Founders: A Novel of the Coming Collapse by James Wesley Rawles

Author:James Wesley, Rawles
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Thrillers, General, Azizex666, Action & Adventure, Fiction
ISBN: 9781439172858
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2012-09-25T09:05:35+00:00

Only a few days after they had arrived at the Norwoods’ ranch, Ken and Terry were like part of the family. The guard schedule was broken into three eight-hour shifts. Ken, Terry, and Graham took most of the shifts, with Carl helping as needed.

Their main security upgrade was to reorganize the woodshed, stacking the split wood for better ballistic protection. They also cut more advantageous gun ports. The firewood itself provided most of the ballistic protection, but they supplemented it with scrap steel and five 30-gallon drums that were filled with fist-sized rocks and gravel. There was no shortage of rocks on the property.

There was already a bridge across the creek that was intended for the cattle. It had been in place for decades but it sat 100 yards south of the house, which was too far for their current purposes. To provide a safe and convenient way to draw water in buckets from the creek, Carl had constructed a new bridge shortly after the Crunch set in. It was a footbridge thirty yards from the house, and was constructed mainly with 4x4s and 2x6 planks. At the center of the span, Carl had built an extended platform with a notched railing so that whoever went to the bridge to draw water would have a safe place to stand.

Typically, they put the water in four 5-gallon plastic water cans and wheeled them back and forth to the house in a twelve-cubic-foot EZ-Haul garden cart.

The next day, Graham showed them the cattle facilities. There were two large connected corrals, each sixty yards square. There was a pair of small bullpens, also adjoining. There was also a tall connecting alley built of planks, with a veterinary squeeze chute and cattle truck-loading ramp at one end. It had a swinging Y gate panel that could shunt cattle to either a high ramp or a low ramp, depending on the deck height of the arriving vehicle or trailer. The ramps themselves were inexpensively built with earth and used railroad ties. Graham mentioned that the entire property was cross-fenced, allowing for efficient grazing. This also kept the cattle out of the hay fields until after the last cutting.

“We got two hay cuttings last summer, which is unusual for here without irrigation, so we have more than enough hay for this winter,” Carl told them.

“How do you deal with all the manure?” Terry asked.

Pointing his thumb at the barn, Graham answered, “We rig Andre up with a horse collar and an old road scraper. Anything in the corners of the corrals, and in the bullpens, we get by hand with a shovel and a wheelbarrow. Before the Crunch, we used the tractor for most of it, and it was a breeze. But nowadays we can’t spare the fuel.”

Terry sighed. “Sounds like countless hours of fun.”

“Yeah, the manure scraping and hauling takes up a lot of our time. Especially now that we’re penning all the stock up every night, year-round, to prevent rustling, there’s a lot more manure to deal with.

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