The First Feather on Earth

Dear Journal

Hey everyone. It's me again. So, I ended up talking to the girls about the whole moving thing yesterday and well, it was a complete success! They are completely on-board with the whole idea!

Well ok, that's a little embellishing. Chatty was quite on board with it, even saying that she wanted to ask if we could herself. Marcy was, of course, nonchalant about it and just wanted to stick with us. She's apparently not even from here, but rather from the US. Honestly, you should have seen her face when I told her that she was in fact in Canada. Oh, it was priceless! Honestly, I kind of needed that laugh and I think Chatty did too.

But anyways, I ended up telling them my ideas and they were totally fine with it all. Thankfully Marcy actually does know a thing or two about gardening from her grandma, so she can help out a small bit with that. Not much, but she says she knows what not to do so that'll be good enough until we find a book on how to do it.

Though they do think that we should wait on the whole rail wagon thing until we do have a bit more of a place of residence, and we can just launch fireworks at night.

Honestly, I do see their point. We'd want to focus on setting up shop and getting everything settled first before we start any large projects. Plus, this way I can start to work on making a water filtration device that can be large enough to support farmland. Which I should probably start brainstorming now that I think about it.

Let's see... Well, the simplest way for us to have access to water is to either collect it from the lake an hours walk from the New Base or to collect it on-site. There is a forest that's nearby and I think I'll have Chatty get the bugs to set up a bit of a leaf bag system first, just so we have a little fresh water as an income. Maybe we can almost make a sort of rain collection farm. Have a bunch of wide, metal bowls with some coned filters overtop of them? That could work for a bit, have it piped into a well to keep it cool.

I think that could work for our drinking water. For the actual crop water, that we'll have to bring that in from Lake Simcoe. Although, we'll have to filter and clean it like nobodies business. Oh right, that's something else we'll have to do before we move out, dive into the books. We'll need to find what books we'll be needing to keep and read so we can survive and learn to farm properly.

So, I guess it looks like we're going to have to do multiple trips back and forth between the new base and here, if only for supplies and other stuff. Though, I really would like to have as many hands on deck for the farming. Err.. Hooves. I just don't like the idea of a single person who has little experience in farming be in charge of the food for us all, even if we bring books about the subject with us.

But that's what we have as of now, so let's try to focus on what we can do to make this all work. I'm thinking we start with smaller groups of crops, but we have them a little further apart than what's needed. Call me paranoid as much as you like, but I'm very serious about our situation. If we run out of the food we already have and some sort of flood or plant disease hits our crops. We're completely and utterly fucked. I'm being serious here, we need to keep these kinds of accidents and happenstances to a minimum and keep them fucking contained!

Anyways, we'll have things spread out in clumps and we're going to have only a couple different kinds of crops at first. Once we have more confidence in our farming we can start planting more and more until we start to hit a critical mass of food intake. The point in time where we don't eat as much as we grow. We'll make a stockpile, like a cellar, and store food for extra utilities. Maybe we save a couple for fermenting into alcohol?

Oh hey, looks like I'm out of time for this entry. Here's the to-do list!

1. GFTO of this fucking city
   
2. We need to set up the new base in Brechin
   
3. Start working on a semi-stable water system
   
4. Get some fucking crops planted in the ground
   
5. Work on ways to find others and bring them to our base
   
6. Set up a defensive perimeter, AKA FORTIFY THE LIVING FUCK OUT OF THE NEW BASE
   
7. See about getting some music up and running!

-- Your Favourite Mechanic --
AJ