by Pete Thorsen
I had cleaned the cannon up after having used it and made additional loads to have ready just in case it was ever needed again. I prayed I would not have to shoot it again for our protection.
With the fall weather there were different wild things for us to gather from the surrounding areas to supplement our food supply. One of the things I taught Beth about gathering and using was acorns for food. She learned how the acorns contained way too much tannins which had to be leached out by soaking the ‘nuts’ in a couple changes of water before they could be eaten.
When she asked how to tell the nuts had been washed enough to remove the tannins I just had her taste one without being soaked. She tasted the bitterness and then I had her taste one of the batch that had been soaked in two or three changes of water. That now had a sweet nutty taste so it was easy to tell the tannins were gone or drastically reduced.
I showed her how the acorns could then be ground into a course meal and used for things like pancakes (or what I called pancakes anyway) that were actually quite tasty.
While acorns were certainly a viable and tasty food, it was a chore to remove them from their shell. We tried removing the shells before soaking while they were dry and after soaking while they were wet and either way it was still a chore to remove the shell.
The shelled acorns still had to be soaked to remove the tannic acid which makes them bitter and too much of this acid can make you sick. The result was worth the effort because the acorns were then tasty and some could be chopped and added to many other dishes and baked goods. They were not bad just eating them as a snack too.
There was some hazel nut brush in one area where we gathered those nuts for our use. Mother Nature provided many things for us to eat in just about every season. We just needed to know what we could eat and when was the correct time to harvest this bounty. To me it was silly to let this natural food supply go to waste. Well not really go to waste because nature used everything. I guess I just wanted to be included in the use of all these edibles like all my family had before me.
Beth was a trooper and was not shy about trying everything we gathered. She did try altering the recipes that our family had always used for many of the things we gathered. Naturally sometimes these recipe alterations led to great successes and sometimes not so much.
The electric power was still on even though we had no way to pay the bill any longer. Of course we no longer got any bills because the mail service had stopped a long time back.
We had everything we needed to survive but the lack of news was what we really missed the most. It was quite a change from the news overload that Americans had enjoyed before things had collapsed. News everywhere including on our TVs, news on our radios, news on our computers, and even news on our cell phones or should I say our ‘smart’ phones. And to now when there was no news of any kind it was very disconcerting to say the least.
With the beggars now almost never seen we often left the house empty again while we traveled here and there together. We visited all our neighbors using our bicycles just to make the trip faster without using any of our very precious fuel.
Without any other contact with the outside world these visits with our neighbors were a treat. Neighbors would stop by our house off and on also just to pass the time. We also did do some trading between us. I had no chickens or cows and we traded for eggs and milk. In the spring Beth and I decided to get a few chickens from one neighbor so we would have our own supply of eggs. He was not just a neighbor but also a friend and agreed to the trade.
I traded odds and ends of items I had gathered before the economy had fallen apart. I also traded my labor sometimes.
I knew we could survive here on our little homestead but few people in America had the benefits of living on a small farm like ours. Most people would be suffering and I felt it would only get worse. I knew that already many had very likely died and more would follow. This winter would be devastating for everyone living in the colder climates. They would die from exposure, starvation, lack of medications, and some from violence. I really doubted that any of the roads would be plowed clear of snow for the whole winter.
All of our technology would not be much help to most of our nation’s population. Beth and I had started using everything up that was in our freezer because I thought our electric power could stop at any time. If the nation’s power grid went down it would spell doom for a very large chunk of our population. It would mean the end of fresh water for just about everyone. That windmill we had here on the farm would then be a very precious item indeed.
I knew the gas I had on hand even with fuel stabilizer added to it would not last all that long so I did not hesitate to use my gas powered chain saw to add more firewood to the stacks and stacks that we already had here on our farm. I would not let Beth run the chain saw but she did carry and stack a lot of the firewood we made.
Most of the bigger pieces requiring it I split by hand but some I threw aside and when I had a pile I brought over my old gas-powered log splitter and used that on the hard to split pieces. I had many pieces of equipment here on the farm that while well used were still functional like my old log splitter.
I had no idea how long it would be before our nation got back up and running again but I thought it might very well be a year or even more. The one thing I would surely miss if it was that long was when we ran out would be the propane. That gas cook stove would be quite a loss. Though I thought we might have enough propane on hand so if we were careful and rationed it some we could have enough for at least couple years anyway maybe even three years. And after that it would be open fires or the wood stove for all our cooking needs. While it could certainly be done, like I said I would miss the ease and convenience of just using the propane stove.
Maybe things would get better long before then. I sure hoped so.
Chapter 13
The weather warmed more than usual for this time of year and Beth and I were relaxing on the porch when she turned to me.
“It does not seem right that we are just sitting out here on the porch while the whole nation burns down.”
“I don’t really see anything we can do about it. We do help our neighbors when our help is needed but for right now most of the work is done. Gardens are all done. Some are doing some butchering now but they don’t need our help for that. We could gather more firewood and we likely will but it sure is not critical to do so with all we have on hand already. We have worked hard all summer to get to this point.”
“I know everyone around here has worked hard and maybe that is why now I don’t feel right just relaxing.”
“There is always work that needs doing. This week we will take the pickup and trailer over and get a load of old manure to put on the garden and then till it in so the garden can be ready for spring planting. After the manure is tilled into the soil I will water the garden several times to use up all the water in the big tank so it won’t freeze over winter.
There seems to always be mending we can do on our work clothes though that is a good project for during the winter months. I will shoot at least one more deer at some point and we will then make that into more jerky to help tide us over the spring and summer months. We will render some of the fat and tallow from the deer and make some lye soap.”
“I am curious about making our own soap. I have talked with some of the other women about it but only one had ever done it before and she said that was long time ago when she was just a kid helping her mom. I never knew you could even make your own soap.”
“That’s why all the books I have are so important. There are many things that were done by most people in the past that have been lost and all but forgotten because we have all been so spoiled because we could always just go to the store day or night and buy anything we would need and we have had to make nothing for ourselves.”
“I just feel like we should be doing more.”
“We were quite busy this summer and fall and in the spring we will be so busy we will wish for
more time. But we are farmers now and there is a reason farmers take their vacations in the winter. It is the slow time. Even though it is not winter yet we have pretty much caught up and have done what was needed to be done. Just wait until this winter when there really is very little to do.”
“Everything you say is true I know but it is just this feeling that I can’t shake. I feel I should be working or doing more.”
“Maybe you would feel better if you came over here and sat in my lap?”
Beth looked at me and smiled then a moment later she was sitting in my lap. Soon after I think she forgot about everything else except us.
We did have work to do and over the next many days we stayed pretty busy. We got the manure hauled back to our place and one load was plenty and did not use too much of our fuel supply. Next we unloaded and spread the manure using just hand tools onto our garden plot. Then it was tilling the garden to incorporate the manure into the soil. I had hauled way more manure than we needed on purpose so I could put it in a pile for next years use. Over the next few days we drained what water remained in the big water storage tank onto the garden to help start breaking down the manure. Plus the water had to be drained out before winter anyway.
We spent some time pruning and cutting back some of the trees and brush that surrounded the home place. This had to be done every year or soon we would have no yard and be living in the middle of a woods. By keeping everything cut back it made a fire break around all the homestead’s buildings. With the way things are now it also gave us a better field of fire if we were attacked.
I spent some time working on the old chicken coop getting it ready to receive chickens in the spring. Beth helped with everything and scoffed at me saying it was man’s work. She made it very plain to me that there was only work and no such things as woman’s work or man’s work. I did not bring up the subject again.
We still gathered more firewood but we had so much on hand that we did not work very hard at that project. We did gather all the dead wood we found that was large enough to be worth bringing back home. Years ago we had made a large two wheeled open front cart that worked very well for transporting firewood and the cart got plenty of use this fall. It was more work and much slower than using the pickup but it also used no fuel and because making more firewood was not critical we had started just using the cart instead of the truck.
When again the temperature fell I did shoot another deer and besides the meat we saved all the fat and tallow to use. We then made soap using no products that were purchased.
On four different days Beth went and helped with projects at our neighbors. I went with but my help was not needed or wanted by the other wives. Plus it was a good chance for Beth to get better acquainted with some of the local women.
Following the natural order of things, fall of course turned into winter. Temps dropped farther and we would get occasional snow flurries. Not that it really mattered to us but we did miss having the news so we would have some advance knowledge of approaching weather conditions. By the first of the year the winter looked like it would be milder than average. But then you can never trust the weather.
The last week of January was relatively mild and Beth and I were spending more time outdoors taking advantage of the warm weather. When the storm clouds came rolling in we thought nothing of it.
The warm temperatures brought rain instead of winter snow. Then the temps dropped dramatically and the rain quickly turned to ice. Over night we lost electric power. In the morning it was very obvious why the power had went out.
Everything outside was coated with a healthy layer of ice. Tree limbs were all sagging way down with many broken off. Every overhead wire had a heavy coat of ice on it and were really sagging though it looked like none right on the place here had snapped. Then the wind picked up and first the wires and then the tree limbs started shedding their coating of ice. It was raining chucks if ice even though the sky was now clear.
We both knew the electric power would now be off for an extended time. Electric lines were likely down all over in this area and we had no idea just how wide spread the ice storm had extended. For all we knew the ice storm could have covered several states and not just our little homestead.
Who would tackle the massive job of repairing all the electric transmission lines? With the power down people would now be facing deadly consequences. No power for cooking, heating, refrigeration, no water, and in many cases no sewer either. Unheated buildings would have all the water lines freeze and burst causing huge amounts of damage.
In many cases people would likely freeze to death in their homes. Many places would likely start on fire from people starting fires to try and stay warm. With the power down even if there were some firemen still working they would not have access to water for fighting any fires. Large sections of cities and many suburban and rural homes would probably all burn to the ground and spread to others nearby.
Even if people escaped the burning buildings where would they go for shelter? Many very valuable resources would be lost in these fires. Food and manufactured items that would be difficult or impossible to replace with the nation in this extended severe economic depression that we were in now would be lost in these fires.
All that doom was if the power was out in a wide area. Hopefully this bad ice storm was just a local event only though even that would be bad enough.
We had already been using the wood stove to heat the house and even used it for most of the simple cooking chores so not much changed on that score for us even with the loss of the electric power. We had been using an electric heater in the main bathroom for extra heat and now that would be lost. We would also lose the running water in the house.
In the spring I could likely rig up a very low pressure gravity water system for the house from the windmill so we would not have to carry water but for the remainder of the winter our water would have to be carried from the windmill up into the house. We could still use the toilets of course but we would have to fill the toilet tanks using a bucket. All water for drinking, cooking, washing, and flushing would have to be hand carried into the house.
Even considering all the that extra work we were one of the very few lucky ones that still had a fresh clean water supply available to us. Clean drinking water would be a very major issue for almost every single person in any area that had lost electric power.
Chapter 14
For the first couple weeks we both really missed the loss of electric power in many ways. But like humans have always done we adapted and we gradually missed electricity less and less as we adapted to our new ‘normal’ situation. Everything that seemed so slow and cumbersome at first became just the way it was done and we got used to it.
We got visits from a couple of the close neighbors and they lamented the loss of the electric power. They all looked at our windmill with envy while they visited us. Once very common, water windmills are now very seldom seen, at least in working condition. Often those windmills you see spinning in the distance are no longer hooked up and functioning. They are just spinning free doing absolutely nothing except providing everyone a glimpse of a past life.
I was not very worried about our neighbors getting water because this area near here had a fair amount of surface water that could and would be used. If the power remained off for a long time I suppose some would dig wells if a good location was found for one close to their houses. The work of digging a well would likely be way easier than lugging all their water a distance every single day.
Now in winter the loss of refrigeration was not much of an issue but come summer it would certainly take some adjusting on our part. As of now we were using up everything we had that required freezing or refrigeration. We were doubly thankful that we had chosen to jerk all that deer meat we had. I had previously stored some powdered milk that we would have to start using. It is an acquired taste but I suppose we will get used to it until we get it used up.
The oil lamps we were now using worked fine and
even produced a little heat besides just the light which was welcomed now in the cold winter months. Unlike the newer gas kitchen stoves the oven on our older one worked fine without any electric power.
Some people might think that the loss of electric power is not that big of a deal. After all our ancestors lived just fine without electric power their whole lives and humanity thrived and built up the world like it is today. Even today we sometimes have short term power outages and people get by just fine.
While that statement is obviously true; our ancestors did thrive without electric power. But since electric power has taken over our world we have shunned the ‘old ways’ and built our whole world around that power source and we have become totally dependent on its use, now without that power most people will not survive.
The list of problems that the loss of electricity entails is almost endless and many of those problems are catastrophic. Everyone in any city (and most rural homes) relies on the electric power grid to provide clean water, remove our sewage, cook our meals, provide heating and cooling, provide light, provide transportation (through subways and electric trains), pump the fuels for our cars and trucks, and the list goes on and on almost without end.
The fact is we have ‘advanced’ until we are just totally dependant on that constant electric power grid for our very everyday survival. So take that power away for any meaningful length of time and the people in this nation will start dying. The longer the power remains off the more people will die. It is sad but that is just the way it is in our country today. It is not really anyone’s fault that we have come to rely on that electric power so much; it is just the way it is.
Naturally there are exceptions. Some very rural homes are ‘off-grid’ and make their own electric power or instead have adapted to not use electric power at all. Here on our farm Beth and I have used electric power but enough of the ‘old’ infrastructure is still here so we can get by more comfortably than most other folks. Access to clean water is essential to life. We are lucky enough to have that functioning windmill to provide us with clean water but think of everyone else. How will they get a constant supply of clean drinking water? You need clean drinking water every single day.