Lisa gave the medical report. It was the first time she’d made a presentation at the Grange. People were glued to her every word. She was wearing her best “cabin outfit,” meaning the clothes she had out there. She even had a white lab coat Cindy gave her which made her look like an ER doctor on TV.
Lisa reported that there were three people in the last twenty-four hours who had apparently died from a lack of medication. Lisa didn’t describe their conditions out of respect for their privacy, but Grant later found out that two people had extremely high blood pressure and the third had a rare pituitary condition.
Lisa reported that two more people seemed to have gone insane from a lack of mental health medications. They had been restrained by family members. Grant would need to do a hearing for them to have them committed to the mental ward. Maybe the family members could keep them restrained, which would be preferable.
A volunteer was coordinating the funerals. Like with Mrs. Roth, the burials needed to occur quickly because there was no embalming fluid. Burials would occur without any fanfare. Funeral services would take place once a week, on Sundays after the church service. That way there would be just one service for all the people who died that week. That was a grim thought.
There hadn’t been a massive die off. Yet. There was no plague decimating the population. During peacetime, there was about one death every few months out at Pierce Point. Now, there were about a dozen a month. Almost all of them were people who would have never lived this long without all the modern medicines.
The next report was from Ralph Ramirez, who everyone started calling the “Ag Director” as in the Department of Agriculture. Ralph was in his early sixties with gray hair. He had a bit of a hippie look to him; more of a Birkenstock look than a full-on hippie look.
Ralph was a recently retired extension employee from the U.S. Department of Agriculture who owned a small farm. He was an agronomist, a crop scientist. On his farm, he experimented with various crops and raising livestock. He was coordinating the other dozen or so small farms at Pierce Point. It was kind of what he did for the former government. Ralph was a farmer first and a retired government employee as a distant second.
At first, Grant thought Ralph might be a Loyalist since he had worked in government his whole life. He was theoretically getting a retirement check from the government, although those checks had stopped coming weeks ago. However, Ralph was a scientist, which meant he couldn’t stand all the illogical shenanigans of politics. Besides, he and his wife had all they wanted there on the farm, so he didn’t care about politics. He was a solid Undecided, but Grant was glad to have him out there.
Ralph gave an overview of the little farms and what they were growing and would be growing. Garden crops of all varieties. He had many of them switching from specialty crops to potatoes; lots and lots of potatoes. He was getting seed potatoes to anyone who wanted them for their own small gardens. A few of the small farms out there had cows and horses. There were a few milk cows, but without modern milking machines, hand milking was required and that was very labor intensive. It was hard to get volunteers to come all the way out to the farms and milk the cows and then go back to their own homes. Therefore, the farmers did the milking, but it was only on a few cows. This yielded relatively little milk. Most of the cows were meat cows.
The horses would come in handy for transportation. There were still plenty of vehicles and a little bit of gasoline and diesel, so horses would be a secondary mode of transportation. Grant dreaded the thought of using the horses for meat in the winter if it came to that.
A former computer guy, Steve Otto, was a beekeeper out at Pierce Point and produced amazing honey. One hobby farm had llamas. They were basically pets, but could, in dire circumstances, become food.
About half the farms were community farms, meaning they donated their food to the Grange. For this, they were “contributors” in Drew’s books and got all the associated benefits, like meals at the Grange and free medical care. The most important thing the community farms got in return was Grange-supplied guards. This was a big deal. Everyone expected the farms to be hit by theft.
The other half was “for-profit” farms. They sold—actually, bartered—their crops and hired all their workers and guards. Grant knew that when winter came, and things got scarce, there would be pressure on the for-profit farms to give away their food. There would be accusations of “greedy” farmers living well while others were hungry. Grant tried to inoculate against this as much as possible by supporting the for-profit farms. He would make little comments like, “Free enterprise is alive and well in Pierce Point. People have a right to their property, and that includes the right to keep the things that grow on their property.” Besides, the for-profit farms were getting people things like fresh beef that they couldn’t get anywhere else. Grant knew from history that the quickest way to cause a famine was to take farmers’ food by force. Even the Soviets eventually allowed farmers to sell food.
But still, allowing and even encouraging for-profit farms would be a political challenge for Grant. When people at Pierce Point got hungry—for the first time in their lives—they would want to take from those who had food. The best way to prevent this was to encourage the for-profit farms to become community farms. Encourage, not force. The free guards would be the way to do that.
Ralph’s Ag report was encouraging. “We’ll have quite a bit of food out here,” he said. “Not enough to totally feed everyone, but a decent amount. We’ll be eating more basic foods than you’re probably used to; a lot of potatoes, but fresh potatoes you grow yourself taste way better than all that processed stuff you used to eat.”
Ralph had earlier talked to Rich about how the existence of the Grange kitchen and lots of people eating there was actually a plus for the farms. This was because, with gas being so scarce, it would be hard for individuals to get to farms, pick up a household-size amount of food, go back home, and cook it. It was easier to bring one big batch of food from the farm and have it cooked in one big kitchen and then eaten in one big sitting. This way, it could be eaten right away, when the crop came in, rather than needing to be canned, dried, or frozen. There would be canning, drying, and freezing of the food that wasn’t immediately eaten, but the Grange kitchen was getting lots of fresh produce to hungry people quickly and efficiently. In fact, the farm-fresh food served at the Grange was becoming some of the best at Pierce Point.
Ralph loved the opportunity to teach people about farming. At Pierce Point, he could do far more of the actual teaching than he could at his former government job, which was largely about filling out paperwork and endless documentation for the zillions of grant programs. Now he was doing what he loved.
Given Ralph’s good news about how the community was assisting people with things like growing food, Grant thought this was a good time to bring up his ideas on strengthening community even more.
“Any other topics?” Rich asked.
Grant raised his hand.
“I have some ideas for a few community things out here and wanted to see what everyone thought,” he said. People were paying attention.
“Ralph is doing great things for everyone,” Grant said. He turned to Ralph and said, “Thank you.” Grant went on. “You know, the community is organizing some things that will make our lives better. Things that are still voluntary, but are helpful. Well, I have a few more ideas for voluntary things.”