It’s odd how once routine sets in you can spend a good chunk of your day simply doing chores necessary to keep you alive. You spend that time aware and focused but a certain part of your mind is off working on other things, I’ve had some of my best and most creative ideas come to me while focusing on something completely unrelated. I suppose it’s a human trait and my guess is that it’s brought on by the left brain/right brain thing; but what do I know? That’s just my guess.

Today I was fussing over winter in the back of my mind. I grew up in cold country and I knew that the onset of spring simply meant that winter was coming and coming sooner than you wanted. I also needed to get to a trading post and figure out how this new world of mine worked. I had a list of items we’d need building in my head and I knew that without overland roads we’d have to figure how to move things up and down the river. Basically light-hearted thoughts all “butterfly’s and sunshine”.

As we sat down to supper I made a point of mentioning that we need to build a new table pretty soon as we couldn’t all sit together to eat. Holder mentioned that he’d watched people do that and all you really needed was a good planer. Well the problem was I didn’t have any planers the closest thing I had was a draw knife, but if he could get us to that stage we could take turns until we got a semi-smooth table top. I immediately added a good planer to my mental shopping list. The list was growing out of control and the problem was I’d have to be the one to go to the trading post as soon as the spring waters started to recede.

Holder was about to tell his tale, I offered him a glass of whiskey which he accepted and gave him the speakers seat at the fire. The speakers seat was the place where the story teller got to sit, it wasn’t overly special but it was on the opposite end of the fire from me and had become a place of honor for the story teller to sit.

Everyone was gathered around in their respective seats. Both kids flanked Matilda on my right and Michelle and then Sonya sat on my left, that’s just how it developed. I had a whiskey and a beer and everyone else had hot chocolate Sonya had made on that chilly spring evening. Everyone settled down finally and I lit a cigarette wondering how much longer until I had to switch to the pipe.

Holder started his story.

Holder started, “I lived up in hills from a town called Harrodsburg over in Kentucky.

“It was a place my grandaddy had laid stake to just after the war, his name was Thomas O’Connell. We had a pretty good homestead built with five different houses and three barns, twasn’t too far from the Kentucky river and the nearest town was Harrodsburg. Although we only called it a town because it had a trading store and a church, we used to go down to church once a month when we did our shopping.

“I had four brothers and three sisters and me being the middle boy I decided once I came 17 it was time to leave. I hired on to a river boat running supplies up and down the Kentucky, it didn’t pay much but they fed me and got me all the way to Louisville. In Louisville I signed on to a boat heading down to New Orleans and finally got to see me a big city.

“I worked the docks in New Orleans for a spell but that turned out bad, the crew I was with from the boat got me hired on at the docks and the gangs were really dangerous. So I found a river boat heading north and worked my way up to St. Louis; eventually I wound up here.

“I really didn’t have a place I was aiming to go but I heard stories about the Oregon trail so I thought I might give that a try. I was just off adventuring you see. My Pappy had told me to go out and get all that craziness out of my system so I could settle down and make them proud.”

Everyone was quiet for a while after he finished, I walked over and poured him another small helping of bourbon and thanked him for the tale. He commented on how good the bourbon was but it did lack a bit of flavor, that made me chuckle. If this guy can make better bourbon than Max did I was going to try extra hard to keep him around.

**** ****

Morning. Coffee, chores and the rest of the morning routine. Today was the day to finish fencing the pasture and so afencing we did go, fencing is a toilsome and time consuming task and I’ve not met a person yet who got excited about it.

Off we went the three of us with Brin happily toting our tools and supplies behind him on the cart. We managed to finish the job by the end of the day. It wasn’t much to look at just a single strand nailed up to some posts but it would keep our animals honest. It connected to the corral we could let them in and out of the corral directly into the pasture as needed. There were two gates still out on the old fence line and we’d install those eventually.

Michelle came out and approved our temporary setup and we let her put the animals out in the field. Matilda, bless her evil soul, even brought out some of her brightly color yarn which she and Esther went around tieing to the wire so the horses could see it easier. Now all we needed was some sort of shed or barn before winter arrived.

We had venison stew for supper with veggies and a salad made from early spring greens that they had gathered, good food was not a problem we suffered from.

After supper on a whim I went through Matilda’s survival seed bucket and I got lucky and found a packet of the seeds I wanted. I felt like the heavens had opened and shined a divine light upon me, I even did a little victory dance holding my prize aloft.

Some kind soul had included hops seeds in the survival bucket.