First, though, she took the two rabbits over to Emma for the meal that evening. Sarah and Georgie were coming to visit to see their new home and to catch up with them all. Phil and Sophie had been out that morning and shot three pheasants between them, which were prepared and lying on the worktop. Sophie had been practising in recent weeks with one of the smaller 20-bore shotguns they’d picked up from the gun store and was getting on well with it. Jane said she would come over later to help Emma with the meal then she and Megan went back to work in the garden. Sally came round to help and to talk with Megan while they worked.
They hadn’t been able to bring the bay tree from the bungalow as it was too big to dig up, but Jane had found two replacements growing in large pots in the garden of a house in their road, which she was pleased about. They removed one from its pot and planted it behind the greenhouses. The other she decided to keep in its pot outside the kitchen, next to their patio table. The five sea beet plants she had brought were planted out, along with the other herbs. The sea beet would be great to have as they produced a large crop of leaves and were perennial.
Sarah and Georgie arrived two hours before sundown, towing the horse cart behind the Land Rover. Bill and Jamie went down to meet them and the women came out of the farmhouse to welcome them. They all exchanged hugs and said how great it was to see each other, then looked at the cart. It was a one-horse model and looked a bit rickety at the moment.
‘We had to take it easy on the way here,’ said Georgie, laughing, ‘as we thought one of the wheels might fall off!’
Bill had a quick look. ‘Me and Jamie will soon have it fixed-up like new.’
‘Yes,’ said Emma, ‘and meanwhile I’m still waiting for you to fix the chest of drawers and the wardrobe in our bedroom!’
‘Ah,’ replied Bill, grinning ‘but they’re not essential for survival in the post-apocalypse world we’re now living in!’ He winked at Jamie, who tried not to laugh.
Emma looked at Jane and rolled her eyes, saying ‘Men!’ and they all laughed.
Sarah and Georgie went to see their newly-converted home and were very impressed, saying what a great job they’d all done and how cosy it was. They then went back to the farmhouse and chatted before the meal. The two sisters had been out on the horses in recent weeks, getting them used to being ridden again and being around people. They had also taken their trailer out on many trips and collected large amounts of hay and straw from the farms they’d visited. They said it would be good if Bill could bring his van over so they could collect more and Bill agreed.
They had to bring in another table to seat all eleven of them for the meal, but they managed to squeeze round. It was a great evening, catching up on everything they’d all been doing and discussing plans for the coming weeks and months. Bill said the stable should be finished in a week or so, and then they could bring the first two horses over from Sarah and Georgie’s place.
The next chapter in their lives would soon begin: having horses for transport instead of vehicles. They didn’t know for sure when the fuel would start deteriorating, but they were prepared for it. It would be probably the most significant thing to affect every survivor in the country since the plague. Without transport there would be greatly reduced movement and communication of people between regions; to join other groups, meet new people, or to trade goods and skills. Most people’s operating circle would be limited to within a few miles of where they lived.
Twenty-nine
The weather started to change as autumn took hold: the temperature dropped, the wind increased and the leaves on the trees turned to beautiful hues of gold and bronze before starting to fall. The area surrounding the farm was dotted with small woods and copses and looked very picturesque. They would all take a day off from their work now and then, and Jamie, Jane and Megan began exploring the countryside around the farm to get to know the area. Megan’s wounds and head injury were fully healed by then and her dizzy spells and nausea had stopped. Max always accompanied them and they found new places to lay snares for rabbits.
They always took an Ordnance Survey map with them and Jamie started teaching Megan map-reading skills. He showed her how to use a compass to navigate and how to read the land’s topography from the map. Jane, while admitting to be no expert, had a fair knowledge of herbs and plants and would stop now and then to show them a particular plant when they came across one that she knew. It wasn’t the best time of year for it, though, as most things were now dying back for the winter. On one such walk they came across a small copse that hadn’t been managed for decades at least. Jamie had done some conservation work years before and had learned a bit about woodland management.
‘Do you see here, Megan, where the trees all have multiple trunks coming out from the base?’ Megan nodded. ‘Well, this is called coppicing. It’s a way of managing the woodland, both to keep it under control and to provide wood for many uses. It’s been done in Britain for thousands of years, but not so much in recent times.’ She asked how it was spelled and wrote it in the notebook she carried with her.
‘Many deciduous trees were coppiced, such as hazel, ash, sweet chestnut, birch and willow. The tree is cut back to its base at regular intervals, causing lots of new shoots to grow. Those new shoots grow up straight and when the time is right they are cut down and harvested to make fencing, firewood, stakes, tools and many other things. And then the shoots grow again and the whole process is repeated.’
‘How long does it take for them to grow back?’ Megan asked.
‘That depends on the type of tree, and the uses people had for the wood,’ he answered. ‘It could be a three, five or seven year rotation for some trees, or longer for slower-growing varieties. They would coppice one area per year and then move on to the next place the following year. Eventually they’d develop a cycle where there was wood to be harvested every year. A tree that’s coppiced regularly will never die of old age because it’s continually regenerating.’
Megan found this interesting and said she would read up on it from the books they had at home. Jamie wondered aloud if it was something they should start doing to provide wood in years to come and Jane agreed.
The work back at the farm had continued and within two weeks of them moving in the stable was finished. They hadn’t known how many horses they should cater for, but they had built six stalls in the barn, each with its own gate and water trough. They made several trips to Sarah and Georgie’s place to help them gather more hay and straw from the farms near them, which would be shared out between them. There were other farms in the area around Hooe where they found more stocks as well. In early November they made further trips into Bexhill to collect more timber and materials for storing at the farm, visiting all the DIY stores and builders’ merchants in the town.
In addition to the equipment the sisters had already got for them, they also visited an equestrian centre not far from the farm, where they picked up other equipment and sundry supplies. There were carcases of several dead horses in the stables there; whether they had died of the plague or of dehydration from being trapped they didn’t know. From damage to some of the stalls, though, it looked like some horses had managed to escape, and they found six roaming in the surrounding fields. They went home and returned with a bag of apples and carrots and the horses came to feed from them. Even though they didn’t plan to take any back to the farm just yet they wanted the horses to get to know them and get used to being around people again.