Then Brand struck the palm of her hand to her forehead. "Wait a minute-my off-season cover crop is winter rye. If I don't plow that up for vegetables, we can harvest it, by hand if we have to. Call it a hundred acres at twenty or so bushels… say two thousand bushels of grain. Not until late August, though. That's about…" She punched her calculator. "About one-fifth of our needs for a year, not counting what I'd have to hold back as seed."
"Potatoes," Ian Arnstein said. The others looked at him; he flushed slightly and went on: "Potatoes are a pretty complete diet, they grow well in a sandy soil, and an acre will support two people. They keep well, too. The Irish used to live off potatoes and skim milk. We could live on potatoes and salt fish over the winter, probably."
Angelica Brand went into a huddle with the A amp;P manager and her secretary and pecked at her calculator. At last she said:
"It's pretty elementary farming, and we've got our usual shipment of seed potatoes on hand at my place. We could plant a couple of hundred acres, although that will cut down on the period for living off stored food," she said. "Plus I can put in a few hundred acres of corn and vegetables, drawing on my own stocks and the stuff from the gardening and supply shops. But I don't have the equipment to cultivate that much, even counting the relics used as lawn ornaments and such I've been tracking down. There isn't that much cleared land on the island, in fact, even if we use lawns and flowerbeds. Incidentally, we should use some of the lawns for fodder, grazing and hay, if we can."
Chief Cofflin closed his eyes, then opened them in decision. "People are going crazy sitting around with nothing to do, anyways." Most of the island's economy depended on tourists. The demand for real estate agents, store clerks, waiters, and cooks had taken an abrupt nosedive. "We'll do the clearing and planting by hand if we have to." He went on, "We'll divide them into teams. Ms. Brand, you use your tractors to do the heavy clearing, plus what earthmoving equipment we can dig up. Then we'll have the teams move in and get ready to plant with hand tools. Anything else you've got seed for, too. Carrots, beets, turnips, you name it. Find the best land and we'll worry about compensation for the owners later, if we live."
"How are we going to pay people to work? It's just sinking in that money isn't worth much anymore," the town clerk said.
That was a good question. "Any ideas?"
Starbuck nodded. "Food. I say anyone who wants to eat, works. We can run a sort of chit system, so many hours drawing so much, and then juggle it. Of course, we'll have to figure out something different for people who can't work, and eventually we'll need a money of our own. But that's going to have to wait."
Martha Stoddard cleared her throat. "The older people, we've got a lot of retirees, they can do things like child-minding. We'll need a day-care system with everybody able-bodied working."
"Good idea, Martha. Yours too, Joseph: work if you want to eat. Damn, you know, that sounds pretty good… Any objections?" Cofflin didn't see any. "Speaking of money, we'll have to make a register of houses, land, and cars and suchlike owned by coo… by people who weren't here when the Event happened. We'll have to commandeer property owned by residents, too, but let's make it clear from the beginning that there'll be compensation eventually."
Everyone nodded. Angelica Brand returned to her specialty:
"Chief, this island is just a big sand dune out in the ocean. There's not much in the way of nutrients in this soil, and I don't have much fertilizer, either. What's more, the best land has the thickest scrub cover."
"Plant everything you can, and you've got the stuff from the composting sewage works." He silently thanked God they'd managed to keep that going, for a few crucial hours a day at least. Without it they might have had plague already. "We can use sludge from septic tanks too, if it's treated-find out how. I'm putting you in charge of food production. Levy the people you need. From now on we're farmers, like it or not."
"Brush," Arnstein said. The others looked at him, and he hurried on: "We have to clear the brush anyway, so we burn it and turn under the ashes. Slash-and-burn farming. The ashes should enrich the soil for a year or two."
Brand nodded and began to make notes. "We'll be short of hand tools. I'll get on to the machine shop. Seahaven Engineering ought to be able to handle what we'll need, them and the plumbers. And seed's going to be a problem next year-these hybrids don't breed true… And I suppose we'll have to keep all the livestock for breeding."
"Everything that can breed," Cofflin agreed.
Martha Stoddard spoke again: "You might try locating wild Jerusalem artichokes, here and on the mainland. They're a native plant. Yield and methods are about like potatoes, and they like a poor sandy soil. They keep well right in the soil overwinter, too."
Cofflin looked at her with respect. "Now, that's an excellent idea, Martha. Perhaps your scout troop could start in on that as well."
"And this being March, the stores would be full of packets of garden seed," Martha went on thoughtfully. "The feed stores might have whole unmilled oats, too. Some of them might sprout."
She paused for a moment. "And get on to Paul Hill-water, the botanist-he's been doing a study of Nantucket's historical ecology for years now. He can advise us on what not to clear, to keep wind erosion down and block salt spray. That used to be quite a problem here when the island was mostly bare."
Angelica Brand nodded and started to speak; Cofflin held up a hand. "Hold off on that for a moment, Angelica. The Professor suggested something. Ron, you heard anything yet you can't handle in the way of toolmaking?"
Ron Leaton, the owner of Seahaven Engineering, was a slender man in early middle age, with long-fingered hands like a violinist. "Oh, I can work up anything you want," he said. "Give me power and bar stock or sheet steel. The problem is there's only one of me. I can do anything, but not everything."
That was a problem. Nantucket simply didn't have much industry. Seahaven was a one-man quasi-hobby; most of Leaton's living had come from his computer dealership, with the machine shop in his basement. At that, it was the sole and singular metalworking facility on the island, unless you counted the high school shop classes and the Eagle's onboard machine shop.
Cofflin pressed his ringers to his forehead. "Let's look at it this way. What have you got, what can it do, and what can you do to do more of it?"
"Ah…" Leaton frowned. "Well, I've got a 1956-type Bridgeport milling machine, with digital controls added on, an old Atlas twelve-by-thirty-six engine lathe, an Atlas horizontal milling machine, a seven-inch Ammco shaper, and I just got in a Schaublin eight-by-eighteen precision tool-making lathe, a real beauty-Swiss. All light-to-medium stuff. There may be more on-island. I'll start looking."
The head of the Nantucket Electric Company cut in: "You made those flanges for us, and some other fairly heavy work. The turbocharger, for instance."
"Yup, but I sort of cheated-used the Bridgeport as a vertical lathe with a rotary table." He looked around. "Forty-eight inches by twenty-nine, machined out of solid five-eighths plate-"
Cofflin cleared his throat. Leaton flushed and continued:
"Bottom line, Chief, is that I could make just about anything, including more tools; a lathe is one of the few tools that can make a copy of itself. It'll be a little awkward without a foundry, but I could make a round bar bed lathe, the Unimat type; it'll work perfectly well, just not as durable as a cast or forged bed. I'm making a tool cutter of my own right now, or was before this all happened."