What was more, the found he needed to spend two weeks building a wicker and twine ‘chicken coop’ for them. It was really more of a dove cove given the smaller frame of the birds and their tendency to fly off. They had lost two of their captives in the weeks leading up to the coop’s completion while trying to open baskets to feed them.

Eventually though, Jill and her gathering team learned how to set and bait the traps, and a few live birds were added each day to their take. When the birds calmed down and acclimated to their new accommodations, they started laying eggs that could be gathered fresh each morning. Fried eggs were still lurking in their distant future, but roasted and even scrambled eggs began to appear on the table each morning. No sausage links, but shredded spiced mutton made a reasonable substitute. It wasn’t the quintessential American breakfast, but given their supplies on hand, Dag was beginning to feel a bit more at home.

All of this was taken to the next level as he showed the women how to milk the sheep. It wasn’t like they got a lot out of them, even after weaning off the lambs, but a little farmer’s cheese over scrambled eggs, soon became the favorite morning meal. Of course Dag had a lot of trouble at first sourcing rennet. Natural rennet from the sheep’s stomachs was, of course the easiest answer, but as with most things he was trying for the first time, gathering it was problematic. Then he tried several vegetable sources, and that didn’t go much better.

At least, not for the longest time. Eventually, he did manage to find a reed that seemed a close relative of the simple cattail from back home, and it worked well enough for simple cheeses. Unfortunately for Dag’s dreams of a good cheddar, good hard cheeses were some years in the future. He never would have dreamed it could be so complicated, but in retrospect, he supposed that he should have.

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Kayak

Dag had the village women help him to form a wicker kayak frame. Everyone looked at him as if he was insane, but both they and Dag were used to that. When he covered that frame with skins, and a heavy smear of animal fat, they realized it looked a lot like the boats they now use, and thought of as commonplace to haul things on the canal. However, they couldn’t really figure out how he was going to add cargo in the boat after he had already covered the top in skins.

All doubts fled though, when he was able to put the kayak into the surf, and with the help of what looked to the natives like a very odd push pole, he was able to paddle easily out past the breakers. Dag knew it wasn’t as big of an accomplishment as those gaping on shore believed, he thought it would help him to catch more fish. By having someone on the surface to assist him in hauling back his catch or checking multiple fish traps without having to use the dive suit.

Far from ideal, it leaked, and was far too easy to destabilize. Dag had tried to fix this with an outrigger, but eventually the Kayak proved itself to be more than an interesting toy in Dag’s view. That didn’t mean it wasn’t a helpful training aid in giving the young something to familiarize themselves with the principles of boating. Jack, in particular seemed to really enjoy it.

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Salt Pan

The storms would be coming in soon, and Dag had originally planned to put this off until after the storms had hit, but with the baby crying through the night still, and both he and Lavern tired and getting snippy and sarcastic with each other, he decided that now might be the perfect time for a few days away.

So, gathering up a manual labor team, he loaded down a travois and hitched up the rapidly growing calf to it. Then headed up the beach, just as he had told Jack to do. Jack had come back with a report of the area, but saw nothing out of the ordinary or exceptionally useful. That didn’t really discourage Dag though, he just needed a flat space above the high tide line for his plans.

At the distance of an easy day’s walk up the beach, he called a halt. The area was far larger than he needed, but he liked it for the chance to expand in the future should the need arise. There was actually more room here than the area where he built the castle and village, but there was no nearby source of fresh water. So in the current climate, and with their limited technology, it was waste land not fit for human habitation.

That is why there was plenty of grumbling when Dag had them all start digging. It wasn’t a little project either. He figured while he was at it, he might as well take the time to do it right. Even in the absence of modern tools, six men can move a lot of earth in three days.

After the canal projects, the men had a lot of faith in Dag, so despite the grumbling, they kept at the work. On the third day, however, when Dag cut the fill channel to the high tide mark and flooded all of their hard work with sea water, there were some pretty angry men asking questions.

Dag just grinned at them, then decided to explain the method behind his madness. “Yes, it floods at high tide, then when the tide goes out, the sea water is trapped in the pools. Then the sun bakes down on them and dries them out. You will find that what is left behind is a thin layer of salt. Over a year’s time, this will happen a lot. The layers of salt buildup, and then when we come back, we’ll have enough salt here to salt and dry every animal on the plains.”

The men looked confused, but they had seen crazier things from this man. They had figured out salt and sea water, but weren’t sure that they hadn’t just wasted their time and efforts. Still, the fresh water supply was nearly exhausted, so that meant one last evening camping, then it was back to the village. Dag built the fire big with the last of the locally scavenged driftwood and broke out double rations. The less the travois weighed on the walk back, the faster they would be able to go.

He had started this project as a way to spend a little time away from the family, but now that he had gotten what he wished for, he found he missed them. Sure, little John would wake him up at all hours of the night, and was a little puke and shit factory, but nothing quite made you feel the way he did when he gave you one of those toothless grins, and you realized that at least one person in this world was glad to see you. As for Lavern, when he got back, he would have to see if she and Shirley wanted a break. Maybe move both babies into Oona’s place for one evening... He shook his head, that might work in the era of giving the baby a bottle, but not in this era, where mommy was the only real source of nutrition for the first three to four months.

Dag decided that once they were past that stage, he would talk to Ajax, and get them to all take a little one-day trip, if for no other reason that to give the women a break. That is, if he could convince the girls to be away from their infants that long.

Weathering The Storm

Cabin Fever

When the storms hit, everyone turned to indoor activities. Down in the village, basket production became the name of the game. While up at the castle, the men focused on using spring pole grind stones to fashion bone spear and arrow points as well as stone axes and new horn bows. The ladies, as usual, had their hands full taking care of the animal, both the two-legged variety as well as the four-legged kind. To say nothing of fixing meals and sewing new boots and clothing.

Dag actually enjoyed storm season. It felt good to sit inside and work on projects rather than be out in the elements gathering in food and other resources. The small gaps of good weather were usually spent playing in the over flowing baths or the larger than usual waves.

He enjoyed it for the first week that is. After that, the young ones were under foot, and the women who were so happy to have them home for a change were tired of having them underfoot now. Dag too was only too happy to retreat to the space set aside as the men’s workshop. He did love Lavern, but the truth was, there was only so much time they could spend together before they started grating on each other. He wondered if that was a universal situation, because he remembered his own father’s difficulties in dealing with retirement. He supposed it was another case of be careful what you wish for.

By the end, he was glad to see the last of the storms. It wasn’t that their food supplies had gotten low, but he was really tired of every bite being dried, smoked, or salted... often all three. It became bad enough one day about two weeks into storm season that he risked a dive, just to bring back a little fresh fish to share.

The water quality had been rough. The heavy surf above stirred up the mud and sand below enough to cloud the water, and of course the overcast skies limited the light available even at reasonably shallow depths. The time under the waves did at least fully recharge his batteries. Not for the first time did he wish that the little dive computer built into the suit was more of a general purpose computer, or he knew more about how to reprogram it so it was. As things stood, it did a fantastic job of keeping track of pressure, decompression times, and even a bit of sonar navigation, but for anything else, it was practically useless.

The fresh fish had been appreciated. Roasted on a spit out by the baths, the afternoon of plenty quickly got rained out, and everyone returned under their various roofs to escape the downpour. Dag couldn’t help but wish that they would get this rain in nice gentle showers throughout the year, but that wasn’t to be. Light spring rains and the river flood from the meltwater from distant mountains, followed by months of hot and dry, followed by a winter monsoon. That was what he had to deal with, and wishing it otherwise wasn’t going to change a thing.

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Storm Gifts

As the storms were finally breaking off, Dag began to take long walks along the beach. As much to have an excuse to get out of the house, as his public stated goal of inspecting for damage. When he stumbled on the recently beached whale, his heart leapt. Examining it closer, he could see that it was still alive, but wouldn’t be for long. At a dead run, he headed back to the castle.

It was an all hands on deck evolution. Harvesting the whale took everyone working together. Even toddlers pulled small travois loaded with meat to those who would cut it into strips for salting and smoking. That was just to process the meat. Boiling down all the blubber into useful oils would take another two days, and the first job that fell almost exclusively to Dag, that of skinning the great beast would take weeks to turn into a decent leather.

When it was done, however, he found himself in possession of two strips of thin rubbery leather that were ten foot wide, by twenty foot long. A couple thousand pounds of meat and oil, and enough bone to make tools for a hundred people. The gift from the sea was bountiful. Dag didn’t want to see a scrap of it go to waste.

It wasn’t until several weeks later that he went to work on the most valuable gift the whale had granted them. Whale leather is notoriously thick and was often used for boot soles. So properly tanning it, wasn’t an easy task, but while it was yet wet and pliable, Dag had formed two canoe frames from the spare cedar poles brought back from the last gathering. Then he wrapped and pegged the skins to the canoe frames. By the time the leather was dry and had hardened into place, he had a pair of the sturdiest boats he had ever constructed. Easily able to take ten men and supplies each, they were perfect for his future plans.

These boats would haul them up river at the time of the Gathering, and eventually carry them far up river for greater exploration once the floods receded, but in the meantime, they would sit out in the harsh sun, drying to rock hardness. Each day to be oiled with a heavy layer of either its own blubber oil or coconut oil, depending on which they had in excess at the moment.

Dag found himself looking forward to the Gathering this year. The looks on their faces when they saw the boats should be entertaining. He just needed to be ready in case they sought to take them by force. Dag thumbed his axe at his side, and thought to himself, ‘let ‘em try’. The boats were going to revolutionize cargo transport.

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Ahead Of The Flood

Dag decided to leave for the Gathering early this year. Leaving behind two hunters and two of the younger archers to guard the castle, and Lavern and Shirley to keep an eye on the little ones, he packed Oona and one of her cronies in one of the boats. Then tied the now much larger calf to one travois, and a pair of sheep to each of the smaller travois, leaving one of Jill’s crew to lead them, and one of Jack’s crew and one hunter to guard each. Then he, Jack, and Ajax loaded into the boats, taking up position forward and aft to defend it from any overly aggressive crocodiles. He gave each of the women a paddle, and soon they were off.

The hardest part was keeping the travois and the boats to roughly the same speed. With the boats taking time to do a little net fishing while the travois were struggling over uneven ground, and the ‘guards’ on the travois taking a little time to do some hunting when the current slowed the boats.

The camp sites that they selected along the river bank were always in the most defensible positions that Dag could find. Even if it meant that they didn’t get to take full advantage of daylight that day. They were always high points that were unlikely to flood, at least not in normal years, so that Dag could mark them for later supply posts.

He had decided that he needed to take more advantage of the river to explore and transport goods. To do this effectively, he needed places where they could camp, hunt, and do any repairs. This meant leaving caches of supplies, and they could only do that effectively if they built small forts at each of these places... eventually. He knew in practical terms, he was still years off from having one at each of the rest sites on their way to the Gathering, much less all up and down the river as he envisioned. Still, the first step was selecting locations, and he could do that fairly easily on this trip.

What he really wanted was a couple of trained oxen and a heavy box scraper to level out some roads on the sides of the river. Unfortunately, he wasn’t likely to have that for several years, either. The dream of being able to toss a tow rope to a team of animals on the bank and not have to row the boats up stream sounded better and better every time he watched the women struggling against the current. However, it wasn’t like he and the other men could take over for them, twice on the first day they had needed to repel crocodiles that decided they might be tasty, and a snake larger than anything that Dag had believed lived in these parts.

Even with these issues though, the trip took less time, carried more supplies, and was overall easier than any trip to the Gathering before it. He decided to be grateful for improvements rather than resentful over challenges, but it was hard to do as tired as they all were on that first day of pulling themselves into the gently rolling hills that the clans all used to shelter from the floods.

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Out Post

Packing everyone into the small enclosure that they had made, along with the gear and the animals made for a tight fit. Even after spending a lot of the day repairing the small stockade Dag was realizing that it simply wasn’t large enough for everyone to stay here the whole time without causing complications he didn’t need. His little clan had just gotten too used to having more space and having a much more comfortable place to live.

So starting early in the morning, he took all the men off to hunt recently fallen trees. It wasn’t easy, even to simply de-limb them using the stone axes. Picking them up unaided was out of the question. Fortunately for Dag, he had made a study of the megalithic builders and all of the ways postulated for them to have been able to build them, given the only tools known to them. These logs, big as they were, still weren’t multi-ton stone blocks, so he assumed that it could be done.

Starting with an A-frame of smaller logs, and a stout rope, he showed the men how to use the A-frame as a lever to make moving the tree back to camp much easier. Ok, so ‘much’ is a relative term, but with five grown man working together along with four half-grown boys, they made reasonable progress and at least had the four main support posts of his tower back to camp by the time the light had faded too much to continue working.

Dag was starving and exhausted, but he had what would become the primary support posts for a large tower he planned to build to guard the gate of their little stockade. The poles were a little more than fifty feet long, but would need to be sunk ten foot in the ground for stability’s sake. So, Dag assumed he could get four floors out of it. That would be plenty to house them, and still have room for the animals in the open stockade, and storage space for their goods on the first floor.