Over at Harvey’s, much of the work of course was taking care of the animals but our initial job was settling in. Many of the items from the second caravan didn’t go into the house, but instead, went into Larry’s tool shed. It was a real roomy one with a nice shop. Larry even had an acetylene torch and a welder, the latter however would take a large draw of electricity to operate, but we still had fuel to make some if a dire need arose. Everyone else’s tools were housed there too, including every lawn or gardening tool that wasn’t being regularly used in the livestock operation. All the other things we brought from home, the hardware and building materials, found a spot in the shed. Dad just hoped they would be useful one day.
Dad made a sign and hung it on the tool shed door.
Anyone - may use these tools
Someone - might break them
Everyone - must return them regardless of condition
No one - shall be irresponsible concerning this matter
Behind the shop all the vehicles were parked in a nice row. There were all kinds: pick-ups, SUV’s, pleasure cars, sport cars, all-wheel drives: seventeen of them in all, not counting farm trucks, tractors, combine and backhoe. Dad, Harvey, Joe, and Jeremiah issued strict orders on their use, that is they would only be used if deemed necessary. Collectively their fuel tanks held a lot of gasoline that might be needed one day.
After taking care of the livestock, much of the work the first couple of days centered on Harvey’s butcher house. It was much more extensive than the one we had had at home. The first day we did Poppop’s and Harvey’s freezers just like we had done at home and because Harvey and Larry had made electricity a couple of times right after it had gone off, the food in there was still in good shape.
Next to Harvey’s butcher shop, he had a wood-burning outside furnace that he used to heat his home. However, it needed electricity to circulate the hot water into the house. Not a problem in August; the house was hot enough. But it had automatic electric controls on it that prevented the fire from burning too hot when the water wasn’t circulating. Dennis, from his experience with working for a HVAC contractor was able to rewire the controls to operate at 12 volts. Then he used a car battery from one of the vehicles to keep the fire burning. That at least gave us hot water to use, so Thursday we finally got around to doing some laundry. The butcher house was set up with a stove, a nice double-kettle; had plenty of room for tables, so the boys set up three long ones, at which I believe thirty people could have sat.
We couldn’t use a washing machine the way it was, but we had the kettles and tubs and we still had laundry soap, so we went at laundry. It was a good spot for that. We had plenty of rope for wash line. Clothespins were another matter; they were in short supply. Poppop liked little wood working jobs, so we put him at fabrication. It would take some time; we’d have to do with the ones we had until he could provide some. Some of the wash could be just draped over the lines and still get dry. It was a whole day affair. We certainly didn’t run out of work.
Aaron, Dennis, and Josh were the mechanical-minded ones and they were constantly pondering how to improve our lot. Eventually they rigged up some piping so that we could easily use the hot water from the stove and made our laundry work a lot easier. We still had to carry all the water over from the springhouse; we were many hands, but we also had brains.
That evening, Dad and Harvey had a pow-wow with Josh, Jake, Larry, Aaron, Dennis, Jeremiah, and Joe. I got to listen in.
Dad said, “We have a lot of challenges, but we also have a lot of skills. We have a contractor, a heating person, mechanic, farmer, and a butcher. We can get everything done. We just have to figure out a couple of things. Here are some of the challenges that Harvey and I see we need to work on:
- Heating Harvey’s house.
- Lighting. We’re making do with flashlights and candles but if there’s any way we could rig up some electrical system, it would be helpful; especially when winter comes and we need to milk and work in the dark.
- We’d like a better way to get water to this butcher house.
- We’d like to have some kind of washing machine set up.
- There’s also a challenge with the bathroom facilities; maybe some kind of showers could be set up
- INCLUDING the fact that we’re going to run out of toilet paper.
- Eventually field work will need to get done.
“Now that there are more hands,” Harvey said, “I wish we could figure out a way to harvest some of this hay that’s matured. It’s too difficult to get our livestock to some of the fields that I have on neighboring farms. And long range, we need a way to haul the liquid manure in the storage tank to the fields next year.” Up until the power went out, much of the manure from Harvey’s cows and some from the heifers was pumped into a concrete storage tank, and then later hauled out to the fields using tanker trucks. Without fuel, some other method would have to be devised to use that manure. At least now that the livestock were outside and moving from field to field the tank wasn’t getting any fuller.
Dad said, “We have a lot of stuff here, and a lot of people. It reminds me of a story I heard from a missionary one time. He was sent to Africa to help the natives and the first thing he noticed was that during the dry season, their cows had virtually nothing to eat. They just survived on brush and some dead grass. They gave very little milk during that time and some even died. However, during the rainy season, there was lush grass but it rained every
day so hay making as we know it, was almost impossible. The missionary reasoned that some of that grass could be stored as haylage. He had been told by his superiors that to solve problems, you had to use the resources that you had. He couldn’t just be ordering up a silo to store haylage or a chopper to chop it. The missionary figured that if he couldn’t build a silo up, then he
would build one down. He had plenty of labor. The natives he was serving were willing, so he had them dig a 12 foot diameter pit about 15 feet deep. They had tools to do that. They also had machetes, so the hands could harvest the grass and get it to the pit. There the older fellows chopped the grass into shorter pieces, like it should be for a silo, and threw it into the pit. When the height got close to the top, some of the children jumped and walked around on top the chopped grass to pack it. To cover the pit, they sheathed some of the long stems of grass, layered them tightly on the top then laid even more brush on top. Eventually, during the dry season they opened the pit, and after removing maybe a foot of spoilage, there was good haylage to feed their cows. The point of the story is, just like in Africa, where they had to use what was available to them, so do we.”
“So,” said Aaron, “to get the water to the butcher house from the springhouse, we need a pump. What kind of pumps are here?”
Jake said, “There are pumps on the wells now but they need electricity.”
Dennis said, “You have a milk pump on the pipeline and also a vacuum pump for the milker system. They’re electric also, unless we could convert them to mechanically driven.”
Josh said, “They’re water pumps on every vehicle we have here that don’t need electricity.”
“That’s right,” Larry said, “and also the fuel tank has a hand pump on it that doesn’t run by electricity. I also have a pump on the sprayer that’s mechanically driven.”
“Okay,” Harvey said, “you’ve gotten the idea. We have a lot of pumps that we can move water with. I think we can round up enough hose and pipe to lay to the springhouse even if we have to borrow some from the barn, but none of that’s being used anyhow, so it won’t be missed.”
Josh said, “There are disadvantages and advantages to each of those pumps and we still need an energy source to use one. I guess we either have to use a mechanically driven one, convert an electric one to mechanical or create electricity for an electric one. What are our possible energy choices?”
Jake said, “We have people and we have animals. We have limited fuel.”
“Until we learn to produce our own,” Aaron said.
“OK,” Dad said, “you guys are on a roll. We don’t have to solve this immediately. Ponder it a while and maybe some of the solutions you come up with can be used to meet some of the other challenges.”
“In the meantime,” Jake said, “couldn’t we build a little cart that two or three people can pull or push 50, 60 gallons on a trip instead of just carrying ten gallons?”
“Great idea,” Josh said, “I can start on it tomorrow. You know I think you’re the smartest brother I have.”
“I’m the only brother you have,” Jake answered.
“Once again you’re right,” Josh retorted, “astounding intelligence!” Everyone laughed. It was good; we needed things at which to laugh and fortunately, at this point we were still able to do so.
To be continued… Find out what the women are up to, next week. Mort
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