The Slow Road Read Online Free PDF Page B

a couple of boxes of the .32 ACP for use in the Savage, as well as an initial purchase of ammunition for each of the weapons. They then began to buy a box of twenty-two rim fire, .308, and twenty-gauge ammunition every month.
    The garden was a moderate success that first year. Millie and Jasper were still learning. But they were intent on growing as much as they could in the space they had using the least amount of commercial fertilizer and pesticide. They were using the companion growing method they’d learned about on the internet. The strawberries did so well that the pair put in another five level tower of them in the front yard.
    And Jasper began hauling dirt. He kept the trailer hooked to the truck all the time, much to Millie’s unvoiced dismay, so he could stop any time he had time at the local sand and gravel pit. As long as he loaded it himself, which he usually did, he got the dirt for free. The sand and gravel he was going to need he had to pay for. But they loaded it into the truck and trailer for him.
    As time rolled around the following fall for the garden to get another layer of manure, there were piles of dirt, sand, and gravel here and there on the property. Stacks of cleaned used brick and block were along each hedge along the sides of the property. They had recovered lumber piled on top. The windows from the salvaged building were stacked, layer by layer separated with lumber, in an out of the way area and covered to protect them.
    Millie found a canner and more jars in time to fill up all available storage space with home canned vegetables from the garden and jar after jar of strawberry preserves. They still gave away the majority of the produce from the garden for lack of a way to process and store it.
    While the weather was still nice that fall Jasper dug away the sod from the area where they were going to build the double wall shelter shown in the MP-15 pamphlet Jasper had down loaded. The design was for the shelter to be set down in the ground a couple of feet, but with the high water table and possibilities for floods, Jasper used some of the dirt to fill in where he’d dug the sod away, and build the level up over four feet high.
    He used plenty of water to keep the soil moist as he layered it in place. It was going to take a long time to finish, so instead of renting a one man tamper, Jasper bought a well used one from the rental agency and worked on it until he got it running. That let him tamp each four inch lift of soil as he built up the area for the shelter.
    Realizing that it might be a good idea to have some of the other projects he and Millie were planning raised higher than the surrounding ground, he expanded the area he was building up. It took double the amount of dirt he’d planned on, and two months of extra time, but he had a large area of compacted soil four feet higher than the rest of the property, the edges protected by interlocking retaining wall blocks.
    He thought about digging the footings for the shelter that fall, but Millie talked him out of it. He didn’t dig primarily for fear the edges of the trenches would slough away in case of bad weather. Millie didn’t want him doing it because he had lost so much weight that summer and was always so tired. She just wanted him to slow down some.
    But she worried as much as he did about what they were seeing on the news nearly every day. If there wasn’t a major natural disaster going on somewhere, there was a new battle between old foes happening. And the weather was so unpredictable.
    There were times that summer when the rain had just poured down and others when the irrigation well saved the garden from total loss. Since the shelter was some months from being completed, Millie and Jasper headed for the shelter in city hall when tornadoes threatened that summer. They simply rode out the one minor earthquake shock they felt three days before Thanksgiving.
    Thanksgiving was quite a celebration. The two had much to celebrate.