299 Days: The Community

Chapter 83 Picking Up Chicks (May 8)

Mary Anne and Bobby went to the farm supply store. She went there a few times a year. It was owned by a nice family.

The parking lot was full, and there were plenty of people there, but everyone was polite. There were no armed guards. Bobby saw a few of the shoppers with revolvers tucked in their belts, only semi-concealed. The farm store seemed much safer than the grocery store and gas stations Bobby had been to in Olympia on the previous milk runs.

Mary Anne hoped the farm supply store would have canning supplies and seeds. Sure enough, they had some. Lots, in fact.

She started with the canning supplies. She had a Presto canner from Wal-Mart and it was OK, but she knew she’d be canning large quantities this summer and fall. Lots of salmon, clams, and oysters and then fruits and vegetables.

She couldn’t believe they still had pressure cookers. She got two of the All Americans, the twenty-one quart ones without a rubber gasket, so they would last a lifetime. They weren’t cheap, but this was no time to save cash…which would probably be worthless pretty soon, anyway.

She had some canning jars at home, but not nearly enough, so she got three cases of quart jars and five cases of pint jars, which was about half of what they had in stock.

Mary Anne realized how important canning lids were so she got 200 of each size lid. She remembered that Mrs. Roth, an elderly lady in Pierce Point, had a bunch of canning supplies that she never used. She would go see Mrs. Roth later and ask to have the lids in exchange for some of the canned food they made.

“Do you have any more of these?” Mary Anne asked the clerk.

“There’s a limit on items per person,” she said. Mary Anne vaguely recognized her as one of the owners’ daughters.

The clerk thought a while. No one was really buying the canning supplies. Most of the customers at the farm supply store already had canning supplies. She figured Mary Anne could have about half of what they had in stock. “You’re OK with the stuff you have,” she said.

On to the seeds. The best selection of seeds was available a few months earlier, but it was early May and they still had plenty to choose from.

“These are heirlooms, right?” Mary Anne asked the clerk.

“Most of them are,” she said. “The non-heirlooms are marked on the packages as ‘hybrid.’”

Mary Anne knew heirloom seeds were the kind to get, as they would produce fertile seeds in the next crop, and the seeds would continue to produce with seeds for the next season, and then the next. Non-heirloom seeds were good for only one season. Hybrids were better than nothing, but not the sustainability Mary Anne wanted.

Mary Anne started putting lots of seeds in her cart. She would get “calorie crops,” things that grew the maximum calories. There would be no fancy gourmet crops this year. The years of gourmet meals were over in America, at least for most people. She picked out lima beans and crowder-type shelling peas.

While not “calorie crops,” she got plenty of tomatoes and onions. She even got lettuce, although it might not grow very well in Western Washington. It would probably do OK, it just wouldn’t be a staple like the next thing on her list, which was potatoes.

They had seed potatoes. Russets and red Pontiacs. Mary Anne noted the irony of her Irish ancestors escaping a potato diet in Ireland 150 years ago and now that might be what would be feeding her and her neighbors.

She realized that she’d need seed for crops to grow in the cooler season and “root cellar crops” that would store well. She got cabbage, squash (which she hated, but others might like), and carrots. Lots and lots of carrot seed.

The clerk saw this and said, “There’s a limit on seed purchases per person.”

Mary Anne was a little embarrassed. Was she hoarding? She wanted all the seeds, but didn’t want to be seen as a “hoarder.”

“What’s the limit?” she asked.

“We kind of decide it based on each customer,” the clerk admitted. “Pick out what you’d like and then we’ll see,” she said. Normally a varying limit would be unfair, but Mary Anne trusted the store to be fair.

Mary Anne saw they had chainsaws. John had a large one and a small one, both Stihls. She knew the kind of oil to get for them. She bought a case of it. They could have all the gas in the world but without that oil to mix in it, the saws wouldn’t work. She remembered the blade lengths of John’s saws and got a spare chain for each one.

Mary Anne heard some chickens. That’s what they needed. The store had a bunch of chicks and chickens. She got twenty chicks, a few hens, and a rooster. That would supply roughly an egg a day, and the rooster and hens would produce fryers once in a while. They didn’t have a chicken coop, but John could build one. Chickens didn’t eat much and sure produced tasty protein.

Mary Anne rounded out the shopping trip with chicken feed and fertilizer.

Bobby noticed that they were attracting attention with their cases of canning supplies and huge load of seeds. People were starting to look at them like hoarders. “This is probably enough,” Bobby said to Mary Anne. “We should get going.”

Mary Anne wanted to keep getting things; she might not get a chance to come back for a while, or ever. But, she looked around, noticed it was silent in the store and that everyone was looking at them. Yep, it was time to go.

“I think I have everything on my list,” Mary Anne said.

They paid for their items. Prices hadn’t gone up there. Mary Anne thought that if she had extra seeds she’d bring them back to the store, if she could get there, and let them sell them to someone else. There was an honor system at the farm supply store. Besides, the family who owned the store had their own farm, and were largely self-sufficient. They didn’t need to rip people off to survive, so they didn’t.

Bobby loaded all the stuff into the back of his truck. The chicks were chirping. He’d never picked up a box of live, noisy things.

They had about $150 left. The farm supply store had a gas pump. “Do you have any gas?” Mary Anne asked the clerk.

“Yep,” another clerk said. “But, I’m sorry, it’s $10 a gallon. Sorry.”

“That’s OK,” Mary Anne said. She remembered they had gas cans in the chainsaw section. “Could I get a couple of gas cans and fill them up?” The clerk looked at the other customers, who didn’t seem to be objecting, and then nodded. Mary Anne got two five-gallon gas cans, the new plastic ones she didn’t like, and went out to the gas pump outside.

Between the gas cans and Bobby’s truck, it was a little under fifteen gallons. She gave the clerk $150. “Keep the change,” she said. It was the least she could do for all the extra stuff they let her buy. “We’ll be back when we can,” Mary Anne said. “I’ll try to bring some seeds back if I can.” The clerk nodded. She hoped Mary Anne would.

Bobby looked at his watch. It was 11:20 a.m. Time to head back to the rendezvous point at the gas station. It was only a few minutes away, but Bobby expected traffic or even a roadblock. He didn’t want to be late.

He got on the CB and thought he’d have some fun and tell them that they had “picked up some chicks,” which was technically true, but then he decided that this wasn’t a time for joking and causing confusion. Stay off the radio if you can, he remembered Ted saying. So Bobby simply said into the CB, “Bobby here. We’re all set. Heading to the gas station meeting place unless anyone needs any help.” Everyone radioed in that they were OK.