My grandparents had a large well dug many years ago, with both an electric pump and a hand pump for use during the frequent power outages that occur in such a rural area. There are also two windmill-powered wells for the animals, one near the barn, and one out in one of the pastures.
Up until they died three years ago, Grandpa grew wheat, corn, and hay in the big fields out behind the barn, and Grandma kept a huge vegetable and herb garden. I don’t have time to be a farmer right now, although I hope that eventually I will retire and learn how. At least then I won’t have to pay someone for hay and grains to feed the animals!
Chris and Jon were young teenagers when we moved to Riverdale, and after living on a military base they loved the freedom and space afforded by the farm. They said they wanted to live on the farm when they were older, and their great-grandparents promised they could each have a house there if they wanted. Tragically, before that could happen, Grandma died suddenly one spring afternoon of a massive stroke. Grandpa followed her several months later – I think of a broken heart. I was astounded to find out that not only did they leave everything to me, but they also left enough money in trust to build a house for each of the boys! In addition, they never spent any of the money left to them when my parents died. It took me almost two years to get my act together and have plans drawn up for the extensions (the boys call them the East and West Wings), with lots of input from Chris, Stacy, Gabby, and Jon. We finally were able to break ground in August. Now that it is early October, the buildings are framed and weatherproofed, and we are almost done finishing the internal structures.
I am really pleased with the way the construction is turning out. My house is a large farmhouse with a wrap-around porch and a metal roof. I have six bedrooms in my section, with four bathrooms, an office off the living room, and a small room next to the kitchen I call my upstairs pantry. The new wings are on each side of the house, but pushed back somewhat. The porch carries around the wings to the back. There is an attached garage on the back of each wing. My garage is not attached, but is not very far from my back porch, which now sits in between the two wings. Each wing is self-contained with its own kitchen, living room, four bedrooms, and three baths. We had to do major renovations to the septic system to accommodate six more bathrooms, but it was worth it. The wings attach to the main house through breezeways towards the back of the house.
Each wing has a full basement. The main house also has a full basement, and the basements from each wing open into my basement, which gives us a lot of shared space down there. The basement in the main house has a large storage room and a decent-sized root cellar. My storage room is a prepper’s dream, with wall-to-wall built-in storage shelves, several movable storage racks, and even a small desk area which gives me a place to track my storage. A generous root cellar opens off the storage area and provides additional cool storage to keep my root vegetables.
The storage room takes up about a third of the basement area and is walled off with a locking door. The rest of the basement was set up as an additional family area, with a full bathroom, a fireplace, and even a small kitchenette area. When the boys were younger, they would have friends visit down there. The boys knew not to let anyone into the storage area, because Mom’s prepping habit was a family secret. I did not advertise prepping for fear people would think I was one of those crazy Doomsday survivalists or something. Even my friends did not know I was a prepper, just that I liked being prepared for emergencies. I can just hear the tin foil hat jokes now if they knew! Of course, Chris, Stacy, Jon, and Gabby knew and they understand why I prep. Chris and Stacy were looking forward to moving in so they could have room for their own prepping, but Jon and Gabby thought I was just being a bit eccentric. We frequently have conversations about the world situation, and Jon, who is ever the optimist, always insists the world is not as bad as Chris and I think it is.
The rain was starting to let up as I pulled my Jeep into the garage. After going through my usual ritual of letting the dogs out and checking on the animals, I settled down on the sofa with a cup of tea to watch the news. I’m not sure why I bother to watch these days, because all I wind up doing is yelling at the television. Kim Jong Un has his finger poised over the nuclear button on his desk; Iran is threatening Israel and the US; Russia is still making moves on the Balkan states; we are still involved in a never-ending war in the Middle East; China is building islands in international waters; the economy is in the toilet; unemployment is rampant; crime is out of control; the country is becoming polarized over things like race, sexuality, and immigration; and incidents of terrorism all over are increasing in both frequency and lethality. But are the TV stations covering any of that? No, of course not. They are spending time talking about football players who can’t stand to respect the National Anthem, the President’s latest tweet, people tearing down monuments to long-dead soldiers from the Civil War, and what movie star is going to win some stupid award. In the mind of the average American, it seems the outcome of the Super Bowl is far more important than anything going on in the world. The more I listen to the news, or rather, what the news is NOT covering, the happier I am that my grandfather taught me about prepping. Even though right now it is just me on the farm, I am hopeful that if anything really happened the kids and at least a couple of my friends would be here.
I do have hopes that I can get at least a couple of my friends to catch the prepping bug. I’ve talked about preparedness and current events at length with Marcie and Patty, and a little bit with Janet. All three seem interested, but I am moving slowly because I don’t want to scare them. Maybe while I am vacation, I can get them over and we can do some canning or something.
Chapter 2
The first few days of my vacation were blissfully peaceful. The concerns my contractor had about the construction were minor things that were easily taken care of. On Saturday the kids came over, and all four were thrilled with the progress being made. They were a little worried about not having enough furniture to fill up four bedrooms, but I told them I would help them with that when the time was right. Marcie, Frank, Janet, Marty, and the boys all came over and stayed for dinner. After dinner, the nine of us adults sat around playing Trivial Pursuit. It was a fun and relaxing evening, and we made plans to get together again soon. Sunday was stormy, and I skipped church and slept late. I spent the afternoon straightening up my supply room so that I could do some shopping the following week. It was really nice to be able to relax and not think about all of the stressful things going on at the hospital!
I decided that my first full week of vacation would be spent getting ready for winter. Although it was only the second week of October, I did not want to wait until it was freezing cold and snowing to take care of my annual chores. With Stacy’s help, we spent a whole day getting about half of the pumpkins in the garden canned, and we cut the rest of the herbs down and hung them to dry in the barn. I had both of the propane tanks filled, as well as the big diesel tank out near the barn. I cleaned the house from top to bottom, and even had time to take Ranger, my favorite horse, out for a ride one evening. I had time to do some leisurely reading, and got a number of things on my list completed. It was a wonderful feeling to have my days filled with activities I loved and to go to bed tired but happy each night.
Friday of that first week off was an especially enjoyable day. Stacy, Gabby, and I spent the morning shopping for baby things. We were able to find a beautiful antique crib with a matching changing table. Yes, I am a first time grandma, and I don’t want my soon-to-be grandson or granddaughter to want for anything! Fortunately, I am in a financial position that I can afford to get a few nice things for the baby. We also found a big old rocking chair, big enough for a bunch of comfy overstuffed pillows. That would be perfect for sitting rocking my grandchild – although I needed to remember that it was for their home, not mine. Stacy, novice prepper that she is, bought a lot of extra baby wipes, and both cloth and disposable diapers. We also bought all kinds of little jumpsuits, baby t
ee shirts, little socks, booties, and a winter bunting set. After a ton of baby shopping, the three of us went out to lunch in Riverdale. I don’t usually get a lot of time to spend with my daughters-in-law, and I really enjoyed the day. As we were finishing lunch, it started raining pretty hard, so we decided to cut our day short a bit. I dropped both girls off and headed home. Supper was a bowl of soup and some home-made bread. I spent an hour watching television and yelling at the news, and then went to bed early. The rain’s steady patter on the roof lulled me to sleep.
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I had only been asleep a few hours, though, when something woke me up. I’m not sure what was going on, but I felt really uneasy with a strong sense that something – I don’t know what – was about to happen. I got up, grabbed the handgun from my night table, and slowly walked down the hallway towards the living room. Everything was quiet, and I didn’t see anything out of place. The dogs quietly followed me down the hallway, but were not acting as though they sensed any problems. I checked all the doors and windows, and everything was still locked up tight. I peeked between the drapes into the yard but nothing seemed to be out of place there, either. The rain had finally stopped, and there was enough moonlight to make out the yard and outbuildings. Everything looked fine, but I still had this sense of… I’m not sure what. Foreboding, maybe? The quiet before the storm? I couldn’t put a name to it, but it was such a strong feeling I felt it viscerally. My gut was clenched, and I felt almost like something was trying to warn me – about what, I can’t say. I noticed my hands were shaking, and I had broken out in a cold sweat. What would cause this, I wondered? Something I ate? Was it from yelling at cable news before bed, maybe? I finally went back to bed, and all three dogs decided to flop down on the floor next to me. Although I tossed and turned for a while, I eventually was able to go back to sleep.
I woke a few hours later to a Saturday morning full of bright sunshine pouring in the bedroom window. In the back of my mind, I still had a lingering sense of something being not quite right, but I decided I had too much to do today to sit around worrying about cable news hysteria-induced fantasies. Two hours later, I was done with my shower, fed the goats, horses, cows, chickens, dogs, and Rhett and Scarlett, gathered the morning’s eggs, milked the cows, and fixed myself a cup of tea as I tried to organize my day. Grabbing a pad and pencil from my desk in the little office off the living room, I took my tea and went outside to sit on the front porch swing in the warm autumn sunshine. There were so many things I still needed to get done over the next two weeks, and I was afraid if I didn’t write things down, I’d forget something. I started making two lists. One was the list of things I absolutely had to get done, and the other list had things I wanted to get done if possible. I needed to meet with the contractor at 10, go to the grocery store, and stop by the cleaners to drop off my winter coats for cleaning before the cold weather hit. I still had about 200 pounds of pumpkin in the garden that I needed to either freeze or can. The big box store in town had solar panels on sale this weekend, and I wanted to go pick up a few to set up on the well – the less I needed to hand pump the well this winter in the event of a power failure, the happier I would be! I also needed to go by the feed store and place my winter feed order. The fence around the garden was in poor repair, and I needed to get more fencing to fix it. I made a note to call the firewood guy to deliver a load. I also needed to check on the tractors – if we had a good snow, I’d need those tractors to plow the driveway out to the road, and I wanted to be sure the plow attachment was handy and ready to put on.
The grass needed to be cut, especially under the pecan trees that were getting ready to drop their nuts. I guess I ought to put harvesting the pecans on my list, too, although it will be a couple of weeks before I’ll be able to do that. A few weeks ago, I ordered a side of beef that was supposed to be ready this week. The meat will all have to be put up in the freezers...if there is room. So…defrost and clean the freezers went onto the have to do list. After about thirty minutes of writing, I realized my lists were impossibly long. I guess that means I’ll just have to be impossibly busy for the next two weeks!
The sound of the dogs barking distracted me from my list for a minute as I watched the dogs running towards the driveway. Suddenly, I felt a chill come over me and I felt the same strange feeling as last night. What is it? Is something going on? It’s almost like I was having a premonition, except a premonition would give me a clue as to why I was feeling this way, or at least that’s what I thought.
I heard a car starting up the long twisted driveway, and I put down my lists and walked out onto the front yard. After a minute or two, I saw Tom VanZant’s old Ford F150 pick-up truck driving up to the construction area. Tom is my contractor, and I walked over to his truck to greet him. Surprisingly, he was followed by Jose Contreras and Timothy McCleary, his two carpenters.
“Hi, Tom! What’s up, and what’s with having the guys here on a weekend?” I called to him.
“Howdy! I hope you don’t mind, but they were available and I have a strong gut feeling I need to get this work finished sooner rather than later.” Tom turned to the two carpenters and gave them some brief instructions. They grabbed their tools from the back of the truck and headed over to the East Wing.
Tom walked with me to my porch with a big folder of papers under his arm.
“I know you are going to think I’m nuts, but last night I couldn’t sleep because I was worried about getting this work done. Maybe I’ve been watching the news too much, but I just have this worry in the back of my head that getting the construction finished quickly is going to be very important soon.”
I was pretty surprised to hear this from Tom, because in the many years I’ve known him, he has always been really level-headed and not prone to doing things without thinking them through really well. I related to him my sense of foreboding from last night, and we both decided we must be having some kind of reaction to all of the world events that were not covered well in the news. Tom was a news junky like me, and he shared my frustration at the slanted, skewed “news” reports we are fed every night on television. Cable news is no longer news, but is now entertainment – as if there is anything even remotely entertaining about people constantly yelling at each other. Even the local news was not reporting stories that were significant, but rather focused on silly superficial stories. Entertainment, indeed. I am not entertained, just really frustrated at feeling as though I am being fed disinformation to distract me from knowing what is really going on. Tom and I have talked many times about the “news” just being a distraction, and we’ve also talked a lot about what real stories are being kept from us. Although we’ve never discussed it, I get the feeling that Tom might be into prepping, too. He just seems to have a good sense of situational awareness, and he’s made comments at times about things like reloading ammunition and shopping in bulk that make me think preparedness is on his mind.
Tom cleared his throat, and pulled out a couple of sheets of paper. “I want to make a few changes to the interior of both wings. Let me explain what I’d like to do and why, and then we can talk about if you like the ideas and how we can implement them. First of all, I am really concerned about power. I know we’ve got underground power expanded to both wings, but I think we ought to add a full solar set-up to the house. I’d like to build a room in the basement for a full battery bank to go with the solar. If you don’t want to do solar, then I’d like to add a few small wind turbines to the hill out back.”
“Tom,” I asked, “is there a reason you are worried about back-up power, other than the frequent outages we have?”
“Yeah, I am really worried that if the economy tanks again, our utilities may fail. I also don’t trust Little Rocket Man to not set off an electromagnetic pulse and fry the grid. We hear all the time about people hacking into big companies – what’s to stop someone from hacking into our electric grid system and destroying it? With solar, though, properly shielded, you could still have power even after
any kind of grid-down situation.”
“Well, there is plenty of money in the construction budget to cover the solar, so I say let’s go for it. I’m not sure about the wind turbines, though – aren’t they huge towers?” Tom laughed.
“No, you are thinking about the giant wind turbines that are part of wind farms. I am talking about small turbines, usually about ten to twelve feet tall. They usually sit on the roof of buildings, but they will also work well on a hilltop or ridge.”
I thought about it for a minute or two. “Let’s hold off on the turbines for now. I think the solar will be enough, although it would be good to get some spares for the solar. As a matter of fact, maybe we ought to think about solar for the barn, workshop, and well, too.” Tom nodded and agreed that expanding the solar and having spares on hand would be a good idea.
“The next thing I want to talk to you about is adding a wood stove to the area between each kitchen and living room. There is that little alcove that was going to just have a bookcase, but I think a wood stove would be good to help heat each wing if the house lost power, and also to gives the kids another place to cook.” I gave my approval to that, too. I love cooking on the wood stove my grandma had installed in my kitchen, and I thought Gabby and Stacy would both learn to love it, too.
“I met with Jon and Gabby yesterday, and they gave me some additional things for the kitchen. Gabby bought a used commercial stainless refrigerator she would like to add. She also would like propane double-wall ovens. Jon tells me Gabby would like to be able to have her own cake decorating business from home some day instead of working in someone else’s bakery. I think it would be a good idea to change both wings to all propane appliances instead of electric. You already have a couple of propane tanks for the house. I would recommend adding at least two more large tanks to go with to the two you already have.”
Premonitions (Book 1): The Farm Page 3