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Post by sniper69 on May 18, 2024 0:01:10 GMT -6
Thank you for the latest chapters. I do have a question in post #99. Why did Colleen suddenly grab Patty's arm? It was a cliff and maybe something was missed when I read post #100? I am thoroughly enjoying this story and looking forward to the next installment of MOAR goodness.
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katja
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Post by katja on May 18, 2024 0:48:11 GMT -6
I read this in the first version and was so exited when I found this one. A great story, looking forward to the next one. As a european middle age woman I don’t always catch the nuances but I love it nevertheless.
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Post by gipsy on May 18, 2024 7:47:29 GMT -6
For sure
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dannab1
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Post by dannab1 on May 18, 2024 14:05:27 GMT -6
Thank you for the latest chapters. I do have a question in post #99. Why did Colleen suddenly grab Patty's arm? It was a cliff and maybe something was missed when I read post #100? I am thoroughly enjoying this story and looking forward to the next installment of MOAR goodness. I think the price of dairy products is when they realized they had a herd of milk and beef cows at home!
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dannab1
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Post by dannab1 on May 18, 2024 14:07:54 GMT -6
What a great story! Love the "crack" at the end! I bet you've been waiting impatiently to get to the point of throwing that out🤣. Well played!!
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Post by CountryGuy on May 31, 2024 11:43:36 GMT -6
Here I need to say a word to all my friends and readers.
My next post is almost ready. just needing to proofread and tweek it. It will be Post # 100 in this story. The document is getting a bit unweildy now, so I am starting a second thread for Post #101 to continue a new phase of the story. I hope you will see in the last post of the current thread some hints that the tone of this tail is about to transition to tougher times.
I also want to take a moment to offer my genuine thanks for your reading my tale and giving your feed back. Please give me feed back. Your feed back is genuinely appreciated even if it is sometimes negative. I can handle honest criticism, and sometimes I even manage to grow as a result. I also can handle positive, engouraging feed back. That, too, helps me to grow. Thank you all again for your support. I helps me to keep this story alive.
Paul
Loving the story's progression PB. I'm finally catching up but still have a couple of your most recent posts to read. I've noticed, and I'm assuming it's a conscience decision on your part to leave out weapons or talk of self defense which is all good. However, one place I see this maybe pulling away from the story is that with those locals and being lumberjacks and the like, I think you would have multiple hunters in the group. I've thought often thru out, why are they not supplementing their food with hunting. The Haven, having been vacant for years would likely have a lot of animal life. Not sure where exactly you have in mind things are located geographically, but I'd expect small game, birds like grouse or turkey and big game, especially deer, possibly elk or even moose and obviously there are black bear (maybe wild boar) to be available to add to the supper table. Be that thru rifle or bow or even trapping. IS that something you've thought of introducing?
Also, I would think many of the local would be familiar with and used to foraging. Be that going out for say wild blue berries/ huckleberries, black berries, mushrooms/ morels, various greens even. I also forget, but when they moved Gerry's herd, I recall several cows had calves. So have they been neglecting getting those cows into production, be it hand milking or buying basic milking equipment. From there, lots of milk everyday for those kids and for making cheeses. Also, no mention of pigs. Slop them with left over food scraps and milk along with letting them forage in the woods area. Not sure if you're familiar with Joel Salatin but he does rotational farming that I would think Gerry or his mentor would be familiar with. breaking the fiel into paddocks, cows in a few days to graze before moving them to the next and then bringing in chicken tractors behind to sracth the ground and patties left behind to keep down the flies while helping to improve the ground. Then a few days behind them, rabbit tractors. before moving off and allowing that paddock to recover for a few weeks. Continual rotation to improve the soil while also optimizing the food production off that acerage in way of beef, milk, eggs, meat chickens, rabbit meat and rabbit furs.
The other thing, living in the woods and having a garden, it's hard to imagine that without lots of fencing and varmint control, animals like deer, rabbits, coons, wild pigs, birds, etc would be wiping out many of their crops.
One question I had was that thinking to Brother Issac and his extended isolation at the lodge until the family came along, where was much of his food coming from? I know he might have had stores of canned goods but then he and his wife would have had equipment for those means of food storage. I would also think going back to his Dad starting the retreat or during his own time there might have been orchards and berry patches planted long ago. if they were isolated, how were they living sustainably off the land or were others providing food to him. Just something that stuck with me on how had he been surviving out there in near isolation.
Thanks and again, I'm loving the work.
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Post by pbbrown0 on Jun 1, 2024 8:11:05 GMT -6
Country Guy,
I LOVE your comments. It is exciting for me to see that my readers are actually thinking about what I am writing and what thinking about the situation the characters in the story.
Some of your observations are starting to be addressed in the next post. As noted in the comments above, when "Colleen grabbed Patty's arm" suddenly realizing they had a herd of cows that were know for producing more milk per hundred-weight than most Dairy cattle. Many of your observations are quite astute. In writing this story I am working to balance the volume details that could be written regarding the various measures taken by families involved with the attempt to keep this sounding like a story that is moving forward instead of a "survival hand book"
I am well aware of the many designs for managing the flow of livestock over an area to maximize the beneficial interactions of diverse flora and fauna. There is an issue in the forest of maneuvering chicken, rabbit, guinea, duck tractor pens over hilly terrain among numerous large and small trees in the forest. Also, I have to keep in mind the mindset of the lead characters as well as the supporting characters. The key families had been city dwellers up until a few months before they fled to the forest, and once they arrived they had almost no access to the internet to search for ideas. The only resources they had were those books that were loaned by a retired High School Agri teacher who had been immersed in teaching students current 'basic' farming techniques. His library likely had a preponderance of conventional farming information and a relative sprinkling of innovative farming practices. He was teaching 'future farmers of America' rather than survivalist/homesteaders.
As for the former lumberjacks and the area they lived in, you are right that they most certainly had hunting equipment since the region they were in is a fictionalized version of northern Arkansas. (the Ouachita mountains in central Arkansas actually derive their name from native American languages meaning 'good hunt' or 'big hunt'.) However, there are two factors I also considered. (1) So far much of the story is focused on the summer and now early fall months and the hunting season is not open yet. (2) these local families are among the overlooked and trampled upon folks who have been struggling to make ends meet and survive in a town oriented culture. I have observed these kinds of folks more closely in recent years and have found that they will sell off even their most prized posessions to feed their family when they cannot afford to pay a hunting fee to land owners. They will sell their vehicle for a pitance if the rent is due and they can walk to a poor paying job in town, because minimum wages aren't enough to pay for rent, utilities, food, and healthcare. Ecclesiastes 8:9 "All of this I [King Solomon] have seen, and I applied my heart to every work that has been done under the sun, during the time that man has dominated man to his harm."
Thank you so very much for your comments.
Paul
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Post by pbbrown0 on Jun 1, 2024 8:18:22 GMT -6
Kaijafon,
Please put this thread in the completed stories section.
Thank you.
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Post by brucearmstrong65 on Oct 4, 2024 17:28:56 GMT -6
I was catching up on the stories and comments I missed while I was in hospital (Sept - Feb) and in a rehab/nursing home (Feb -now) and I had a question.
I see a Post # 61 (Not the Path You Thought) posted on Dec. 7, 2023). That is followed by a Post # 63 (Trouble with a Capital T) posted on Dec. 9, 2023). My question is: Where is Post # 62?
In any case, thanks for another great story. I don't know if or when I'll be back to writing again. I lost two fingers on my right hand to osteomyelitis, so I'm back to the slow (and inaccurate) two-finger hunt-and-peck method of typing - about 30 WPM when I maxed out at 110 WPM. But I've got an idea or two bouncing around the ol' brain pan, so we'll see.\
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Post by gipsy on Oct 4, 2024 17:31:43 GMT -6
Nice to see you back.
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Post by feralferret on Oct 4, 2024 19:59:10 GMT -6
I was catching up on the stories and comments I missed while I was in hospital (Sept - Feb) and in a rehab/nursing home (Feb -now) and I had a question. I see a Post # 61 (Not the Path You Thought) posted on Dec. 7, 2023). That is followed by a Post # 63 (Trouble with a Capital T) posted on Dec. 9, 2023). My question is: Where is Post # 62? In any case, thanks for another great story. I don't know if or when I'll be back to writing again. I lost two fingers on my right hand to osteomyelitis, so I'm back to the slow (and inaccurate) two-finger hunt-and-peck method of typing - about 30 WPM when I maxed out at 110 WPM. But I've got an idea or two bouncing around the ol' brain pan, so we'll see.\ Bruce, you got me beat. I spent May-June in the hospital and June-August in a nursing home with osteomyelitus in my left foot. Lost a metatarsal bone but no toes. I can imagine how frustrated you had to be at basically losing a year out of your life in addition to the fingers. Still stuck on a wound vac, but hope to be off of that soon. Spent a week in September back in hospital after a heart attack.
Glad to see you back. Hang in there and take care of yourself. I would love to see you come up with a new story. I really enjoyed you past ones.
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Post by brucearmstrong65 on Oct 4, 2024 20:49:34 GMT -6
Bruce, you got me beat. I spent May-June in the hospital and June-August in a nursing home with osteomyelitus in my left foot. Lost a metatarsal bone but no toes. I can imagine how frustrated you had to be at basically losing a year out of your life in addition to the fingers. Still stuck on a wound vac, but hope to be off of that soon. Spent a week in September back in hospital after a heart attack.
Glad to see you back. Hang in there and take care of yourself. I would love to see you come up with a new story. I really enjoyed you past ones.
Glad to see you back too, if not up & around.
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