Don't look a gift chicken in the mouth (Cumberland Saga)

Like a freight-train taking off from a dead-stop on a level piece of track, the afternoon progressed with crashes-and-bangs, groaning and much smoke. But by the end of the afternoon the train was moving.

The first challenge after lunch was that the three trainers who were men (and supposed to be learning about construction) had to walk the teenagers through the expectations about planting corn.

Then there was AnnMarie: She had five children all under the age of nine. Who was going to plant their corn?

Blain and Evan were hard-pressed to stake-out the 75’ square plots AND lead the planting. A further complication was that the plots ended when the grade exceeded 10% (ten-feet-vertical-in-one-hundred-feet-horizontal). That made for some plots that were not a full 5600 square-feet.

They simplified the plotting by using a 75’ length of baling twine to tie the belt-loops of their pants together and then pacing out 30 paces. Whether it was 75’ or 90’ was less significant than the time-urgency. They carried stakes in their aprons and a maul in their hands. Every couple of plots they swapped sides lest the one with the longer stride take them too far out of square.

"Campers" were already quibbling about who got which plots and they didn't even know which cabin they would be permanently occupying.

Fortunately, the teenagers who were in Blain’s algebra class stepped up. This wasn’t their first rodeo. They respected Blain. They led by example. The new teenagers fell in line behind them.

Blain and Evan plotted out ten parcels to start the process. The swirling and mutating process and crew planted a stunning three plots in the first, partial afternoon. Stunning because the process was 80% training and 20% wheels-not-spinning work.

AnnMarie was able to single-handedly cross-train all of the other mothers in the group of newcomers. The only fly in the ointment was that Alice and Sarah wanted to know when THEY would get one of the new, sweet-smelling latrines.

The next morning there were three additional families at breakfast. By modern standards, the Schwertler Swabians were incredibly fertile. They averaged over 3.5 kids per family unit. Including Amira and Walter’s family and Samson’s family, the influx of new residents exceeded Sig’s initial estimate by 150%.

During breakfast, the newcomers updated the community on recent events.

Over 20 bridges had been destroyed in the last 24 hours, including the Robert F. Kennedy suspension bridge in NYC. The terrorists had bypassed the roadblocks by driving in the “wrong direction. The authorities had only placed roadblocks on the entrances and it had never occurred to them that the exits were totally unguarded.

The explosives had destroyed the cable-saddles and the vertical elements of the towers and dumped the entire span into the East River. Has only one cable-saddle or one-side of a tower been compromised, there would not have been a catastrophic failure. There is a lot of redundant structure built into most bridges. But the terrorists had executed coordinated attacks on several of the critical, structural elements of the bridges and destroyed them.

Authorities responded by putting road-blocks on each end of EVERY strategically important bridge in the eastern US and only allowing one vehicle to be crossing at a time. Dump-trucks filled with gravel choked off the flow so there was only one lane that was passible at each end of the bridge.

Traffic was stacked-up for 70 miles behind some bridges. Vehicles ran out of fuel waiting for the massive traffic stoppage to resolve. They were pushed to the side of the road.

The newcomers shook their heads in dismay. “If anymore people show up, they will probably be walk-ins.”

***

Sally showed up mid-morning, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. “Anybody here want some chickens?”

Sarah squinted at him. “What kind? Egg-layers or broilers? Pullets or straight run?”

 

Sarah was running on fumes after nearly 48 hours with just occasional cat-naps. She was running on empty.

If the chickens were pullet (female) broilers or cockerel (male) egg-breeds, she didn’t have any use for them. They ate too much for the return on investment. In fact, given the recent growth in the human population, she wasn’t sure that she wanted ANY meat chickens.

“Straight run, broilers” Sally replied.

“What are they asking for them?” Sarah wanted to know.

“They are giving them away” Sally replied.

Sarah asked “What’s wrong with them? They have been running $4 a chick.”

“Nothing wrong with them” Sally insisted, feelings hurt. “The broiler farm up the road just got a call from the slaughter-house cancelling their order. The slaughter-house can't ship finished product so they stopped receiving. McCloskey's would rather give the chickens away than have to pay a certified hauler to dispose of them. I guess chicken carcasses are considered a bio-hazard and have to be incinerated.”

“Wait just a minute. Are you telling me that these are fully grown, ready-to-slaughter birds that they are just GIVING away?” Sarah asked, amazed. “Mister Salisbury….have you been drinking before lunch?”

“No ma’am!” Sally said, crossing his heart with his right hand and wearing his most solumn expression. “What I told you is a true fact.”

“How many they got?” Sarah asked.

“How many you want?” Sally parried. “Last I heard they had over 5000 birds ready-to-ship.”

Sarah did some quick calculations in her head. She could pack two pounds per quart and get four pounds of meat per bird. If she added saltpeter (sodium nitrate) she could avoid pressure canning and really crank them out. Since there were so many hungry mouths to feed, many of the quart jars would be empty when the tomatoes came in.

“Gimme five minutes” she told Sally.

Ellie, Sig’s wife, had 150 quart jars she could spare. Alice had 200 and Sarah had another 200. On a whim, Sarah trotted over to Walter and Amira's house and learned that they had found almost 400 ready-to-go quart jars in Constanze's pantry, many of them still new in their plastic and cardboard boxes.

Catching up with Sally, Sarah told him “We can take 500.”

The nice thing about commercial broilers is that they don’t need a fence to keep them from running away. Just put out food and water and they won’t move from the spot. Keeping the birds alive would give them the breathing room of processing them over the next several days.