There is a truck garden the farmer's wife put in before they were thrown out. They pick some beans. There's a pig. They don't know what to do about the pig or the cows. They read the instructions. They try to figure out the instructions. They call the help center. It's a busy signal (because there are thousands like them in the same predicament).
The lawyer actually sits down and reads all the documents. The main thing he extracts is that they are entitled to "supplementary emergency fuel" allocations on the basis of being farmers. Okay! Styling. They can get gas!
They have driven down a Mercedes SUV from Atlanta. A gas turbo. The "fuel" they can get, by special delivery to the tanks at the farm, is diesel. Their car sits on the side of the road for a long time.
There are no diesel vehicles at the farm except a tractor. The diesel F-350 is at the Parrish farm, up on blocks until the "real" farmer can find fuel.
There are crops growing in the field. They look at them. There's not much else to do. The cable is out and the only channel they can get on the TV is CBS and that's snow-filled and nearly impossible to understand. There are no books in the house.
The wife runs out of birth control pills. They don't have any money to buy some from the small-town pharmacy that's still struggling along. It's not going to sell them birth control pills on credit. They are extremely polite but firm. The wife makes a scene.
At this point, some of them get fed up and find some way to get back to being real grasshoppers. The soup lines are better than this.
But we'll say they hang in there.
At some point an officious woman turns up at their house. The officious woman is the new rep for the seed company. It is pointed out that all of their crop is owned by the government. But it's genmod seed. So it can't be used. They need to till it under and plant new seed. That will be provided by the government, as well. And when it's harvested, it will be turned over to the government.
And we get paid . . . ?
In seed.
That's the next point where people said "blow this for a game of soldiers" and found any way back to civilization.
There are lots of such points. I'll skip most of them.
The husband finds out that driving a tractor over a plowed field is not easy. But he does it. The wife does not. She is attempting to learn how to cook. He also learns that:
Hooking up a plow is a bitch.
So is plowing. And it's very fucking boring. And it takes forever, especially if you're in a fucking little 35-horse tractor that the farmer only ever used for minor stuff. But he'd taken one look at the big combine and gone "oh, no fucking way."
The seed is delivered. He plants it. Despite being an intelligent person he is confused by the concept that the seed he's growing is going to be seed. But if that's what he's doing for a living . . . I wonder if the town needs a lawyer?
No, as a matter of fact. Ours survived, alas.
He then finds out.
Seed bags are very fucking heavy.
So is a spreader and if you don't know how to hook one up you can kill yourself. Or hook it up wrong and then bad things happen.
A standard grass spreader is a lousy way to spread wheat seed. He doesn't know that there's a seed planter sitting there. He doesn't know what a seed planter is. And, besides, it's designed for the big tractor he's avoiding.
And he has to keep filling the spreader with those heavy fucking bags of seed.
Things break. They always do. Some things you just have to get a repair guy for. Most, farmers can fix. He can't. The tractor stops. He doesn't know why.
He goes down the road to the next farm. That's no help, that's a young couple who look like they just stepped out of a rock concert and they haven't even bothered to figure out the tractor. They've got a nice crop of ganja out back, though. The crop's like, whoa! It's beans and shit! I think! Dude you have got to try some of this shit! Hey, Stacey's pregnant, man, 'cause we're like out of birth control pills . . .
His wife has cut him off because she's not going to have a baby, the tractor is stuck in the field because the spreader is on backwards and it's jammed the transmission and he really needs a drink, not a toke.
Leave point.
Instead, he goes into town looking for help. There are choices as to what to do.
There were those who said: "I'm a bigshot and you farmers had better fix this or I'll get the gub'mint on your ass!" Or just were hostile and in people's face.
In which case they got exactly dick for help. And the crops never got as far as planted. Seed sat in bags until it got rained on and rotted and was lost. This, alas, was common and contributed to the famines of 2020 and 2021.
We'll give this guy a more optimum situation. He's a dick normally but he also knows when he has to crawl. He's just not sure where to.
Sometimes he runs into the county agent who is running around like mad and gets some help. Enough to get the crop in the ground.
Sometimes he ends up on the phone with me. If he's not a dick, I'll do what I can long distance. Because I can see the train wreck on the way. If he's a dick, I figure he's not worth the time.
Sometimes he walks into the feed store.
There are a bunch of guys sitting around not doing much. There are rocking chairs. None of them are available. Some other guys are standing up.
He doesn't know it, but there's a defined pecking order to those chairs. If a guy gets up and leaves, a specific guy is going to get his chair.
The hayseeds in the feedstore kind of nod and go back to talking about the weather. He waits around for someone to walk up and ask him what he needs. No one does. He's not sure who works there and who is just hanging around. Everyone is in the same clothes.
He is, more or less, ignored.
One of the guys makes mention that it's gonna be a cold winter. The woolies are already getting wooly already. (And the old farmer knows where to look for real long-term predictions.)
The lawyer contends that predictions are for a mild winter. Yeah, it's been a cold spring but it's warming up and what with global warming . . .
They look at him as if he's a Martian. One of them finally says:
"Can I help you?"
He pours out his tale of woe. Little does he know that the guy he displaced, whose truck garden he is eating off of, is sitting in one of the rocking chairs. Everybody knows who the newcomer is. Everyone knows his "tale of woe." Everyone knows that the harvest is going to be fucked and famine is on the way. What they're discussing in quiet voices is how to survive.
"Put the spreader on backwards," one of the hayseeds contends. "Reverse and take it off. Put it on right ways round. That'll do ya."
"Why you usin' the spreader? There's a perfectly good planter."
"What's a planter?"
If, at this point, he just says "Look, I know this is fucked up. I didn't think we'd be taking someone's farm. I thought I'd be working on one. Helping out or something. I don't have the slightest clue what I'm doing. The only thing I know about farming is from watching reruns of Green Acres. But I've got to get this right or . . . it's going to be bad . . ."