Forsaking Home (The Survivalist Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

peeled before cooking, and she immediately volunteered the older girls for that job. She said she’d take care of the watercress and that I needed to
deal with
the cattails, as she put it.
    I took the tub with the tubers down to the river and washed them by shaking them in the water repeatedly. It was quite an effort to get most of the mud off, rubbing at them with my fingers and swishing them around in the water. Once they were as clean as they were going to get, I filled the tub with enough water to cover the rhizomes. I was wet and filthy by this point, and went back to the cabins to change.
It’s a good thing Thad’s gonna teach the girls how to make soap
, I thought, looking down at my muddy clothes.
    When I came back out, relatively clean, Danny and Thad were sitting on the picnic table.
    “You guys done getting the wood?” I asked.
    Danny pointed to a massive woodpile over by the chicken coop. “That should take care of us for a few days.”
    “What’d you guys find?” Thad asked.
    I pointed at the tubers that the girls were peeling. “We got some taters, some cattail roots, and some watercress greens.”
    Thad picked up one of the tubers. “What are these?”
    I explained to him what they were and how we could use them. He and Danny both nodded their approval. I told them to come down to the river so I could show them the roots. On my way, I stopped by the woodpile and picked up a piece of oak about the diameter of my forearm.
    Thad kicked the side of the tub of tubers. “What are you going to do with this stuff?”
    “We’re going to get the starch out,” I said. Using the end of the wood, I started to pound the roots.
    As I worked I explained to them the process: First, you pound the roots as thoroughly as possible, so the water turns cloudy white. Then, you remove as much of the fiber as possible and let the water settle. Once all the starch settles, you pour off most of the water and allow the rest of the water to evaporate. I told them that you could speed up the evaporation process by heating the tub, as long as you were careful not to scorch the starch.
    “That’s pretty neat,” Thad said.
    “We can use it to cut things like pancake mix. I’ll make some tomorrow for breakfast.”
    “Oh, the girls are going to be so excited,” Thad said.
    “Screw that,
I’m
excited for pancakes. What else can we use this stuff for?” Danny asked.
    “Anything you would use starch or flour for, like dusting fish for frying or thickening stews. The uses are really unlimited,” I said.
    After I pounded the roots out more thoroughly, the bottom of the tub had a soft layer of starch. Satisfied, I stood up and we started making our way back to the cabins. It was time for our soap-making lesson.
    “I know you get lye from wood ash. What else do we need?” I asked.
    Thad pulled a pillowcase from the table. “We need to fill this with ashes. And we’ll need a few empty buckets.”
    We’d had a fire burning in the pit nearly nonstop since we moved into the cabins, so there was a lot of ash. When the pile of ash got too high we would dump it in a pile at the edge of the woods. We went to this pile with the pillow case and a shovel. Thad held the case open while I shoveled the ash into it.
    Mel and Bobbie were at the table when we got back.
    “You gonna show us how to make this soap?” Bobbie asked.
    “Yes, ma’am,” Thad said with a smile, “but it takes time. It isn’t a fast process.”
    “What is, these days?” Mel joked, with a smile. “How long does it take?”
    “The soap mix can be done in a day, but then you gotta pour it into a mold to set for at least another day. Then when you take it from the mold, it has to cure for a month.”
    Mel and Bobbie were both shocked. “What? A
month
?” Mel asked.
    “Yeah, otherwise it’ll burn your skin. It’s got to cure. How much soap do we have left?”
    “We still have some, but we’ll probably be out of it in a few weeks,” Bobbie said.
    Thad