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Greenhouse Breakdown

Marauding Thieves destroy our greenhouse and our food
Swiftrunner

Our farm, in northern Ontario, is small to avoid detection from the overall world. Sparse cropping mixed with conifer trees have allowed our sheep, goat and few cattle to survive, even thrive undetected by the world. We have enough to feed ourselves and to barter with the locals.

 

We survive fantastically on a diet of primarily meat and diary, with grain sides, and of course local berries, but we find cravings for vegetables, we have given up on most fruits other than apples. Unfortunately, the cold and long winter months are not conducive to large scale farming. We built a lackluster Greenhouse a few years ago that has come in particularly handy for starting a few of our crops. We, and the local farmers have collaborated and constructed a larger greenhouse and we were pleased by the growth of our tomatoes.

 

It was this last week that a migrant group arrived up here, probably looking for stable living conditions, and a conflict broke out about their squatting on a far hidden lot. We only discovered them as food began disappearing from the common fields and lately the greenhouse itself.

 

Someone in the area must have picked a fight with them, tried to force them off the land, and the next thing we knew, the entire greenhouse, with all of our starter tomatoes had been shattered. Our crops are spoiled now and so is the greenhouse. A tough season is ahead of us now that we have lost nearly all of our vegetable starters. We still have the potatoes and carrot plots, and the wild grains and of course our cattle. But our lost greenhouse is going to cost us in vitamin supplies. Luckily we think we will have enough from years of canning.

 

The locals are getting more agitated as we become more infiltrated by scroungers. We have worked hard to maintain the small community; most of us have lived here our entire lives, living in what was once considered poverty by metropolis’ like Toronto. Yet, now, we are seen as hoarders living in small ancestral cabins in the woods. Anyway, the locals are planning a general lockdown of the area, trying to control what we live on. They are fashioning their own weapons, based on the ones we use for hunting. That is, cross-bows and the like, for security. It has become a modern day-medieval feudal state here. We are banded together, living off the land, trading with one another.

 

The power doesn’t work here anymore. We tore down the cables and infrastructure after the break-down to add to our obscurity, only a few solar and electrical devise are used now, the relics from our former lives. There is no fuel here anymore, just wood burning for heat and horses for transportation. Luckily, our husbandry skills are still strong.

 

Why didn’t we move south, or into larger communities. We saw this coming, we have little disease or crime problems, except for the scroungers who come from distant cities looking for free food. We cannot afford to feed and house them, it is tight as it is.

The Question is:

 

Should we focus on rebuilding the greenhouse and concealing/guarding it or should we prepare for immanent and dangerous future raids?

 

If we rebuild, we need to repair the glass structure, maintain it and guard it. We do not readily have the supplies and will need to send a team out for them, with trading items, this may alert others to our whereabouts. We may still be attacked.

 

If we focus on security, we may have other failed crops and localized starvation, or increased security may lead to civil disputed within the community, but we would have defense systems in place.

Oct 12
food,farming,marauding,thieves,greenhouse,destroy


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  • PlatonicJensen
    Oct 12
    As long as you have food and others don't, they'll probably keep trying to take it. It's not raids by hungry people you have to worry about, because starving people don't mount invasions. It's laws getting passed forcing you to share, and organized communities with armed forces like the local police or the army. You can try and hide, but that makes you isolated from the world and unlikely to see big things coming. You can't really fight off police or the army with crossbows. The strategy I've taken is to be open, and to work actively to help others start growing their own food. The best way to protect your crops is to see to it noone is hungry.
  • StrategicFuturist
    Oct 12
    Dear swiftrunner. I hear your pain, having experienced similar issues back in 2012. A quick note though - you really cannot afford to be carrying the cattle anymore - if you dump them from your roster you'll DRAMATICALLY increase your available crops for consumption which will enable you to dedicate more time to security. Simultaneously you'll lower your fresh water consumption. You may find people nearby willing to swap some cattle for poly plastic and that sort of thing (though I doubt it). I'd probably pass word around that you are going to have the final public offering of the cattle and have a giant BBQ. At that BBQ announce that you intend to make your location a co-operative and that you need the help of everyone to maximise output and for that they'll all get better fed. That will do a few things - lower cattle based consumption, increase available water supplies, lower localised risks by having more people on the look out and increase the number of people that can help increase capacity. Ditch the cattle, sleep better at night
  • modernman
    Oct 12
    Unless you really think you can booby trap everything (and I mean everything) and are willing to use lethal force you might want to try to bring some of the outsiders to your side. I bet a few of them don't have the stomach for a fight and are likely facing similar issues as you are. If some of them are good at hunting you could try to trade game they catch for plants you grow.
  • Swiftrunner
    Oct 16
    I don't thing we can fully lockdown, it is just unrealistic, unfortunatly. Nobody around here has any plastics anymore. These people seem out of place, recent refugees, I don't know where they are from, but they don't seem to know what they can eat, we can't afford to support them, nor scare them off. We have worked hard to maintain a very small, I mean tiny cattle herd, we are hoping when all this works itself out, we can reintroduce cattle, we are trying to save a species here. Anyway, we are careful to appear modest in our means, and we are. Looks like we are going to have to come up with some sort of comprimis with these people, but we cannot carry them on what we currently produce. We have a standoff, if we feed them, they redroduce and we run out of food. If we don't feed them, they will probably be hostile.
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