It was mid-August and autumn was just around the corner. Little tell-tale signs of the rapidly approaching change of the seasons were starting to show; our time-travelling corn and tomatoes were starting to ripen and the fruits we ate were different as summer waned. The good news was fresh sweet corn and potatoes, the bad news was we were running out of time to build winter shelters; we were going to end up with more Pawnee style lodge houses than I had originally intended.
The lodge houses made up for their lack of privacy with sturdiness and warmth that a quickly built log cabin would lack. The boatmen would have a couple of large lodges for this winter while we’d build smaller ones for the individual families. I also planned one for my little family compound to have someplace for us all to retreat to in the worst of the blizzards.
The newly recruited families each got a tent or a tipi depending on what was available. Those would easily keep them warm and sheltered into the middle of October. By mid-November however we needed everyone to have a solid structure as the storms would start. We also needed plenty of food and fuel put up, everyone was going to be busy.
After I cleaned up and got presentable, we went back out to do our civic duty. Mouse made a beeline for the kindergarten (children’s garden) while I mounted up to take my tour. A couple of the Council members were waiting for me but most of them were busy. It was still early enough in the work day that things could be done, so I started off on my inspection tour with Michelle, a few council members and Brin.
The day was growing short so we focused on the town and the landing for the afternoon, then I’d head to the crop fields, pastures and hay tomorrow morning. The main road was nice and clear, it was still just a one lane dirt path but it was clearly defined; that hadn’t changed too much since I left. The town itself had suddenly started to take shape. While the buildings were still crude structures; mostly skeletons in fact, you could see the shapes and placements of the permanent stuff coming slowly into focus.
It was amazing what that amount of manpower could do in a very short time. If we managed to get a saw mill and grist mill put together soon then we’d really be able to move things along. It was apparent that Holder had gotten a bit of mastery with the tractor and had been helping with the heaviest of the lifting. I was glad they were putting it to use because those hydraulic hoses and tires wouldn’t last forever and we needed to leverage it while we could. I was hoping we could cannibalize it at a certain point and get decades of use from the various components; until then we just had to baby that precious machine until it lifted its last load.
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The smithy and cooper's shop were the most advanced buildings with production moving along at an agreeable rate. I was reassured that we should have a shipment of pig iron on its way upriver and we could begin to ramp up after that. So much to build and so few resources at this point. The cooper was working with sapling wood for barrel bands at this point but he really wanted to get to iron bands. He also had four apprentices working with him to keep up with the demand for buckets and barrels. The types of things we took for granted in the modern world.
The bank/cobbler building was the most interesting. While they waited for actual bricks they had thrown together a very small log cabin with a working station out front, cobbler on one side and banker on the other. It was working but it was a strange mixture. A brick kiln had popped up behind the smithy and there were women and children in the mix pit stomping hay into the wet river clay. Our intrepid brickmaker then formed them up and left them out in the sun to dry before sending them into the kiln. I wished I had time to learn more and actually help.
It was truly quite amazing to see how far they had come in the short time that I was gone. No place was a better example than the timber yard: it was literally packed with fallen logs drying in the summer heat. I received a long lecture there on how wood had to be properly aged before use to prevent warping and cracking. The truth was that some of these logs wouldn’t be ready for years.
My fears were quickly allayed when I was told that the logs used for the log house structures were actually drying also; we’d eventually recover them and saw them into boards. Nothing was going to be wasted in this frontier world of waste not, want not.
My final inspection point of the day was the first lodge house being built as the boatmen’s dorm. It was a very large lodge but only had the beams and boughs at this point. It was still nice, shady and cool inside. I could see that some boatmen had already set the pallets up along the wall to claim their sleeping spaces. It was better than some berthing areas I’d been in on modern warships and far better than a tent when the wicked winds of winter decided to come calling.
We were called to supper at that point, finishing the tour. I’d meet with the council over the weekend to discuss progress and plans for while I was gone to the east coast. I still planned on leaving next week; we had to create more income flow and the payments on patents would fill that need quite nicely. There were some investments I intended to make but cash was going to be king over the near term.
In the meantime I was looking forward to a good meal with friends and a comforting snuggle in bed with my Mouse.