Lisa then checked Mary’s perineum for any tears, and was happy to report that there were none large enough to require stitches. She chuckled and said, “There’s just a few little skid marks on your taint, Mary. No stitches for you!”
Mary laughed and said, “That’s good, because I wasn’t sure that I was going to trust you to stitch me up anyway. I remember you always used to tie your practice stitch knots backwards!”
Todd took care of cleaning up both Mary and the bed. The bedsheet was soaked, and the rubber sheet beneath it saved the rest of the linens and the mattress from sure ruin. Looking at the soaked linens, he exclaimed, “I’m not sure we’ll ever get these stains out!” He wrapped up all of the sodden linens and towels and threw them in a bucket of cold soapy water to soak. Mary looked up and said, “Well, since it’s a boy, I guess we’ll call him Jacob, like we discussed. Is that okay with you, Todd?” Todd walked over to the bed and picked up the baby in his arms, and said, “Yep, he’s definitely a little Jacob. He comes to us as a gift from God, and our God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, so it is only fitting that we call him Jacob.” Jacob weighed nearly nine pounds at birth. The next day, when the rest of them got their first peek, Mary pronounced him “very healthy.”
The boy’s full name was Jacob Edward Samuel Gray. It was Todd who suggested the name. He said, “I wasn’t even given a middle name by my folks, so I didn’t have any choice as to what I’d be called. It was always just Todd. I wanted to give our son some more leeway. Little Jacob here will be able to choose from Jacob, or Jake, or Edward, or Ed, or Eddie, or Samuel, or Sam. How’s that for options?”
The first summer after the retreat was activated, the group made only a halfhearted attempt at gardening. Security was the main concern. With a large quantity of stored food available, a big garden was not a necessity. Only a quarter of the garden plot was put under cultivation that summer. By the spring of the second year, however, all of the group members were tired of eating storage food. As Kevin so aptly put it, “There’s only so much you can do with wheat, rice, and beans.”
Most breakfasts consisted of heated wheat berries (whole wheat soaked overnight in water), and fresh baked wheat bread slices dabbed with a bit of reconstituted butter, peanut butter, or occasionally some jam. On alternate days they made pancakes, oatmeal, or cornmeal mush. Lunches were typically either peanut butter sandwiches (using dehydrated peanut butter) and soup, or simply a large kettle of steamed rice. Dinners were more varied. There were stews, elk and venison steaks, casseroles, rice pilafs, dehydrated vegetables, canned fruits, canned vegetables, and canned meats. In the summer there were fresh vegetables available, including lettuce, cabbage, and tomatoes.
For the first half of each winter there were crocks of slaw that Mary kept out on the north porch. After the slaw ran out each year (usually just after the New Year—a sad day), Mary sprouted alfalfa or beans to provide fresh greens until spring. Kevin, who emerged as the head cook, did an admirable job of making an otherwise bland diet more palatable by coming up with interesting dishes. There was often fresh game served. This included venison, elk meat (jokingly called “elkison” by Todd), pheasant, and quail. Any game that was shot outside of the coldest months of winter were either eaten immediately, canned in mason jars, or dried into jerky.
Kevin got most of his recipes from two books, Making the Best of Basics and Carla Emery’s Encyclopedia of Country Living. Both were invaluable references.
Kevin was generally in charge of making dinner. His most frequent assistants were Margie, Mary, Dan, and Dell. These four also did most of the breakfast and lunch cooking. Margie did most of the bread baking. She was soon renowned as the group’s “baking wizard.” In addition to bread, she baked most of the cookies, pies, and cobblers. Dell, who had a sweet tooth, made most of the candy. Her favorite was molasses taffy. Dan cooked many of the meat dishes including venison steaks, roasts, and meat pasties. He also did many of the rice dishes including Mexican style rice and rice pilaf. Mary did most of the canning and cooked up most of the gravies and sauces. Doug Carlton, who professed to be a “fumble fingers” cook, helped out by being in charge of big game butchering and making jerky and pemmican.
Although their diet was at times monotonous, it was nutritious. Dan Fong, Lon, and Margie, the only three members of the militia who were chubby, slimmed down considerably. Rose, who was thin even before she arrived at the retreat, lost ten pounds while recovering from her gunshot wound. She soon regained the weight, however. A few months later, Jeff noticed that Rose wasn’t eating well and had started to lose weight again. With the combined efforts of T.K., who counseled her regularly, and Jeff, who insisted that she take second helpings at most meals, Rose gradually got back to her normal weight. Most of the other members maintained their “pre-Crunch” weight. Some of them, including Todd and Mike, noticed that they had to take in their belts a couple of notches, but they did not lose weight overall. They attributed this to the greater amounts of exercise that they had been getting. Fat was being replaced by muscle.
Late in the second spring after the Crunch, Mary headed up the effort to plant a large-scale garden. Everyone pitched in for the effort. They started by cultivating the entire garden plot by breaking up the soil with the cultivating attachment for the tractor. Next, with a heavy gardening fork, they finished breaking up clods and cultivated the areas near the fences and in the corners of the garden that the tractor’s cultivator did not reach. They then went back through the garden with the hand fork, further breaking up the soil. Most of the contents of their now large compost heap were worked into the soil. Mary, with the help of Dan, Doug, and Della, then began planting the “early” crops. These included potatoes (lots of them), turnips, beets, radishes, onions, and corn.
At the same time, they started the more delicate crops in cold frames. These protective frames were made from the old windowpanes from the house that Todd had saved after they had been replaced with double-pane glass. The more delicate crops included melons, squash, tomatoes, and cucumbers. After the twentieth of May, these seedlings were transplanted from the cold frames to the garden proper. Many of the crops were planted at two-week intervals, to provide a steady supply of vegetables throughout the late summer. The first two crops of corn were planted inside the garden fence, while the three later crops were planted in a patch outside the garden. Only a few ears of corn were lost to the local deer, thanks to the watchful eyes of the LP/OP pickets and Shona.
At one end of the garden, Mary had a small, specially cultivated crop of herbs, both for cooking and for medicinal purposes. She realized that their stocks of stored vitamins and medicines would eventually run out or go bad, so she had started the herb garden well before the Crunch. Her main references on herbs were The Complete Medicinal Herbal by Penelope Ody, The Cure For All Diseases by Hulda Clarke, and Ten Essential Herbs by Lalitha Thomas. Mary spent hours reading and rereading these books and making lists of seeds and cuttings that she wanted to find. She enlarged the herb garden each summer, expanding her plantings and adding a wider variety of herbs. One of the most important herbs in her plot were her echinacea flowers. Echinacea, also known as the purple coneflower, had a reputation as a potent natural antibiotic. Mary had a friend on the other side of town who raised dairy goats and recommended growing echinacea. Her friend had successfully used echinacea to treat her goats when they had udder and teat infections.