03 November, 20XX
My Dear Lucilius:
Our days continue to
shrink in their daylight hours – we are down to 10 hours a day here
now, but it will sink to 9 hours by the time of the Winter Solstice.
The summers, of course, are amazing – up to 15 hours – but every
year at Winter I always seem to forget, in some ways, that those
hours were there.
It wreaks havoc on
the greenhouse and the quail, of course. I am not one of those that
has ever tried to “extend” the laying season by adding lights to
area. They need their off season, just like all the rest of us do.
Besides, with a life span of about two years, it seems like anything
I can do to make their lives less work is worth it. Their eggs have
kept me going in the past and I will be equally dependent on them in
the future.
The quail in the
greenhouse at winter has turned out to be a blessing for both. I
simply drop sawdust or wood shavings on the ground and let the quail
free. They turn over the shavings, making great fertilizer for the
garden, they add to the heat load in the greenhouse, and they are
protected from the wind and rain (the biggest killer of most
livestock, by the way: keep them dry and out of the wet and cold is
not quite the issue it is for us). The plants, of course, are up off
of the ground. Every now and again I simply throw down another layer
of shavings, although I wonder what I will do when the shavings are
gone – is grass an alternative?
It is dark by 1700
hours now, and the snow and wind makes it seem all the darker. I
have come, in some way, to appreciate those that came before us here
and view them with even more respect. The Sioux survived in this for
hundreds of years without any of the accouterments of civilization
that we cling to. Even the settlers of the 1800s and 1900s had much
less than we, yet managed to cling to life throughout the long
winters until the Spring. I load my stove, cook my soup and tea, and
listen to the howling of the wind outside, the wind they undoubtedly
heard howling at their doors all those years ago.
I sometimes watch
the fire and wonder how others in the small pockets of the world are
surviving. How is it in Iceland (I still treasure my visit there 12
years ago and regret never going back. Ah well, no use complaining
now)? In the Shetland Islands? In Nepal or Bhutan? In the Outback
of Australia? Are we, those that live on the fringe of society,
huddled around our stoves, thinking of places and times that will
never return? Or is there a sense that the world is simply returning
to the way that it has always been, a struggle for survival where
life is a privilege, not a right?
My fear, Lucilius,
is that we will survive this tragedy only to discover that we have
learned nothing from the experience.
Your Obedient
Servant, Seneca
Glad I got caught up. Really good update.
ReplyDeleteGrass would be good if it can be found in winter. :-)
Thanks Linda. I really like quail and enjoyed having them. I hope I can have them again sometime.
DeleteGrass would be great - I do not know there is that much that can be harvest that far North.
The hole in your narrative continues. Not slagging your writing TB - it's great. But the omission or realities is something that seems to kick me out of otherwise good stories.
ReplyDeleteThere will be no escaping into the rural areas in southern Canada or the lower 48. There may be some in the far north. For the most part, when or if the food runs out... it will be total carnage in the population centers and for hundreds of miles around them.
Fair enough, Glen. Mine is a premise based on certain assumptions (my own, frankly - the joys of authoring!), but contain a certain amount of logic. In this case, by the time things have really started to go South, it is Winter. In this case - and this is based on a real location - it is 10 miles either way from a small town, 20 miles from a larger town, and 75 miles from a large city in state of less than a million. Not quite like trying to invade Russia in Winter (look how well that worked out for Napoleon) but close.
DeleteI am also assuming the bias of normality. You can literally see it now. We will see how the current plague plays out, but even now people are acting as if things will get back to normal. Look at Italy - at least a month of folks going right on with their lives as if nothing had gone wrong, until it completely fell apart. I suspect a final end will be just like that - vain hopes that things will come around "after Christmas", "After Spring" - but never will.
Perhaps (a third bias on my part) I am also not overly impressed with the bulk of the citizens nowadays. The thought that anyone will cover that distance walking (can you imagine that today) is possible, but not likely in snow and wind (people scarcely get out of their climate controlled lives anymore).
I suspect - although Seneca is not there, obviously - things are much worse in the cities and urban areas. But realistically in this circumstance, would anyone go to find out?
Who knows? Maybe when the weather turns, things will get more desperate - and easier to travel.
Grass works fine for chickens. I would think it would work for quail as well. I was using straw when I first started my coop, but then I thought of the compost heap and all the grass leaves thereon. I rake a load of dry material from the outer layer of the heap and spread it in the coop. The chickens start going through it right away, looking for bugs that stowed away in the pile. I don't even spread it out, as they do that quite nicely. By the end of the week, the leaves and grass have been eaten or broken down. I rake it up with the poop and put it on the top of the compost heap. It's a win-win. The chickens get more comfortable bedding, with the bonus of possible "prizes," and the compost heap is enriched with chicken poop. I started doing this around five years ago, and haven't gone back to store-bought bedding since.
ReplyDeleteAs for finding natural bedding in winter,... store it like hay before the snow flies... If it's dry when stored, it won't compost quickly at all... just like hay...
I assume it would work for quail as well Pete. They sure loved their lettuce when I gave it to them. Thanks for the break down of how you do it as well. Knowledge is power.
DeleteGood idea on the storage of bedding: reading a book on Hay making and it is just as you say.
"The accouterments of civilization that we cling to." An interesting statement to consider in the light of what's going on now. Toilet paper, for example, was only invented in the late 1800s. Hard to believe anyone could have survived before then. )
ReplyDelete"My fear, Lucilius, is that we will survive this tragedy only to discover that we have learned nothing from the experience." And there's the rub. Humans, apparently, learn very little from experience. Or at least forget what they've learned. Maybe a major reset wouldn't be such a bad thing after all.
Leigh, you are right of course. How did we make it all this time? And maybe this explains part of the panic - people have no idea of what the options are, or at least are afraid of them.
DeleteI wonder, Leigh, if we are not learning from experience any more because we consider the knowledge useless (e.g. old fashioned and out of date in our modern world) or that we have become so reliant on technology that we just "assume" we can find it again?
I wonder, if in some small way, this minor "reset" we are experiencing in terms of panic buying will jar a few thought processes.