Chapter 36

Lunch was a real treat, and after it was over the news from home Rose had been letting us in on started again. Since one of the details she'd shared earlier didn't seem to fit now I had to ask. Yes, the answer let me know I should have kept my mouth shut.

"Rose, if you had such a grip on their short hairs how come you didn't get to keep any of the bot workers?" I asked.

"I didn't want to keep any. I needed them here to get things in shape for you before you made it back so we could get settled without too much confusion, but if I'd kept them you'd have ended up sitting on your lazy ass even more than you do now," she said.

Luckily it was only me and my women sitting around the table now. Of course they all laughed at me, but I knew at once Rose hadn't meant it to be mean or anything and I also knew she was one hundred percent correct.

The Shepards, Mama, and the pups were all lazing around the table too. The male Shepard, King, had sort of taken up with me and the female, Queenie, hung close to Rose for now. Needless to say Mama was still trying to get King's attention and all the cubs were mostly keeping a low profile.

"Are you planning to start cutting hay tomorrow?" Rose asked, reminding me there would be work to get to sooner or later.

"We probably should. I'm not sure how much longer it'll be before we need it," I said.

"It'll probably be sooner than you think, but I brought a little help for the job along with me. We might as well go over to the garage and let you get a look at it. You haven't even seen your truck yet," she said.

Hell, why not. The girls and I got up and even Daro and Rayta came along. Of course the wolves and the dogs thought they should come too. I didn't have a hint where the garage she kept talking about was, but at least I didn't bother to ask. She'd have to show us before we could look inside.

It was a mystery easily solved. As soon as we left the cave I could see a roll-up steel door on the other side of the smokehouse. It let us into a cave I knew hadn't been there before. Rose operated the door with a remote control and as soon as we were all inside she closed it behind us.

It was one hell of a garage, probably a hundred yards by a hundred yards. My new truck, which looked a little like the one I'd crashed to get here, was parked along the back wall and it was hooked to three trailers.

The reefer was in pride of place, hooked to the tractor. Next in line, pulled by a dolly attached to the back of the reefer, was a big fifty-three foot dray van. Last in line, on another set of dollys, was a full sized bullrack. The rig together was long as a well rope.

I could also see why Rose thought we wouldn't run into any trouble with getting stuck. It looked like there were enough tires on the rig to let it float if you drove it off into the river. Of course there weren't more wheels and tires than normal, they were just bigger than normal.

Supersingles were thought up by people who wanted to haul high-cube loads which didn't weigh much. They were usually ono purpose built trucks and trailers and their main claim to fame was light weight. they amounted to one wheel and tire which was nearly as wide as a set of dual wheels.

Sigfried, with Rose spurring him on no doubt, had modified my truck and the trailers and it now had dual-supersingles, except for the steer axle of course, but he'd even switched out the wheels and tires there and had a supersingle in place for the front tires.

The skidder she'd told me about was one hell of a big one too.

The sawmill wasn't as impressive looking as I'd thought it would be. More than anything it resembled a horizontal band saw on steroids, but it was obvious the carriage was big enough to handle twelve foot logs up to about thirty inch diameters. It wasn't a setup to turn out thousands of board feet of lumber per hour, but it would surely let us cut more lumber than we could ever need.

I also got a good look at our fusion power plant. It looked surprisingly simple to me, but I could tell it didn't charge batteries and use inverters to get alternating current. It made three-phase 440 AC and fed a large transformer which broke it down to more usable voltages for us. It was also completely caged off so there'd be no possibility of someone examining it too closely and getting their ass fried.

The most interesting things in the garage were the farming tools. All of the first bunch I saw were horse drawn, but what the hell. We had plenty of horses and now we had plenty of implements. Our hay cutting wasn't going to be done by hand after all. We had a horse drawn sickle mower and a horse drawn baler.

The baler was going to be a tremendous help. Even though I hated hauling hay it was very much more efficient than small bundles of cut grasses. One thing I didn't see was any sort of horse drawn combine, if there even ever had been such a thing.

Of course there had and I could almost feel Rose about to say something. I was right again.

"Yes, we have a combine too, but it's hidden from you now behind the other stuff. It isn't horse drawn though. It has its own fusion modification. Sigfried said it was actually easier for him to do the modification than fool around with furnishing more diesel. Besides, it let him keep the machine's weight down.

"It isn't one of those giant things, but it will serve our purposes well. Since you started trying to catch and train every horse you saw I figured we might as well bring it along. It will also let us store enough of the wild oats to feed the bison and aurochs you have captured so they will still be half assed fat after a hard winter,

"I even brought along a small Farmall Cub tractor. With this bunch you have put together we'll need to raise at least a few crops. Nothing extensive, but we'll need more than horse power can cultivate, especially since the farmers don't know shit about farming yet," Rose said.

After taking a walk around to see the rest I was surprised when I noticed the small tractor seemed to look brand new. I figured it meant Sigfried had made the damned thing. When I noticed it didn't have a gas tank I knew he must have. Hell, it seemed to me Rose should change her name to Santa.

"Ok, you've had enough of a look around for today. In the morning you can teach one or two of the men how to operate the combine and get the oat harvest started. Don't worry about it being a pain. Sigfried even taught me to use it and he simplified the controls and the works somehow too. All you have to do is cut the oats and make sure there's plenty of the tow-sack material left on the roll," she said.

"Tow-sack?"

"Yep. He bypassed all that load the grain into the wagon crap. He supplied rolls of tow sack material. Once you get a roll in place the combine cuts off enough for a tow sack, puts it in place, and sews the bottom shut. When the bag is full it sews the top shut too and drops it. It's really sort of fun for a while, but it does get old quick enough. Thankfully it isn't very hard to do," she said.