A Rocky Demise by Pete Thorsen

Author:Pete Thorsen
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2016-10-25T02:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Spring was close and I again got a load of manure to mix into the garden soil. Like before I tilled it in thoroughly then waited for one of our infrequent rains. After everything dried out I tilled it yet again. After a couple years of this treatment the soil was visibly much richer than everything around the garden.

The basement area I had thoughtfully incorporated into the house design worked great as a root cellar. We had stored all of our potatoes and other root vegetables down there over winter and they had lasted just fine in the dark cool area.

I had built shelving down in that basement and Donna used those shelves to store all the jars of canned food she had produced. We also stored much of our long term storage food down there with the thought it would last even longer in that temperature-controlled storage area.

Donna had talked about buying a greenhouse but I asked her just how much longer of a growing season did we need? We could already, without the greenhouse, grow more produce than we could use in a year. I didn’t say ‘no,’ I only questioned the need. She finally admitted that there was no real good reason to buy one other than it was something we didn’t have and she had just read about many other preppers having a greenhouse and enjoying the additional length of a growing season that the green house provided.

We planted our big garden and it grew better than we expected. We canned, froze, and dried a huge amount of produce; way more than we would ever eat over winter even if we entertained a lot (which we don’t). Donna finally quit buying additional long-term storage food for us.

While harvesting from the garden we could see the fruit ripening on the trees and this year they too produced considerably more fruit than last year. We expected that due to the trees maturing and next year they would likely produce even more.

The garden and the orchard were not what really made us happy though. Instead it was just the fact that we had found each other and were now together.

By the end of summer and through the monsoon season when we had many cloudy days we noticed that the battery bank was failing. The batteries had reached the end of their life cycle and there was no denying that it was time to replace them. When we had cloudy days I had to use the generator to put an additional charge into the battery bank to keep the power up.

It was a large expense but there was no alternative for it. And we did not want to mix new batteries with the ones that were now mostly worn out. So we replaced the entire lot with a completely new set. Donna had researched which batteries had the best lifespan compared to expense and when that conclusion was reached she then searched for the best price on the ones she chose for us to buy.

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