299 Days: The Community

Chapter 104 Meanwhile, Back at the Farm (May 10)

What was that sound? It was like a chicken or something. Tom Foster hated waking up, but this was even worse. He was being forced awake by a “cock-a-doodle-doo” sound, like from a movie. He opened his eyes. He was in a strange bedroom. It was a rooster. Shit, they really do crow at the break of dawn.

Tom was not a morning person, and was not a country person. He liked late nights and the city. But, he didn’t like people burning down his office and trying to kill him and his family, even more than he disliked waking up at the crack of dawn in the country. So a chicken waking him up on a farm where he was safe was just fine with him.

His wife, Joyce, was stirring. She had been going non-stop out there. The house was brimming with kids and adults. Lots and lots of activity. There were all kinds of farm things to learn out there. Plus, she needed to stay busy to take her mind off of all that was happening. Their house had probably been burned down, and people were likely looking for her family. She constantly worried that someone at WAB would tell the authorities they were hiding out at the Prosser farm. These were the worst days of her life. She was constantly afraid. She tried to busy herself with work at the farm to take her mind off of all of her terrifying thoughts.

Others started stirring with the rooster crowing. Joyce wanted to be the first one up to help Molly with breakfast. She was getting ready, but it was weird getting dressed in someone else’s house. It wasn’t like a hotel. It was her house now. Well, her room, at least. She didn’t have most of her things. She didn’t have any makeup. Oh well. No one else was wearing makeup out here. No one cared. And there was no one to see her out of her makeup.

Tom was still in bed, trying in vain to go back to sleep. Joyce kissed his forehead and said, “I’m so glad we’re all out here together.” Tom smiled. Maybe it wasn’t so bad out there.

People started shuffling into the kitchen for breakfast. Some of the kids were running around. Where did they get all that energy?

Jeff Prosser was thinking about all the work they had to do. All this work would be even harder given the fact that all his “farm hands” were city people who didn’t know how to do anything. That was OK. They were friends, who were in desperate need. This is what friends do. Even when they’re only the mailroom guy. Yep, Jeff felt with pride, he was the mailroom guy who had saved the day.

The families talked about the chores they needed to do. It was May, so they had a garden to tend. Joyce and Karen made the point that all of this would be over soon, so maybe they didn’t need to have a garden to get them through the winter; Jeff politely said that they should plant one “just in case.”

The garden was a big one; half an acre. They grew just about everything that would grow in western Washington State. Lots of hoeing and weeding. After Joyce and Karen accepted that they should plant the garden “just in case,” they really enjoyed turning it into a huge source of healthy food for their families. They had enjoyed gardening in their beautiful yards back in Olympia and decided to make the food garden at the farm into a masterpiece.

Molly really appreciated the help in the garden. When the crops came in, she would have plenty of help canning and drying all the produce. They’d eat the best food of their lives, Molly thought. No preservatives, no chemicals, no ripening in trucks on the drive up from Mexico. Just fresh, non-genetically modified fruits and vegetables.

The Prossers had a few dairy cows. Jeff’s kids would show the city kids how to milk a cow. It was a completely foreign experience for the city kids, but they caught on. Molly was glad for the help with the dairy cows. They had to milk them by hand since they didn’t have a milking machine for just the three cows they had.

The Prossers getting those three dairy cows had been a big decision a year ago. Back then, Molly thought that some milk cows would be good to have “just in case.” Right about that time, WAB was cutting back the hours of employees, including Jeff, so saving money on milk and dairy products made sense. Besides, the price of “store bought” dairy products had been creeping up faster and faster. With the value of the dollar tanking as the government created trillions of dollars to buy its own debt, investors looked for something “real” to put their money into instead of the U.S. dollar. They found commodities like gold, oil, and agricultural products. Pretty soon, speculators were buying dairy products and other food commodities. The price kept increasing. Right before the price of dairy cows went way up, Jeff and Molly got some and were very glad they did.

Now, the Prossers and their guests had fresh milk and lots of it. They even churned the cream to make butter with an electric churn Molly’s mom left them years ago that Molly dug out of the attic.

Kids were invaluable little laborers out on the farm. In addition to milking the cows, they were in charge of gathering the eggs from the hens. They had planned on selling the extra eggs, but now, with all the guests, they used the extra eggs for breakfasts. They had beef cows, too; about thirty. Beef cows were one investment that outperformed the stock market enormously. They had more beef than they knew what to do with. Even with the guests eating lots of it, they still had enough to sell.

The Prossers sold the extra beef to neighbors. Now, with cash not having any real value, Jeff figured they could trade the beef for gasoline, chainsaw oil, fence posts; whatever they might need out there, which wasn’t much. That was the beauty of the farm: it didn’t produce a lot in economic terms, but didn’t take a lot to keep it running. They were largely self-sufficient. Not completely; they still needed electricity and running water and would need to go to town for things like tractor parts.

They had electric heat in the house, but Jeff was too cheap to run it. Besides, electricity prices had quadrupled in the past few years. A ton of “greenhouse” gas regulations had kicked in and utilities were not allowed to use the great and nearly free electricity source in the Pacific Northwest: hydroelectric dams. The utilities shut down the nearly free electricity of the dams and had to buy power on the open market, competing with California utilities for a limited amount of electricity and bidding up the price. With the cut in hours at WAB, that electric bill became a big deal.

Jeff had a woodstove in the farmhouse. His dad got it in the 1970s and it was very efficient. They had tons of firewood on the property. Down by the creek, alder grew like weeds. Alder wasn’t the best firewood, but it would do. They had lots of cedar and spruce farther out toward the hill, but it was a long haul back to the house.

Jeff was glad he had the tractor. It made hauling logs or cut wood across a sometimes soggy field much easier than trying to use a truck or, worse yet, carrying it all on foot. He had a winter’s worth of wood already cut, but with the free labor out there he might as well get even more cut. His guests needed to work for the room and board, he thought with a chuckle.

Another chore was guard duty. They were nearly at the end of a long road of farmhouses. There was a gate at the entrance to the road to keep cattle from escaping. It worked well to keep people out, too. Up on the high ground where they were, the Prossers could see a car coming down the road for quite some distance. But still, they needed a guard out there. Jeff had made a deal with the neighbors: they have an armed person watching the gate during the day and his house would take care of the night. He did this because he didn’t want his POI guests to be seen during the day even by the neighbors, though he had grown up with and trusted them. Who knew what guests the neighbors would have during the Collapse and where their guests’ allegiances might lie.

Jeff had a little Motorola radio set so a guard could communicate with the house. After a few times out on nighttime guard duty showing people the lay of the land, he let the WAB guys take it over. Jeff needed to sleep. He figured he was doing plenty for the WAB families by harboring fugitives and letting them live out there for free. They could pull nighttime guard duty in exchange. They didn’t seem to mind the trade. In fact, they were extremely grateful.

The WAB guys hadn’t spent much, if any, time with guns. That was OK. Jeff went over the operation of a shotgun, which would be good at the gate-to-car distances involved for a guard at the gate. A rifled slug from a 12 gauge could punch through most car doors. Jeff had a standard Remington 870 Wingmaster. It was a great duck gun, or a looter gun.

Jeff showed them how to shoot his lever-action 30-30 carbine. They did fairly well, but weren’t exactly marksmen. Jeff had a limited amount of 30-30 ammo, about 250 rounds, so he got the WAB guys familiar with the lever-action 30-30 by shooting his lever-action .22, a Marlin 94. He had been shooting that gun since he was a kid. He knew exactly where each round would go. Jeff had thousands of rounds of .22 ammo, which he bought one box at a time over the past few years. They used the .22 frequently out there on rabbits, squirrels, and crows. Besides, Jeff loved shooting that lever-action .22.

The guys took their pistols with them when they were on guard duty. Karen didn’t like seeing the guns and asked that they not be visible to the children. The kids didn’t seem to care about the guns, though. They had been afraid of them at first, but quickly realized that guns were part of what happened on the farm. They were tools. After a while, Tom and Ben quit trying to accommodate Karen and she didn’t say anything. Brian, however, kept his pistol hidden as his wife wished. That was OK. At least he was carrying it, which was what mattered.

Jeff had two pistols. The first was a snub-nosed .38 revolver that he used when he needed to carry a concealed gun. He didn’t have a holster; he just put it in his pocket. He couldn’t remember if his concealed weapons permit had expired or not. Oh well. They weren’t exactly required anymore. Besides, he only needed a permit if he was in town and he didn’t plan on being in town.

Jeff’s second pistol was his pride and joy: a Ruger Blackhawk in .357. It was a “cowboy” gun. He had a Western holster for it and loved it. He loved all things cowboy and wasn’t afraid to wear his cowboy pistol and carry his cowboy lever action rifle. It was his damned farm and that’s how it was. No one cared. Jeff had lots of .38 ammo. It also worked in the .357. He wished he had a lever-action carbine in .357/.38, too, but he never got around to getting one before the Collapse. That was OK; his 30-30 worked just fine. He had almost 200 rounds for his 30-30. It was enough for hunting, or an attack or two on the farm.

Rounding out the “arsenal” was his 30-06. It was scoped and could take down elk, which came by quite a bit, at 200 or more yards. That had been the longest shot he’d taken with it. Jeff didn’t shoot it much; he didn’t need to. But, it was sighted in perfectly. He only had about 100 rounds. This would be the gun he used from the house out to the road, if necessary. He hoped it wouldn’t be.

Just then, someone knocked on the door. He grabbed his shotgun and went to the door. It was Dennis, Jeff’s cousin who lived down the road. Jeff’s family owned all the land on the road and subdivided it a few years ago when that was still possible before environmental regulations prevented it. Dennis’ mom, who was Jeff’s aunt, got one of the lots. When she died, Dennis got it.

Dennis was a nice guy, kind of quiet and shy. He was a non-descript bachelor in his thirties. A hard-working guy who was perfectly comfortable on the farm, but not so much in town. Dennis had come over to Jeff’s house to see if he could help show the new people some of the things they’d need to know. He was also coming over because he was lonely and wanted to be around some new people.

Jeff told Dennis that the people staying with them had left the city because of the violence. He told Dennis not to mention to a single person that they were out there. There had been a misunderstanding with the authorities that would get straightened out when all this cleared up.

Dennis was a hick, but wasn’t stupid. He knew that Jeff worked for WAB and that WAB was hated by the state government. He was glad to help the effort. He, too, hated all the superior-minded city people who kept taking and taking from the people out in the rural areas. Dennis just wanted to be left alone, but the environmentalists kept telling him how to live. They wouldn’t let him raise cattle out there. At 500 yards, it was too close to a stream. That stream had been fine for the 140 years the Prossers had been on this land. Dennis wasn’t political, but he was glad to be helping in some small way to get even with the people who were destroying his country. If that meant harboring some fugitives when the cops were stretched too thin to do anything about it, that was fine. It was more excitement than he’d had in his whole life.

Tom, Ben, and Brian were huddled together and talking before breakfast. Jeff introduced Dennis to Tom, who was scoping out Dennis’ truck.

Tom asked, “Hey, Dennis, does your truck run on diesel or regular gas?”

“Diesel,” Dennis said. “Why?”

“Good,” Tom said, “Jeff has plenty of diesel in that underground tank. So you can make trips to town, right?” Obviously, the POIs couldn’t show their face in town, but Dennis could. He had no ties to WAB. Even Jeff, the mailroom guy, had WAB ties. Only Dennis could go into town.

“Yeah,” Dennis said. He didn’t like to go to town and knew that it was dangerous right now, but he could go. For a good enough reason.

Ben said, “Dennis, we need you to get something pretty important.”

“Yeah? What?” he asked, trying to hide his excitement.

“Can you go to an office supply store and get some blank CDs?” Ben asked. “You know, the kind you can record music on. As many as you can.”

That was weird. Making music CDs? “Why do you want to do that?” Dennis asked.

Ben told Dennis what they were doing with the CDs. Wow. This was exciting, Dennis thought. He couldn’t wait to go to town.

Brian gave Dennis a bunch of cash. Brian didn’t want his wife to see how much he was handing Dennis; she’d get mad. Karen was not loving this farm living. She was used to suburban living. She was grateful to be away from the protestors, but she felt so odd out at the farm. Giving Dennis the last of their cash to buy blank CDs would have been too hard for Brian to explain. So he didn’t. He just did it.

“I’ll go right now,” Dennis said. He needed to go to his house and get his pistol. He wanted to be ready for what was sure to be the biggest adventure of his life.