After his meal, Percy had one pipe of tobacco on the roof deck of the earth-sheltered dome that was his house. He enjoyed a snifter of cognac in the library/den as he watched the news. He turned in early, feeling a bit uneasy at the world situation. Terrorism might have replaced the cold war in most people’s minds as the big danger in their lives, but it sure looked like there were still some warlike leaders in a few nations. And the weather wasn’t looking too good, either. He wasn’t going to be able to wait until the twins got back to start ground preparation for spring planting.
Percy’s alarm went off at four-thirty the next morning. Knowing Mattie would be there by six he showered, dressed, and went out to check the animals. An hour later the four milk cows were contentedly finishing their feed after having their udders’ stocks of milk reduced.
The milk was in the chiller, ready for pick up by Brian Epstein on his way in to the city. So were the fresh eggs from the hens. Brian got a calf from Percy every year as payment for stopping to pick up Percy’s milk and eggs to take to town with his own. He made a daily trip to the local dairy and went right by Percy’s place on the way.
Percy had tilled forty acres with the one of the Unimogs before he stopped to have breakfast. There was a big grin on his face when he entered the kitchen of the house.
Susie cut him an impish grin. “Musta’ worked, huh, Boss?”
“Like a charm. And you knew it would, just as did I, Missy. Hand me the eggs.”
Mattie Simpson and Susie had their breakfast at the main house, with Percy, as was their usual custom. Percy had insisted, since they started so early. “There’s no reason to cook for two, then for just one. It’s easier to cook for three. I’ll supply the food as part of your wages. How’s that?” he’d asked the day Mattie started working for him so many years before. At the same wages as he’d intended, even without the food thrown in. She was a newly widowed single mother. He figured it was the least he could do. And it had worked well over the years.
The Simpsons lived in one of the three other houses that were part of the building complex of the estate. The twins lived in another and the third was vacant at the moment. Two of Percy’s other hands lived nearby so didn’t need the third house. Bernard lived in the bunkhouse when he was working. The housing was part of their pay. They took another part of their pay in estate-produced goods, in addition to cash. All the hands did, getting truck farm produce, items from the household garden that Mattie tended, and meat and dairy products from the cattle, pigs, and chickens that were part of the estate animal population.
Percy had fallen into bartering many years earlier, when he was a very young man trying to hang on to the family farm. He was a natural born horse trader, as the locals told him. He’d been quite successful in his barters and other endeavors, pulling the farm out of debt and turning it into the estate it now was.
About the only thing original from the old place was the ground itself. His mother had inherited three hundred twenty acres from her grandparents. He’d traded for and bought more.
Percy now owned a full section that was the estate. One square mile. Six hundred forty acres in one parcel. He had almost another thousand acres in forty and eighty acre plots around the county but he leased them to other farmers for the cash flow and some trading of stud services for his animals. He liked to maintain genetic diversity in his stock and outside stud services was one way to accomplish that. He also traded for products he didn’t produce himself.
All the buildings were earth-sheltered structures. Even the six big green houses were bermed up to where the polycarbonate panels started and they were connected to an earth-sheltered barn. His utility bills, except for liquid fuels, weren’t that much more than they’d been when he took over the operation after his parents’ deaths thirty years before.
Percy was thinking about early retirement now, at only fifty-one. He’d built the place to what he’d dreamed as a young man it could be. He had a good crew and the operation was turning a nice profit even after deducting the operating expenses and the principle and interest of the few loans still outstanding for the improvements he’d been making almost from day one. He also had a very nice nest egg.
His parents had not been into preparedness and self-sufficiency, being more the squandering type. They’d let the farm go to pot, after they’d inherited it. They preferred just collecting income from leasing the arable land. When they died in a car crash caused by his father’s drinking and driving when Percy was barely twenty, the bank account was empty.
Percy dropped out of college and came back to the farm with what little money he’d saved from working while he was at Iowa State. Not until he got the first monies from one of the local farms leasing the land was he able to start making the changes he wanted. This included farming the land himself, including cultivating some non-traditional crops for the area.
Percy began a truck farm on the few acres of land not under lease. Then, as the leases expired, he didn’t lease the acreage out again. Instead, he took over the farming himself, hiring one, then a second hand. By the time he bought and traded for the additional land he now owned, the estate was beginning to take on the look it now had.
Most in the area considered him totally eccentric. They couldn’t fathom how he’d been successful enough to gain some of what they considered his toys, as he’d heard many a time. Things like the customized Suburban. He’d had the axles replaced with heavier ones, and added a third, all steerable, to create the six-wheeled rig he privately referred to as Rufus.
Not that many had even seen the Kenworth truck based motor home he only used occasionally. The vehicle was similar to the mechanic’s utility/service truck as far as the chassis, running gear and power train were concerned. Where similar converted motor homes costing millions of dollars were equipped with queen sized beds, marble counters and tubs, fancy faucets and fixtures, Percy’s was a lot less luxurious and more utilitarian, therefore much less expensive and very maneuverable.
As one person who had seen his house and the motorhome put it, The Beast was like his home, only without the dirt walls. A bit austere, but very comfortable. And with the custom-built barge trailer The Beast pulled, it was amphibious. It took less than ten minutes to unfold and rig up, back it into the water, un-hook, and then back aboard the barge, ready to go. The wheels of The Beast normally powered the barge, though it had a pair of Mercury outboard motors that would propel it empty at speeds of twenty miles an hour or more.
The Kenworth utility/service truck would also fit. Since The Beast could tow the trailers the utility/service truck usually pulled, at least for short distances, the trailers could be transported on the barge, too. So could the semi trailers used with the third Kenworth truck Percy had. He had dollies so the utility/service truck and The Beast could pull the semi trailers using their pintle hitches.
The semi tractor was set up the same way as the utility truck and The Beast, with five steerable axles with single high floatation tires rather than duals. It had a large sleeper suite and was equipped with an equipment winch, rolling tailboard, pintle hitch, and interchangeable fifth wheel and king pin plates so it could tow any type of large trailer.
Percy had a reefer trailer, tilt deck equipment trailer, flatbed trailer, a stock trailer, two convertible floor trailers that were useable as box trailers or grain trailers, a live floor canvas top box trailer primarily for silage, and a curtain wall trailer. All were three axle trailers with high flotation tires, except the equipment trailer, which had four axles. It too had the same tires the other trucks and large trailers used.