” near the house that I tend to keep the inspectors as ignorant as I can, but by and large I do most of my harvesting by the dark of the moon these days. Sawyer doesn’t like it, but he understands it. Especially when he isn’t around to protect us.
It was July when the Inspectors first came. All of that keeping the gardens small and mixed together only slowed them down long enough for someone to get the bright idea to bring harvesters in. Most of them were migrants caught on this side of the border. Most of those have since run off if they aren’t bivouacked on large commercials farms further west. Bivouacked without choice I might add. Now what they do is draft men, and some women as well, to do the harvesting. They learned real quick not to assign harvesters to the area they live. You’d think at that point they would have thought of everything. I’m not sure how it is in other places, but we go on ahead and let them think that around here. It’s easier just to grant them a level of ignorance than enlighten them and hurt their egos.
There are different levels of inspectors. There’s the local inspectors that have learned to be cautious. They’ve got the most to lose because they are known, and so are their family members. And to put it bluntly one of these days their side will go out of favor, lose, and paybacks will ride down on them. So local inspectors tend to tread as lightly as they are allowed to with most sticking to the town and refusing to come up here to the Ridge at all. Because they also believe in ghosts, and haunts, and hobgoblins that lie in wait for unwary travelers. They've been taught the wisdom in believing in those spooks since no one has been able to prove they don't exist.
Then there are the State inspectors. They are middle of the road types that try and be moderate and keep all that is confiscated and harvested within their own state. Too bad that's not the way it happens because that’s where the feds come in. Those boogers have military escorts, real federal troops. I’ve seen videos of tanks rolling through towns and across farms during a riot making a bigger mess than the destruction the rioters themselves create. We don’t have that around here that I’m aware of. There might be propaganda in the videos, probably is but impossible to determine how much. We are required to watch them ever so often when there is power which is usually only two or three days a month. I’m cautious. I’ve found I have a wide streak of rebellion in me, but I am not a fool. Though … I do let people think it on occasion. People tend to believe what they want to anyway.
Jeepcats27
Senior Member
Sad, I could see that happening unfortunately!
Landcruiser
Contributing Member
Ahh, that went from 0 to full tilt boogey in a hurry.
Griz3752
Retired, practising Curmudgeon
Very much as it could, right here, right around the next corner in our timeline.
Old Gray Mare
TB Fanatic
Thank you Mother Hen. Gotta watch out for those haints in the hollars.
Could imagine this happening. If it were to happen, any Christian charity from the countryside would be totally extinguished.
Could imagine this happening. If it were to happen, any Christian charity from the countryside would be totally extinguished.
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sssarawolf
Has No Life - Lives on TB
Oh wow and goodness gracious. Thanks Kathy.
Chapter 104
“Harley. Davey. Guard.” Once they took up their positions I said, “Mind things for me and when I come back I’ll try and bring you something.”
As Barbara and I quietly left the house after locking it up she whispered, “I hope there is something in that trap Burt set. We need the meat in case our men come back.”
“They will, just not sure what day,” I whispered back, refusing to think otherwise. Any more than Sawyer would wonder if we’d be here when he got back. At least I hope he doesn’t spend time worrying on that.
We were silent from there on. Turns out my night vision is as good as my leg is crippled. That’s something I suppose. Barbara’s deep brown eyes, nearly black, has night vision near my equal. That’s fine. It’s needed and we make a good team with me being grateful I don’t have to worry about her tripping and falling in her condition.
Our goal was the groves of apple trees in various locations around the house lot. Tomorrow the harvesters were coming, and they’d strip the last fruit from the remaining trees. If they left anything, and they sometimes did, I’ll bring Burt with me to help pick up any falls. Barbara would agree to stay at the house for that. Bending up and down over and over is just getting too hard for her. As we’d bring packs back full of fruit, she’ll be the one cutting the bad spots out (the usual reason for the harvesters leaving that piece of fruit behind) and cut them to fit on the solar dehydrators or for soaking in a water bath with some citric acid to keep the fruit from browning until we could process it in other ways.
By August we’d set this system up. The men got the green willies when they found out what we were doing but they’ve come to terms with it, especially as it helps to keep us all fed. By August the system of inspectors and harvesters was fully in place as well. It was a shock for all of us how thoroughly they had taken over all the domestic crops. And the harvesters were good at their jobs. They had to be, that’s how they kept their families fed and out of trouble.
We are lucky in this area if luck is what you want to call it. The Inspector in Charge, or Chief Inspector, the top of the food chain whatever you call him, has some smarts. He knows just because there is fruit on the trees or crops growing in the ground doesn’t mean they are ready for harvesting. He’s got people that inspect the fields and set when the harvesters are to come in and clear things off. Tommy has told me that the Inspector has allowed the family to keep a few rows in every field for gleaning. People need to eat if they are going to work but it is hard enough to even keep that little bit harvested. At least half of Sawyer’s cousins are gone at any given time. Tommy is exempt due to what you would expect. The government people underestimate him and Linda, and everyone let’s them do that very thing so that the aunts and uncles still at home always have someone younger around to help them.
The first time he admitted to it he was covered in guilt. “I’m sorry Kay-Lee. They shake me down every time I leave the farm. There’s no way for me to bring you anything. You sure you all are eating?”
I patted his arm, trusting him to be unable to lie about that and merely told him, “My hobby is keeping us fed. That and the garden they are letting me keep so they don’t have to take commodities away from the town.”
“Hmph. They’re supposed to because you have kids and someone pregnant here.”
“Don’t fuss about it. Less attention they focus on us the better.”
He sighed. “You know that’s right.”
What Tommy and the inspectors and harvesters didn’t know is that I’ve refused to play by the rules no matter how I make it look. I learned long and well by watching those in the foster care system for most of my life, both adults and kids. There’s always a way to hide things. There’s always ways of getting around the system. You just have to be careful.
I thought Barbara was going to throw a hissy fit the first time she caught me at it.
“Are you insane?!” she whispered frantically as she pulled me into the dark house. “Where did this come from?!”
“Same place it came from last year about this time.”
“Kay-Lee they’re going to arrest you and then where would we all be?!” She stopped and I saw her scrub her face even in the dark, her movements were so upset. “That didn’t come out the way I meant it.”
“Relax. I know you now, and you know me. You don’t need to be so careful in your words. You don’t mean any harm.”
Her body language said she was relieved, but she hadn’t relaxed much at all. “Just explain it Kay-Lee. I’m too worried about Huely. He’s lost so much weight. I don’t think they are feeding them right when they shuttle them to worksites.”
I didn’t disagree but couldn’t worry about it. I had enough on my plate and had to work things so they could eat when they were home.
The government has all but stolen all the domesticated crops from us. Their purpose? To redistribute them fairly and humanely so that everyone gets their fair share. Yeah. Right. People around here certainly aren’t getting their fair share after all the work they are being forced to put into growing the crops. I don’t think the government people have thought this out very far. They might get away with it this year but next year if fields don’t get replanted because there is no money to buy seed, or no seed to buy, there will be no crops to harvest. Even if fields do get planted, without fertilizers, fuel to run farm equipment, insect sprays to keep the bugs from destroying what gets planted, etc. there won’t be any crops no matter what they imagine and hope for. And it isn’t just about what will and won’t be available. They are destroying the motivation of the farmer. No one is going to work for free forever, not even a slave. Slaves will revolt faster than a free man. Or maybe that is a man who thinks he is free.
By law they are supposed to pay us market value for what they take but they don’t, not even the controlled market value. The give us slips of paper that say they’ve applied the balance towards whatever they say we owe the government … the property taxes and income taxes primarily, loans that are owed, and such like. But they also have a bad habit of tacking on fines and interest to those that don’t follow their rules and mandates. Worse, at least for the farmer, they seem to always measure what they have coming in as less than we measure it as it goes out. There’s politicians trying to come up with a solution to prevent the discrepancies but I’m not going to trust them. They’re the ones that got us into this mess in the first place. Or mostly. There are a lot of idiots in this country that seem to want something without having paying for it, simply because their heart beats and they draw breath.
I keep every scrap of paper, every satisfactory inspection report, every invoice and receipt. Every weight and measure log. I also make note of names and contact information for just in case, down the road, should it become necessary to track someone down and have a word or three with them. Nothing may ever come of it but better to have the information than not.
It was a bitter pill in August to have so much all but stolen from us. And by us, I mean us ourselves, not the “us” the Hartfords used to form as a group. We weren’t the only ones, but I was to a point I didn’t have it in me by strength or inclination to worry about much that was happening beyond this farm. I was in a funk and running scared. It was when I caught Burt hiding that he was saving back stuff for Jolene for just in case that the top of my head finally came off all the way. And then I grabbed it, screwed it back on tighter than before, and set myself to rights. I’d promised the kids, Sawyer, God, Delly and Burt’s memory, and even myself that I would never let Burt and Jolene grow up like I had to, being pulled from pillar to post and never knowing what the next day would bring. I would be damned in the literal sense if I was going to suddenly throw that sacred promise over for wallowing in fear and protecting my own skin. It was time to get smart and sneaky.
For one, I realized there was no way the inspectors could know the amount and number of all the fruit on each and every tree. All I had to do was be careful and pick a fruit here, a fruit there and they’d never know. We have so many trees and with no one else in the family coming to help out for shares … well by now you likely have the picture. What the inspectors didn’t know didn’t hurt them … and it surely didn’t hurt us either.
Some of the field crops were more challenging. Take beets for instance. Even if I just pulled one beet out of the ground here and there it would leave a gap. What I had to do was pull the beet from the fullest part of a row, where the beet tops grew all together. Luckily we’d planted them thick this year and were unable to thin them out as they needed for them to be the prettiest for market. This year they looked mutated and getting their skins off has been an exercise in patience. Out in the field I’d pull a beet root, try and fill the soil back in to make it look as undisturbed as possible, and then fluffed the surrounding beet tops to hide that one of their number had gone missing. Time consuming but again, necessary. The fines and penalties for breaking regulations and “stealing” what the government has laid claim to are high and include criminal charges. And getting it done without the cultivators and other people the inspectors sent gave me ulcers when I first started doing it.
It was all just so sad it made me boiling. Especially when Sawyer would look at all the time, effort, and money he’d put into the farm to get us some independence. It was going to be a bumper year. We had plans. The bad times had leveled off. Success, or at least something like it, was within our grasp. And look where things are now.
But I guarantee that the inspectors, harvesters, politicians and who all else won’t be having the last laugh. Not as long as I can get around, even if I have to crawl to do it.
August saw a lot of domestic crops ready for harvest. Before the harvesters could get it all I did my share of harvesting as well. Had to be at night and slyly, but I did get enough for us to eat and to preserve. Apples, apricots, canning and dessert pears, boysenberries, nectarines, peaches, figs, and raspberries were stealth harvested from the orchards and briar patches. Beans, beats, broccoli, cabbage, cantaloupe, carrots, cucumbers, garden peas and field peas, peppers, potatoes, winter and summer squash, and onions came out of the field patches. Neither the inspectors nor the harvesters knew doodly squat about the celery patch. Truthfully it had only been an experiment for me, but the local inspector of that week magnanimously let me keep it all rather than have it waste her time. Apparently celery wasn’t much of a winner in their pursuit to keep people quiet anyway.
And if they didn’t know anything about celery – blanching it and all the work it takes to make it harvestable – just imagine what they had to say about okra. Especially after I gave them a sample of pickled okra. The woman couldn’t even get it to her mouth because I made sure that it was an especially “snotty” batch. She was gagging like I’d given her some maggots to taste. Barbara nearly wet herself after they left laughing so hard while being pregnant. We had fried okra nearly every meal there for a while and I’ve dried and canned the surplus smiling all the while.
Tomatoes are as numerous as they were last year, or nearly so. At least on our farm. Because the plants are growing so well, I’m able to pull all we want, of all the strange varieties that were planted like white, black, brown, yellow, pink, and all the shades of red. I bring them back and save the seeds of the heirloom varieties that will go true next season. I can what I have the time and wood for, but even doing it at night it is so hot it runs Barbara and I out of the kitchen most of the time. And we are all suffering from the heat. It has been a bad year. At least the government has allowed all the big water monsters to run as much as they are needed to. If that hadn’t been allowed, the crops would have withered in the field. It has happened in some places which is why they are so “magnanimous” about it around here. They’re discovering slowly but surely the farmer and what he does has a bigger impact on peace than they ever thought.
“Harley. Davey. Guard.” Once they took up their positions I said, “Mind things for me and when I come back I’ll try and bring you something.”
As Barbara and I quietly left the house after locking it up she whispered, “I hope there is something in that trap Burt set. We need the meat in case our men come back.”
“They will, just not sure what day,” I whispered back, refusing to think otherwise. Any more than Sawyer would wonder if we’d be here when he got back. At least I hope he doesn’t spend time worrying on that.
We were silent from there on. Turns out my night vision is as good as my leg is crippled. That’s something I suppose. Barbara’s deep brown eyes, nearly black, has night vision near my equal. That’s fine. It’s needed and we make a good team with me being grateful I don’t have to worry about her tripping and falling in her condition.
Our goal was the groves of apple trees in various locations around the house lot. Tomorrow the harvesters were coming, and they’d strip the last fruit from the remaining trees. If they left anything, and they sometimes did, I’ll bring Burt with me to help pick up any falls. Barbara would agree to stay at the house for that. Bending up and down over and over is just getting too hard for her. As we’d bring packs back full of fruit, she’ll be the one cutting the bad spots out (the usual reason for the harvesters leaving that piece of fruit behind) and cut them to fit on the solar dehydrators or for soaking in a water bath with some citric acid to keep the fruit from browning until we could process it in other ways.
By August we’d set this system up. The men got the green willies when they found out what we were doing but they’ve come to terms with it, especially as it helps to keep us all fed. By August the system of inspectors and harvesters was fully in place as well. It was a shock for all of us how thoroughly they had taken over all the domestic crops. And the harvesters were good at their jobs. They had to be, that’s how they kept their families fed and out of trouble.
We are lucky in this area if luck is what you want to call it. The Inspector in Charge, or Chief Inspector, the top of the food chain whatever you call him, has some smarts. He knows just because there is fruit on the trees or crops growing in the ground doesn’t mean they are ready for harvesting. He’s got people that inspect the fields and set when the harvesters are to come in and clear things off. Tommy has told me that the Inspector has allowed the family to keep a few rows in every field for gleaning. People need to eat if they are going to work but it is hard enough to even keep that little bit harvested. At least half of Sawyer’s cousins are gone at any given time. Tommy is exempt due to what you would expect. The government people underestimate him and Linda, and everyone let’s them do that very thing so that the aunts and uncles still at home always have someone younger around to help them.
The first time he admitted to it he was covered in guilt. “I’m sorry Kay-Lee. They shake me down every time I leave the farm. There’s no way for me to bring you anything. You sure you all are eating?”
I patted his arm, trusting him to be unable to lie about that and merely told him, “My hobby is keeping us fed. That and the garden they are letting me keep so they don’t have to take commodities away from the town.”
“Hmph. They’re supposed to because you have kids and someone pregnant here.”
“Don’t fuss about it. Less attention they focus on us the better.”
He sighed. “You know that’s right.”
What Tommy and the inspectors and harvesters didn’t know is that I’ve refused to play by the rules no matter how I make it look. I learned long and well by watching those in the foster care system for most of my life, both adults and kids. There’s always a way to hide things. There’s always ways of getting around the system. You just have to be careful.
I thought Barbara was going to throw a hissy fit the first time she caught me at it.
“Are you insane?!” she whispered frantically as she pulled me into the dark house. “Where did this come from?!”
“Same place it came from last year about this time.”
“Kay-Lee they’re going to arrest you and then where would we all be?!” She stopped and I saw her scrub her face even in the dark, her movements were so upset. “That didn’t come out the way I meant it.”
“Relax. I know you now, and you know me. You don’t need to be so careful in your words. You don’t mean any harm.”
Her body language said she was relieved, but she hadn’t relaxed much at all. “Just explain it Kay-Lee. I’m too worried about Huely. He’s lost so much weight. I don’t think they are feeding them right when they shuttle them to worksites.”
I didn’t disagree but couldn’t worry about it. I had enough on my plate and had to work things so they could eat when they were home.
The government has all but stolen all the domesticated crops from us. Their purpose? To redistribute them fairly and humanely so that everyone gets their fair share. Yeah. Right. People around here certainly aren’t getting their fair share after all the work they are being forced to put into growing the crops. I don’t think the government people have thought this out very far. They might get away with it this year but next year if fields don’t get replanted because there is no money to buy seed, or no seed to buy, there will be no crops to harvest. Even if fields do get planted, without fertilizers, fuel to run farm equipment, insect sprays to keep the bugs from destroying what gets planted, etc. there won’t be any crops no matter what they imagine and hope for. And it isn’t just about what will and won’t be available. They are destroying the motivation of the farmer. No one is going to work for free forever, not even a slave. Slaves will revolt faster than a free man. Or maybe that is a man who thinks he is free.
By law they are supposed to pay us market value for what they take but they don’t, not even the controlled market value. The give us slips of paper that say they’ve applied the balance towards whatever they say we owe the government … the property taxes and income taxes primarily, loans that are owed, and such like. But they also have a bad habit of tacking on fines and interest to those that don’t follow their rules and mandates. Worse, at least for the farmer, they seem to always measure what they have coming in as less than we measure it as it goes out. There’s politicians trying to come up with a solution to prevent the discrepancies but I’m not going to trust them. They’re the ones that got us into this mess in the first place. Or mostly. There are a lot of idiots in this country that seem to want something without having paying for it, simply because their heart beats and they draw breath.
I keep every scrap of paper, every satisfactory inspection report, every invoice and receipt. Every weight and measure log. I also make note of names and contact information for just in case, down the road, should it become necessary to track someone down and have a word or three with them. Nothing may ever come of it but better to have the information than not.
It was a bitter pill in August to have so much all but stolen from us. And by us, I mean us ourselves, not the “us” the Hartfords used to form as a group. We weren’t the only ones, but I was to a point I didn’t have it in me by strength or inclination to worry about much that was happening beyond this farm. I was in a funk and running scared. It was when I caught Burt hiding that he was saving back stuff for Jolene for just in case that the top of my head finally came off all the way. And then I grabbed it, screwed it back on tighter than before, and set myself to rights. I’d promised the kids, Sawyer, God, Delly and Burt’s memory, and even myself that I would never let Burt and Jolene grow up like I had to, being pulled from pillar to post and never knowing what the next day would bring. I would be damned in the literal sense if I was going to suddenly throw that sacred promise over for wallowing in fear and protecting my own skin. It was time to get smart and sneaky.
For one, I realized there was no way the inspectors could know the amount and number of all the fruit on each and every tree. All I had to do was be careful and pick a fruit here, a fruit there and they’d never know. We have so many trees and with no one else in the family coming to help out for shares … well by now you likely have the picture. What the inspectors didn’t know didn’t hurt them … and it surely didn’t hurt us either.
Some of the field crops were more challenging. Take beets for instance. Even if I just pulled one beet out of the ground here and there it would leave a gap. What I had to do was pull the beet from the fullest part of a row, where the beet tops grew all together. Luckily we’d planted them thick this year and were unable to thin them out as they needed for them to be the prettiest for market. This year they looked mutated and getting their skins off has been an exercise in patience. Out in the field I’d pull a beet root, try and fill the soil back in to make it look as undisturbed as possible, and then fluffed the surrounding beet tops to hide that one of their number had gone missing. Time consuming but again, necessary. The fines and penalties for breaking regulations and “stealing” what the government has laid claim to are high and include criminal charges. And getting it done without the cultivators and other people the inspectors sent gave me ulcers when I first started doing it.
It was all just so sad it made me boiling. Especially when Sawyer would look at all the time, effort, and money he’d put into the farm to get us some independence. It was going to be a bumper year. We had plans. The bad times had leveled off. Success, or at least something like it, was within our grasp. And look where things are now.
But I guarantee that the inspectors, harvesters, politicians and who all else won’t be having the last laugh. Not as long as I can get around, even if I have to crawl to do it.
August saw a lot of domestic crops ready for harvest. Before the harvesters could get it all I did my share of harvesting as well. Had to be at night and slyly, but I did get enough for us to eat and to preserve. Apples, apricots, canning and dessert pears, boysenberries, nectarines, peaches, figs, and raspberries were stealth harvested from the orchards and briar patches. Beans, beats, broccoli, cabbage, cantaloupe, carrots, cucumbers, garden peas and field peas, peppers, potatoes, winter and summer squash, and onions came out of the field patches. Neither the inspectors nor the harvesters knew doodly squat about the celery patch. Truthfully it had only been an experiment for me, but the local inspector of that week magnanimously let me keep it all rather than have it waste her time. Apparently celery wasn’t much of a winner in their pursuit to keep people quiet anyway.
And if they didn’t know anything about celery – blanching it and all the work it takes to make it harvestable – just imagine what they had to say about okra. Especially after I gave them a sample of pickled okra. The woman couldn’t even get it to her mouth because I made sure that it was an especially “snotty” batch. She was gagging like I’d given her some maggots to taste. Barbara nearly wet herself after they left laughing so hard while being pregnant. We had fried okra nearly every meal there for a while and I’ve dried and canned the surplus smiling all the while.
Tomatoes are as numerous as they were last year, or nearly so. At least on our farm. Because the plants are growing so well, I’m able to pull all we want, of all the strange varieties that were planted like white, black, brown, yellow, pink, and all the shades of red. I bring them back and save the seeds of the heirloom varieties that will go true next season. I can what I have the time and wood for, but even doing it at night it is so hot it runs Barbara and I out of the kitchen most of the time. And we are all suffering from the heat. It has been a bad year. At least the government has allowed all the big water monsters to run as much as they are needed to. If that hadn’t been allowed, the crops would have withered in the field. It has happened in some places which is why they are so “magnanimous” about it around here. They’re discovering slowly but surely the farmer and what he does has a bigger impact on peace than they ever thought.
Chapter 105
I don’t just rely on the stealth harvesting from the domestic gardens. I can’t. Not if I want to look poor and backwoodsy so I can keep up their idea of what all a bunch of hillbillies we are. We only eat the domesticated foods at night after the sun has gone down and we are sure the inspectors and harvesters are gone for the day. Curfews apply even to those self-important people. During the day I make sure the only thing they see are some of the wild forage we eat, mostly green or strange looking stuff. Or, maybe the “treat” they allow us when they drop off some of the poorest of what they’ve taken that day. Usually not from our farm. It is a good way to make people jealous or suspicious or both, and angry on top of it. I’ve tried to avoid that trap but some surely haven’t.
One day they brought a peck of grapes that had been forgotten in the field and been all but turned to raisins. And I used them that way too. Without telling them the night before they stripped that vineyard I had gone and harvested a bushel that could be eaten fresh while I turned the other bushels I’d harvested into juice, fruit cocktail, and lord knows I can’t remember what all else I’ve done on the sly except to say I’ve dried more than I’ve canned and made more than a few strange dried roll ups to help keep things as long as I can now that we are without frig or freezer to use.
The gooseberries were overlooked altogether. It wasn’t long after the elderberry incident and no one wanted to take a chance on them. And beside the gooseberries were the currants, a rare crop that I was thankful that Barbara helped me to figure out what they were.
We had a fine row of zucchini that we kept picked to encourage it to produce many, more, and for as long as the vines would give to us. We got so many I didn’t bother stealth harvesting any from other locations. What I did stealth harvest were blossoms early in the morning. I’d bring them back and fry them up. Burt and Jolene would both go nuts for them. I did get caught doing that once, but my mouth is a lot quicker on its feet than the rest of me is.
“You have to thin the blossoms while they are this thick or they’ll suck all the life out of the plant before it produces its fruit.”
Even checking up behind me they found it to be true and allowed as how it was a good way to save waste by serving them at meals. I was given a “bonus” for sharing that information and trying to be helpful. Sure I was. I let them just keep on thinking that. It resulted in us getting fifty-pounds of peanuts raw and still in the shell. They poured them in the dirt right by the front steps to prove how nice they were. I coulda kicked ‘em for being so ignorant. I also didn’t appreciate the joke of calling us goobers, but I just smiled vacuously, like it had flown over my head. It didn’t stop me from scooping those things up though with Burt to help because Barbara was too busy puking in the azaleas on the other side of those same steps. And it didn’t keep me from almost crying at the memories of all those peanuts that Sawyer had brought in last year when we were new to each other and life, for all its trials, was so much easier.
You might be wondering about the livestock around here. Well a lot of it got “culled” due to possible infection by some gobbledy-gook animal virus that everyone knew was a lie but no one could do anything about. Families were allowed to keep a small chicken or duck flock for personal use, emphasis on small. Flocks over a certain size were subject to culling or confiscation for redistribution. So I have my three little hens and my rooster, or at least that is all the inspectors know about.
As for sugar, I’ve got a couple of barrels still, but I try not and use it. Instead, we are using the wild caught honey Uncle Donnel had “planted” in places up here on the Ridge in an attempt to make sure there were enough pollinators for all that we were growing. The inspectors don’t know squat about the bees either. That would be a disaster if they did. Of course, I started out not knowing squat about them either. And bees aren’t exactly gentle teachers, but even that has had its uses.
I caught an inspector heading for the barn. He had a suspicious look in his eyes and there was no trust in me for him. I told him seriously, “Not to scare you or anything but are you allergic?”
“What?”
“To wasps and things that sting. Are you allergic?”
“Why?”
I held up my hand that was a swollen and grotesque appendage at the moment. “There’s some yellow jackets in there somewhere. I haven’t found their hive yet. It’s not up in the rafters that we’ve seen so it must be a ground nest like the hornets I hear a harvest crew found the other day.”
He got slightly alarmed. “Wasps? Hornets? Why aren’t you eradicating them?!”
“Because the Chief Inspector doesn’t allow for those kinds of chemicals around here. He is on record as stating it could cause problems with the bees that are needed to pollinate the fruit trees.” I shrugged. “They could be in the hay bales as well.”
“Yes, that’s what I was about to ask. Why do you have all of that hay if you don’t have livestock. It could be put to better use.”
“Well, before everything that has happened, we were going to see about having goats or something like that, so we baled the long grass that was coming out of the orchard … or at least we were until we ran out of fuel for the tractor and hay baler. Doesn’t matter now anyway.”
“Why?”
“The hay is old. It’s gone sour and would be poisonous to feed to any animals and since my husband isn’t around to do anything with it …”
“And how is that my problem?!”
“It isn’t Sir. I was just trying to answer your questions in full rather than you having to pull it out of me a word at a time.”
“Damn you people are problems even when you are trying not to be. Just make sure that hay doesn’t become a fire or health hazard and stop bothering me about it. I’ve got better things to do.” With that he turned on his heel and went on to the next thing or person on his list he felt he had to control and irritate.
Inside I was breathing a sigh of relief. Hidden behind that hay bale wall was the rest of our chicken flock and the biodiesel manufacturing equipment, still perking away. Huely and Sawyer tend to it when they are here, the flock is my responsibility. It has been neither fun nor easy to hide the door in the hay bales that give me access to the flock. It also isn’t easy to climb the ladder twice a day to open and shut the upper bay windows so that the flock can have fresh air and light while keeping them out of sight. I have had to learn to trust Burt to do it most of the time. He takes pride in his contributions to our food and safety and maybe that is a little bit of what he had been missing all along. He’s nearly eleven and finally catching back up and exceeding the average maturity level of a boy his age.
The one time it came up between Sawyer and I, Sawyer said, “Damn shame it had to happen the way it has but Babe the rest of us [meaning his cousins] would have been better off in the long run had we not been allowed to run wild and responsibility-free as long as we were. Not least because of the way the world is turning out.”
Sawyer is tired. All the men are from what I hear. They keep them that way on purpose so they don’t have the time or the energy to revolt. Or at least that is what the government tells itself in private. What they don’t know will one day bite them on the butt. Not right now but I can’t see this lasting this way forever. What they are calling socialism is tantamount to slavery. Ill treated slaves with nothing to lose revolt and people wind up dead in their beds.
I don’t just rely on the stealth harvesting from the domestic gardens. I can’t. Not if I want to look poor and backwoodsy so I can keep up their idea of what all a bunch of hillbillies we are. We only eat the domesticated foods at night after the sun has gone down and we are sure the inspectors and harvesters are gone for the day. Curfews apply even to those self-important people. During the day I make sure the only thing they see are some of the wild forage we eat, mostly green or strange looking stuff. Or, maybe the “treat” they allow us when they drop off some of the poorest of what they’ve taken that day. Usually not from our farm. It is a good way to make people jealous or suspicious or both, and angry on top of it. I’ve tried to avoid that trap but some surely haven’t.
One day they brought a peck of grapes that had been forgotten in the field and been all but turned to raisins. And I used them that way too. Without telling them the night before they stripped that vineyard I had gone and harvested a bushel that could be eaten fresh while I turned the other bushels I’d harvested into juice, fruit cocktail, and lord knows I can’t remember what all else I’ve done on the sly except to say I’ve dried more than I’ve canned and made more than a few strange dried roll ups to help keep things as long as I can now that we are without frig or freezer to use.
The gooseberries were overlooked altogether. It wasn’t long after the elderberry incident and no one wanted to take a chance on them. And beside the gooseberries were the currants, a rare crop that I was thankful that Barbara helped me to figure out what they were.
We had a fine row of zucchini that we kept picked to encourage it to produce many, more, and for as long as the vines would give to us. We got so many I didn’t bother stealth harvesting any from other locations. What I did stealth harvest were blossoms early in the morning. I’d bring them back and fry them up. Burt and Jolene would both go nuts for them. I did get caught doing that once, but my mouth is a lot quicker on its feet than the rest of me is.
“You have to thin the blossoms while they are this thick or they’ll suck all the life out of the plant before it produces its fruit.”
Even checking up behind me they found it to be true and allowed as how it was a good way to save waste by serving them at meals. I was given a “bonus” for sharing that information and trying to be helpful. Sure I was. I let them just keep on thinking that. It resulted in us getting fifty-pounds of peanuts raw and still in the shell. They poured them in the dirt right by the front steps to prove how nice they were. I coulda kicked ‘em for being so ignorant. I also didn’t appreciate the joke of calling us goobers, but I just smiled vacuously, like it had flown over my head. It didn’t stop me from scooping those things up though with Burt to help because Barbara was too busy puking in the azaleas on the other side of those same steps. And it didn’t keep me from almost crying at the memories of all those peanuts that Sawyer had brought in last year when we were new to each other and life, for all its trials, was so much easier.
You might be wondering about the livestock around here. Well a lot of it got “culled” due to possible infection by some gobbledy-gook animal virus that everyone knew was a lie but no one could do anything about. Families were allowed to keep a small chicken or duck flock for personal use, emphasis on small. Flocks over a certain size were subject to culling or confiscation for redistribution. So I have my three little hens and my rooster, or at least that is all the inspectors know about.
As for sugar, I’ve got a couple of barrels still, but I try not and use it. Instead, we are using the wild caught honey Uncle Donnel had “planted” in places up here on the Ridge in an attempt to make sure there were enough pollinators for all that we were growing. The inspectors don’t know squat about the bees either. That would be a disaster if they did. Of course, I started out not knowing squat about them either. And bees aren’t exactly gentle teachers, but even that has had its uses.
I caught an inspector heading for the barn. He had a suspicious look in his eyes and there was no trust in me for him. I told him seriously, “Not to scare you or anything but are you allergic?”
“What?”
“To wasps and things that sting. Are you allergic?”
“Why?”
I held up my hand that was a swollen and grotesque appendage at the moment. “There’s some yellow jackets in there somewhere. I haven’t found their hive yet. It’s not up in the rafters that we’ve seen so it must be a ground nest like the hornets I hear a harvest crew found the other day.”
He got slightly alarmed. “Wasps? Hornets? Why aren’t you eradicating them?!”
“Because the Chief Inspector doesn’t allow for those kinds of chemicals around here. He is on record as stating it could cause problems with the bees that are needed to pollinate the fruit trees.” I shrugged. “They could be in the hay bales as well.”
“Yes, that’s what I was about to ask. Why do you have all of that hay if you don’t have livestock. It could be put to better use.”
“Well, before everything that has happened, we were going to see about having goats or something like that, so we baled the long grass that was coming out of the orchard … or at least we were until we ran out of fuel for the tractor and hay baler. Doesn’t matter now anyway.”
“Why?”
“The hay is old. It’s gone sour and would be poisonous to feed to any animals and since my husband isn’t around to do anything with it …”
“And how is that my problem?!”
“It isn’t Sir. I was just trying to answer your questions in full rather than you having to pull it out of me a word at a time.”
“Damn you people are problems even when you are trying not to be. Just make sure that hay doesn’t become a fire or health hazard and stop bothering me about it. I’ve got better things to do.” With that he turned on his heel and went on to the next thing or person on his list he felt he had to control and irritate.
Inside I was breathing a sigh of relief. Hidden behind that hay bale wall was the rest of our chicken flock and the biodiesel manufacturing equipment, still perking away. Huely and Sawyer tend to it when they are here, the flock is my responsibility. It has been neither fun nor easy to hide the door in the hay bales that give me access to the flock. It also isn’t easy to climb the ladder twice a day to open and shut the upper bay windows so that the flock can have fresh air and light while keeping them out of sight. I have had to learn to trust Burt to do it most of the time. He takes pride in his contributions to our food and safety and maybe that is a little bit of what he had been missing all along. He’s nearly eleven and finally catching back up and exceeding the average maturity level of a boy his age.
The one time it came up between Sawyer and I, Sawyer said, “Damn shame it had to happen the way it has but Babe the rest of us [meaning his cousins] would have been better off in the long run had we not been allowed to run wild and responsibility-free as long as we were. Not least because of the way the world is turning out.”
Sawyer is tired. All the men are from what I hear. They keep them that way on purpose so they don’t have the time or the energy to revolt. Or at least that is what the government tells itself in private. What they don’t know will one day bite them on the butt. Not right now but I can’t see this lasting this way forever. What they are calling socialism is tantamount to slavery. Ill treated slaves with nothing to lose revolt and people wind up dead in their beds.
Jeepcats27
Senior Member
Very chilling with all that is really going on in the world right now!
Chapter 106
“You almost finished?” Barbara whispered.
“You running out of steam?”
Regretfully she nodded.
“Okay, there’s still a lot to do but it might be better for all of us if you stay at the house with this load. I’m going to keep going.”
“Kay-Lee, you haven’t even had a nap today.”
“I’ll rest when the harvesters are here. Not like we’ll be allowed to leave the yard anyway while they’re around.”
She agreed and after we got back to the porch, I emptied the apples in a bushel basket then got back at it. The story in my head kept running as well.
# # # # #
“Tell me what all you’ve been up to. I can’t seem to get enough of your voice.”
Sawyer was home and though he was tired, he was wound up as well. He hated having to leave us alone, not knowing where he would go, when he would get back, and unable to communicate with us during that time. And with Huely gone as well his worry just grew on itself.
“Well, the cattail pancakes you ate for dinner should give you some idea.”
“You’re careful around the water. Tell me you are.”
“I am. I wouldn’t want to cause you any more worry than you already have. I’m using the fluff to make the wheat flour go further. And now I’ll use the cattails to keep the mosquitos away. Where on earth did you learn that trick[1]? They’ve been driving us all buggy.”
“Oh woman, do not make me laugh with those terrible puns of yours. I’m too tired and it will give me ideas and I’m not in the shape to treat you the way you deserve.”
“Hmph. I’ll take you anyway I can get you Sawyer Hartford and you better believe it.”
Well there wasn’t anything sensible said for a bit and then he asked me again to tell him what all I’d been doing.
“It is a good thing that the Chief Inspector and those in his office have allowed as how wild forage is a permitted private enterprise to feed our families … we just can’t sell it to anyone.” I snorted. “Not that anyone has been around to try and sell anything to. It’s been a week since Tommy has been here and might be another week before we see him. And even when he does come, I barely do the talking unless he asks me particularly or I’m asking about Linda and Jeannie.”
“You’re still angry?”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with that. Tommy is cleverer than he is given credit for being. If I say too much, accidentally reveal too much, he’ll eventually put two and two together and it might get back to some in the family that doesn’t need the information.”
Now understanding Sawyer kissed the top of my head. “Thanks.”
“For?”
“For being you. The kudzu greens were good. Er … what were those funny looking things that Burt put so many on his plate.”
I grinned in the dark. “Milkweed pods.”
“I take it his aversion to green things is over.”
“His aversion to any kind of food is over. He’s going through a growth spurt. If I can’t feed him up he’s going to look like a long-legged stork in the near future.”
“Couple of the cousins were like that. The boy is sure turning out to be more Hartford than Penny.”
“I don’t know about that. I suspect he’s going to be as good at math as Burt Sr. was. And he can be a slick salesman when he has to. The inspectors try and catch him out often enough that he’s learned to dance and sing and throw them off as good or better than I can. They don’t expect a kid to be able to do that.”
“About what?”
“The other day an inspector found a row of our muscadines. He was one of those that regularly tries to create what you used to call his own stream of income under the radar. Well Burt caught him starting to put his hands in the vines to look at the fruit.”
“Don’t do that mister! There’s snakes in there!”
“I do not see any and I’ve looked.”
“That’s the kind of varmints they are. They hide up under the leaves and then strike before you can get a bead on ‘em. Besides those are just muskies.”
“These are grapes.”
“Naw Sir, those are muskies. See? They ain’t the same color as table grapes … they’re more goldie … and they got mold growing on ‘em that makes their skin rough. And their skin is thick too.”
“Oh really.”
“Yes sir. Stand back and I’ll see if I can’t get you one to look at without drawing the snakes out. This here patch is awful close to that pond over yonder. Moccasins are bad about chasing people if they think they can get away with it. I sure don’t want to mess with one.” Burt acted real careful and got the most unripe one he could that was barely still edible.
He pulled a couple and handed them to the inspector who had watched carefully. Sure enough the inspector smiled superiorly and popped them in his mouth. For all of two seconds before spitting them out and nearly gagging.
“Dear God, that’s disgusting.”
“Yes Sir. Told you they weren’t grapes. Only the snakes, bears and mean ol’ boars will get up in here and eat ‘em. It’s why them animals taste so bad and can make you sick; they eat things like these muskies. You can ask my aunt about it. She’s pretty good about telling the Chief Inspector when he comes out about things to watch out for. You can trust her. Honest.”
By the time I was finished Sawyer had the pillow parked on his face to keep his laughter from waking the house.
When he’d gained control of himself I told him about all of the other wild forage I’d brought in under the nose of the foolish inspectors. Wild blueberries, wild huckleberries, chokecherries, paw paws, highbush cranberries that I had everyone convinced was nearly poisonous due to their unprocessed flavor that was nearly like powdered alum, wild plums, salmonberries, serviceberries, lambsquarter, purslane, wild mushrooms like lobster and leatherback cap and boletes, and what blackberries were left after the harvesters started eating them out of the hedge rows.
“They haven’t found the garlic patch which has been providential. I’ve been adding it to the green brother to try and build everyone up and not catch any of those disgusting diseases the migrant workers are spreading. At least the overseers are finally stopping them from treating the bushes and trees like a community bathroom. That was horrible and I was really worried for our water sources for a while.”
Sawyer was home for over a week which was grand except for the day he went to go check on the rest of the family and came back disgusted, asking how the hell was he supposed to do what they wanted of him. “Gramps and the others aren’t being realistic. They’re hearing what my cousins say when they come back from their own work assignments, but they think we must be exaggerating. Even with everything going on here they’re going to have to see it for themselves before they’ll believe it. What I’m not believing is how hardheaded some of them are being. Just because they don’t want it to be true doesn’t mean than it isn’t.”
“Did you get to see Uncle Mark? Were you able to pass the note along?”
“Saw Davis. His hands are still healing but he’s gonna have trouble with them for years from the look of things, especially if they don’t give him a break from the work crews. Got some news for you and Barbara. Cindy thinks she might be pregnant again and Jeannie knows she is. Everyone is pointing fingers and saying I-told-you-so. Linda sent her thanks and she has her calendars all fixed up already and I’m pretty sure I’m going to be sorry I asked but what did she mean?”
I grinned. “Not as sorry as Tommy was when he tried to explain to me what Linda wanted when he came last time.”
“Er …? A recipe for Midol?”
That did make me laugh. “No, but close. She needed me to remind her of how the girl’s dean in the SLD program had taught us to track our period for just in case we didn’t have any birth control we could still be careful.”
“No. Don’t tell me anymore. It’s that thing TMI.”
I just laughed all the harder.
He spent the rest of his days at home; him and Huely finally hiding not just the fruit cellar but the entire basement. They wrapped the landing with wood paneling they “borrowed” from the attic and made it look like a closet instead. In the floor was a hidden door that you pulled up so you could go down the stairs. Then they boarded over the window and made the siding to look just like the rest of the house. If anyone did happen to notice I was to tell them it was a plumbing repair where tree roots and a rat’s nest had clogged an old stack. Whatever the heck that means. No one has noticed to this point, so I haven't had to say it, thank goodness.
# # # # #
“Kay-Lee you’re starting to limp.”
I looked at Barbara and explained, “I stubbed the toe of my bad foot on a tree root. Teach me to not watch where I’m going.”
“How either of us can see anything in this dark I don’t know. You need one of your pills?”
“Not yet. Just set this next bunch of apples in the pantry. I’ll move them tomorrow.”
“I’ll go ahead and run them down the dumb waiter. Burt has rigged up some kind of string that pulls on his wrist when something is coming down. He catnaps between loads.”
“That boy is still awake?!”
“Only when he knows something is coming down or something needs to go up. He’s slick as cow snot. He really is.”
“I know. I just hope it doesn’t get him in trouble one of these days.”
[1] Benefits of Cattail And Its Side Effects | Lybrate.
“You almost finished?” Barbara whispered.
“You running out of steam?”
Regretfully she nodded.
“Okay, there’s still a lot to do but it might be better for all of us if you stay at the house with this load. I’m going to keep going.”
“Kay-Lee, you haven’t even had a nap today.”
“I’ll rest when the harvesters are here. Not like we’ll be allowed to leave the yard anyway while they’re around.”
She agreed and after we got back to the porch, I emptied the apples in a bushel basket then got back at it. The story in my head kept running as well.
# # # # #
“Tell me what all you’ve been up to. I can’t seem to get enough of your voice.”
Sawyer was home and though he was tired, he was wound up as well. He hated having to leave us alone, not knowing where he would go, when he would get back, and unable to communicate with us during that time. And with Huely gone as well his worry just grew on itself.
“Well, the cattail pancakes you ate for dinner should give you some idea.”
“You’re careful around the water. Tell me you are.”
“I am. I wouldn’t want to cause you any more worry than you already have. I’m using the fluff to make the wheat flour go further. And now I’ll use the cattails to keep the mosquitos away. Where on earth did you learn that trick[1]? They’ve been driving us all buggy.”
“Oh woman, do not make me laugh with those terrible puns of yours. I’m too tired and it will give me ideas and I’m not in the shape to treat you the way you deserve.”
“Hmph. I’ll take you anyway I can get you Sawyer Hartford and you better believe it.”
Well there wasn’t anything sensible said for a bit and then he asked me again to tell him what all I’d been doing.
“It is a good thing that the Chief Inspector and those in his office have allowed as how wild forage is a permitted private enterprise to feed our families … we just can’t sell it to anyone.” I snorted. “Not that anyone has been around to try and sell anything to. It’s been a week since Tommy has been here and might be another week before we see him. And even when he does come, I barely do the talking unless he asks me particularly or I’m asking about Linda and Jeannie.”
“You’re still angry?”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with that. Tommy is cleverer than he is given credit for being. If I say too much, accidentally reveal too much, he’ll eventually put two and two together and it might get back to some in the family that doesn’t need the information.”
Now understanding Sawyer kissed the top of my head. “Thanks.”
“For?”
“For being you. The kudzu greens were good. Er … what were those funny looking things that Burt put so many on his plate.”
I grinned in the dark. “Milkweed pods.”
“I take it his aversion to green things is over.”
“His aversion to any kind of food is over. He’s going through a growth spurt. If I can’t feed him up he’s going to look like a long-legged stork in the near future.”
“Couple of the cousins were like that. The boy is sure turning out to be more Hartford than Penny.”
“I don’t know about that. I suspect he’s going to be as good at math as Burt Sr. was. And he can be a slick salesman when he has to. The inspectors try and catch him out often enough that he’s learned to dance and sing and throw them off as good or better than I can. They don’t expect a kid to be able to do that.”
“About what?”
“The other day an inspector found a row of our muscadines. He was one of those that regularly tries to create what you used to call his own stream of income under the radar. Well Burt caught him starting to put his hands in the vines to look at the fruit.”
“Don’t do that mister! There’s snakes in there!”
“I do not see any and I’ve looked.”
“That’s the kind of varmints they are. They hide up under the leaves and then strike before you can get a bead on ‘em. Besides those are just muskies.”
“These are grapes.”
“Naw Sir, those are muskies. See? They ain’t the same color as table grapes … they’re more goldie … and they got mold growing on ‘em that makes their skin rough. And their skin is thick too.”
“Oh really.”
“Yes sir. Stand back and I’ll see if I can’t get you one to look at without drawing the snakes out. This here patch is awful close to that pond over yonder. Moccasins are bad about chasing people if they think they can get away with it. I sure don’t want to mess with one.” Burt acted real careful and got the most unripe one he could that was barely still edible.
He pulled a couple and handed them to the inspector who had watched carefully. Sure enough the inspector smiled superiorly and popped them in his mouth. For all of two seconds before spitting them out and nearly gagging.
“Dear God, that’s disgusting.”
“Yes Sir. Told you they weren’t grapes. Only the snakes, bears and mean ol’ boars will get up in here and eat ‘em. It’s why them animals taste so bad and can make you sick; they eat things like these muskies. You can ask my aunt about it. She’s pretty good about telling the Chief Inspector when he comes out about things to watch out for. You can trust her. Honest.”
By the time I was finished Sawyer had the pillow parked on his face to keep his laughter from waking the house.
When he’d gained control of himself I told him about all of the other wild forage I’d brought in under the nose of the foolish inspectors. Wild blueberries, wild huckleberries, chokecherries, paw paws, highbush cranberries that I had everyone convinced was nearly poisonous due to their unprocessed flavor that was nearly like powdered alum, wild plums, salmonberries, serviceberries, lambsquarter, purslane, wild mushrooms like lobster and leatherback cap and boletes, and what blackberries were left after the harvesters started eating them out of the hedge rows.
“They haven’t found the garlic patch which has been providential. I’ve been adding it to the green brother to try and build everyone up and not catch any of those disgusting diseases the migrant workers are spreading. At least the overseers are finally stopping them from treating the bushes and trees like a community bathroom. That was horrible and I was really worried for our water sources for a while.”
Sawyer was home for over a week which was grand except for the day he went to go check on the rest of the family and came back disgusted, asking how the hell was he supposed to do what they wanted of him. “Gramps and the others aren’t being realistic. They’re hearing what my cousins say when they come back from their own work assignments, but they think we must be exaggerating. Even with everything going on here they’re going to have to see it for themselves before they’ll believe it. What I’m not believing is how hardheaded some of them are being. Just because they don’t want it to be true doesn’t mean than it isn’t.”
“Did you get to see Uncle Mark? Were you able to pass the note along?”
“Saw Davis. His hands are still healing but he’s gonna have trouble with them for years from the look of things, especially if they don’t give him a break from the work crews. Got some news for you and Barbara. Cindy thinks she might be pregnant again and Jeannie knows she is. Everyone is pointing fingers and saying I-told-you-so. Linda sent her thanks and she has her calendars all fixed up already and I’m pretty sure I’m going to be sorry I asked but what did she mean?”
I grinned. “Not as sorry as Tommy was when he tried to explain to me what Linda wanted when he came last time.”
“Er …? A recipe for Midol?”
That did make me laugh. “No, but close. She needed me to remind her of how the girl’s dean in the SLD program had taught us to track our period for just in case we didn’t have any birth control we could still be careful.”
“No. Don’t tell me anymore. It’s that thing TMI.”
I just laughed all the harder.
He spent the rest of his days at home; him and Huely finally hiding not just the fruit cellar but the entire basement. They wrapped the landing with wood paneling they “borrowed” from the attic and made it look like a closet instead. In the floor was a hidden door that you pulled up so you could go down the stairs. Then they boarded over the window and made the siding to look just like the rest of the house. If anyone did happen to notice I was to tell them it was a plumbing repair where tree roots and a rat’s nest had clogged an old stack. Whatever the heck that means. No one has noticed to this point, so I haven't had to say it, thank goodness.
# # # # #
“Kay-Lee you’re starting to limp.”
I looked at Barbara and explained, “I stubbed the toe of my bad foot on a tree root. Teach me to not watch where I’m going.”
“How either of us can see anything in this dark I don’t know. You need one of your pills?”
“Not yet. Just set this next bunch of apples in the pantry. I’ll move them tomorrow.”
“I’ll go ahead and run them down the dumb waiter. Burt has rigged up some kind of string that pulls on his wrist when something is coming down. He catnaps between loads.”
“That boy is still awake?!”
“Only when he knows something is coming down or something needs to go up. He’s slick as cow snot. He really is.”
“I know. I just hope it doesn’t get him in trouble one of these days.”
[1] Benefits of Cattail And Its Side Effects | Lybrate.
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Jeepcats27
Senior Member
Amazing the way they are diverting the Inspectors!
Landcruiser
Contributing Member
Twists and turns aplenty, but a really good tale in between. Thanks Kathy.
beaglemama
Contributing Member
Thanks Kathy!
One of the reasons I read Kathy's stories is that she has many prescient descriptions of things that could happen, and, sometimes years later, have happened in the real world. For example, pandemic scenarios, or officials making arbitrary rules that make future crops and such difficult to impossible. She is good at seeing possible consequences. I have been amazed and interested in her talent for this.
The last few chapters here give me pause, considring how tense and wound up people have become these days, and how willing to 'rat' on each other.
Her stories, while entertaining, are also a rich field for gleaning how to cope in difficult situations, and what those situations might encompass.
Thank you, Kathy!
The last few chapters here give me pause, considring how tense and wound up people have become these days, and how willing to 'rat' on each other.
Her stories, while entertaining, are also a rich field for gleaning how to cope in difficult situations, and what those situations might encompass.
Thank you, Kathy!
CGTech
Has No Life - Lives on TB
"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” - Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
sssarawolf
Has No Life - Lives on TB
Thank you, wonderful story no matter what.
Griz3752
Retired, practising Curmudgeon
Chapter 107
I would love to rest even if that meant just sitting and not sleeping. But there’s no time to waste. These are the last of the apples and I need to harvest as many of the long keepers and pie apples as I can manage without making it look obvious.
I’m also worried because the Chief Inspector has gotten some group in from DC that are making all kinds of suggestions. One of them is to burn over fields rather than spend the fuel to plow them under. The summer was too hot and dry for that to be a safe practice, not to mean it will burn off all the cover crops and waste plants that are used to replace the nitrogen in the soil used up by the crops. Barbara is the one that explained that to me. Sawyer is off, God only knows where, and he couldn’t stop it even if he was home.
Another thing they want to do is come in and cut down trees they don’t think are producing enough. Idiots. The trees and crops aren't producing enough because it was a drought year, the plants were stressed, and we didn’t get enough fertilizer and such to stave off the problems the stress opened them up to.
Worse, some of them committee members are just plain stupid. A black cherry is still a cherry despite it not being fire engine red like the ones that get sprayed before heading to the grocery store. At least I was able to head that particular idiocy off by giving the Chief Inspector and his team a bag of black cherries to “sample.”
“Please just don’t eat too many at a time. I’ll feel so bad if you do. They can be about like little green apples and the result of eating too many. You know?”
The man cleared his throat and said, “We’ll handle them with all due caution.”
The sure did. They also told the committee from DC that they would need to do “extensive sampling and testing before they could apply their suggestions in the local microclimate.” Good Lord, but at least my “helpfulness” came with another hundred pounds of peanuts. And this crew didn’t even call us goobers. Of course they were from a different area of the country and I doubt then even knew what a goober is.
Truth be told, I sampled plenty of the black cherries myself. Sampled and preserved them any way we could. Same for the other fruit that was coming in during September. Pears, new varieties of apples, grapes, peaches, and raspberries. An overseer for the commercial field harvesters made my life more interesting than I needed it to be by noticing how the ends of rows were getting shorter. Luckily however he finally put it down to the depredation by wildlife rather than people sneaking in and gleaning things. Beets, cabbage, cantaloupes, carrots, cucumbers, peppers of all types and varieties, summer and winter squash, tomatoes, watermelons, okra, onions, zucchini, and fresh field peas.
I nearly got us lost in the corn when I got turned around because there was no moon. Barbara nearly started crying when we finally came out, but it was on the other side of the field that we had been heading for. And we nearly tumbled into a bunch of crop rustlers but they didn’t see us. There was a chill wind blowing and we weren’t the only ones the sound of it in the corn was spooking.
We snuck away but it was a near thing and I vowed that we’d be staying out of the corn for a while. Besides we had other things we needed to harvest . But the Irish potatoes and sweet potatoes had hills that were ready to turn. Problem was we couldn’t “turn” them without notice. We had to dig into them, a longer and more labor intensive process, and then do the same thing in enough places in any given night so that when it was noticed, again it was put down to animals digging around in things because of course no human would waste that kind of time. The pumpkins have also been important if for no other reason than Burt and Jolene love their bright colors when they have to spend hours hidden in the root cellar. Burt said it was just about like the patchwork quilt his Granny Penny had made for him when he was a little boy. God rest her soul. She’s gone now and I have to have confidence that she’s in Heaven with Delly and Burt and can’t see what this world is becoming.
The quince trees barely produced anything this year, not enough for the inspectors and harvesters to even notice and think to do anything with. They did notice the crabapples but most of them had only thought that crabapples were small apple-tasting apples. Nope. I explained that they help pollinate the domestic orchards of apples and to please not cut them down. They weren’t spoiled trees, they just have a different job.
The Chief Inspector and his team started to get in a contest of words with the committee of idiots from DC. It may sound like I support the Chief Inspector but that isn’t the case. Just better the enemy you know than the one hiding in the bushes. For now, the Chief Inspector came out on top but who knows what will happen as the holidays draw nearer and the reality of what is pouring out of DC is setting in for the parts of the country that thought the new way of doing things was going to make their lives better and easier only to have it prove to be the exact opposite. We aren’t the only ones on thin rations and trying to figure out how to make things go further and last longer.
The amaranth is already making seed heads and between that, the rice, and odds and left over from stuff Delly and Burt had in their supplies I’ll make the flour and corn meal last as long as I can. Milk and cheese is already a luxury need. Especially for Jolene, Burt, and Barbara. I’ve figured out how to make nut milks but that doesn’t provide the calcium and fats they need.
Funny thing about that is that due to the fight between the Chief Inspector and the Committee of Idiots, they’ve had to reinstate the social services programs that they were withholding there for a while. Not out of the goodness of their hearts of course, but because the news reported it and neither side wanted to look bad … or should I say they didn’t want to look worse. People were already asking where all the money in the programs had gone if there were a lot of Americans getting nothing of the something they had been promised.
Once a month we get three boxes … one for Jolene, one for Burt, and one for Barbara. Barbara’s has prenatal vitamins and stuff like you would get from an OB/Gyn office. Burt and Jolene get age specific vitamins of there own and a few things like that. The bulk of the boxes is commodities … powdered or canned milk, block Ameican cheese, bottled orange juice (not 100% OJ), at least one can of meat, bulk dried beans and lentils, pasta noodles, grits, oats, and rice. Notice what is missing … no sweeteners, no salt, pepper, or other seasonings, no convenience foods, and no way to purify water.
Salt is one of my bigger worries. I can make mixes that make other things taste salty but I can’t make salt. And sometimes for preserving things you have to have salt. I can’t do anything about it right now. It is just one of many things I need to talk to Sawyer about when he gets home.
September was a bleak month in most areas and for most people. It was the month that things started running out completely for many people. It was the month that the stores stopped restocking. It was the month local municipalities finally admitted that utility infrastructure was failing because repair parts and chemicals weren’t available. It was the month that inflation doubled and then doubled again. It was the month that nine out of ten gas pumps ran dry and were going to stay that way. It was the month schools did not start back up which meant the help parents had been expecting in the form of free school breakfasts, free lunches, and free childcare didn’t materialize. It was the month that child tax credits and unemployment checks stopped arriving. It was the month that temporary layoffs became permanent as the corporations that could headed overseas, and those that couldn’t simply closed up shop as their owners moved overseas with whatever assets they could port out of the country. Even fifty cents on the dollar they were happy to get.
It looked like a tipping point had been reached. Believe it or not, the Idiot in Charge took a page out of history and somehow convinced most people that what was happening was growing pains. The separation of the chaff from the wheat. The pain was transitory. We’d emerge and stronger and more vibrant country where everyone would truly be equal.
Gag me. It was also the month that I become convinced that the majority of people must live with their heads up their butts starving their brains of oxygen. Because worse was to come.
In September the Idiots from DC did something that nearly ruined us all. They sprayed the kudzu. Kudzu was keeping a lot of locals from starving. Even the townies had come to rely on it. Now even that was being removed from the list of resources people were dependent on for survival.
I would love to rest even if that meant just sitting and not sleeping. But there’s no time to waste. These are the last of the apples and I need to harvest as many of the long keepers and pie apples as I can manage without making it look obvious.
I’m also worried because the Chief Inspector has gotten some group in from DC that are making all kinds of suggestions. One of them is to burn over fields rather than spend the fuel to plow them under. The summer was too hot and dry for that to be a safe practice, not to mean it will burn off all the cover crops and waste plants that are used to replace the nitrogen in the soil used up by the crops. Barbara is the one that explained that to me. Sawyer is off, God only knows where, and he couldn’t stop it even if he was home.
Another thing they want to do is come in and cut down trees they don’t think are producing enough. Idiots. The trees and crops aren't producing enough because it was a drought year, the plants were stressed, and we didn’t get enough fertilizer and such to stave off the problems the stress opened them up to.
Worse, some of them committee members are just plain stupid. A black cherry is still a cherry despite it not being fire engine red like the ones that get sprayed before heading to the grocery store. At least I was able to head that particular idiocy off by giving the Chief Inspector and his team a bag of black cherries to “sample.”
“Please just don’t eat too many at a time. I’ll feel so bad if you do. They can be about like little green apples and the result of eating too many. You know?”
The man cleared his throat and said, “We’ll handle them with all due caution.”
The sure did. They also told the committee from DC that they would need to do “extensive sampling and testing before they could apply their suggestions in the local microclimate.” Good Lord, but at least my “helpfulness” came with another hundred pounds of peanuts. And this crew didn’t even call us goobers. Of course they were from a different area of the country and I doubt then even knew what a goober is.
Truth be told, I sampled plenty of the black cherries myself. Sampled and preserved them any way we could. Same for the other fruit that was coming in during September. Pears, new varieties of apples, grapes, peaches, and raspberries. An overseer for the commercial field harvesters made my life more interesting than I needed it to be by noticing how the ends of rows were getting shorter. Luckily however he finally put it down to the depredation by wildlife rather than people sneaking in and gleaning things. Beets, cabbage, cantaloupes, carrots, cucumbers, peppers of all types and varieties, summer and winter squash, tomatoes, watermelons, okra, onions, zucchini, and fresh field peas.
I nearly got us lost in the corn when I got turned around because there was no moon. Barbara nearly started crying when we finally came out, but it was on the other side of the field that we had been heading for. And we nearly tumbled into a bunch of crop rustlers but they didn’t see us. There was a chill wind blowing and we weren’t the only ones the sound of it in the corn was spooking.
We snuck away but it was a near thing and I vowed that we’d be staying out of the corn for a while. Besides we had other things we needed to harvest . But the Irish potatoes and sweet potatoes had hills that were ready to turn. Problem was we couldn’t “turn” them without notice. We had to dig into them, a longer and more labor intensive process, and then do the same thing in enough places in any given night so that when it was noticed, again it was put down to animals digging around in things because of course no human would waste that kind of time. The pumpkins have also been important if for no other reason than Burt and Jolene love their bright colors when they have to spend hours hidden in the root cellar. Burt said it was just about like the patchwork quilt his Granny Penny had made for him when he was a little boy. God rest her soul. She’s gone now and I have to have confidence that she’s in Heaven with Delly and Burt and can’t see what this world is becoming.
The quince trees barely produced anything this year, not enough for the inspectors and harvesters to even notice and think to do anything with. They did notice the crabapples but most of them had only thought that crabapples were small apple-tasting apples. Nope. I explained that they help pollinate the domestic orchards of apples and to please not cut them down. They weren’t spoiled trees, they just have a different job.
The Chief Inspector and his team started to get in a contest of words with the committee of idiots from DC. It may sound like I support the Chief Inspector but that isn’t the case. Just better the enemy you know than the one hiding in the bushes. For now, the Chief Inspector came out on top but who knows what will happen as the holidays draw nearer and the reality of what is pouring out of DC is setting in for the parts of the country that thought the new way of doing things was going to make their lives better and easier only to have it prove to be the exact opposite. We aren’t the only ones on thin rations and trying to figure out how to make things go further and last longer.
The amaranth is already making seed heads and between that, the rice, and odds and left over from stuff Delly and Burt had in their supplies I’ll make the flour and corn meal last as long as I can. Milk and cheese is already a luxury need. Especially for Jolene, Burt, and Barbara. I’ve figured out how to make nut milks but that doesn’t provide the calcium and fats they need.
Funny thing about that is that due to the fight between the Chief Inspector and the Committee of Idiots, they’ve had to reinstate the social services programs that they were withholding there for a while. Not out of the goodness of their hearts of course, but because the news reported it and neither side wanted to look bad … or should I say they didn’t want to look worse. People were already asking where all the money in the programs had gone if there were a lot of Americans getting nothing of the something they had been promised.
Once a month we get three boxes … one for Jolene, one for Burt, and one for Barbara. Barbara’s has prenatal vitamins and stuff like you would get from an OB/Gyn office. Burt and Jolene get age specific vitamins of there own and a few things like that. The bulk of the boxes is commodities … powdered or canned milk, block Ameican cheese, bottled orange juice (not 100% OJ), at least one can of meat, bulk dried beans and lentils, pasta noodles, grits, oats, and rice. Notice what is missing … no sweeteners, no salt, pepper, or other seasonings, no convenience foods, and no way to purify water.
Salt is one of my bigger worries. I can make mixes that make other things taste salty but I can’t make salt. And sometimes for preserving things you have to have salt. I can’t do anything about it right now. It is just one of many things I need to talk to Sawyer about when he gets home.
September was a bleak month in most areas and for most people. It was the month that things started running out completely for many people. It was the month that the stores stopped restocking. It was the month local municipalities finally admitted that utility infrastructure was failing because repair parts and chemicals weren’t available. It was the month that inflation doubled and then doubled again. It was the month that nine out of ten gas pumps ran dry and were going to stay that way. It was the month schools did not start back up which meant the help parents had been expecting in the form of free school breakfasts, free lunches, and free childcare didn’t materialize. It was the month that child tax credits and unemployment checks stopped arriving. It was the month that temporary layoffs became permanent as the corporations that could headed overseas, and those that couldn’t simply closed up shop as their owners moved overseas with whatever assets they could port out of the country. Even fifty cents on the dollar they were happy to get.
It looked like a tipping point had been reached. Believe it or not, the Idiot in Charge took a page out of history and somehow convinced most people that what was happening was growing pains. The separation of the chaff from the wheat. The pain was transitory. We’d emerge and stronger and more vibrant country where everyone would truly be equal.
Gag me. It was also the month that I become convinced that the majority of people must live with their heads up their butts starving their brains of oxygen. Because worse was to come.
In September the Idiots from DC did something that nearly ruined us all. They sprayed the kudzu. Kudzu was keeping a lot of locals from starving. Even the townies had come to rely on it. Now even that was being removed from the list of resources people were dependent on for survival.
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Chapter 108
“Kay-Lee. You need to stop. Even in the dark I can see you’re gray in the face.”
“Can’t stop. Not yet,” I answered her, trying to hide how truly tired I was. Tired and getting discouraged at all the work that needs to be done and remembering all the roadblocks that keep being put in our way.
She said, “We’ve got all the apples we can handle. We don’t need any more right now. Maybe they’ll leave some and we can get them another day.”
I nodded. “I agree but I saw lightning up in the foothills. It looks like what happened right before that last bit of rain we had. The drought is trying to come to and end and there’s trouble in that just as much as there is good. I need to get those bushels of acorns and bring them back to the house. We may have enough apples, but we can’t afford to lose the acorns. That’s going to be the only flour we have this winter. As it is we’ve probably lost a bunch to wild animals even though we hid and covered them up.”
“Let me get my coat. I’ll come with you.”
“No. You stay here. You can’t lift those bushel baskets anyway. I’ll take Davey and he can pull the sheet metal skid with me. The blasted dog is as strong as an ox and stubborn as a mule, might as well put it to use. Harley will think it is a game and play too much so he’ll stay here and guard.”
“There’s no talking you out of this is there.” It was statement, not question. “Even if it makes you so sore you won’t be able to walk for a couple of days.”
I shrugged whether Barbara could see me in the dark or not. “The weather that’s coming may cripple me up either way. Better to work while I can.
# # # # #
The loss of the kudzu was a horrible blow. I nearly panicked wondering if they had gotten the remainder of the wild forage as well with their blasted defoliants. But God protected us, and at least on our place they hadn’t. Fairy potatoes, autumn olive berry, wild plums, paw paws, kousa dogwood fruit, wild greens. The drought made finding edible wild mushrooms too much work but there were a few here and there if you got lucky. The garlic was worth ten times its weight in gold and I tried not to harvest too much so we’d have more to grow next year. The muscadines had ripened and with Burt’s help he and I brought in every bunch we could put our hands on, snakes or no snakes.
Persimmons were ripening and it was only because of how much work they were that the inspectors left them alone. They also didn’t travel to market well and spoiled quickly, making a mess. Their loss was our gain, and it’s a rare day that I don’t process at least a five-gallon bucket full. The pulp goes onto lined drying trays, that after completion are stored in the coolest part of the fruit cellar. A chest freezer I hope to make ice for once the temperature drops far enough. With luck the persimmons won’t give out until next month, November.
Burt helped me harvest the last run of honey as well. Afterwards we let the bees retire for the year and only have to work for themselves. On our own with no one teaching us we got a little over eight gallons of honey from the two hives we found. Not bad. Not great, but at this point I take any addition to our inventory as providential. We’ve already used a lot of it to preserve what we harvest but there’s still some and we’ve learned we don’t need nearly as much sweetenings as we used to think we needed. I’m not sure Burt even remembers what a soda tastes like anymore. He certainly hasn’t asked for any for a long time.
Two of the items that started coming in during September that really helped were chestnuts and pecans. I mostly made chestnut flour[1] out of the first. It was work but once I had them roasted and dehydrated, they fit in my spice grinder and could be done by hand. Chestnut flour is thought to be a gourmet food these days, used only in fancy kitchens, but all the way back to medieval times it was thought to be a poor man’s food, a substitute for grain flours. It only makes flat bread because it has no gluten but flat bread is still bread and there are a lot of carbs in it which translates into energy food to us. Too bad the only chestnuts left are the ones with grubs in them. On the other hand, Burt uses those grubs to fish with and the ponds and creeks that still have water in them, the fish fight over them something ferocious. What the fish don’t get, he tosses to the “feather dusters” so they have protein to go with their garden scraps
The pecans I harvest by the tarp full. I tie the tarp closed and then drag it back to the house at night. They’re nearly as much work as the chestnuts, especially cracking them. But it is something I can sit and do when I can’t do anything else, and we need the oils and fats in the nutmeats.
October has been a month of “the end of’s” as well, just in a different way from September. It’s the end of the apples and the harvesters will be here tomorrow. It’s been the end of the pears. It’s the end of the watermelons though if the harvesters don’t split them open in meanness tomorrow, I intend on harvesting the culls left in the field. They aren’t pretty and aren’t always ripe, but some is better than none and the children love the juicy red fruit and will be sad to see the last of them. I really should stop and get at least a couple tonight but I’m barely putting one foot in front of another.
It’s also been the last of the cabbage, beets, pumpkins, okra, onions, and the never-ending zucchini. Carrots will continue to come it through November. So will winter and summer squash though the varieties are limited. I got a few heads of Cauliflower this month and hope to get a few more before the harvesters take them all. This month and next the last of the celery will be blanched but we already have so much, the rest will have to be dried, at least what Burt and Jolene don’t chew on like it’s candy. I try to fill them with a nut butter and raisins when I can. They both need the protein. So does Barbara. I worry for them all. Leeks, turnips, and parsnips have replaced all the other root crops except for carrots. Chard, kale, and collard greens; I serve one (or all) at at least one meal a day. We all need the vitamins and minerals. Barbara especially needs the folates to make sure her baby develops the right way.
If not for the other wild forage, October would be the month we’d be in trouble with the kudzu now gone. The more I think about it, the angrier I become. How dare the inspectors, harvesters, politicians, and all the others come in and just take things that they didn’t work for themselves. But I can’t waste my energy on anger or thinking vengeful thoughts. It exhausts me and I still have a ways to go.
Forage, forage, forage. I feel like the squirrels and rabbits that Burt uses his wrist rocket to bring home for the only meat we get that we can be seen eating during the day. The inspection teams guards or those the overseers use with the harvesters are used to me skinning and gutting such things as squirrels, rabbits, frogs, sometimes fish, and even the occasional turtle. I give the offal to the dogs as extry on top of what they catch for themselves. And the guards know not to mess with the dogs, have a healthy respect for them in fact, and warn off anyone else not to mess with them. They’ve even got special tags to show we have permits for them. We got those when the dogs went savage on a man that went beserk and started hurting people with a machete out in the orchard.
“Those are some damn fine dogs Ms. Hartford. Damn fine,” the inspector of the day said. It was he that got them the special tags.
Barbara asked me if I felt bad about what the dogs had done and how it was viewed by the inspectors. At least she waited until the children had gone to bed before asking me. “You want the truth?” I told her. “Not particularly.”
“They said he was a rebel, someone trying to overthrow the current government. That would make him a hero.”
“I know what they called him. He might even have called himself that. But what he was doing was getting between me and Burt and Jolene and you with a deadly weapon. He was hacking at other people that might have been rebels too for all we know. Regardless of what people called him, what he was was flipped out and looking to get put down like he was rabid.”
“That’s how you see it?”
“Barbara, had that man cut you, regardless of what he thought he was doing, you could have died. At a minimum you might have gone into labor and lost the baby. I wasn’t going to let that happen.”
She looked at me, heard my words, and then in a shocked voice said, “You set them on that man. They didn’t just do it for no reason, you told them to.”
“Yes I did. And no, I don’t feel bad. You or the children or both were in his sights. And those idiot guards were moving like slow molasses. I can’t believe they didn’t pull their guns.”
Quietly she said, “They didn’t have any bullets Kay-Lee. The guns are for show.”
“What?!” I asked, shocked in spite of myself.
“At least that’s what I heard some of them grumbling about.”
“Maybe they’ll give us ammo now. How are we supposed to do our job if we don’t have the tools to do it?”
“You mean all this time …”
“I don’t know about all this time,” she said. “But I do know the overseers have loaded weapons, but they were out at the road and didn’t get here before the dogs … did what they did.”
Sawyer didn’t have much good to say when he heard next time he came home. He wasn’t angry at me or the dogs, he was upset we’d been put into such a position. He did double check on what those collars meant and could we lose the dogs. The answer to that is no, in fact it protects the dogs from confiscation or from them being taken for training to be guard dogs in town.
# # # # #
“Kay-Lee I’m putting my foot down. No more. As it is the light before dawn is not that far off and there’s a smell of rain in the air. There might be no harvesting done today anyway if it rains like if feels like it wants to.”
“All right.” I felt a tug. “Hang on Harley, Davey is tired and I need to get him loose out of the harness. Then you two can go on the house. I’ve got each of you a bone you can gnaw on the kitchen rug.”
“Where did you get dog bones from?” Barbara asked as she helped to slide the bushel baskets of acorns inside once I’d gotten them onto the Old Kitchen’s porch.
“I found a deer carcass. It had already been picked clean so the bones aren’t messy.” What I didn’t say is that I only tripped on them when Davey leaned into me pushing me back towards the house. There was something out in the night he didn’t care for. I’d sensed it before … a mountain spook of some type. This one definitely gave off a dangerous vibe and it wasn’t one the dogs had run across before or Davey would have wagged his tail once to let me know even if he had kept pushing me on. Whoever they are, none of them have ever bothered me or come near the house. I’ll admit to being tempted to try and make contact, but I’ve always gotten the impression it wouldn’t be welcome. So be it. I’ve got things to do myself and don’t need people getting in the way of it more than they already do. So long as they don’t become a threat to me and mine, I’ll pass them by and pretend they aren’t there.
[1] Make This Easy Chestnut Flour and Start Baking
“Kay-Lee. You need to stop. Even in the dark I can see you’re gray in the face.”
“Can’t stop. Not yet,” I answered her, trying to hide how truly tired I was. Tired and getting discouraged at all the work that needs to be done and remembering all the roadblocks that keep being put in our way.
She said, “We’ve got all the apples we can handle. We don’t need any more right now. Maybe they’ll leave some and we can get them another day.”
I nodded. “I agree but I saw lightning up in the foothills. It looks like what happened right before that last bit of rain we had. The drought is trying to come to and end and there’s trouble in that just as much as there is good. I need to get those bushels of acorns and bring them back to the house. We may have enough apples, but we can’t afford to lose the acorns. That’s going to be the only flour we have this winter. As it is we’ve probably lost a bunch to wild animals even though we hid and covered them up.”
“Let me get my coat. I’ll come with you.”
“No. You stay here. You can’t lift those bushel baskets anyway. I’ll take Davey and he can pull the sheet metal skid with me. The blasted dog is as strong as an ox and stubborn as a mule, might as well put it to use. Harley will think it is a game and play too much so he’ll stay here and guard.”
“There’s no talking you out of this is there.” It was statement, not question. “Even if it makes you so sore you won’t be able to walk for a couple of days.”
I shrugged whether Barbara could see me in the dark or not. “The weather that’s coming may cripple me up either way. Better to work while I can.
# # # # #
The loss of the kudzu was a horrible blow. I nearly panicked wondering if they had gotten the remainder of the wild forage as well with their blasted defoliants. But God protected us, and at least on our place they hadn’t. Fairy potatoes, autumn olive berry, wild plums, paw paws, kousa dogwood fruit, wild greens. The drought made finding edible wild mushrooms too much work but there were a few here and there if you got lucky. The garlic was worth ten times its weight in gold and I tried not to harvest too much so we’d have more to grow next year. The muscadines had ripened and with Burt’s help he and I brought in every bunch we could put our hands on, snakes or no snakes.
Persimmons were ripening and it was only because of how much work they were that the inspectors left them alone. They also didn’t travel to market well and spoiled quickly, making a mess. Their loss was our gain, and it’s a rare day that I don’t process at least a five-gallon bucket full. The pulp goes onto lined drying trays, that after completion are stored in the coolest part of the fruit cellar. A chest freezer I hope to make ice for once the temperature drops far enough. With luck the persimmons won’t give out until next month, November.
Burt helped me harvest the last run of honey as well. Afterwards we let the bees retire for the year and only have to work for themselves. On our own with no one teaching us we got a little over eight gallons of honey from the two hives we found. Not bad. Not great, but at this point I take any addition to our inventory as providential. We’ve already used a lot of it to preserve what we harvest but there’s still some and we’ve learned we don’t need nearly as much sweetenings as we used to think we needed. I’m not sure Burt even remembers what a soda tastes like anymore. He certainly hasn’t asked for any for a long time.
Two of the items that started coming in during September that really helped were chestnuts and pecans. I mostly made chestnut flour[1] out of the first. It was work but once I had them roasted and dehydrated, they fit in my spice grinder and could be done by hand. Chestnut flour is thought to be a gourmet food these days, used only in fancy kitchens, but all the way back to medieval times it was thought to be a poor man’s food, a substitute for grain flours. It only makes flat bread because it has no gluten but flat bread is still bread and there are a lot of carbs in it which translates into energy food to us. Too bad the only chestnuts left are the ones with grubs in them. On the other hand, Burt uses those grubs to fish with and the ponds and creeks that still have water in them, the fish fight over them something ferocious. What the fish don’t get, he tosses to the “feather dusters” so they have protein to go with their garden scraps
The pecans I harvest by the tarp full. I tie the tarp closed and then drag it back to the house at night. They’re nearly as much work as the chestnuts, especially cracking them. But it is something I can sit and do when I can’t do anything else, and we need the oils and fats in the nutmeats.
October has been a month of “the end of’s” as well, just in a different way from September. It’s the end of the apples and the harvesters will be here tomorrow. It’s been the end of the pears. It’s the end of the watermelons though if the harvesters don’t split them open in meanness tomorrow, I intend on harvesting the culls left in the field. They aren’t pretty and aren’t always ripe, but some is better than none and the children love the juicy red fruit and will be sad to see the last of them. I really should stop and get at least a couple tonight but I’m barely putting one foot in front of another.
It’s also been the last of the cabbage, beets, pumpkins, okra, onions, and the never-ending zucchini. Carrots will continue to come it through November. So will winter and summer squash though the varieties are limited. I got a few heads of Cauliflower this month and hope to get a few more before the harvesters take them all. This month and next the last of the celery will be blanched but we already have so much, the rest will have to be dried, at least what Burt and Jolene don’t chew on like it’s candy. I try to fill them with a nut butter and raisins when I can. They both need the protein. So does Barbara. I worry for them all. Leeks, turnips, and parsnips have replaced all the other root crops except for carrots. Chard, kale, and collard greens; I serve one (or all) at at least one meal a day. We all need the vitamins and minerals. Barbara especially needs the folates to make sure her baby develops the right way.
If not for the other wild forage, October would be the month we’d be in trouble with the kudzu now gone. The more I think about it, the angrier I become. How dare the inspectors, harvesters, politicians, and all the others come in and just take things that they didn’t work for themselves. But I can’t waste my energy on anger or thinking vengeful thoughts. It exhausts me and I still have a ways to go.
Forage, forage, forage. I feel like the squirrels and rabbits that Burt uses his wrist rocket to bring home for the only meat we get that we can be seen eating during the day. The inspection teams guards or those the overseers use with the harvesters are used to me skinning and gutting such things as squirrels, rabbits, frogs, sometimes fish, and even the occasional turtle. I give the offal to the dogs as extry on top of what they catch for themselves. And the guards know not to mess with the dogs, have a healthy respect for them in fact, and warn off anyone else not to mess with them. They’ve even got special tags to show we have permits for them. We got those when the dogs went savage on a man that went beserk and started hurting people with a machete out in the orchard.
“Those are some damn fine dogs Ms. Hartford. Damn fine,” the inspector of the day said. It was he that got them the special tags.
Barbara asked me if I felt bad about what the dogs had done and how it was viewed by the inspectors. At least she waited until the children had gone to bed before asking me. “You want the truth?” I told her. “Not particularly.”
“They said he was a rebel, someone trying to overthrow the current government. That would make him a hero.”
“I know what they called him. He might even have called himself that. But what he was doing was getting between me and Burt and Jolene and you with a deadly weapon. He was hacking at other people that might have been rebels too for all we know. Regardless of what people called him, what he was was flipped out and looking to get put down like he was rabid.”
“That’s how you see it?”
“Barbara, had that man cut you, regardless of what he thought he was doing, you could have died. At a minimum you might have gone into labor and lost the baby. I wasn’t going to let that happen.”
She looked at me, heard my words, and then in a shocked voice said, “You set them on that man. They didn’t just do it for no reason, you told them to.”
“Yes I did. And no, I don’t feel bad. You or the children or both were in his sights. And those idiot guards were moving like slow molasses. I can’t believe they didn’t pull their guns.”
Quietly she said, “They didn’t have any bullets Kay-Lee. The guns are for show.”
“What?!” I asked, shocked in spite of myself.
“At least that’s what I heard some of them grumbling about.”
“Maybe they’ll give us ammo now. How are we supposed to do our job if we don’t have the tools to do it?”
“You mean all this time …”
“I don’t know about all this time,” she said. “But I do know the overseers have loaded weapons, but they were out at the road and didn’t get here before the dogs … did what they did.”
Sawyer didn’t have much good to say when he heard next time he came home. He wasn’t angry at me or the dogs, he was upset we’d been put into such a position. He did double check on what those collars meant and could we lose the dogs. The answer to that is no, in fact it protects the dogs from confiscation or from them being taken for training to be guard dogs in town.
# # # # #
“Kay-Lee I’m putting my foot down. No more. As it is the light before dawn is not that far off and there’s a smell of rain in the air. There might be no harvesting done today anyway if it rains like if feels like it wants to.”
“All right.” I felt a tug. “Hang on Harley, Davey is tired and I need to get him loose out of the harness. Then you two can go on the house. I’ve got each of you a bone you can gnaw on the kitchen rug.”
“Where did you get dog bones from?” Barbara asked as she helped to slide the bushel baskets of acorns inside once I’d gotten them onto the Old Kitchen’s porch.
“I found a deer carcass. It had already been picked clean so the bones aren’t messy.” What I didn’t say is that I only tripped on them when Davey leaned into me pushing me back towards the house. There was something out in the night he didn’t care for. I’d sensed it before … a mountain spook of some type. This one definitely gave off a dangerous vibe and it wasn’t one the dogs had run across before or Davey would have wagged his tail once to let me know even if he had kept pushing me on. Whoever they are, none of them have ever bothered me or come near the house. I’ll admit to being tempted to try and make contact, but I’ve always gotten the impression it wouldn’t be welcome. So be it. I’ve got things to do myself and don’t need people getting in the way of it more than they already do. So long as they don’t become a threat to me and mine, I’ll pass them by and pretend they aren’t there.
[1] Make This Easy Chestnut Flour and Start Baking