We fell into the routine of our new existence; not easily and not without considerable stress, but it did become routine. We gathered mill ends as we always had at the lumber mills, carried them into the house by boxfuls and loaded them into the stove whose metal was so thin and rusted through that you didn't need to open it to see if the fire was still going; you could see through the pinprick sized holes in its sides. Loaded empty barrels onto the truck, filled, unloaded, sucked siphons, used water and emptied buckets of used water, tipped the barrels that'd lost their siphons to get every remaining drop of water, and put the empty barrels outside to await filling again. Filled the oil lamps, trimmed their wicks, adjusted their flames, cleaned their chimneys. Emptied bucket after reeking bucket of sewage.
Most of our food was made from #10 sized cans of dehydrated food donated to the food bank. When you read old Mother Earth News magazines from the 70's and 80's and see ads for survival food stashes to last through a nuclear holocaust or war or similar crisis, this is what we were eating. It wasn't bad food, it was just different. Some of it, such as the dried fruit, was fantastic! The main flaw was that nearly all of it required copious amount of water, and in our case, water required gasoline, so we sometimes ran out of water, and therefore could hardly cook anything, either. Let me tell you, you cannot truly appreciate water until you have gone without it, struggled to melt a whole potful of snow down to a meager inch or two of water, found yourself panicking and desperately thirsty, casting about for anything at all moist to eat.
Winter came and found us unprepared as usual. Raphah stuffed wads of insulation between the logs, per Eliyah's orders. Food was still scarce. Our reserves of firewood were negligible. And, of course, there was still Mom to worry about, because she was pregnant with Baby Eliyah. She was about 5-6 months along, and we kept wondering when she would start to show, but we couldn't mention this. We had to have faith. Dinners were often fairly lean, and Eliyah made certain that Mom got an extra helping because she was "eating for two". We were hungry, but the baby had to eat of course, whether we could see him or not. We did still get occasional food from the food bank. Whenever Eliyah came home with a bag of food from the store or a box from the food bank, we would sing praise songs and hover about excitedly, eager to see every precious package Yahweh had blessed us with. The toilet paper seemed to go especially fast, and then we'd have to improvise with crumpled paper, etc, or Sarah would come up with a roll she'd found. We didn't figure out what was going on until one day, Raphah and I found five or six rolls stuffed away behind the water heater. She'd been taking rolls as soon as we got a new package, and hiding them for lean times, which were yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and next month too.
So we were pretty ecstatic to score about a dozen military issued big rectangular tins of crackers from the county landfill. They were all sealed and clean, if rancid...they were probably twenty years old. Now we could eat whenever we were hungry, even though it was only these old crackers, it was something to put into our stomachs.
We made friends with another family with kids. Doug and Donna Deitz had three kids; a girl and two boys. Donna and my mom became close friends; I don't know if you could say that Eliyah and Doug were good friends or not, but they did stuff together, such as firewood, and then shared the wood. Or to put it more correctly, The two men and most of the kids did the work. Sarah and Rachel frequently didn't do a lot of outside work, and neither did Doug and Donna's little girl, who was about Raphah's age. Sarah and Rachel wore dresses all the time, which meant that their clothes might get messed up if they worked outside, and it made them look more delicate. Also, Rachel had a history of seizures related to a head injury she'd sustained as a toddler, and Sarah had allergies and helped Mom with the cooking and housekeeping. I liked being outside, and I didn't mind manual labor, so Raphah and I spent a lot of time loading, unloading, and stacking wood with Doug and Donna's boys. The firewood was usually mill ends, but sometimes the men would cut down a tree and then we would have to carry sections of log to the house.
Doug and Donna were hippies who'd spent a lot of time living in the country. Unlike us, they knew a lot about goats and chickens and homesteading. Donna was excited that Mom was going to have a baby and they talked about all sorts of boring, womanly things, things I tuned out while reading or going back outside after finding a warm dry set of gloves to replace soggy half frozen ones. Donna sometimes brought us stuff she'd grown in her garden, and then we'd prepare it and everyone would eat together.
We were still eating a lot of lentil soup, and then one night, while our parents were gone and it was all snowy and dark outside, the dogs barked and we heard a knock at the door. It was an official looking guy, so we were immediately suspicious. Through the crack in the door, we saw a bearded guy who actually looked kind of nice. He said his name was Don Carr and he was from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, which frightened us, but he assured us we weren't in trouble for anything. Then he said. "It's cold out here, can I come in?" We had never allowed a stranger indoors when our parents were gone before, but he said it so disarmingly, and sounded so cold, that we did. He wasn't there long when our parents came back. They didn't scold us for allowed a government agent into the house. In fact, He and Eliyah talked a lot about hunting, and how our family was hungry, but we didn't believe in buying hunting licenses because all the animals belonged to Yahweh, not the State of Idaho. Don Carr said he was OK with that as long as we didn't hunt without a license, and we didn't.
Not long after that night, we got a call from Don Carr. He said a big buck deer had just been hit on the road, and would we like to have the meat? It wasn't even very far away. Dennis drove right out to get it, gutted it, he and mom cut it up and wrapped it, and put it in Mark's freezer. After that we always had venison to eat.
Most of our food was made from #10 sized cans of dehydrated food donated to the food bank. When you read old Mother Earth News magazines from the 70's and 80's and see ads for survival food stashes to last through a nuclear holocaust or war or similar crisis, this is what we were eating. It wasn't bad food, it was just different. Some of it, such as the dried fruit, was fantastic! The main flaw was that nearly all of it required copious amount of water, and in our case, water required gasoline, so we sometimes ran out of water, and therefore could hardly cook anything, either. Let me tell you, you cannot truly appreciate water until you have gone without it, struggled to melt a whole potful of snow down to a meager inch or two of water, found yourself panicking and desperately thirsty, casting about for anything at all moist to eat.
Winter came and found us unprepared as usual. Raphah stuffed wads of insulation between the logs, per Eliyah's orders. Food was still scarce. Our reserves of firewood were negligible. And, of course, there was still Mom to worry about, because she was pregnant with Baby Eliyah. She was about 5-6 months along, and we kept wondering when she would start to show, but we couldn't mention this. We had to have faith. Dinners were often fairly lean, and Eliyah made certain that Mom got an extra helping because she was "eating for two". We were hungry, but the baby had to eat of course, whether we could see him or not. We did still get occasional food from the food bank. Whenever Eliyah came home with a bag of food from the store or a box from the food bank, we would sing praise songs and hover about excitedly, eager to see every precious package Yahweh had blessed us with. The toilet paper seemed to go especially fast, and then we'd have to improvise with crumpled paper, etc, or Sarah would come up with a roll she'd found. We didn't figure out what was going on until one day, Raphah and I found five or six rolls stuffed away behind the water heater. She'd been taking rolls as soon as we got a new package, and hiding them for lean times, which were yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and next month too.
So we were pretty ecstatic to score about a dozen military issued big rectangular tins of crackers from the county landfill. They were all sealed and clean, if rancid...they were probably twenty years old. Now we could eat whenever we were hungry, even though it was only these old crackers, it was something to put into our stomachs.
We made friends with another family with kids. Doug and Donna Deitz had three kids; a girl and two boys. Donna and my mom became close friends; I don't know if you could say that Eliyah and Doug were good friends or not, but they did stuff together, such as firewood, and then shared the wood. Or to put it more correctly, The two men and most of the kids did the work. Sarah and Rachel frequently didn't do a lot of outside work, and neither did Doug and Donna's little girl, who was about Raphah's age. Sarah and Rachel wore dresses all the time, which meant that their clothes might get messed up if they worked outside, and it made them look more delicate. Also, Rachel had a history of seizures related to a head injury she'd sustained as a toddler, and Sarah had allergies and helped Mom with the cooking and housekeeping. I liked being outside, and I didn't mind manual labor, so Raphah and I spent a lot of time loading, unloading, and stacking wood with Doug and Donna's boys. The firewood was usually mill ends, but sometimes the men would cut down a tree and then we would have to carry sections of log to the house.
Doug and Donna were hippies who'd spent a lot of time living in the country. Unlike us, they knew a lot about goats and chickens and homesteading. Donna was excited that Mom was going to have a baby and they talked about all sorts of boring, womanly things, things I tuned out while reading or going back outside after finding a warm dry set of gloves to replace soggy half frozen ones. Donna sometimes brought us stuff she'd grown in her garden, and then we'd prepare it and everyone would eat together.
We were still eating a lot of lentil soup, and then one night, while our parents were gone and it was all snowy and dark outside, the dogs barked and we heard a knock at the door. It was an official looking guy, so we were immediately suspicious. Through the crack in the door, we saw a bearded guy who actually looked kind of nice. He said his name was Don Carr and he was from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, which frightened us, but he assured us we weren't in trouble for anything. Then he said. "It's cold out here, can I come in?" We had never allowed a stranger indoors when our parents were gone before, but he said it so disarmingly, and sounded so cold, that we did. He wasn't there long when our parents came back. They didn't scold us for allowed a government agent into the house. In fact, He and Eliyah talked a lot about hunting, and how our family was hungry, but we didn't believe in buying hunting licenses because all the animals belonged to Yahweh, not the State of Idaho. Don Carr said he was OK with that as long as we didn't hunt without a license, and we didn't.
Not long after that night, we got a call from Don Carr. He said a big buck deer had just been hit on the road, and would we like to have the meat? It wasn't even very far away. Dennis drove right out to get it, gutted it, he and mom cut it up and wrapped it, and put it in Mark's freezer. After that we always had venison to eat.
posted by chamoisee at
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