“Rise and shine, it’s morning. You know what they say, make clay while the sun shines.” Debbie’s voice full of false cheer rattled through the keep and I groaned. Even if she was smoking hot I didn’t want to wake up to that unless I’d gotten to go to bed with it beforehand.

The ever pedantic Steve had to call out and correct her. “Debbie, the saying actually says make hay while the sun shines. It probably resulted from a serious admonition to avoid baling wet grass that could cause colic or other veterinary distress in farm animals.”

His voice was even worse. I didn’t want to wake up to that ever. I rolled out of bed and went outside to take a piss, because at my age once I wake up it’s gonna happen if I get out of bed or not. When I got back Debbie had made bacon. She’d cooked all the yummy out of it, leaving crisp little sticks of bark that everybody else thought were delightful. I ate my share because at least it was still bacon, and realized if we didn’t get a different diet than all meat all the time soon, everyone was going to be in trouble.

Debbie wasn’t really aware of my culinary worries, and as I finished the last of my food she stood and grabbed everyone’s attention again, trying to keep folks upbeat. “Morning guys, wanna give a quick shout out to Hunter and Jeri for bringing back that pig. I’m sure every one is thrilled you ran into it, except maybe the pig.” She paused for half a beat and I realized she was checking to see if anyone laughed. Before I could fake it she’d gone on. “We’re going to make as much clay as possible today, except John who’s doing his farm, and Allison who’s going to go along and keep an eye out for the hell moose. Other than that, it’s clay time so if everyone will please give their attention to Jack.”

I wasn’t expecting it, but I wasn’t exactly shy either so I raised a hand to acknowledge everyone’s stare and nodded in the direction of the falls.

“If you’ve got a shovel and a bucket, that’d be handy. It’s gotta be water-tight so no woven basket stuff. We’ll also need some fabric. If anybody’s got a bed sheet that would be ideal. You’ll get it back when we’re done.”

Nobody said anything, and I just let it hang. Making eye contact and feeling the silence grow until Jeri shrugged.

“I’ve got an extra dress and I guess I can only wear one at a time. Will that work?”

“Perfect, grab buckets and shovels if you got em and let’s head to the lake.”

There was a shortage of shovels but everyone managed to have a bucket, even though all but Steve’s and mine were the crude hand made ones from hollow logs. Steve had a plastic 5 gallon bucket that was ubiquitous to a modern farm while I had my trusty steel pail. When we got there I explained how a perc test worked and told everyone to pick a spot to dig a small hole and fill it with water so we could compare and find a good deposit. It wasn’t exactly a scientific test, because what counts as a small hole and how accurate was the one one thousand two one thousand method of time keeping? Nobody objected though, and we split up. Debbie and Steve stayed pretty close together because they were sharing a single e-tool, and Hunter was in the same boat with Jeri. It was still better than my random ass pick a hole and dig from yesterday, although I went back to that same spot to get a count.

Everybody came back and compared times. Hunter’s hole won on clay content. I told them all to fill their buckets back up and we’d fall back in on what Hunter kept insisting we call the mother lode. Once there we all cut through the sod, scooped some soil and dumped it in the bucket easy enough. The stirring bit was even kind of fun with people splashing and horsing around a little bit. When I asked Debbie and Jeri to each hold an end of the dress while we poured the muddy water on it, I thought I had a mutiny on my hands.

“Use your own damn clothes, Jack.” Jeri was pissed.

“I did yesterday. It was this same shirt, and it cleans right up see?”

“That shirt is definitely not clean.” Debbie interjected, then tried to offer a solution. “Can we just use your shirt again since you already tried it once?”

“Despite what you may have heard, size matters, Debbie.” I winked at her before I clarified. “If everyone is doing this we need more filters. The dress has way more material than my shirt, but I’ll kick my shirt in too. We’re trying to make as much as possible right?”

Everyone agreed, although I noticed nobody was rushing to volunteer any of their limited clothing to the cause. Social pressure worked though and Jeri gave in, spreading out her dress with a hand on each hem while Debbie pulled it up from the shoulders. I slowly poured in my bucket, careful not to dump the stuff that had settled into the bottom. I pitched that to the side. “That’s the sand and crap that’s not clay. We keep going until it’s all filtered and then repeat. Anybody got questions?”

No one did, and the group got to work. Pretty soon Debbie took over and reorganized, sticking me and Hunter on shovel duty, whileTerri stirred and poured, and she and Steve ferried full buckets of water back from the shore. It didn’t take long until we had a fair amount of clay and we filled one of the buckets and let it sit to free up space in the filters, taking a little chunk out of the rotation. We kept it up and as it got close to meal time, we had a couple buckets worth of clay and had slowed down. There was a natural pause in the work while one of the bucket runs was being made, and Debbie set hers down to address us.

“We’ve got a ton of clay already, but what do you guys think about we keep going? Instead of knocking off at midday we finish out as much as possible, then form it when we go back for food when the light starts to go and fire it overnight? Guards tonight can keep the fires fed. We’ll get it all out of the way, and we can take tomorrow off to work on our own projects.”

I was fine with it, and I looked around and saw indifference in most of the rest of us, but Steve objected. “John and Allison will be coming back to the campsite expecting us. No one informed them of a change to our schedule.”

Debbie nodded. “Fair point. Why don’t you take a couple of the buckets up the camp and dump them out there. Before you bring them back, let John and Allison know they’re welcome to join us for today or stick with a half shift for tomorrow. Honestly I want to get this pottery finished as soon as possible so that if something comes up we’ll have trade goods in place.”

Steve agreed and that’s what we did. John and Allison opted to join us, and the entire group spent the rest of the day mining clay. There’s no way we approached even a fraction of what a modern operation could do with dozers and pressure washers, but it was still an impressive mountain of clay piled up at the keep by the time we ate. Debbie started crafting more of those oil lamps and gave us all a talk.

“You need to keep everything the same thickness so it cooks evenly when we fire it. Use a stick off to the side as a measurement when you roll it out if you need to. Always get it wet again before you try and join different pieces, and if you smash it too much in one place it will develop pressure cracks.”

I made a shit ton of arrowheads, because they were relatively easy. Steve was working on a hollow cylinder with a flared end he said could be joined together to make pipe. I decided as soon as I saw it that I’d use a similar system for the fireplace in my new house. Allison made a couple of pretty nice looking vases before we talked her out of it. The consensus seemed to be that practical items would be our best sellers. John cranked out a ton of needles and some awls, and Hunter joined me in arrowheads. Jeri was the only one of us who tried keeping up with Debbie. Between the two of them they made a couple dozen oil lamps, three or four ceramic knives that looked cool as hell but would be fragile enough I wouldn’t buy them, and a kind of dutch oven complete with lid that John said could bake biscuits if you were careful. By the time we buried the last of it and lit the kiln fires we were working by moonlight, and for the first time in a long while I drifted off to sleep without rifling through wikipedia for an advantage.