10 Pound Bag Ch. 056-060

****Chapter Fifty-Six -- Situation Normal ****

Matilda was back.

The ignore the world and take care of business woman who was basically the ying for my yang in our camp spirit was if anything more focused than before. She still sang a song about some guy named "Ralph" every morning but that didn't seem to slow her down.

And she still didn't talk.

It was a normal Saturday and all about weekly chores and maintenance. That maintenance now included the root cellar. We reinforced any weaknesses we could find and shored it up a where necessary. It had stayed blessedly dry inside and the temperature seemed stable. We added some vertical posts down the center using large flat rocks from the creek for footers and wooden shims to make them nice and tight. I repurposed one of the tent thermometers so we could track the temp and humidity on a daily basis, temperature tracking was one of Sonya's daily chores. She was tracking it on one of the tablets, I hadn't been following how she did it just that she was doing it.

I realized then and there that I had to take firm control of the handheld technology, it was yet another finite resource that we had to ration out in hopes of extending the shelf life. After dinner that afternoon I collected up all of the phones and tablets. We actually had a pretty good inventory once piled all together on the table. I went into the electronics bay and retrieved my backup devices which were still in the box. If your plan is to go on several multi-week hunting/fishing trips out in the hinter lands of America it's a good idea to carry a backup phone.

Before the lottery I would have just the cheapest burner phone I could buy, after the lottery I just bought two of whatever I liked and I liked outdoorsman phones. I wasn't a dainty frail person and I didn't need a dainty pretty phone so everything I bought was military or construction grade. Toughness and battery life were my greatest concerns.

I got the grief as I expected when I took their phones, laptops and tablets away, you would have thought I had a bunch of teenagers sitting around the table. I held strong and when the outrage died down I explained that we needed to back all that data up and then use these devices over the next decade or so, maybe longer if we got lucky. We'd keep one phone, one tablet and one laptop out for use; the rest would be packed away and brought out as needed. I hoped the batteries wouldn't degrade too much over time, but that was just a hope; I didn't have any data about that which I could easily find in our archives. I reminded myself to carefully read about my wallpack batteries hoping I could glean an understanding from there.

Sonya was charged with sitting down and creating a series of logs and inventories for us, we needed to keep a more exacting log of what we had. There wasn't a 24-hour grocery just around the corner and we couldn't allow anything to run short or food to go over so everything had to be monitored. Life had been so much easier in the modern world.

After weekly chores were finished we moved on to practical lessons we had a lot of people who had a lot to learn. We started off with equestrian lessons and by the end of the day everyone knew how Michelle wanted us to handle and saddle the horses. Sonya and the kids even got a short bit of saddle time before we were done; Holder and I got corrected a lot, it seems we had a lot of bad habits when it came to saddling and riding.

The air was cooling and rain was on the horizon, we shored up the temporary livestock shelter again and started our end of day chores. After chores were done and all the tack was stored we had a hearty rabbit and potato soup for dinner leaving drowsy people everywhere. The movie that night was Alladin which brought gasps of wonder and laughter from even the most technology jaded of us.

All in all it was a nice way to wind down for our day of rest.

**** ****

Back in the modern world Sunday morning was usually a sleep-in morning, out here on the homestead you were only allowed to sleep in if you were ill. Sunday was still a day of rest though and our only plans for the day were a few classes in shooting and Matilda wanted to show everyone how to shear a llama, so shooting and a demonstration.

I had decided that Sundays would be the day that the guys cooked, which in turn meant the girls did the morning chores. Everybody got to do something different and everything still got done. So the fellas and I got busy making breakfast and we did a good job, pancakes were one of the few things you can make with powdered eggs and powdered eggs were one thing I always kept in my camping supplies. Dry eggs and dry milk; cheap, compact, lightweight, and utterly disgusting. But they were essential if you wanted good pancakes when horse packing on a hunting trip.

Cooking also gave me time to take a close look at our food inventory. I had scoped this rig out to support up to ten people on a four week hunting excursion, we now had seven. While we had been supplementing from our surroundings we were making a big dent in my larder, simply put I needed to get to a trading post sooner rather than later.

Breakfast was good, Amos cooked the actual pancakes and the women tested out their vocabularies compimenting him on his half burnt, half undercooked pancakes. I just smiled and drank my coffee. I had a conversation with Holder about my trading post plans, he agreed with me that it would be another three to four weeks before I could cross the river.

I planned to ford the Nemaha and head east towards the Missouri and then follow that down until I found a ferry to take me across. He said there was a new fort just built over in Leavenworth and that a trader by the name of Robidoux had just set up on this side of the river across from a settlement some folks were calling St. Joseph.

I was hoping to be able catch a river boat heading to St. Louis somewhere along that stretch and get down to the city. My plan was simple, get to St. Louis, buy a boat of my own and load it with supplies and the come home. Overland travel was far too slow and I needed to be able to get to market and back in two weeks time if possible.

Sunday proceeded as every lazy day should, we had things to take care of but we took care of them at a sedate pace. We all went down to the corral to watch as Matilda tied one of the llamas to the outside of the corral and carefully sheared away it's fleece with a pair of sharp scissors, she left it about a half inch of woal to protect against the coming summer sun and then stuffed the harvested fleece into one of the burlap sacks she had made. It was obvious that she'd done this before, she looked a little rusty but very confident and competent. I wondered about her past once again.

She left the other two llama to be shorn later, I assumed she would be giving hands on lessons tomorrow and I hoped one of the students was Sonya. While Sonya had gotten better since my outburst she still had significant ground to make up as a contributing adult around the homestead.

We had our shooting class after our mid-day dinner, we focused on rifles and shotguns and I even let Holder give the .30-06 a go. It was hard to get it back from him, them Kentucky boys love a good rifle and this was a special one; hand built and match grade. In the hands of a good shooter it was harder to miss than it was to hit at anything less than five hundred yards and Holder was a very good shooter. It was zeroed at three hundred yards and there was no point in teaching the young man about adjustable sights, after shooting that old rifle of his he understood windage and elevation better than I did. After about half a dozen rounds down range that guy could pick off pine cones at three hundred yards, if he could see it through the peep sights he could hit it.

Everyone else worked with the .22 rifle taking turns and getting used to the concepts, Holder was a great help here with the kids as they seemed to understand quicker the way he taught it. Michelle worked with Sonya on the shotgun, Sonya hated everything about guns and the 12 gauge was awful to her. We got her around to understanding it's use as a defense weapon and she calmed quite a bit. Michelle figured that one out explaining that if you point that at someone they will understand to leave you alone and that's really all the Sonya needed to hear. By the end of the session I felt a lot better about our ability to defend ourselves without having to release Matilda and the hounds.

Sundays were good for the soul.

**** Chapter Fifty-Seven -- Starting to Build ****

Monday morning we started building a quick barn for the livestock. This was to be just enough to keep the worst of the rain and the sun off the animals during the spring and summer, basically a simple pole structure made out of saplings.

It was sixteen feet wide and matched up perfectly with one steel corral panel. We sank the first posts in next to the panel we planned to remove from the corral fence itself. We cut all of the poles to be ten feet in length and built our wall in sections. It took two posts to hold up each end of a section of poles and where sections of the wall connected simply put up three posts. This wasn't supposed to be an architectural masterwork just a crude shelter for our livestock over the spring and summer.

We did use the same tarp for the roof in an attempt to keep it as dry as possible. We laid one full layer of saplings down and then installed the tarp. We then laid a second row of saplings on top the tarp and perpendicular to the bottom row. I hoped to provide extra layer of structural integrity to the structure while keeping the tarp from billowing. The entire roof was at about a five degree angle to the walls to allow runoff, we secured all of the saplings with strips of sapling bark and called it a success.

We finished it in less than a day with the roof taking the majority of the time, the poles were longer and stouter for the roof and of course building roofs basically sucks however you approach it. Once we had time to build a proper barn this would probably become a hay shed but it was a great short term solution and when it started raining again later that afternoon the livestock took to it quickly. It was crowded but dry.

We threw up a quick roof over the fire pit with only a single layer of poles, it would keep the worst of the rain off the fire and provide a little shade in the summer. After that we sat back to clean our tools and stare at our creations with far to much pride considering the crude efforts that they were.

I spent the evening searching our library and looking at pictures of various palisades, my primary focus was on hiding our technology from curious eyes.

**** ****

The first step was to tighten all of the vehicles up, I was pretty sure we'd seen the last of our daily driving and I wanted to put everything up on blocks to preserve the tires. The morning was pretty much spent playing Tetris with two trucks, a horse trailer and the tractor, the tractor ended up being the only vehicle still easily able to move. My suspicion was that the trucks were destined to become donor vehicles pretty quickly. On a positive note they would also provide a secure storage or sleeping location that didn't leak, we'd need them sooner or later.

We used larger trees for the palisade, we had plenty after our tree cutting expedition down to the river. Since my first priority was to build a screen I didn't need to build a complete wall this week which meant I could use the small groves of trees around the campsite as part of the screen. After much discussion and dithering it was decided that we didn't need an active gate so on each end of the compound we built an offset wall section that could be moved into place if necessary to complete the wall. That section was ten feet long and we set it up a good eight feet back from the wall so that it still screened us but there was plenty of room to walk around each end. We weren't planning to hold off a siege just shield our advanced technology.

Back in my Marine Corps days we would have planned for this and just put up camouflage netting and that sort of stuff was available to the general public. My rig, on the other hand was stocked for hunting and fishing trips not survivalist training. The only reason we had some of the items in our inventory was this was supposed to be a first run to my new ranch and I felt safe loading up; that and the fact that we had a lot of fun spending my newly found wealth. On reflection Matilda had been loading up like she would live on my ranch forever while Sonya had bought very little or anything of long term value. Michelle had intended to visit with me for a few days and brought basically what she and her horse would need for the extent of that visit. In hindsight I was wishing that I had been a fanatical prepper but maybe luck was better than preparation sometimes.

Tetris played and decisions made we started in our palisade. Tuesday afternoon was spent sorting logs and dragging them close to the construction site, the mules were great for this work and we got things in place pretty quickly. By the end of the day we were prepared to start putting up our wall in the morning.

The end of our work day also brought good news, three eggs had hatched and the rest were expected soon. I knew that the duck and goose eggs would take longer but I trusted Matilda to handle that, we wouldn't be having goose for Christmas this year but perhaps next. Obviously a chicken coop was high on our list of needs, we needed to get those messy birds out of the rig before it suffered permanent and debilitating insult. We had two more mares bred so we were expecting a total of three foals next spring, I fully expected Lunch to take after the nag mares when they came in season which would further increase our herd.

Finally Kordi had taken, this I was fully aware of as I was the one to monitor the dogs and knew she had come into heat. This would create quite a pack of dogs if they both whelped true and would create some consideration in the feeding department. On the other hand I knew there was a US Army Fort up near what was soon to be Omaha and another going up down in Leavenworth, they were always in the market for trained dogs.

I went to sleep wondering if there were opportunities to be had in dealing horses and dogs to the army in the 1820s.

**** Chapter Fifty-Eight -- Fasteners ****

It's really funny how the world revolves more on tiny inventions than on massive ones. We love to talk about the flashy, impressive airplanes and starcraft but in reality it's the little things that truly changed the world. Fasteners are the little things that make the goods of the world stick together and are a great blue chip type investment as the demand is never-ending. I got to read extensively on them when one of our funds made a major investment in a fastener company, it is simply mind numbing when you realize the importance of such a seemingly simple thing as the nail.

I had some fasteners. Any decent toolbox has a supply of fasters as you don't want to be running down to the hardware store just to complete a simple task. Because this toolbox was an camping/hunting set up most of my fasteners were what you would need out camping; big nails, hooks, eye bolts, and the like. I just didn't have a lot of them. Basically like everything else in the new existence of mine what I had was a treasure to be hoarded.

To make up for this we used what mother nature provided as often as possible and one of those things was natural fibers. The easiest to obtain this time of year was sapling trees that the deer hadn't gotten to, it had to be deciduous (leafing) and it had to be young. The deer and other herbivores would chew on these when the winter snows came too heavy for them to forage on the ground any longer. When you removed the bark the sapling would die which is why we would put fences around young trees in our yards back in the modern world.

You also needed to use the bark immediately after you cut the tree so that it maintained its flexibility, we peeled the saplings as we needed them. We would then save the sapling pole itself for other uses.

We dug a two foot deep trench and went another two feet deeper for the corners and gate posts. That was definitely backhoe work; the tractor was able to finish the trench in a couple of hours and we still did a lot by hand in order to save our small supply of diesel.

We planted the main gate posts and secured them, a cross bar went across the top to keep them straight and relational. Holder split a log to serve as the cross bar so we had a flat surface to work with, that was a new experience for me but a skill I had to learn also. By the end of the day Tuesday we had our gate frame built, I had even splurged and used two lag bolts to attach the cross bar on the top of the gate.

From that point it started to get faster. Holder and I would stand a fence pole up and hold it while Amos secured it to the neighboring pole with sapling strips. They weren't huge poles and while they could be handled by a single person it just went a lot faster working together. One man would hold the pole up while the second aligned it and the third secured it. Repetition breeds process familiarity which increases quality and speed. We were able to get a quarter of the palisade up by the end of the week, even if we did have to work a little late on Friday to get the first corner post in and the dirt all filled back. We were racing the next rain storm so we pushed on until just before dark.

Everybody got beer that night, celebrate your small victories with small celebrations as they occur.

The women had stayed in constant motion while we worked and the dog cart never got a days rest. Someone was always in the fields, out gathering or working with the livestock; I didn't even want to think about the household chores but the camp was always prepared and tidy. Holder had made them a couple of drop spindles and they spent much of their evenings spinning yarn while the fellas and I cleaned and sharpened tools. Somebody was always reading out loud to us or telling us a story from their youth during the evening. It took a while to get that going as most folk don't know how to tell a proper tale, but with coaching and encouragement we eventually got everyone except Matilda to relate a few funny stories.

We had been here a month now and we planned a party for Sunday which included us going out hunting Saturday morning so we could have fresh meat. Michelle promised us some fresh fish from the river now that the raging spring waters were beginning to slow, we were still in flood season but with the rains slowing and the melt finished the waters were beginning to slowly recede. I'd be travelling soon.

Saturday was maintenance day and that now meant checking all the buildings and fences and making repairs, horses had a bad habit of bumping into walls and llamas felt they had to chew on everything. The chickens were just a mess regardless of what we did and we had more of them now with more on the way. The rooster and the cats had come to an uneasy truce and we had yet to lose a chick, that damn rooster would even stand his ground to me if I wandered too close. Matilda and Esther didn't have a problem though so we left the birds to them.

The root cellar was still dry inside and seemed to be holding up well, it was dark, cool and mostly dry. I felt the moisture was truly effect of the soil we'd built it out of and the season. My solution was simple, we built a small smoky fire in the center and let the smoke and heat take care of the rest. Once the surrounding turf had dried we'd be in good shape and could start moving our dried goods in. We built a small fire pit in the center and brought in coals from our camp site fire to get things started, we threw on a couple of small logs and once they heated up and began to smoke we left it to it's own devices. We'd check again tomorrow.