South Bumfork, the former state of Maine
Wednesday, April 1, 2099
I don’t know why I’m starting this diary, but maybe someday, someone will dig it up and read what life was like at the end of the twenty-first century.
Let me start with this place. The Way Beyond Deep Community was founded in the middle of the twenty first century by folks who thought, for some reason, it might be a good idea to build an off the grid commune in the midst of deepest, darkest Maine. These were folks who believed in sharing everything: stuff, money, work, ideas, ideology, love, hugs, sex, and communicable diseases included.
We’re actually several miles away from South Bumfork and our nearest neighbor is a hermit that lives about a mile up the road. I’ve seen her maybe three times since I’ve been here–and I was born here. In other words, we are rather isolated. It’s probably the only reason that we’re still around.
Tuesday, April 7th
Yesterday morning, Terra had an announcement. “Listen up, people,” she said. “It looks like we’re coming to the end of our endless supply of dried beans and grains. Which means that, unless anyone thinks they know how to grow kidney beans or rice, we’d better get used to eating nothing but vegetables and berries. And anything the mighty hunters can catch.”
“That’s not true!” Biobabe said. “There are lots of mushrooms growing around here. Not to mention that I can set up a spawning room to grow more.”
“Well then,” Terra said. “That’s so very different. Vegetables, berries, and mushrooms. Such a well balanced diet.”
“I remember when we got all of our food from dumpsters,” Gander said.
“I remember when we all got salmonella from the dumpster,” Spice said. She rapped her cane on the floor to make her point.
“Once!” Gander said. “That happened once!” He glared at Spice.
“There hasn’t been food in the dumpsters in fifteen years,” Tyger said. “I was on the last run. We found pasta!”
“I’ve heard of pasta,” Claudia said.
“We used to make yogurt here,” Cathy said. “But that was before the last cow died.”
“Enough memories, people,” Terra said. “We need to figure out how we’re going to get more food.”
“We can grow beans,” Biobabe said. “Or at least I can grow beans. Anyone who thinks that they can help should join me in the back field this afternoon. We’ll start pulling out weeds and since it’s all weeds back there, it’s pretty simple work.”
Which is how I ended up spending yesterday afternoon pulling weeds.
Simple, it was. Easy, it wasn’t. Basically we (that was Biobabe, Cathy, and I) pulled up everything there. It was a lot of work. Biobabe was a worker. Cathy was filled with enthusiasm and kept saying that we should get more people involved and what was wrong with everyone that they weren’t out helping us and every so often she would pull something up.
Then Ferrous came by to tell us everything that we were doing wrong. Fortunately, Biobabe knew how to handle Ferrous. Unfortunately, dealing with her meant that Biobabe wasn’t able to focus on pulling up weeds, so for quite a while it was yours truly working away.
Today I’m sore all over. Biobabe is staking out the newly dug field and planning what goes where. Fortunately, she doesn’t need help with that so I’m sitting in a side room, writing this and licking my wounds. I’ll help with the cooking later. We’re having vegetables tonight. Surprise.
Wednesday, April 15th
The word heard on the pirate stations today was that the Grandsons of Chaos are moving into our area.
The Grandsons of Chaos are one more group of young guys that hate that all the systems have collapsed and everyone has to work three times as hard to get three times less. I don’t blame them for that; I haven’t been thrilled about the situation myself. But their solution to this is to force everyone else to work for them.
Yeah. The warlords were coming to town. Now I could start worrying about how a group of communal neohippie peacelovers were going to deal with a gang of real thugs.
Biobabe has been talking about giving martial arts lessons. I was skeptical that any martial art was going to be helpful since I had heard that the Grandsons of Chaos were heavily armed and had a habit of shooting anyone who got in their way.
Meanwhile, Biobabe’s beans are slowly coming up but it seems like it will be at least a couple of months before any of them are going to be close to edible. If we want dried beans, it might take more than three months. For now, dandelion green salads with wild onions and strange mushrooms have become our daily diet, along with the occasional chipmunk stew for those who aren’t vegetarian. We have three jugs of maple syrup that were collected during the February thaw, but we seem to be saving them for some special occasion. Like maybe the day that the Grandsons of Chaos arrive.
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