by Pete Thorsen
The station told the truth that they had been forced to only transmit the government programs but were now free though they were waiting for satellite feed to show national and world events. In the mean time they could only report that the Homeland Security troops had left the immediate area after taking heavy losses from fighting with local citizens. Many citizens had also been killed.
There were reports that most towns had trade or flea markets set up where anyone could freely trade items with others. In many towns the churches were trying to get food to those in need. People were worried about the winter that was approaching and many feared that everyone would be hard hit over the winter and deaths were expected from both the cold and from starvation.
The station was telling everyone to open their homes to others so fewer homes had to be heated during winter. In some areas deer and livestock were being butchered and distributed amongst families. The TV station warned that the electric power grid was fragile and could go down at anytime. Everyone was urged to keep that in mind regarding heating their homes with wood stoves and some non-electric heaters used if available. Again they urged to plan ahead as no one knew what the future would bring. Expect the worst and hope for the best but make preparations for the winter now before it hit.
As it got cooler the men at the ranch (and a couple of the women) started hunting. To conserve their fuel they always walked but ranged a few miles in each direction. There were several natural ponds where they found ducks and geese and on most trips they returned with quail. They were able to bag a few turkeys and two of these were used on Thanksgiving with two more frozen and saved for Christmas dinner. Many rabbits were bagged with both Jack rabbits and Cottontails included.
After finding some sign in one area Al and Bob went back and returned with a feral hog. Pork was a welcome addition to the meals. All coyotes were shot whenever they were seen to reduce the competition for small game. They all also shot any dogs and cats that were seen. There were many deer in the area and one was shot and brought home.
Everyone liked venison but they viewed the local deer as their livestock and saved them for later when they maybe got short on other meat because currently they had plenty. All the hunters would report where they shot the game and how many were seen so they would not deplete any of the local populations too much.
Liz hunted with a 22 rifle and was a crack shot with it. She brought home many game birds by making all head shots. She had shot a large number of doves that way and because they were migratory did not worry at all about depleting the local supply.
One of the early projects they had completed at the ranch was the addition of a fair sized greenhouse that was built against the south side of the barn. That was really paying off now with the cooler weather and they were still enjoying fresh vegetables with their meals. Part of their early planning had been Long Term Storage foods and the three siblings that did not live at the ranch full time had bought large amounts of this food for quite some time before the collapse so they had a lot stockpiled.
Art and Joy had home canned quite a bit of produce from their garden and from their fruit trees. Of course with eight adults and three children it took a large amount of food to keep everyone fed. But they had plenty of chickens for eggs and the three milk cows provided plenty of milk, butter, and some cheese. One of the group purchases had been a grain mill for making their own flour. While they did not grow any wheat themselves it was harvested on many of the surrounding farms.
They had many five gallon pails of wheat along with many more of flour. They also had purchased a lot of regular white rice. It was cheap and could be stored almost forever. It was also something that they could not buy or grow locally. They had several hundred pounds of rice and used it often for meals or added into recipes. They knew they could also grind it into flour but doubted they would ever need to because wheat was the most popular cash crop in Oklahoma.
They worried very little about food. They had a very large supply on hand and could grow plenty where they lived and though some people thought the land looked barren there were plenty of game birds and game animals around that they could eat.
They used propane for cooking and for heat but had a large supply on hand with three one thousand gallon tanks and four smaller ones. They had a five hundred gallon tank at the main house that had been there for many years and was plenty big for their needs. Then when the other three houses had been built they had set 250 gallon tanks next to them for their use which they had all agreed would likely be adequate. Then when Art had been at an auction at a large farm quite some distance away there had been brought up for auction three one-thousand gallon propane tanks that had been used for the large grain drying operations.
They were having a tough time getting any bids on the tanks and Art had bought all three for four hundred dollars apiece which was a huge bargain. It had cost some to get them hauled back to the ranch and then they had hooked them up and gradually had them filled until all three were full (that had been a major expense). The propane never went ‘bad’ and could stay in the tanks for many years and it would take several years just to use it all up which made all of them happy knowing they had all that propane for cooking and for heating.
Chapter Ten
They had a great Christmas even without any presents. The ladies went all out for the meal and other than the necessary daily chores everyone stayed together in the old ranch house all day long and into the evening. Many games were played that included the children. Several Christmas stories were read to the kids and they even sang Christmas carols. Everyone was happy and gave thanks that they were all together and were warm and well fed. No matter what the rest of the world was like they all agreed that it was the best Christmas they could remember.
The weather got cold in January and Joy asked the guys to shoot another deer. She said as long as they had to heat the houses anyway they could use the ovens in each house and make some venison jerky. The guys were quick to agree and the next day they returned with a deer which was promptly quartered then brought in and with many helpers it was cut into thin slices which were soaked in Joy’s special secret sauce and then dried in the ovens under a very low heat.
Of the scraps that could not be used for jerky some were used in a stew for that night and the rest was ground into ‘hamburger’. The venison jerky was a big hit with all the family from kids to adults. They all thought it would be something they could likely sell or trade because it could be kept quite awhile without spoiling and did not need to be in the refrigerator or freezer.
Joy told the guys that the way they were all eating it all up she doubted any would be able to ever be saved to sell or trade. Two days later with Joy’s permission they shot another deer and made it all into jerky again.
Joy also told the guys that they could probably make their own hams and she would like to try it. It took them two days to find and kill a feral pig. After some cutting they soaked the meat in heavy salt brine with a little sugar mixed in. After the soaking the meat was cooked in water that was kept well below the boiling point until the meat reached a high enough internal temp to kill all bad things that might be in the meat. The ham tasted good but was not the reddish color that they were all familiar with. The color made no difference to any of them. It tasted like ham and that was what counted.
The days went by and they watched the TV but it did not transmit on a regular basis. When they did catch it on it was still just local news which did not amount to much. No one got any news from outside the state with the phones and internet still down. Not that it really mattered that much to those on the ranch. They had no intention of leaving to go anywhere but were still concerned for their country.
They lost some of the plants in the greenhouse when it got pretty cold for a few nights in a row. They had plenty of seeds and after a week of warmer weather they replanted what they had lost. If any of them had thought about it they would have put an electric heater in the greenhouse for those cold nights but h
indsight is always twenty-twenty.
They did not know if they were even being charged for electricity anymore because there had been no mail delivery for months now. Art and Joy had most of their bills on auto pay anyway so the money may have been deducted from their checking account. At least someone in the government must be smart enough to see to it that the electric power generating plants continue to operate. There would be total devastation if the whole country went dark; at least they assumed there was power everywhere as long as they had it here at the ranch they hoped everyone had it.
Everyone wondered what was going to happen with the money situation. They all assumed the government would come out with a new currency to replace the dollar. That was to be a fiasco for sure and many people would get mad about it no matter how it worked out. To make sense the new money would likely be ‘worth’ more than the old dollars and when people found out they would only get one new ‘dollar’ for several of the old ones they would not like it.
Plus it would be a long transition period because prices would be in flux for some time even after the new money came out. Plus what would the government do with the trillions of dollars held by foreign governments? That none of them on the ranch could decide.
Then there were all the bonds from all the levels of government from the Federal on down to local. And what about all the money in pensions and Social Security? Then there was wages, private companies could likely figure that out fairly quickly but government wages would be fought over for a long time. The whole old money, new money thing would be a total nightmare that would take months or even years to find all the answers.
The awful truth that there would be way fewer citizens to worry about it as the death toll by the end of winter from when this all started would be huge. Without a doubt millions of Americans would die from starvation, from freezing, and from all the violence. It was something none of those on the ranch wanted to think about.
But they had hope and trust in the American people to overcome this huge disaster. The amount of work ahead was daunting but it would be done, of that they had no doubts.
Chapter Eleven
Once they got past January and almost through February chance of freezing temperatures dropped but it was still too cold to risk planting in the garden. In March it was much safer and the garden season was started. They planted many things in the greenhouse to get them started. They worked up the garden and enlarged it to more than double its former size. They worked in both manure and some of the compost they had. They planted more of just about everything this year and they really expanded their potato patch.
As soon as the temperatures had gone up very much they had let their chickens free range to reduce the amount of feed they were using. With the warmer weather they let several batches of eggs hatch to increase their number of chickens. March saw an increase in rain and that with the warmer temperatures helped everything green up remarkably well. With so many on the ranch now the poor weeds in the garden hardly had a chance to poke up through the ground before they were pulled.
Al welded up a simple steel fence post puller and pulled all the angled posts they had put in the hay field to stop the vehicles. They also pulled up all the stakes and barb wire that they had used to slow the soldiers that had attacked them. The twelve gauge poppers all along the driveway were also removed. All the defensive equipment was stored carefully so it could be deployed quickly if the need ever arose again. All of them hoped that stuff would never again be needed but all continued to carry guns whenever they were outside.
They still checked the TV every evening but it was still just ‘local’ news and only transmitted occasionally. One evening Art said he thought they should make a trip into the little town nearby and check things out. He wanted to get a feel about the need for hay before he used their precious fuel for putting up the hay.
It was decided to go the next day which happened to be a Saturday (not that it mattered) and four adults would go and four would remain on the ranch. They asked the two twins if they would like to go and they were quite excited at the prospect of a trip to town. So they waited until mid-morning the next day and with some inside (including the twins) and the rest riding in the back of the pickup the left for town. It was not very far away and they drove slowly so those in back did not suffer from the wind.
The town looked no different at all and a couple people were seen walking here and there. They drove to a friend’s house to check on how they were doing and get the scoop on situation in town. Their friends (Frank and Lilly) were home and very happy to see Art, Joy, and the twins. They were briefly introduced to the others and all were invited inside but warned it might be best to leave someone in the truck to which Bob and Dean promptly decided to do and the twins said they would stay with truck also. Both Art and Joy had seen how thin their friends were and wished they had brought some food with to give them.
Once inside Frank told them of the rather dire situation in the town. The town’s people did not keep a lot of food on hand and the little general store was quickly depleted of anything edible. There were several hunters in town and they had brought in many game animals which they shared with the town.
This had been a tremendous help but then the Homeland Security people had come to town. The soldiers had wanted to collect all the food but found there was almost none to be had. They did do house searches and while they took no food they did take all the guns and ammunition they found. They also took all the fuel supplies they could find.
The troopers had then gone out of town into the rural areas. The town’s people noticed that often fewer troopers returned than went out. Then one day all the remaining troopers had left and not ever returned and the couple of office types that had remained left right away after that. A couple people had hidden guns and everyone had pooled what fuel they could scavenge around the town for the hunters to use.
Art and Joy were shocked and promised to do what they could to help. They asked if everyone in town was planting gardens and were assured that just about every seed had been planted and was being tended like their very lives depended on it. Art said they would return tomorrow afternoon and bring some food but that they could not feed everyone in town.
Art promised to do everything he could and had a couple ideas that might help. Frank asked Art to bring the food to the Baptist Church and they would see that it was distributed fairly. He would stop over there in the morning to tell them food was coming.
With that they bid goodbye to their friends and headed back to the ranch. On the way home Art stopped at every farm and ranch on the way home. He told everyone about the plight of the people in town and urged compassion and to give what ever they could to the townsfolk to try to keep them alive until their gardens were producing and please drop anything off at the Baptist Church because that was the whole town’s distribution point.
When they got home Art dropped the others off and left again to spread the word to other nearby farms and ranches about the situation in town and to ask them to give whatever food they could spare to those in desperate need.
At the ranch when the others heard about the situation they all said they could go hunting early tomorrow morning and could likely get at least a deer or two to bring in with whatever else they thought they could spare from their food stocks.
All knew they couldn’t give up all their food as none knew how long this situation would last and it might stretch into another year or more. But they would bring in a hundred pounds of rice and a few other things from their larder plus whatever meat they could bag in the morning.
By the next afternoon when Art, Al, and Bob went to town they brought with two deer and a feral pig along with the rice and vegetables. The church was full of people. It seemed that many rural residents had already showed up with food of all kinds to help the town.
There were even some live chickens and two milk cows. There was plenty of help to unload the deer and feral pig and they said rest assured that none of the me
at would go to waste. When Frank spotted Art he couldn’t thank him enough for all the help he had provided to the town.
Art explained that he had only done what was right and many other people from outside of town had sacrificed to give what they felt they could. Apparently Frank had told those in the church that Art was the leading force behind the huge out pouring of food and supplies the town was receiving and soon a crowd had gathered around Art’s truck and would not let them leave until every person there had thanked him in person.
Everyone at the ranch was happy and relieved to find out about all the food and supplies that the rural people had provided to those in the town. It just showed again how generous and caring the American people really are.
When Art had went to all the ranches in the area he had taken the opportunity to see if there would be any amount of hay needed this year.
The answer was yes but payment would be an issue because they was no real money right now. Art had told those that needed hay that some barter or an IOU would work and it could be decided later. He would put up hay the same as always so it would be available to those that needed it and payment details could be worked out at that time.
As spring continued the garden was growing and plants in the greenhouse were either used and eaten or transplanted into the garden. They were already harvesting some early things in the garden. The hay was growing very well and it would be soon time for the first cutting. It would be a little trickier this year without any weather forecasts and would have to be done with Art’s best guess as to whether it would rain or not before the hay was dry.
As part of the planning before the collapse of the dollar Art had the ranch diesel tank filled so they had plenty of fuel for both the first and second cutting of hay with some left over. The following year they would need more fuel because they would only have enough remaining for one cutting of hay, if even that much. Hopefully by that time the nation would be back on its feet and fuel would again be available.