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The summer is slipping past and we are still as busy as ever, but we always find time to rest on the Sabbath, and to spend time with our families. Bob and his team are out looking for others again. They always manage to find at least a couple of people that are more than willing to join our family. They have been gone as long as a month, at least once this year, although the average time they are away is about two weeks. We did find some pool tables in town as well as in the city that is in the opposite direction. Since we use the church for meeting in when we have a large group, we put three pool tables in our meeting house, and we still have room for our entire group to fit in comfortably. There are also several homes in all the groups that have pool tables in them. I enjoy playing once in a while, but not as much as some of our younger and older people do. Frank and dad love to play pool, as much as they do playing checkers and cards. We found a small table in one of the stores we were in, and they love playing on that.
Our peanut crop is getting close to harvesting. According to the books we have read on the subject, there is a short window that the ripe peanuts must be picked. If you wait too long, they will break off the plant and stay in the ground, and if you pick them too early, they will not be ripe. We have been marking the days on the calendar to make sure we don’t forget. When the time comes that they are finally ready we will make sure we have plenty of help, because the plants have to be picked by hand since we don’t have a peanut harvester. The plants have to be pulled out of the ground, with the peanuts holding on to the roots. The plant is turned upside down to let the peanuts dry for a few days in the air. This last trip Bob mentions seeing a couple of things that catch our attention.
One of those is that they went past a large farm that was marked as a peanut farm. They took the time to check it out quickly, and they found several barns full of equipment that was probably used to harvest peanuts. We waste no time getting a group ready to check that out. As it turns out they do have three harvesters on this farm which looks huge. We also find very large ovens that were used to dry the peanuts after they are picked. They must have made their own peanut butter as well, because we find at least two presses in boxes that show that’s what they are for, and two others that look almost just like them. We also find dozens of bags of seeds in the barns that they were probably going to plant the year the war ended almost everything. It takes a couple of trips to get everything we can use, but it is definitely worth it. We also find hundreds of cases of jars and lids that are just the right size for peanut butter, along with many more books with information in them.
Our peanut crop turns out to be a huge success, but then we have been praying that we have a good crop more than planning how to use it. Our expectations are high in how the peanut butter will taste, but we are fully aware that our soil may not be as good as it should be for this crop. Our pinto beans did much better than we thought they would. They are pretty easy to store as well. We simply put then in five gallon plastic pails with lids that we found in town, after seeing them in the basements of most of the homes here. Naturally the beans have to dry first, but after that they will last quite a while. That is if we can keep from eating them all. When they ripened we cooked a large batch, and mashed them with some cheddar cheese that we make. Everyone in all the groups loves them, so next year we are going to double the area that we plant.
Our other crops are doing quite well also. We have more tomatoes this year than we did last year, and our sweet corn is doing great. I remember when I was young, helping Ma Horton cut the corn off the cobs, and get it ready to either be frozen or canned in jars. When the corn is ripe we have large groups of people in the meeting house sitting and cutting the corn off the cobs. We have some tools that help the process, but we wind up cutting at least some off with a knife. This is the third crop that we have had, and we can all honestly say we have not heard one word of complaint from any of our family. We are still concerned about being able to replace the lids that we use for canning. The rings and jars can be used over and over again, but the lids only work once. We tried using some twice and it didn’t work very well at all.
That’s the other surprise Bob had for us when he came back last time. We got so busy harvesting and canning that we haven’t been able to do anything about it. He told us that in their travels, they saw a factory that has the same name as the lids and jars that we use for canning. They did not go inside, but they say it is a pretty good sized factory. Mike is excited about it, he says that he may be able to bring some of the machinery back here, and we might even be able to make our own lids. That would be great, but even I know that it will take many processes to make the lids, but maybe they have a good supply of them in the factory. Bob says the factory is just about a day’s drive away, so in between harvests, we plan a trip over to see what we can find. At this time of year we are busy harvesting, and preparing foods for storage, but we feel this is important enough for a few of us to check out.
The trip over is uneventful, which is what we always hope for. The factory is larger than I thought it would be, and we are definitely not disappointed. We enter the factory from the front, and go into what appears to be the offices of the people that ran the company. Sara, Morgan, and Jenna are with us as well as James, Mike, and Gary. The women all say they would love to have some of the office equipment, even if it is pretty much all antiques compared to what they are accustomed to. Mike heads into an area of the offices that is marked engineering, the rest of us head out to the production area. There are machines and equipment all over the place. We can see the lids and rings that we use for canning on punch presses where they were being punched out. They are connected to conveyors that carry them to hoppers, that I’m sure got taken away to the next step in the process when they were full.
I would have loved to see this factory when it was running. There are other machines that appear to be where the completed lids were fed into, to get the coating of rubber that seals the jars shut. Mike joins us when we are at these machines, trying to figure out how they work. Mike has some notebooks that he says are the process instructions for operating this equipment. He is excited and confident that if he had a couple of days, he could actually get this equipment running again. Around the machines we are looking at, there must be fifty or sixty thousand lids, waiting to have the rubber put on them. At the end of the process there are thousands more that have gone through the process, and are being put into the little boxes automatically. At least they were when the factory was working. There is another line where rings are coming off being boxed as well.
Looking at the number of rings and lids right here, we will have more than enough for a couple of generations. It would be great to get the machinery running again, but just seeing what we are is a huge relief. What we find when we go to the shipping area is almost mind boggling, because here we find pallet loads of boxes of the finished product. The pallets are marked with who they were going to, and how many are on that particular pallet. Just adding the quantities quickly in my head, I can see that there are over a million lids sitting here on the dock. They must be affiliated with the jar company of the same name, because there are thousands of jars in the stock room and on the shipping dock. We find that we can back our truck right up to the dock, and load the pallets onto it using one of the fork trucks sitting here.
They are electric, so we will have to recharge the batteries, and hope it holds long enough to load the truck. Gary and Sara are looking around and find a propane fork truck that we are sure we can get running. We spotted a store on the way here, so while Gary, Sara, and Ken get the fork truck running, some of us head to the store to see what we can find there. The store shows signs that people have been visiting here recently. The stock room is still full of canned goods, and there are a lot of canning supplies here as well. We decide to see what we can get on the truck from the factory, and then see if we have any room. We only take enough food for our trip then head out to see if there is anyone around.
We see a sign that says Sporting Goods, so we head that way to see what we may be able to use. They have just about everything you could want in the line of sporting goods. There is a barrel full of different putters, as well as a whole wall covered with golf clubs, balls, and clothing. We also find a very nice almost new, thirty years ago, truck with about a fifteen foot box on the back. Naturally we have to see how much work it will be to get it running. Since we are going to spend the night anyway, we figure why not and get to work on the truck. James and Jenna head back to the factory to tell the others what we are doing. They come back with the pickup with the compressor and generator on it, and we have the truck running in no time. Gary and I take it for a drive to make sure it is going to stay running.
We turn down a street a couple blocks from the store, and we see a woman and two small children running for cover in a building, a few doors down from where we are. Naturally we stop and call to the young woman, telling her that we mean them no harm. They have disappeared by the time we get to the building, so we continue on, hoping that maybe we can find them before we leave. We mention what we saw to Sara, Jenna, and Morgan when we get back and they want us to take them to where we saw them. We are on the block before where we saw them, when Sara tells me wait here for a moment. We are walking, so I just stop where I am and watch them go into the next building. They are in the building probably five minutes, when they come out with four women and seven children. We recognize the ones we saw earlier, so that is a relief. The woman says she heard us call, but she was too frightened to stop.
With the new truck, we have just about room enough for everyone to ride back to the farm. The women we found tell us that as far as they know, they are the only ones living here. In the morning while the truck is being loaded, some of our group decides to take a ride around town just to make sure we don’t leave anyone behind. On the far side of town they find a family of four that are walking into town from the north. They are more than happy to join our group, and the father in the family even helps us load the truck. We are able to fill all of our vehicles at the factory, which had its own gasoline pumps right there. The weather is not bad, so rather than spend another half day getting a vehicle running, some of us volunteer to sit in the back of the pickup on the way home. When we get there everyone is excited about the quantity of lids, rings, and jars we found and they are just as excited about the golf clubs, and balls we brought back, as well as the other balls and games we found there.
As usual the new people are excited to join our community. There is plenty to do and since they are all more than willing to help, we know they will be good additions to our family. We are continuing to harvest our crops that include the fruit trees we have. At first the new people were afraid that they would get into trouble if they eat some of the fruit while it is being picked. But then the children told them that they do it all the time, especially when they are picking apricots and cherries. They all seem to like the peaches, apples, and pears just as much. The orchards seem to be doing better every year. Frank says that’s because we are pruning the trees properly each fall, so that they don’t have a lot of wasted branches that prevent fruit from growing. We have plenty of each crop to can some, dry some, and eat just about as much as we want fresh.
The faces on the new people make going after them all worth it, especially the children. They have never known a time when they can have a full belly on good nutritious food, and sleep in a warm comfortable bed. We have a large number of children under ten living in all the groups. We always have to be careful in the farm yards, because there are always children riding bikes and other riding things, and just playing around the yards with the other children. The dogs and puppies keep them from wandering off, besides the moms and the teens take turns watching the little ones. If there is mischief brewing you can bet that Tammy and Tina are right in the middle of it. Fencing in the playgrounds has helped keep the little ones where they are supposed to be, plus we try to keep adding to what they have to play with to keep their interest.
One of the things we have been doing at least this summer and fall so far, is taking bike rides as a family. We found some little stroller like carts that can be fastened on behind a bike for the younger children. Some of them even have plastic covers, to keep dust off the little ones, and to protect them better. It is not uncommon to see thirty or forty people, and bikes riding from group to group on an evening. We love to go bike riding to visit our friends in the other groups. We get to visit with our friends and get some great exercise doing it. Our hunters have started taking their bikes to ride farther from home to shoot game, to keep what we have local just in case. They always take a radio with them and call when they are ready to have whatever meat they have killed, picked up.
We have been talking about raising our beef in the pastures, instead of letting it run wild. Personally I have been studying the animals in the woods since we came here and they seem to be breeding and multiplying fine on their own. Most of the cattle we see in the woods are not even afraid of us, and on most days you can sit on the porch and see several large groups of them, along with deer grazing on the deep grass on the other side of the road. That is not counting our cows that we keep for milk and other dairy products. We usually just let them graze behind the two barns that we bring them in to milk. When we first came here, and we started having cows come into the barnyard, there were several calves along with the adult cows. We now have ninety-seven head at last count that we milk every day.
That’s another improvement that James, Jenna, Morgan, and Mike have made since coming here. They know a lot about dairy farming, and have been able to get the automatic milking machines working, so the job of milking the cows is much easier than it was. Each group has their own cows, so they had to go from group to group and teach those in charge of that chore how to use them. Anyway, getting back to raising our own beef cattle, we discussed all the pros and cons and decided that we may be getting into something that will just add more work, with no real return on investment. We all agree that when the area becomes more populated with other than our groups, then we will probably need to do something, but as it is we simply don’t need to do it.
This year we planted oats as one of the new crops that we wanted to try. I honestly don’t know much about harvesting and preparing them, but I definitely enjoy the oatmeal and the oatmeal cookies that the ladies always seem to find time to make. We found grape arbors at the farm where Billy and Ramona moved, so this year we have grapes. We were even able to make some raisins this year, much to the delight of the children and some of us who are simply young at heart. The wives have started cutting up dried peaches, apricots, cherries, and apples and putting them in oatmeal cookies. Between that and the ice cream made with the fresh fruits, you can see why we need the exercise we get from riding our bikes. We do eat well, but we work hard as well, so none of us seem to be getting fat, at least not yet.
I have been able to get back into good enough shape to beat the teenagers at the obstacle course. They are still very popular with the groups that can use them. The younger people got so good at running the course we did for them that they have pretty much all started using the bigger one. The wives love to race me on the course, but they always cheat so they can win. I won’t tell you how they cheat, but I don’t mind losing, if that helps you figure out what they might be doing. Fall comes and turns into winter before we realize it. We are getting ready for another Thanksgiving already, and our family has grown by twenty new members. They are fitting in with the groups as if they have been here from the start. We continue to have babies and our couples continue getting married. Melissa is expecting in January, the twins are about as excited as they can be. They say they know this baby will be a little sister, time will tell.
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Dayna, Robin, Melissa, and Becky chastised me, because when we talk it seems like everything is going along without a hitch here in our community. Things are going very well, and all of us are doing much bet
ter than we did before we came here, but we do have our share of setbacks. For instance, this summer we had a tropical storm that made its way inland and blew down a windmill in Barbs group, and two of them in Ryan and Carol’s group. We were able to get them back up and running within two days, so the impact was minimal. Everyone involved agreed that compared to what they lived with before coming here that was a minor inconvenience. Not all of our crops grow as we would like them to, but we plant almost twice what we think we will need, so we still get more than enough for our needs.
Just like in any home, water heaters go bad, pumps stop working, and have to be repaired or replaced, but we work our way through these small inconveniences, just as you have to when they happen to you. I prefer to talk about the good things that are happening, rather than dwell on the small problems. We have been very lucky, and have not been attacked in almost a year. That doesn’t mean that we let our guard down, because we are still ever vigilant. We continue training the new people and giving refresher training to everyone. There has been nothing in any of our lives to make us believe that we will never be bothered again. We continue to check with other groups on the short wave radio. Tim, and many of the others, are always talking to someone, mainly in the evenings. The group in Arizona has been dropping some hints that all may not be as well as they would like. They have been growing much like we have, only not to the extent that we have.
In their conversations, Tim says it sounds like they are having trouble getting enough food, and other necessities, for the larger group that they have become. After our get together on Thanksgiving, Tim raises them again, only this time they come right out and ask if there is any way we could send them some of our people who know farming, mechanics, and electricity. When they only had thirty some people in it, they were able to sustain fairly well, but they have had twenty people join their group, and now they don’t know what to do. Clark, the leader of their group, even asks us if we are being honest when we tell them we have over four-hundred people in our group.
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