Chapter 11 — Country Life
A serial novel in the form of correspondence among a family while the world as we know it collapses around us. I recommend you start at the Introduction:
https://readmedium.com/climate-for-change-introduction-5331d5ab9313
But you can start anywhere you want.
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Chapter 11:
Email:
Dear Benjamin!
Bravo for getting your letters to us! I cannot tell you how pleased we are to hear from you, Mel, and your mom! Before I say anything else — please know we are all safe and healthy out here.
I’m sending this to your email, but I don’t think we should communicate via email any more. I have created a webpage routed through a Bulgarian server that you can access using this URL
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Chat box on a Bulgarian Website (Translated from Bulgarian):
Dear Grandpa and Grandma,
This is a test. If you get this, Mom, Melody, and I want you to communicate back with stories about how life has been for you since the coup. We are very curious! The rumor in the city is that the country is like the wild west.
Love,
Benji, Melody, and Carol
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Dear Benji, Mel, and Carol,
Your grandma and I were overjoyed to hear all the news from your letters, although they did confirm some of my own worst fears. I am worried about those chips. It is typical of military policy to try to do something in the most controlling way, without thinking about civil liberties. It is also typical military to wage a total war on what they perceive as the greatest threat. If they have chosen climate change as the greatest threat, then the decisions of the Circle make perfect sense. From the point of stopping climate change, I agree with almost everything that they have done. Almost. The only problem is that they have made your grandma and I into outlaws. I’m your outlaw grandpa!
I’ll see if I can reconstruct for you the timeline of what has happened out here since the coup.
On the first day after the coup, we were quite busy building the winterized dining hall for our little commune. Roy, Erika, and I built out a big room around the outdoor summer kitchen. You know the one where we boil the tomato sauce for hours on a wood stove and do it under shelter outside so we don’t heat up the house? Well, with the insulated walls, that extra heat from the cook stove will be quite useful in the winter.
That same afternoon I took the truck over to town to get some extra lumber, and everyone was buzzing about the coup. Nobody really knew at that time what a big deal it was going to be. Some people seemed pleased and hopeful that the military might bring order and security. That day I spent as much money as I could on basic supplies at the hardware store. I got screws and nails of all sizes, extra hand tools, another cordless drill, garden hoses, lots of plywood and other lumber, nylon tarps, plastic buckets, corrugated metal roofing, and plumbing supplies. When we left, the truck and trailer were loaded so full that I was worried the tires would burst.
That first night we read the full proclamation from the Circle. It probably sounded good to them in the Circle’s planning room, but for us rural people it is a disaster. What were they thinking?
First off, they want to stop climate change by moving everybody into the cities and preventing private use of fossil-fueled vehicles. They must not have thought out the fact that all of those people in the cities need to eat. Food is produced in spread out rural areas! Rural people need our trucks and tractors to live in those areas and produce the food that the people in the city need to eat. Just because the military has stockpiled some food and can keep the city dwellers fed for now, doesn’t mean they can do it indefinitely, especially if they don’t have a functioning rural sector. What about all of the rural people who have farm animals? What do they expect people to do with the millions of cows, pigs, horses, and other animals when the rural folks are forced to move to the cities? This is a bad idea.
Second, I applaud moving people away from wildfire zones in the west and hurricane and flood prone areas in the east. But can they really force people to move? I guess they are going to try. It is going to make people who want to stay in their homes into criminals. How do you compensate someone for a house that they can’t sell? Are we going to make all of Florida into a ghost state? It is a recipe for unregulated squatting and looting, in my opinion, which might end up being worse for the climate.
Third, that whole thing about registering and getting chips is not going to fly with some people I know, let alone the Circle’s policies of forced vegetarianism or taking away people’s guns. I can see why they are forcing people into the cities. Then they just have to control the cities. If people are living in the cities, then they will give up their privacy rights and get implanted with the chip just because they need the food and heating fuel rations. If the Circle controls the food, the jobs, and the heating fuel, they can force people to do just about anything. We country people can grow our own food, and we can chop wood for heat, so we don’t need them. And we are not going to give up our guns and meat in exchange for a vegan food ration.
Your grandma and I made the decision that we would not go and register at the polling place. All of the people staying on the farm with us made the same decision. It was easier for them because no one really knows they are here anyway. With us, someone could come knock on the door and look for us. Most of our neighbors decided not to register, but a few did. Those who went in to register were told that the Circle would not be supplying fuel to rural gas stations starting that day, or food to the small town grocery stores. They could use up what was left in reserve. The Circle also declared that starting within a week, they would cut electricity to all rural areas. They had already cut Internet service that morning and blocked all cell phones and landlines. Those that registered were given chips and told to report as soon as possible to the city for a new housing and job assignment. I saw one neighbor after she registered, and she told me that even though she has the chip, she is still deciding whether to report to the city.
So that first week, all of the people we know had their own decisions to make. Would they stay on their farms, even though they would lose all of the modern things they have grown to depend on? Some of my neighbors are great at growing corn and soybeans, but they don’t eat anything that they grow. Instead, it all is sold to commodity buyers, and then they go to the grocery store for all their food. If there is no food available at the grocery stores, what will these people eat? Most of my neighbors don’t have solar panels and a wind generator like we do. What will they do without electricity? With broadcast TV and radio gone overnight and the Internet and phone coverage cut to the rural areas, how will people get information or stay in touch with loved ones? It certainly cut your grandma and I off from you all! We were lucky to have the ham radio, which could pick up international stations. Finally, without gas and diesel for the trucks and tractors, and without agricultural chemicals and fertilizer, most of the farmers I know in this area will not be able to farm in the way they are used to.
All these regulations felt like the deepest sort of betrayal. Pretty much immediately people hate the Circle. Many people left for the city, because they could not see any other way. They sold or gave away their animals and reported to the polling places to be picked up, but we don’t know anyone who actually wanted to leave.
After that first wave of people left, it got real quiet out here. In addition to having a lot fewer people, the roads were very quiet, too. Everyone was using fuel only if they needed it. Most farmers have reserves of gas and diesel, but because nobody knows when this madness will end, we all have to be very stingy with fuel. We did hear the near constant sound of chainsaws and wood chopping in the distance because anyone who is planning to stay is converting their house to wood heat if it is not already. I had visitors asking about our solar panels, but since I bought them from China, I had to admit I don’t know how to make them from scratch. People were looking in their basements for old oil lamps and candleholders.
As some people started to leave for the city, more people left to join them. It was a sort of cascade effect, especially in the small towns nearby. The people who live in towns don’t have the ability to live off the land like we do. By the second week, there wasn’t much point in going into town because all the stores were closed, and most of the town people had moved in to the city. There were sometimes military checkpoints on the roads going into and out of the towns, too. It made travel more than a little unsettling. At that point the military was still just asking people to register voluntarily, but we were worried that soon they wouldn’t be so nice.
It was a weird time for us. Our farm continued more or less just like any other fall. We harvested potatoes; we harvested corn and dry beans; we made a barrel of sauerkraut; we finished the apple harvest; we cut firewood. We did everything on a larger scale because of all of the guests. When the commodity buyers did not show up to buy our neighbor’s potato crop, we hand-dug a second root cellar and put away several more tons of russets. It was good to have all of the help digging, and if nothing else, we will not go hungry.
While our farm was humming along, most of our neighbors who stayed out here were in full crisis mode. Their lives were turned completely upside down. Many of them also dug root cellars and got russet potatoes. They started cooking and canning the meat that they had in their freezers in anticipation of losing electricity. We saw people drying meat into jerky to be cured too. At least the colder fall temperatures now mean that people do not miss refrigeration quite so much as they might next summer. People came by to ask us how to eat field corn. They had been growing it for all their lives and feeding it to animals, but they had never ground corn and cooked and eaten it themselves. We had demonstration days on the farm, and people learned how to hand-grind their corn and make cornbread, corn tortillas, and grits. If we rural people can eat corn, we won’t go hungry. We have a silo full of organic corn, and we have been sharing it with anyone who asks.
Living conditions have changed a lot for everybody around us, except for the Amish community just north of us. I stopped into an Amish friend’s house, and we talked about the coup and what it will mean for them. He was mostly worried that city people will stop buying their hand-made furniture. There are also some items they are accustomed to buying from the store like sugar, salt, cooking oil, and tools, but they will be fine, he said. Their community is going to look out for each other, like they always have. I told him that we could learn a thing or two from them.
We started to see the drones fly over somewhere in the third week. At first it was one every other day. Little electric drones that sort of buzz like flies about 200 feet up. Then it increased in frequency. Twice a day a drone would get into a stable spot over the farm and watch for about 5 minutes and then move on. We certainly thought about shooting them down. I know a couple neighbors who did, but I didn’t really want to start a personal war with the Circle. Not yet, at least.
With the banks closed, people have had a hard time. On the one hand, most of the people I know were in debt to the banks, so there seems to be a bright side. On the other hand, we don’t really have a lot of cash sitting around, so people are resorting to barter. Some people are using cigarettes as currency like you all; others are trading in 5-gallon fuel cans of diesel or gas. Still others are using sacks of grain or potatoes for money.
All the while, I have been listening to the English Broadcast Group and trying to figure out what is happening. Then I tell my neighbors, who tell their neighbors. I am afraid our main form of information is word-of-mouth, which is notoriously unreliable. One day I mentioned something I heard on EBG to my next-door neighbor. The next day I heard a rumor from a different neighbor that contained parts of my original story but was horribly twisted. The meaning of the story was inverted. When people are afraid, they assume the worst in other people.
We have been hearing a lot of gunshots in the distance. We think that people are out hunting because they assume the DNR is not prosecuting people for hunting out of season. At least that is what we hope.
You know that your grandma and I are not usually in the habit of going to church. Organized religion has never been our cup of tea, but since the coup, I have made a point to show up every week at our nearest church. It is a good place to see people and be seen. It is weird to see a bunch of improvised horse and buggy setups parked outside a rural church. Your grandma commented to me that all of these rural churches were built with big turn-around parking lots to accommodate horses and buggies, but probably haven’t seen a horse hitched up for a hundred years. It is like we are coming full circle.
After church every week we have a potluck in the basement. That is where people get down to talking about what is happening in their lives. That is where I found out about the improvised bus and mail service for our county. There is one guy named Buck with a van, who drives all the main roads of the county over the course of two days. If you have a piece of mail that you want to try to get out, you put the person’s address on it and then go down to one of the roads that he drives and wait for him to pass. If you have mail that is coming to you, he will drop it at a house that is on his route nearest to your address. They will hold it until they see you or bring it to church on Sunday. It works the same for rides. You flag him down on his route and ride along. If you have to leave the county, he can drop you at a house on the county line, and you can wait for another driver. He mostly accepts fuel as payment but also will take cigarettes and non-perishable food. He drives some roads on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and others on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. This is how your letter came to us. We couldn’t return it by improvised mail because it doesn’t work in reverse, yet.
So now we have caught you up on most of the news from here. I wish you could just jump in the car and come on out like you used to. We will figure out a way!
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Next chapter:
https://readmedium.com/chapter-12-they-wont-win-65063ca5fbec
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