Two years before the onset of the Crunch, Todd had built a new and larger fence for the garden, measuring forty-by-one-hundred-and-thirty feet, served by three Merrill frost-free faucets at forty-two-foot intervals. As was Todd’s usual habit, he “overengineered” the garden fence to make it deer proof. First, he bought treated six-by-eight-inch posts twelve feet long for the corners, and treated four-by-four-inch posts for the intermediate positions. The lower three feet of each post was buried in an oversized hole that was filled with concrete.
Between the posts, Todd stapled up two panels of stiff “hog wire” mesh, one atop the other. Above this he stapled a strand of barbed wire. In all it created a nine-foot-high fence—more than high enough to stop deer from jumping over. As added protection against the ravages of smaller garden pests, Todd added a wrap of small mesh poultry wire to the lower portion of the fence.
Todd built a double gate for the garden out of four-by-fours. They typically used only one half of the nine-foot-wide gate to walk in and out. If necessary, however, both halves could be opened up to allow the tractor to drive in and out.
Most of the vegetable seeds came from the supplies of vacuum packed seed that many of the members had stored. Although it was several years old, most of this seed germinated satisfactorily, due to its packaging and storage in the cool basement. On Mary’s advice, all of the group members were careful to select only non-hybrid seeds for their storage programs. The advantage of non-hybrid seed was that it “bred true” generation after generation. Although hybrid varieties often produced more, they could not be depended on for the use of their retained seeds for more than one or two generations. The other sources of seed were the seeds saved and dried from the previous year’s crops.
This seed also germinated well, so Mary made it a SOP for group members to save as much seed as possible from the vegetables produced each summer.
The garden, the corn patch, and apple trees outside of it became natural lures for deer. T.K. became the main meat supplier for the retreat. He usually set up to still-hunt early in the evening. In the summer, he’d sit just inside the edge of the corn patch. In the winter, he sat on a platform he built in a ponderosa pine near the east property line. Beneath this stand, he placed a salt block to attract deer. To conserve ammunition and keep things quiet, he hunted with his crossbow. He rarely missed his mark. The only detractor to hunting with a bow rather than a gun was that the deer did not die almost immediately as they usually did when hit by a rifle bullet. Unless T.K. got an incredibly lucky shot and hit a major artery or penetrated the deer’s spine, the animal would run several hundred yards before succumbing to blood loss. This meant that they had to be packed back to the barn for butchering and cooling out. Dragging a full-grown deer, especially uphill or in foul weather, was a real chore.
Margie’s extensive farming and gardening experience proved invaluable. It was Margie who taught the gardeners how to use the “double dug” method of cultivation, how to use companion planting techniques, and to plant marigolds around the perimeter of the garden. The marigolds, she said, discouraged a variety of harmful garden marauders.
One of the biggest problems for the garden was the ravage of birds. Because the Grays had not taken the precaution of laying in a supply of protective netting, valuable manpower had to be used to post a guard on the garden during the worst of the “bird season.” Generally the guards were armed with either Todd’s .177 caliber El Gamo air rifle or Mike’s .22 caliber Feinwerkbau 124 air rifle. Both T.K. and Kevin preferred to use their Wrist Rocket slingshots. They quickly developed deadly accuracy with them. Never ones to waste anything, the larger birds taken in the defense of the garden were made part of the summer diet.
Each spring and early summer at the retreat were dominated by cultivation tasks, and the mid-summer with firewood cutting and hauling. The late summer was a time of frenetic activity at the retreat. In addition to the normal guard duty and chores, there were crops to harvest, and hundreds of jars to be canned. Fortunately, they had procured a large supply of Ball and Mason jars, lids, rings, and paraffin well before the Crunch. Most of the canning was done using the water bath method. This was the method preferred by Mary. In contrast, Margie preferred to do pressure canning. Complaining that it looked too dangerous, Mary shied away from the pressure canning operation.
The group had purchased large quantities of canning supplies, far in excess of their predicted needs. Mary had frequently pointed out that canning supplies would make excellent barter items in most survival scenarios. The greatest quantities purchased for this purpose were canning lids and paraffin.
In addition to canning, many foods were preserved by dehydrating. A few were preserved by pickling and salting. Because Todd and Mary had not gotten around to buying a dehydrator before the Crunch, they had to build their own. It was constructed by Lon and Dan, using a design from one of Mary’s back issues of The Mother Earth News. It was a simple design that used an electric light bulb to provide low heat for a wooden box containing racks for a dozen large trays. The trays were made from old fruit packing boxes, and were covered with plastic mesh screen. Although less sophisticated than commercial dehydrators with thermostatic controls and exhaust fans, the new dehydrator worked well, albeit slowly.
Because electricity was at a premium at the retreat, Lon and Dan eventually built a solar dehydrator to supplement their electric model. This dehydrator took advantage of the fairly reliable hot days of the late summer in the Palouse.
It consisted of a large wooden framework covered by window screen. It featured a pair of doors that swung open in the front, and racks for thirty trays.
One of the nice features of the Grays’ farm was its large orchard of fruit and nut trees. Most of these trees were of mature size. A few of the apple trees were more than fifty years old, and still going strong. To hedge their bets, Todd and Mary started planting saplings soon after they moved in. These trees came from a nursery outside of Lewiston. The Grays resisted the urge to sprout seedlings from the fruit produced by their own trees, knowing that the chances of growing a productive tree from such stock were slim.
One of Todd and Mary’s biggest regrets was that they never bought any livestock for their farm. With all of the activity required to get the retreat in shape, they never got to stocking the farm before the Crunch hit. The stock would have provided a valuable source of food, muscle power, transportation, and fertilizer for the garden. Livestock would have also eliminated the teasel weeds that were beginning to crop up in small patches all over the retreat.
When Mary pointed this shortcoming out to Todd, he said, “Oh well, hindsight is twenty-twenty.”
Bartering for livestock was put high on the list of priorities for a future time when a barter economy eventually developed. Mary made up a “livestock dream sheet” of the animals that she thought that the group would need and that their forty acres could support. She made up the list as a guide for future barter purchases. It included one Jersey cow, one donkey, and five saddle horses. Mary also wanted to buy a few rabbits, goats, ducks, and sheep, and breed them to eventually provide needed meat, milk, eggs, wool, feathers, down, and hides. She also would have included a pair of draft horses on the list, but she realized that such animals were scarce even before the Crunch.
Although they would likely be bred in greater numbers in the future, the chances of the group obtaining a pair within the next ten years was remote.