The Slow Road

by Jerry D. Young

  When he had the footings dug and the reinforcement in place for the monolithic floor and footing pour, Jasper and Millie tightened their belts and Jasper called the concrete company. It took all the spare cash they had at the moment to get the concrete required for the footings and floor of the shelter. But finally the concrete was in and curing. Jasper kept a close eye on it and kept the fabric spread over the fresh pour damp as instructed by the concrete workers for the time needed for the concrete to cure.

  They did without most of the simple pleasures they permitted themselves that cost money that summer. By early fall the concrete was ready for Jasper to start laying the blocks for the two parallel walls that enclosed the shelter. After each lift had time to cure, Jasper shoveled in the dirt, sand, and gravel mixture he’d been accumulating and tamped it down after wetting it.

  It went slowly, and Jasper had to stop during the winter. It was another bad one and they had to scrimp again to buy propane, though there was nothing like the blizzard and ice storm of the winter before. There was more snow than usual, though it had come intermittently and hadn’t caused much problem. But the snow melt had the ground saturated when the spring rains started.

  Once again Jasper put in more than his share of time helping out church members and the county deputies take care of people that couldn’t take care of themselves during the floods. They weren’t bad and didn’t affect Millie and Jasper’s place at all, but Jasper had to rest up for two weeks, doing only the watchman job and taking care of the garden. He finally was able to start working on the shelter again. It still went slowly, but it went steadily.

  The thick, earth filled walls were at the correct height, which was a couple of layers of block higher than the original design. The shelter was small and Jasper wanted it as high inside as he could reasonably make it to cut down on the claustrophobic feel. That was also the reason he painted it white inside when it was finished.

  He had to rent the high lift, long reach forklift again to set the structural steel in place that would support the earth covered concrete roof of the shelter. That done, they had to wait to come up with the money for the concrete for the roof. But they had plenty to keep them busy.

  Millie helped Jasper place and lightly tamp brick floors for the greenhouse they were going to build against the south facing side of the shelter. Jasper had picked up two medium sized polymer stock watering tanks from TSC and buried them down with the top edges just above the floor level, back against the wall of the shelter.

  When the floor was in place, Jasper began building a wooden framework with the salvaged lumber. As the structure took shape, the salvaged metal framed glazed windows were installed.

  The windows were in pretty good shape considering their age and going through the recovery process. Jasper had to replace a few broken panes of glass and re-glaze a few more as he installed them.

  The garden was producing well, as were the two strawberry towers. There was still no fruit on the trees, but they were healthy and doing well. The next year would tell the tale for them and the grapes. The nut trees still had a few years to go, except for the original paper shell pecan that was at one edge of the front yard. It produced a few nuts every year, but not as many as it should. Jasper was studying up on why.

  Though there was no roof on the shelter yet, just the decking to support the concrete when it was poured, Millie began stacking the cases of glass jar canned foods she was producing on shelves that Jasper had built for her with some of the salvaged lumber. They kept another of the old salvaged tarps over the shelves in case of rain leaking through the forms of the roof.

  Jasper had made sure to get his hunting license and migratory waterfowl tags again and went hunting with Alvin several times that year. Millie found the help she needed on line to learn how to can meats. Most of what Jasper brought in went into pint jars that were added to the vegetables in the shelter.

  The green house was finished by winter time, but Millie and Jasper didn’t try to start a winter garden that year. Jasper still needed to make the growing tables and install a wood burning heater.

  They got a break that winter. As usual every few winters there was an exceptionally mild one. They still had plenty of masonry blocks and bricks, and Millie and Jasper decided to expand their outdoor garden beyond the confines of the garden plot. Jasper built raised growing beds using some of the block and bricks, incorporating gravity feed deep soil irrigation pipes in the beds using the pipe that he hadn’t sold to finance the labor on the salvage job.

  With the new raised beds and the greenhouse, the regular garden could be used for space intensive plants like corn and potatoes, both of which the two of them loved and wanted. They were able to increase the useable space by planting the various melons they liked at the back of the garden, along the fence, and train the vines up the fence on rails that Jasper had attached for that purpose. Jasper used some of that year’s load of manure from Alvin to sweeten the raised beds for the following year.

  Some of the blocks were used to make a four bay mulching assembly, making it easy to turn the mulch when needed. It would eventually be used on the raised beds and in the greenhouse, with the yearly manure delivery going to the regular garden.

  Christmas that year found the family a soon to be real family. Millie was two months pregnant. They’d always planned on children, and tried, but had never been blessed until that fall. Both were ecstatic, despite the realization that a baby meant a lot more expenses in their lives. They adjusted their plans accordingly.

  The only major expense they allowed themselves, besides preparations for the baby, was the concrete for the roof of the shelter. It was poured the first good day that spring and allowed to cure properly before Jasper rented the high lift, long reach forklift to lift the large box he built and filled with earth up and down so he could spread the fill material on the roof, inside the outer, extended block wall of the shelter.

  Jasper had laid down drain lines around the perimeter of the roof and covered the entire roof with plastic sheet before he filled the area in. One of the changes he’d made to the shelter design had been to build stairs up one side of it so they could use the dirt covered roof of the shelter for additional garden space. That would come later.

  For the moment, Jasper replaced the sod he’d cut before starting the process and stored, keeping it damp year round. It hadn’t fared well, and it took the entire amount to piece out the roof of the shelter with good sod.

  The next low cost project Jasper started was to lay down another brick floor on the raised section of the property next to shelter on the side facing the garden. Using a combination of block, brick, lumber and salvaged sheet metal he’d made a deal for the previous summer, Jasper built a new yard shed over that winter between Christmas and spring, when he wasn’t otherwise engaged. The material from the old shed was incorporated into the new, the contents of the small building stored in the shelter temporarily.

  He built a less elaborate shed on the north side of the shelter and began stacking the firewood he got every year helping Alvin in it on the brick floor. The final additions to the outside of the shelter were worm beds with rabbit hutches built over them, under the stairs that went up to the roof of the shelter. The area could be fully enclosed if the temperature got too cold for the rabbits and heated with a tiny sheepherders stove that Jasper built out of scrap steel.

  Millie lost the baby in the second trimester and she and Jasper mourned the loss, and then carefully packed away all the baby things they’d already accumulated and put them in the shelter. Millie had been advised not to let herself get pregnant for at least two years.

  Perhaps because of the loss of the baby, Millie eagerly took on the responsibility of the rabbits they had been planning on raising for their own use and to supplement their income. Jasper managed the fish in the two stock tanks in the greenhouse, using the worms to feed them. The worms fed on the droppings from the rabbits. The rabbits lived on items from the garden most of the year, wi
th rabbit food fed to them when fresh food wasn’t available.

  Just as she’d not been able to take game when she went along on a couple of Jasper’s hunting trips, Millie couldn’t bring herself to butcher the rabbits. She was okay handling the carcasses after Jasper had butchered and cleaned them. Some she canned and some she sold, just as she did the fish that Jasper’s fish tanks started producing.

  After checking the town statutes, Jasper found out that chickens could be raised legally in the area of town they were in. A bit reluctantly, out of anticipation of the neighbor’s possible squawks because of the squawks of the chickens, Jasper built a moveable chicken pen and henhouse. The chickens got some of the worms, too.

  But the birds weren’t too noisy, and the thick hedges dampened the sound to each side and the solid alley fence dampened the noise to their across-the-alley neighbors. The neighbors didn’t seem to mind as long as they were able to buy the fresh eggs and chickens the Willingham’s were now producing, along with the generous gifts of fresh vegetables during the height of the garden harvest.

  Just as scheduled, the fruit trees began to bear that summer. It hurt Jasper initially to thin down the fruit as it began to show, but the experts on the internet were adamant that the process was critical for good yields and the good health of the trees. All the thinned fruit went right into the compost bins.

  That fall Jasper came home to find Millie nearly at the point of collapse from having been in the kitchen nearly constantly for several days, canning produce. He vowed to prevent that from happening again and immediately began to construct an outdoor kitchen for use during the canning season.

  There were still plenty of bricks and blocks from the building salvage project and feeling guilty about Millie’s condition, Jasper built something more elaborate than he might have otherwise. He did acquire more fill dirt and built up the area to the same height as the shelter mound. Though he ran a gas line from the propane tank to the outdoor kitchen and installed a couple of propane side burners, the main cooking apparatus was the wood stove with oven that Jasper built from plans he found on the internet. He had to buy the firebrick for the stove, but decided it was well worth the money to make it easier on Millie.

  Besides the wood stove and oven, and the side burners, Jasper piped water to the structure and put in a small sink that drained into a bucket that could be emptied into the cleanout for the sewer line at the back of the trailer, or used to water the garden. There was a large flat work surface for the food preparation activities. The entire structure had half height walls and a roof. The area between them was fiberglass screen to keep the bugs out but allow circulation.

  Fortunately he’d built the thing so the additions he decided on in the middle of the project worked right in with almost no modification of the original construction. At the south end of the brick structure Jasper mounted a large C-band parabolic dish he got for free from one of the neighbors that had switched to cable vision. He cleaned it and painted it with reflective paint.

  Above the focus point of the dish Jasper built a large multiple tray solar dehydrator. It had screened sides, enclosed at a distance with light plywood to allow air circulation all around the trays. A piece of heavy metal was suspended at the very bottom that the reflector focused the sunlight on, heating it up to provide low heat to help dry the items on the trays.

  At the north end of the outdoor kitchen Jasper built a small wood burning pit that was piped to a tall smoker assembly. They would be able to smoke and cure some of the meat they were producing. All the hickory wood that was Jasper’s cut of the firewood he and Alvin cut every year was consigned for use in the smoker.

  The smoker didn’t get used at all that winter, though Millie and Jasper were able to get a few trays of fruits dried in the dehydrator. The next year both additions got as much use as the canning kitchen. Jasper bought a heavy duty manual meat grinder and ground up the entire deer he took during hunting season and made jerky strips out of it with a kit from Cabela’s.

  Without any really expensive projects going, Millie and Jasper had the money to buy a whole hog and a half of a beef which they processed by jerking, canning, curing, and smoking, with Jasper making sure he did his share of the work.

  The entire electrical system in the US was getting old and overloaded. Millie and Jasper began to find themselves out of power on a fairly regular basis. They shopped and shopped for a small generator, but just could not find one with the capability they wanted for a price they were willing to pay.

  They spent more than one night in the shelter when the power was out during a one-hundred-plus degree heat wave. With the thick walls of the shelter the temperature stayed below seventy even during the sustained heat.

  With the nearly unlimited irrigation water they had available their garden and orchard thrived even with the high temps. Millie bought a second canner that summer and several more cases of jars, with the additional money they had available from her new side business at the consignment shop, since the money wasn’t going to big projects.

  She had run across a home business idea on-line and fell in love with the idea. She talked to Jasper about it and they saved up for three months to purchase a #10 can lid sealing machine, along with a case of cans, and some blank computer labels from the website. The business was packaging small gifts in the cans and selling them. A person could select items at the consignment shop to put in the can, or bring their own items to be canned.

  Millie also sewed items to can for pre-made gifts. The business wasn’t all that lucrative until the sealer was paid for, but after that it was gravy. And the side benefit was that Millie and Jasper began dry canning much of the food they dehydrated and jerked, using oxygen absorbers in the cans for long term storage. They didn’t bother with the fancy computer generated self stick labels for their own canning, just marking the contents and date of the canning directly on the cans with an indelible marker.

  They were also finally able to make a couple of double payments on the mortgage, though it was for only two months. They went into 2008 in the best physical shape they’d either ever been in, and also the best shape financially. They didn’t have much of a savings, but they were able to set aside a small emergency stash of cash for just-in-case emergencies.

  They were producing most of their own food, buying only staples at the store. Millie had always wanted to buy in bulk to save money, but had never been able to do so. They always seemed to need a little of a lot of things all the time.

  But now, with food put by, Millie began grocery shopping only once a month, for the staples they needed. She had been buying the powdered whole milk that Jasper liked from a long term storage food source and after talking it over with Jasper; they invested in a Country Living grain mill and bought a #10 can of hard red winter wheat for Millie to start experimenting with.

  She had baked bread from time to time using commercial flour, but they usually bought the seven-grain wheat bread both of them liked. It took a while and another can of the wheat for Millie to get the hang of making the whole wheat bread in the outdoor kitchen wood fired oven. But they finally switched over completely to the homemade bread from home ground flour. They bought a six-gallon Super Pail of the wheat for immediate use, and another for storage.

  Millie baked once a week, and with the nutrition of the bread, they had one day a week where they ate only a whole loaf of bread apiece, and had only water to drink. Both seemed to be healthier as their diet had changed over to home grown foods.

  Jasper and Millie both liked honey in their hot tea, and had been buying the small containers for a long time. But the more they read on the internet about the benefits of natural raw honey; they became convinced that it was what they wanted to start using.

  Both wanted to get beehives to ensure good pollination of the garden and orchard, but Millie was allergic to the stings and they couldn’t take the chance. The garden and orchard were doing fine with the natural bee population so Jasper started looking around the are
a for someone with honeybee hives that would trade raw, unprocessed honey for labor. If he could get several five-gallon buckets of it, they would have enough to last them for years.

  He finally found someone through Alvin. It didn’t surprise Jasper very much when Alvin went along and paid cash for four buckets of the honey when Jasper collected his after working part time for six months around the man’s large farming operation doing odd jobs and mechanic work. The honey was stored in the shelter. Millie would transfer a little each month for use that month, from the bucket to a stainless steel honey canister that Jasper had found for her.

  The two years had passed since Millie’s first miscarriage and she and Jasper again let nature take its course. If she got pregnant again, fine. If she didn’t, well… that was God’s will. They were trying.

  And it worked. Millie again found herself two months pregnant at Christmas time. And it was going to be twins. Jasper began looking for a decent paying day job so he could be with Millie during more normal hours.

  He had been applying for a job with the county maintenance crew every time an opening came up for several years. But Harry Harleson had been a county commissioner for years. He and Jasper had been mortal enemies since high school. Jasper was sure that Harry kept him from getting any county job.

  Harry lost his seat on the commission amidst a slew of accusations of wrong doing. Jasper’s application was approved for a job on the county maintenance crew a week after he put it in for the newest open position. Not only was Jasper pay going to be significantly higher, he would get medical and retirement benefits.

  But Millie and Jasper gave up on ever building their dream home. They were going to have to do something. The forty-foot park model trailer was soon going to be too small for the family.