Working Together

This is my submission for John Michael Greer's short fiction contest for the proposed collection Love in the Ruins. It's my first attempt at fiction, and I hadn't been thinking I would enter the contest until recently. When it was first announced though, it did catch my interest.

I started thinking about what a de-industrial future might look like, as I worked at various places in the city, and kind of daydreamed about a few characters. I got busy with a period of technical training and left off thinking about the story for a long while.

When I saw the deadline approaching, I thought I would try to write down some of the scenes that I had envisioned, and the story started rushing out in full. It definitely could use some editing and revision, but I thought would post it anyway, in case it might be suitable for the collection.

Working Together

   

    Alex took a moment's break from packing the remains of the harvest, as well as some tools and belongings, into a large trailer, and had a drink from his canteen in the cooling autumn air. He looked out across the field at his journeyman, hoe in hand, making some finishing touches in the garden before they would leave for the season. A wiry man with a thick dark beard, wearing a wide straw sun-hat, a billowy white work-shirt and long skirt that he'd sewn for himself from cotton broadcloth, as well as his homemade tire sandals, he did not exactly accord with the image of fashion that Alex was used to at least aspiring to approximate.

     Alex had made the trip into the city twice since the late summer, to transport into town the vegetables and grains that he had helped to produce, for the most part to be preserved for the winter by those few who remained in the city for the summer months. He was glad that his boss let him make the trip, instead of taking it for himself, and leaving Alex with a set of chores on the farm. His journeyman, Phillip Ducharme, seemed to him a bit odd, unconcerned with the months of isolation, and welcoming the three days of solitude that these delivery trips would afford him. Alex would have preferred some more time in the city himself, as aside from these trips, there were only two local dances out in the country to break up the hot summer months. But after dropping off the produce and arranging for their preservation, and spending a night at his mother's house, he was obliged to make his way back out to the union farm. Harvest would be over soon enough, however, and he would have time on his own to enjoy some return parties in the city, to play some music and meet up with his friends before winter set in and a new season of work began.

      One of those who remained in the city for the summer was the chef at a lunch counter next to the law courts. Between orders, Rose was getting two young teenagers set up at a long wooden cutting block next to some baskets of vegetables. Her own cutting block was adjacent to the two hammered-steel woks she cooked at, and set back a little from the counter where her customers ate, or could pick up their orders to eat at the tables. From her station she could keep an eye on everything in the restaurant, as well as deliveries being brought down to the cellar.

      A regular pushed through the screened door and made his way to a stool at the counter, a bundle of papers under arm, wearing thick round glasses, a loose linen dress shirt, khaki pants and some leather sandals.

      “Chicken soup?” Rose asked. He pulled his lips to one side and gestured with his face “Why not?” while setting his papers in front of him. “And a light beer.”

      Rose slid the gas valve open with her knee, and the burners fired with a whoosh while she flicked a spoon of lard into the wok. It melted and shimmered, and she tossed in a handful of sliced onions, bell peppers, and celery root, and then a few chicken pieces. She pushed them up along cooler back slope of the wok to make space for another little pool of fat, into which she added some ginger, garlic, and dried lime peel. Chicken bones were quietly simmering in the other wok, with a few aromatics and chilies swimming around at the surface, and she took a few ladles of broth to add to the vegetables. It came to a quick boil as she added a scoop of cooked rice and a pinch of green herbs. She ladled the mix into a deep clay bowl and brought it to the counter, then pulled a cork stopper from a jug of cool-ish beer, to pour him a glass.

      “Thank you Rose,” only just barely pulling his eyes from his long sheets of handwritten notes. She smiled at him, and moved back to scrub the wok and get ready for the next order.

      She was quick and deft in every movement she made. The years of kitchen work, the constant movement, the slinging around of cast iron cookware, sacks of grains and crates of vegetables had made her healthy and fit, and strong for her slight frame. Working in a food business helped as well, as there was always nutritious meals to be had from what wasn't sold in the day, which she cooked up to eat with her sister and her helpers.


      The restaurant had been set up by her mother when Rose was a young girl. After Rose's father had passed away, her mother took over his restaurant supply business, which imported goods that weren't grown locally, various grains, legumes, coffee, spices, an so on, mainly for the few restaurants in the city, as well as for some inns and institutional kitchens. It was successful enough, but grew harder to manage as time went on: demand in the city was always diminishing, and there was continual disruptions in supply. Certain orders would just stop arriving, and the suppliers never heard from again, though Rose's mother, Natalia, would write letters, left to wonder what had happened to her connections.

      So Natalia kept her ears open for an opportunity to set up an establishment of her own, to augment her main business. She was offered a chance to go in on a roast house that was opening on Wellington Avenue, a wealthier neighborhood in the city, but instead she took a commission to run a cafeteria in the city centre, right beside the law-courts and near city hall and the hospital. It was a good decision. The high-level staff that worked there were a captive clientele of professionals requiring a meeting place with an interesting rotation of meals. It added a steadier income stream to Natalia's family.

      And compared to the outdoor ovens at the roast house, her fuel cost was minimal. She had decided on the woks, as good quality Chinese pans and tools were available from her northern supplier, and they could be heated quickly for a stir fry as the order came in, and then turned off again as quickly. This also helped keep the kitchen from heating up excessively. (In cooler weather, they sometimes would set up an iron grate over some charcoal, for a change of pace.) The commission came with the ability to buy city bio-gas at a decent rate, as a supply line had already been piped over from the central physical plant, across the street.

      So, it was an economical way of cooking. They could use shavings of whatever meat was available (pork, poultry, rabbit, goat, beef, bison) to serve over whatever dried grains or legumes that they had in dry stock (rice, millet, wheat, sorghum, lentils, beans.) To these proteins and carbohydrates, they added whatever vegetables might make sense, incorporating fresh produce from the city garden beds, or the onions, cabbages, beets, Brussels sprouts, carrots, garlic and ginger that were stored in the root cellar, as well as the sauerkraut and kimchi mixes that fermented in clay vessels along the cool basement walls. Added to that the seasonings and sauces made possible by the imports that Natalia was able to arrange, it was a versatile culinary style. Over the years Rose had developed a sense of how to combine these variable inputs into one or two coherent dishes to offer per day, and based her style on an intuition on how various regions (Europe, Asia, Central America) might have composed their flavours and arranged their meals.

     In the early morning, Alex rolled up their bed clothes and bug nets, and loaded them into the trailer, along with a generator and a small pump. He checked the air pressure on the tires, harnessed their two mules to the trailer's makeshift hitch, and with that they were ready to go. Philip climbed into the open cab, dressed not in his gardening wear today but instead in his city work uniform, a dark collared shirt, dark denim pants, cuffs rolled up, and some leather shoes. His hair had grown out about a quarter-inch from when he had recently shaved it. No socks though, for whatever reason, Alex noted. The younger apprentice had put on some nicer clothes for the journey himself, wearing a newer red plaid shirt and some blue jeans. He had shaved his deeply tanned face, though he barely needed to. His blonde hair was nearly down to his jawline at this point, but he would get a haircut once he got back into the city.

     Not tending the reins on this trip, his journeyman morose and silent as usual, Alex had plenty of time to think on the ride back home, reflecting on his first summer out on the union farms, which could be the first of many. He did not relish this thought. It wasn't that he minded the work really, and it was pleasant to be out in the country, especially for the hot summer months, were the heat was especially oppressive in the city. Not to mention, it felt dead in town from June to August, as so many people closed up business for the season and headed out to work on the land and grow food, in a variety of arrangements. But Alex doubted that many in either city or country had to endure the spans of deadly quiet that he did that summer.

     They rolled slowly down the highway. Alex watched the ruined houses, clustered together every so often not too far from the highway. In a few places along the paths leading into Winnipeg, there were a few homes that were maintained over the year. Some family had obviously stayed in place over the decades of disruptions, to patch, paint, caulk or tarp as needed to keep the elements out.

     “How long since most of these houses were put up?”

     “Hmm. I'd say about eighty years for most. Sixty maybe for the last ones.”

     And silence again for a while between them. They were coming up to another camp working in the field, about eight people. Alex didn't know these people's affiliation, but he did feel a touch of longing at the idea of working in a group of people like that. He noticed too that, like the set-up that Philip and Alex had just closed down for the season, they were making use of some of the poured concrete basements that had been left intact beneath these collapsing chipboard structures. If a basement could be found that wasn't too big, and where the house had been built on higher ground,where drainage wouldn't be a constant problem, these could be covered and used as in-ground shelter. Which was pretty much the only option to passing through the summer's devastating heat.

     At the site they had stayed at in the Central Maintenance Union's grounds, some timber wood had been pulled across the opening of such a concrete dugout. Moss had been pounded into the crevices where the logs came together, and on top of that some loosely-filled sandbags had been arranged into a V-shaped roof, aiming to move standing water away from their shelter. There were some some fence boards, and some brushwood that had been woven together on top of that. They had a piece of corrugated tin, weighed down with cinder blocks on three corners, to cover over the hatch at the front, where they climbed down into their quarters.

     Watching this group in the field, a few men and a few women, Alex wondered how they arranged their sleeping spaces, and how they spent their downtime. Alex and Philip had gotten up early nearly every day of the summer, working from the cooler hours of the morning until about noon, when the heat would become unbearable. They would take a break on their cots for a few hours. If he didn't sleep, Alex would practice quietly on his mandolin, and also write down some lyrics and chords in his notebook if a new song was beginning to come together. He didn't ask if Philip minded, and Philip never mentioned it, so he kept at his songs throughout the summer, though he kept it muted nonetheless. There was a large clay vessel, that they pumped full of water, that somewhat separated the two sides of the dugout, and also kept the air a few degrees cooler in a radius of a few feet.

     Well, it was behind him now, and he was looking forward to seeing his friends, playing in the band, and having a week or so to himself. And as for next summer, maybe he could have more time working in the other, larger camps of the Maintenance Union's. For seeding, harvest, and for a little bit of building, Alex had helped out some other camps for a few days over the summer. Maybe as he got to know Philip more, and so long as he did his chores on Philip's plots, he could perhaps spend more time living in another camp? Alex didn't think his journeyman would mind the time alone.

     He didn't dislike working under Philip. He was actually quite grateful to have been taken on, and a lot of his fellow apprentices had far harsher work conditions than him. He did get along with Philip for the most part, but it was a hard transition into the working world from how he had been living. His parents, somewhat unusually, had allowed him to follow his interests into his late adolescence, in part because his father, Bill Roche, was fairly well off, working as an official near the top of the city's bureaucracy. He was a competent man, and had carved out a place for himself organizing various essential services and dealing with the unions that were supposed to provide them. Bill was a good negotiator, he managed his connections and his influence with skill, balancing his own affluence and security with the needs of the city and of the unions, he was well aware that these were all connected.

     The long hours that Bill put in though, along with the back-room deals, and the precarious obligations that he struggled to fulfill, inclined him to let his son move along a different path. So Alex had finished the tenth grade and focused on music, making some money with a band of friends, playing the coffee house scene on Osborne street and wherever else they might get hired to perform.

     The coffee houses tended to sell newspapers and, for a few cents each, a variety of pamphlets, mainly political essays or diatribes, though sometimes they veered more into spiritual topics. An atmosphere of discussion and debate pervaded these establishments, and as well as playing shows, Alex had taken an interest in politics, communtarian thinkers in particular. This somewhat aligned with the politics of his father and some of the others his father had allied with.

     In short (and, to be honest, Alex had not yet fully mastered the details of their philosophy) commutarians were either calling for an end to money in the economy, or at least for a limit on it's role. Times had been hard in recent years, and organization between the city, provincial and national goverments were spotty at best, there often wasn't even enough currency available for the economy to even function. There were a number of proposals, but most had some sort of arrangement for essential goods to be distributed directly to the working people, in exchange for performing certain work essential to the city's economy. People were looking for security in their basic needs, and hoping to exchange a portion of their work for a guarantee of a share of what the city produced.

   The wealthier families of the city did not like these sorts of ideas circulating among the working class.  Those families, who sometimes lived in multi-family compounds to shore up their positions, did not have trouble keeping stores of currency on hand, or keeping stores of food, as their well-stocked pantries could carry them through the lean times at the end of winter and the early spring, aside from whatever other disruptions might occur over the course of a year.

    The debate raged on, fueled by editorials and comments in the papers, and the pamphlets that circulated among the intellectuals in their various places they congregated. That was the world that Alex had gotten involved with on account of his involvement in the music scene, even to the point of participating in some rioting. Some residences had their windows smashed, some fires had been set, and Alex had narrowly avoided being charged.

    Once his father had fallen ill though, and then passed away, Alex realized soon after that his extended youth had come to end.  Through a connection in his father's office, Alex had been connected with Philip, who was looking to take on an apprentice in the city's maintenance union. He felt lucky to get the position, at twenty he was older than a lot of the other new apprentices, a lot of them as young as fifteen as they started in the union. Philip didn't seem to take notice of that, or didn't care, and never mentioned it.

     A noisy pickup truck with some sort of hand-painted company logo on the passenger-side door overtook their trailer on the highway, and moved slowly on ahead.

     A pair of surgeons were finishing up a large meal at a corner table, eating their way through some bowls of meat and vegetables, some small dishes of sauce on the side, a sambal and a mayonnaise dip, and a platter of thin flatbread. They're celebrating something, Rose thought, or maybe indulging after a difficult ordeal at the hospital. She had sent the food out on a new set of dishes that she had bought, all with a mottled deep-blue glaze.

     “Hey Rose!” one of them called out across the restaurant, a little overly loud. Rose looked up from her cutting block. “I love these bowls! What do you say we take them with us?”

     She raised her cleaver from her table into their sight-line,and bobbed it in the air. “What do you say I take a few knuckles?” She paused, and gave them a slight smile. They grinned, as well as an administrator who was eating at the counter, a woman wearing an elegant, long, light-grey wrap dress.

     “Alright, they stay here!” Rose returned to her work.

     Rose was a definite favourite among those who worked in the city centre, as her mother had been. She was a beautiful woman with a commanding presence, and didn't hesitate to speak her mind. She ran her business with intelligence, and was attentive to the needs of people she dealt with, both her customers as well as those with whom she had business. She had long dark hair, that she usually had her sister braid and tie up, to sit behind her black baker's cap. Her daily uniform was a black t-shirt, loose checkered kitchen pants, a long black apron tied at her waist, some kitchen clothes tucked between the strings, and a pair of rubberized clogs on her bare feet. In her appearance and personality, as well as in her capabilities, she was a radiant figure to all those who knew her.

     Her mother had passed earlier in the summer, and though Rose didn't show it, talking with doctors made her uneasy. She had some mixed feelings and held some resentment towards them. As helpful as they had been with her mother, they had scheduled her surgery for the winter, after the hospital resumed full operation and they starting working through their back-lists of non-urgent procedures. She had no way of knowing, but of course she had to wonder if her mother would have survived with more timely attention.

     Her mother had been in poor health for a while, so Rose was used to running the restaurant and the import supply on her own, along with overseeing her sister's small side-business. When her mother had passed, the burden was lessened somewhat, not having to care for her on top of the long days of work. But she she couldn't help feeling the weight of responsibility increase on her, particularly for her sister, and for the network of relatives and cousins that often looked to her for help. The city was always in hard times these days, especially as industry and the government began to focus more to the north. A lot of things were being neglected, and Rose felt the strain of keeping things together in lean times.

     Katerina was at her usual table off to the side of the restaurant, as her morning duties in the kitchen and in the store room were finished, and the small animals in the building's courtyard had been fed. She bused tables as needed for the early afternoon, though Rose usually took care of the counter, while Katerina caught up on some paperwork, among several other things. Rose never really exactly knew what Katerina was working on, her sister was a much quieter person than herself, and a bit secretive, you had to pry if you wanted details from her. Looking over at her table, three or four books beside a notebook and some papers clipped together, it was clear she was busy with something.

     Katerina had kept the books for the business for years now. She had been pulled from school to work, as Rose had been, a little less early though, but her mother knew that Katerina was not going to take to physical work as readily as her sister had. She was reading whenever she had a chance, she was shy and she lived in her head a lot more than she focused on the details of daily life. As a younger teenager, Katerina mentioned some vague ideas of wanting to work in the city's office buildings, as a secretary perhaps, so her mother got her a subscription to Modern Professional. It was a small quarterly that catered to these sorts of aspirations, aimed mainly at young women, with articles about making it into, and succeeding in, the professional classes. It was mostly a vehicle for selling correspondence courses, of which her mother purchased a few to further Katerina's education: bookkeeping, penmanship, applied math, short-hand, basic legal studies.

     Katerina devoured these courses, receiving lesson materials and sending tests and assignments by mail, usually far before they were due. Natalia was pleased with the system she'd set up for her younger daughter: she could put in some work with basic chores to earn her keep, and put in time on her courses later in the day. With time she gave over to Katerina more of the administrative work, writing letters to suppliers, paying taxes, and so forth, and Katerina talked less about wanting to get a job in the government or industry. This pleased Natalia, as while she wanted her daughter to be happy, she was averse to the idea of working for wages, and liked to keep her family working together, as a unit.

     Over time, an idea came to Natalia of a business for Katerina. Constantly interacting with the various professions and officials at the restaurant, from time to time they asked Natalia if she could maybe source a certain book from her contacts in Chicago or Minneapolis, with some sort of technical information they were needing, things related to medicine, geography, or engineering, and so on. Sometimes she was successful, and bringing the books along with some other supplies, and she wondered if maybe she could start up a small bookstore beside the restaurant that Kat could manage. The space she had in mind was more an alcove than a full shop space. It had been once been the front desk/lobby for some offices in the building, but it could fit a few shelves, and they could build up some stock slowly. There was a need for information that was getting harder to access these days, maybe she could carve a niche for her daughter in supplying that gap.

     Another magazine Katerina had a subscription for was Mind, much more fun than the professional journal. It was filled with logic puzzles, crosswords, articles on things like code breaking, mnemonic systems, Latin etymology, and speed reading. It was an amusement, but it helped immensely in dealing with the requests that the doctors and judges grew accustomed to placing with her. A lot of the specifics they mentioned were alien to her, but she could make an image with her mnemonic system to keep a track of it quickly, even if she was busy. She couldn't always arrange for a book to be ordered, but she developed some work-arounds: sometimes materials could be loaned, and she could write up a neat manuscript for her client, an article could be sent, or she could even arrange a long-distance phone call, and make notes dictated by a specialist. Her short-hand and mnemonics made that possible.

      She would practice her short-hand and her concentration skills from her table in the restaurant sometimes, eavesdropping on conversations, singling them out through the noise of a lunchtime service. No one noticed, and even if they did, no one would be able to read her personalized notation. She was good at working from the sidelines, and didn't mind letting her sister take centre-stage. 

      “Hey Kat!” Rose called from behind the woks. Kat looked up from her book. Rose gestured to the dishes on two tables in the corner that had been vacated for awhile.

      “Oh yes, thanks,” Kat replied, marking her place and getting up. She had known they were there, but tried to finish up her chapter first.

     Moving towards Winnipeg from the east, Philip and Alex took a short detour off the highway when they could see off to their right the tops of the lime kilns rising above the prairie horizon, preceded by smoke rising from several spots in the vicinity. As they moved towards them, their road passed through the open quarry, and Alex looked out over the men down in the rocky pit, working with hammers and shovels, filling carts with the blasted stone. Though they were heading into autumn, the direct sun beating down on field of white rock beneath the cliffs was intense. As much as he had struggled over the past year, he had to reflect on how much harder some lines of work were compared to his own.

      A sign on the path read 'Manitoba Limeworks and Colliers Union', leading into the complex of kilns, a central plant and the worker's barracks. And as hard as the work in the quarry must be, Alex couldn't imagine adding to the summer heat the continual fires burning here, roasting the limestone and producing charcoal from the massive piles of chopped timber stacked in the field beyond. There were men in gloves and long-sleeved shirts, with goggles and scarves over their faces raking the the quicklime from the bases of the kilns, and others, blackened with soot, collecting the charred wood into large sacs tied down to pallets. Maybe they worked mainly night shifts during the heat spells? Their were lamp posts set up throughout the grounds. Alex couldn't imagine any other way.

     Their trailer was more than half-way full at this point, but there was room to carry in to the city some of the building supplies that their Union used in such large quantities. Philip would be reimbursed for materials when he dropped them off and then credited for the delivery. Every little payment helped to make ends meet. They pulled up alongside a loading dock, and a worker carted out three medium-sized kegs of quicklime and two large sacks of charcoal, which he helped Alex to load into the trailer, while Philip went into the office to pay. 

      There were two other vehicles at the dock doing the same as them, making building supplies a part of their cargo on their way into the city. Leaning up against the trailer, Alex couldn't help but eavesdrop while they conversed with another worker about city news. His heart sank at what he heard. The two councilors who had been working in networks related to the commutarian circles he'd been a part of last year had been arrested. Charges unclear, but Alex was sure that it would be something entirely unrelated to the fact that ideas which these politicians were promoting were becoming popluar in the city. He had no idea if these two might in fact be involved in corruption or something like that, but whatever the case, it wasn't good news for the movement that he realized he still had some hopes for. After the months out in the country, overhearing this conversation about the murky intersections between politics, the legal system and the industrialists left Alex feeling somewhat glad that he had left his involvement in all that behind when he started his apprenticeship.

      “I think we'll stop here for the day,” Philip said, interrupting Alex's thoughts as he passed around the mules, heading toward the trailer's cab. “They said it's alright to camp in the grounds over there. We'll eat, and have a good sleep, and start back on the highway tomorrow.”

     They rolled the trailer to a site beyond the workers' barracks, with a few fire pits spaced out around a well with an iron hand pump. Alex wanted to take a look at the kilns, so he said he'd take a walk and pick some firewood from the lot they'd seen on their way in. He reached over behind the lime kegs to grab some cloth he could use as a sling to carry the wood. Philip started setting up their two canvas pup tents, and setting out some hay and water for the mules. 
 

     It must have been dinner time for the kiln workers, as the lot was empty and quiet, except for the crackling of fires in the various kilns. The lime kilns were towers made themselves out of limestone, while the charcoal units were made of thick steel, painted black, in which logs were stacked to char behind heavy metal doors. The charcoal units were paired with the lime kilns, and pipes directed the gases let off by the charring wood into the fires of the lime kilns.

     Alex had heard that the Limeworks had been built in the thirties, during the drawdown efforts that had been taken up back then. He had no idea if that project, with all those countries working together might still be in operation, but he was glad they had invested in all this, he had seen through his work how useful it proved to be. Though Philip worked nominally in the plumbing division of the maintenance union, more often than not they were capping off people's connections to the sewer system. The treatment plants had become unreliable, and especially in the heavy rains, basements were continually under water.

     The city did have a program where they could offset the cost of the maintenance work if they had their bathrooms set up for the collection of their wastes by the night-soil men, this was a usual task for Philip and Alex. They city had invested in some giant anaerobic units, to generate bio-gas for various purposes, to generate electricity, for some heaters, and so on. They ran their limited phone service by this power.

     Alex's main task was usually smashing open the concrete floors near the building clean-outs, so he could dig down to cut the main sewer line, and plug the pipe with a mix of sand, gravel and mortar.  Cement was unusual these days, and to replace the hole they'd broken in the floor, they made a mix of quicklime, clay and char which set fairly well.  It also worked well for repairing leaks in the old foundation walls made from river stone and mortar, which they could chip out and replace. The old concrete though was harder to replace. They could tar over cracks for a while, but eventually, when the rebar swelled and broke open the concrete, turning to powered rust in the center of the walls, the structural strength was lost, and the buildings had to be abandoned, and taken down.

    In the evening twilight, Alex picked through the logs in the yard, and headed back to the fire Philip had set up. The roasted sweet potatoes pierced with metal prongs, as well as some dried beef jerky.

    Rose slowly climbed the stairs in the courtyard up to the landing outside their family's second floor apartment, and took a moment to look out at the sky. The evening sun was casting dark pink hues up on the heavy clouds resting above the city's skyline. Kat heard her unlock the deadbolt, and looked up from the kitchen table at Rose coming through the door. Rose paused when she saw her, and something in Rose's eyes made Kat nervous right away.

     Rose flipped her black clogs onto the mat and came over to the table. She seemed like she was going to say something, and then paused again. “We need to talk for a minute.”

     “Sure.”
     Rose took a seat on the chair, angled a little away from facing Katerina directly. “That position they were talking about, up north, they awarded it to me.” She looked up. “They want me to move this week.”

     Kat was silent. A friend of Rose's hearing the news would've put on show of being glad for her getting this commission, and covering over their sadness to see her go. But the sisters, close as they were, especially after losing their mother recently, were both overwhelmed with trying to process the implications.

     Rose started again, “We're going to have to leave the restaurant to you, at least for a bit.”

     Kat wiped a tear from her face, Rose's eyes started to well up. “Why do they want you so soon?”

     “Ah,” Rose began to reply, trying to steady her shaking voice, “I guess it's the same up there as it is down here, their city's starting up again in full for the fall. There's big dinners planned, and politicians from Asia are coming to stay in the consulate. I need to get up there to organize everything, the supplies, the menus, and train people for the kitchen. You know how it is with staffing, people get sick or go missing last minute, things turn on a dime.” She leaned on to the table and rested her chin on her hand. “It's a really good opportunity though.”

      Kat's eyes had dried a little, she was trying to think everything through. “It's going to be busy next week here, with everyone coming back into the city, the parties and all. You know I can't do the work that you do Rose.”

    “I know, Kat. You have seen it all though so many times, and you don't have to do it just like I do, you can make the things that you want to. If people don't like it, too bad.” She paused for a moment. They both knew that Kat wouldn't take the complaints she was bound to receive that well. “You've got the helpers, and you can hire some more if you need. You don't have to open everyday right way either, I'm going to be bringing in plenty of money up north, we can afford it. And with the return parties and everything next week, people are going to be out of their routines anyway.”

      Kat stared down at the table. There were so many details left out of these directions that they both knew there wouldn't be time to work out before Rose left, Kat would just have to figure things out as she went. She looked at Rose again, “Are you going to come back?”

      “Not for a bit, Kat. I don't know how this is going to go. I'd really hate to lose this restaurant and our other accounts unless I knew for sure that things will be good up there, but if things turn out, maybe we could give this place up, or have someone else in the family take this over, and you could come up with me. Maybe I could come back to train someone, and get things in order.”

     “But what about the bookstore?”

      “I don't know. Maybe you could do something like that up there.”

      Kat's took a deep breath, her head was spinning. She got up and put her arms around Rose, and leaned her head into Rose's shoulder. “I'm going to miss you.”

      Philip had circled the trailer around the edge of the city to the nearby town of Charleswood to drop Alex off at his mothers' house. Philip paid his respects, and they made some vague plans to meet in about ten days to start up their winter maintenance work, before he left to head into Winnipeg.
He had considered having Alex help him unload the trailer in the city before dropping taking him home, but he knew his apprentice's patience had worn thin over the last stretch of the summer. He could feel the young man's restlessness grow the closer they got to the city. He was actually kind of glad to be rid of him, so he could calm down and take a rest himself. Overall though, Philip thought, Alex had done well, he was glad to let him have a little time to himself before they set to work again.

      On his way out of Charleswood, Philip stopped at a store to buy a little tobacco, and rustled a pipe out a bag of his in the trailer. He hadn't smoked anything all summer. His habit was to use the move out to the farm in the late spring to shed whatever vices he'd fallen into over the winter. the withdrawal from city life into the silence of the country (especially into the solitary way he worked during the hot months) pretty much masked the withdrawal he'd feel from other the substances. He didn't mind indulging with his pipe today though, to mark the changing of the seasons.

      Philip himself really wasn't excited to get back into the city, though he was a little glad to have a break from the farm. He wasn't trying to isolate Alex and himself on the plot he always worked, it was just he had always found socializing with other teams on the union's farms felt a little too close for him, ironically there was a bit more distance between people in the city, and that touch of formality suited him. Watching Alex happy to go help the other teams, Philip felt a little ashamed: maybe he should try to be more outgoing? He resigned himself to the idea that this wasn't likely. Once your habits and your reputation have reinforced the faults in your nature, it is hard to make a change.

      Looking ahead at another winter in the city, the headaches seemed to line up one after the next. It was getting harder to function in his trade. Not that there weren't a lot of repairs, and a little construction for them to do, but finding a way to pay for these was getting harder. People were doing without, or abandoning their buildings altogether and moving elsewhere. Proper parts could be hard to come by, patches and impromptu fixes were not the way he liked to work, but he didn't always have a lot of choice. Keeping an apprentice was another expense, even just one was a struggle to afford for many in the union. He wanted to keep Alex on, he saw promise in him. And when Philip took on an apprentice, he did his best to see them through learning the trade, to a point where they could be recognized, and take on jobs and apprentices of their own. And it was not only work, but the general violence and the theft in the city that had been weighing on him for the last few years.

      Philip exhaled deeply, pulled back his shoulders tightly for a moment, and tried to release all this worry. He'd be alright. As long as he worked hard and made himself useful, there would be a way to make a living. It was a matter of managing all the problems as they arose, and that was done moment by moment, when the time came.

      When he got into Winnipeg proper, he pulled the trailer over, hitched the mules, and bought a bottle of soda. He sat in the cab for a moment and watched the people in the street. Two women were leaving a hair salon together. That is one business that will never fail, Philip thought, when it comes to people looks they will find a way to come up with the money. In a studio to the right, some grunting and slamming sounds were coming from some open windows out into the street. One young man was working out combinations on a heavy bag, and a few others were on the mats in the back, practicing some catch-wrestling. Henderson's Fight Club. Further down the street Philip could hear a church choir in an afternoon rehearsal. A lot of noise and activity to acclimate to in the city.

     As Philip made his way through city centre, heading a little further north past the old rail-yards, just after passing the law-courts he came across a woman leaning up against the post of a fence, her face buried in the sleeve of the white dress she was wearing. There was bit of blood splattered across her apron. He noticed her light-brown hair tied up loosely, resting on her dress's stiff white collar. A cleaver dangled from her hand, on his side of the fence. He pulled back on the reins, and brought the cart to a stop.

     “Ma'am, is everything alright?”

     Katerina sniffled, and pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers, moving across her closed eyes to clear away the tears. She looked up at the stranger, not knowing how to answer. “I... can't.... I don't like doing this,” she said as started to cry again. Philip looked at her again, and then through the fence to further in the yard, and saw a chicken's body dangling from a thin rope, it's head cut off. There was a goat chained to the fence as well.

     He took a moment. “Well, if you don't like to do it, do you have to? You couldn't bring them to the butcher's maybe?” he said, thinking aloud.

     She turned her head slightly and looked askance into the yard. She hadn't thought of that, maybe that was an idea?

     She didn't quite meet his gaze. “It's only that... The restaurant there, nothing's set up, I can't get the burners to work right...” She looked up at him, “Just not a good day.”

      He wasn't sure how to respond. She wasn't quite asking for help, but she wasn't indicating that he should move along either. “What kind of burners?”

      “Oh, um, they're under the woks we cook with.”

      “Well, I could take a look at them if you like. I'm in the maintenance union, I work with that sort of thing.”

      She looked up at him again, scanning his face to see if she felt she could trust him, to let him into the closed restaurant alone. Rose's two helpers were working at the back table, but they were still fairly young, they probably wouldn't be a lot of help if was to rob them or something like that. 

      “Um, sure,” she said, thinking it over, “you can pull your trailer in here.” She walked over and unlatched the long gate they opened for delivery carts.

      She stepped up on the back dock, and hung up the bloodied apron and the cleaver as well, fitting the hole in the back of the steel blade over a thick nail in the wall. She washed up over the outdoor sink, and took a cloth from her pocket and wiped it by her reddened eyes, trying to get a hold of her emotions and deal with this day. “Just a moment,” she said as he paused by the back steps. “Ok, right in here.”

      “I didn't get your name yet, ma'am.”

      “Oh, Katerina. Chovnyk.” She held out her hand for a hand-shake.

      “Philip Ducharme. Nice to meet you,” he said, giving a slight nod with his head.

      Two young faces looked up at him as they came through the back end of the kitchen, halting the conversation they were having while slicing some onions, ginger and cabbage. The air was pretty smoky, in the wok on the right there was a fair amount of suet rendering and spitting of bits of oil or water. Philip didn't know much about cooking, but this looked way too hot, and dangerous. Katerina walked up to the pan, tilting it carefully away to try to avoid being hit with splatter. “This pedal here, it seemed pretty stuck this morning,” pointing down to the gas lever at knee height, “I forced it on but it doesn't seem to work anymore.”

      He bent over to move the lever back and forth, which was very loose. It looked like the shaft had snapped off inside the valve, you couldn't turn the bio-gas off with it anymore. Philip stood up to take a look at the direction the steel pipe was run from. More worrisome than that was the hood vents above the woks, they didn't seem to be taking up the smoke too quickly. Not such a danger today, with the breeze from the open windows just the metal grate security doors, but in colder weather it could be a problem.

      “Do you need these on for the rest of the day?” he said, gesturing to the woks.

      “I don't think we're going open 'till tomorrow at this rate. I guess they just need to be on to finish this.”

     “Ok, good, well if you want... I'm not really set up now, but if you want, I could come back in the morning and probably get this lever working. For today...” He trailed off, moving over to look behind the shelves at the gas piping. “Oh, yes,” he said, as he bent down near the far wall, throttling the gas supply with a shut-off on a pipe coming up through the floor. The flames beneath the pan with the suet dropped down to the burners, heating the woks far more gently. “I'll leave that bar mostly down like that, and when you're done, move the bar right down towards the floor, and make sure those flames go out.”

      Katerina took a look in beside the shelf. She really hadn't ever paid much attention to the details of the restaurant, that was Rose's domain. She realized she had always just focused on completing her limited kitchen chores, so that she could get to her other work, pushing through it in turn that she could get to her own interests. Maybe she should've shown a bit more interest in how their businesses were ran. With her mother gone, and Rose moved away, it was so much to take on this abruptly, and there was no way that Rose could've prepared her in so short a time.

      “I'm hoping too that there's access to the roof around here,” Philip continued, “...cause I'm thinking there is something not right with these vents. You should probably have those looked at before it cools down.”

      Katerina looked at him, feeling overwhelmed with him piling on these issues. “Can you do that?”

      “Oh yeah, sure. No problem. I'll try to make up something for that lever tonight, and like I said, I can be back in the morning.” The pedal was a specialty device that had come with the unit that those woks were sitting on, probably a long time ago, but Philip was thinking of ways he might attach it to a regular gas valve with something he could find in the union shop. 

      “Ok, then, do we pay you, or the Maintenance Union, tomorrow then, or do you need something today? We're ok for the money,” Katerina said to reassure him. “I don't normally deal with these things.”
      Philip looked at her, and thought a moment. “You know what? I'm just coming in from the country today, I've got a lot of vegetables in that trailer, and more I had brought in a few weeks ago. I'm thinking maybe I could do the repair, and the cleaning, no need for pay, and your restaurant could, buy some of the food I've got stored from the summer?”
      He really should not have offered that, that food was really more the union's than his own. The workers who spent the summers in the country were credited for what they produced, but what was produced on the farm was more for the security of all union workers, not just those that grew it. He might be able to buy some of this back, in order to sell it, pointless as that would be, but Philip's mind was racing through some ideas as to how he might make good on this strange deal he had proposed. Nonetheless, on this day, coming back into the city after months of solitude, not really expecting to be taking on his role as maintenance worker yet, his impulse was not to make this repair a transaction for pay, but rather to set up some sort of relationship with this woman and her restaurant. He'd worry about providing the vegetables later.

      “Well, we might be able to do that. We do have a food supply business here too, it's not hard for us to make use of extra food,” she said, with a slight smile, pleased to be able to offer something in return.

      “Great. Ok then, I'll be back tomorrow, first thing.” He smiled and nodded, and started for the back door. “Oh,” he said, and looked back, “that chicken – I'm going to be passing a butcher, would you like me to drop it off and bring the meat back tomorrow?”

      Katerina's heart dropped a little, being reminded of the stress of dealing with the animals, at the same time as she was touched by his attention to detail and his helpfulness. 

     “Please. Thank you.”

     Philip had parked the trailer in the Union compound for the night, and slept the night in a dorm room there, to get up early to deal with the contents of the trailer, and to gather a few parts and tools to deal complete the repairs at the restaurant. It was no hardship, he was used to getting up very early over the summer, trying to get some work done before the heat became overwhelming. Katerina had been on his mind, lightly, over the night. Something about her and the atmosphere of the restaurant had caught his interest. He didn't feel like hanging around the union hall today. He felt a call to get involved with something new.

      The trailer and the mules were left in the compound. After a light breakfast of rough-cut oats, Philip borrowed a worksman tricycle with a deep cargo bin, and packed it with a basic tool kit, some varied lengths of threaded steel pipe and rod, some pipe wrenches, and some brushes for cleaning out the vents. A beautiful cool autumn breeze met him as he set out below the garage door and headed towards the butcher's shop. 
 

      When he arrived at the restaurant, he tapped on the window grate to be let in. One of the helpers he'd seen yesterday, the younger sister of the pair, came to let him in. On the dock, some charcoal was heating up an iron grate.

      “All cut up,” Philip said to Katerina, placing the packages of chicken, neatly wrapped in brown butcher's paper, on the back counter.

      “Thank you so much. Did you find what you needed to get the wok going?”

      “Yep, pretty sure. I'll get to that first, I'm sure you'll be needing it soon.”

      “Yes! Thank you.”

      Philip carried the tool kit to the woks and started to work. He watched Katerina move about in the kitchen, somewhat frantic and lost, bringing things up and down from the cellar, working with the helpers on the large cutting blocks. The older boy, maybe fourteen years old or so, was offering his advice, and helped her out with a large pot of water to the outdoor charcoal stove.

      By the time he'd finished the repairs and turned the bio-gas back onto the woks, a few customers had already been let in and had taken seats at the counter, conversing and drinking some tea. Katerina was trying to set herself up at the woks as Philip was gathering his tools. He went up on the roof to check on the vents while she started making a few of the dishes she'd planned out for the day.

      And by the time Philip had carried his tools back down off the roof, they restaurant was pretty busy. He tried to make himself scarce as he twisted up a sheet of newsprint, and reached around around Katerina to light it from the flames beneath the wok. He blew it out, so it would issue a little stream of smoke, which he held near the hood vents, to see if the smoke would be drawn up and out the vents. 

      Despite his efforts to be unobtrusive, he could sense that Katerina was stressed by the cooking, and a little irritated by the interruption, though she tried not to let on. Once he was sure the vents were working, he stepped back, and took a look at the customers at the tables, and back at the two helpers working at the cutting block and minding the stove out back.

      “Katerina,” he started, and hesitated.

      “Yes?”

      “Is it possible I could help out in the kitchen?”

      She looked at him with questioning eyes. Was he wanting a job? Was this part of what he'd mentioned yesterday, about buying the vegetables? She was confused about what she was owing him at this point. “Ok – were you wanting to be paid separate from the repairs, or..?”

      He took a moment. “You know, I'm not too worried about pay right at the moment.” He was thinking how he could phrase this, and raised his eyes up to hers. “I've just got back into town yesterday, and I've got some time off for the end of the season, before things start up again. I'm just interested in the restaurant, I've never really seen in a place like this, how it works.”

       She looked back at him, and her face softened a little. “Yeah, alright. That's fine.” She looked at his hands and clothes, covered in soot and dust and grease. “You should probably wash up, the sink's out back.” She smiled. “There's an apron on the hook back there.”

      After he got cleaned up, they got Philip set up with a kitchen knife where the young man was working, while he went up to the woks to help Katerina and to deal with the customers. He moved back and forth to organize Philip when he had a moment. The younger helper, the young man's sister, even started to give some pointers on how to hold his knife, and on how thick to slice the various vegetables, or how fine to dice them, passing on some of the instructions she'd been taught by Rose.
       Over the afternoon, all of them had a some fun taking on unfamiliar roles. The lunch service was right on the edge of falling apart, but they were being creative, forced to relate to each other differently than their roles had dictated before now. For the first time since Rose had left earlier in the week, the gloom had lifted in the kitchen. Philip didn't say a lot, focused on the prep tasks he was given, but he was glad to have a role in the kitchen that day. And Katerina appreciated his presence, strange as the circumstances were having him in working in the kitchen out of the blue.

      Over the next few days, while getting settled back in his apartment and getting his workspace at the union compound back in order, Philip kept coming by the restaurant for a few hours at time, helping out with the various crises as they arose, in the restaurant, or with their stores and the supply business. He was interested in how the restaurant operated. Though he'd been involved in growing food for quite a few years now, his own knowledge of cooking was very basic. He enjoyed seeing how they processed all the meats, the vegetables and the spices. Their clientele of professionals, and the adjoining bookstore, only lent to the allure the restaurant held for him.

      Questions of pay kind of fell into the background, maybe they were working under the pretense he was coming by to secure the sale of the vegetables he'd grown. With the preparations underway for the return parties over the weekend, and in the wake of the shock of Rose leaving so abruptly, Katerina and the helpers were in a holiday mood, and Philip's presence kind of blended in with all the other changes.
 

      That Friday in the late afternoon, when the helpers were washing up outside, Philip approached Katerina before leaving for the day.

      “Kat, I was wondering if you'd want to go the return party on Osborne street tomorrow, together. I didn't know if you were going or not.”

      She was taken aback. She hadn't really thought of the weekend yet, or expected to go to the festivities at all, it wasn't something she normally would normally do. This was the first weekend since Rose had left, and now that he'd brought it up, she didn't want to spend it entirely alone.
“Sure, that would be really nice. Thanks for asking,” she said, smiling.

      Katerina took an extra hour of sleep the next morning, and then planned to care of all the tasks she hadn't managed to get to over the week. Deliveries were stacked up out of order, they had fallen behind on their own shipments, and a pile of paperwork was building on the kitchen table. She hadn't even opened the lock on the bookstore since Rose left. Exhausted, aching, and a little depressed, she was unsure how she could continue with this. She was keeping the restaurant closed today on account of the return parties, and they almost always took Sunday off, so she was glad to have the weekend to catch her balance. Before she began, she took a seat in the restaurant with a cup of black tea that she'd dropped some dried citrus peel into, and enjoyed the silence and the sun spilling in through the shuttered windows.

      In the afternoon she laid out some clothes on her bed that she was considering for the evening. She was quite nervous. Just for this moment she was glad that Rose was away and she had the apartment to herself to think, she would've been quite embarrassed by all the comments that Rose would've no doubt sent her way. She hadn't been out with anyone for a very long time, not since she was a teenager at least. Rose had a a few suitors more recently, but it had been hard for her to match with someone who wouldn't disturb their lives. Katerina was reserved by nature, and she found it easy to keep herself more than busy with the studies she was constantly taking up. It had been easy to fall into a routine, especially with her mother falling sick and needing care this year. Somehow though, her death and Rose's sudden move had shifted her perspective quickly, things were not seeming they did a few short months ago, though she hadn't put words or definite thoughts to anything yet, it was just the sense of questioning that had come over her. It was strange that Philip had shown up right when he did.

    She chose a flowing red dress, with little some white, black and green worked into some small floral designs throughout the fabric, along with some nearly-flat leather shoes, with a slight heel, closed toe and a strap reaching over to a buckle. After she did her hair, she sat on the bed with a thick hardcover book on her lap, though she wasn't reading it, just lost in thought. She was very happy to have had Philip coming by the restaurant over the week, it was good to have his help, and his thoughts on the various problems that were coming up. Though he didn't know anything about restaurants, he had a viewpoint coming from his range of experience that she found interesting.

      He was nearly as quiet as she was. She could tell he was enjoying having a little role in the restaurant, learning about their methods, joking a little with the two young assistants. It wasn't his business and he was on a break from his work, so he could afford to be more easy going that Katerina had been that week, but it had lightened the mood and made the week bearable. She had no idea what she owed him at this point, she hadn't settled up for the repairs, and she guessed they were working under the pretense that he was just around for his interest in restaurant work. She didn't have the social skills to try to clarify the odd situation. She didn't want to offer to pay him again, she sensed that a transfer of money would bring to an end whatever was developing between them, and disperse the spell that had come over the restaurant that week. She was glad in a way that he had asked her to the return festival, him expressing interest in her directly brought some unstated sense into the situation.

      Philip rapped on the window, and Katerina came around back on to the dock. She looked at Philip on the sidewalk through the fence. He had cleaned up nicely, he must have given the deeply tanned skin on his face, his hands and forearms a hard scrubbing. His beard was trimmed, and he was wearing a new navy denim collared work-shirt, the sleeves rolled up into light-coloured cuffs just below his elbows, with some dark denim pants and black leather shoes. She came through the gate and joined him, and they took off walking towards Osborne Street.

      Over the evening, they really didn't discuss anything from the previous week, and just let themselves have fun at the various attractions that had been had been set up along the the avenue, lit by the wavering flames of torches that had been posted along the way. They sat and listened to some country music, and got some kettle corn, and some roasted & spiced peanuts. They stopped at a bench to watch a play that was being performed several times over the evening, a comedy with some brilliantly coloured paper mache masks, a story about a greedy figure who tried to manipulate all the characters around him, whose house of lies fell down around him in spectacular fashion.

     Philip walked Katerina back to the restaurant, and after they unlocked and opened the gate, she leaned over and placed a kiss on his cheek. He pulled the gate closed again and clicked the lock closed again, before heading back to his apartment in the late evening, entirely elated.

      The feeling remained the next morning, as he made the walk over to the union compound. These few days since returning to the city had overturned his regular orientation completely. He was full of energy, sleeping about six hours a night, and everything seemed new to him all of the sudden. He hadn't mentioned any of this to Katerina, but his mind was streaming with plans to work their lives together.

      As he entered the union compound, heading toward the area near the dorm room he'd stayed in, where he'd deposited his tools and belongings, a voice called over to him from the office area. “Hey Philip, come over here a minute.”

      He walked over to Andrews, the union representative standing in the doorway. “Yeah?”

      “Ah, have you heard what happened to Alex?”

      “No,” he said, growing worried, “what is it?”

     “He was arrested, a bunch of them, a crackdown from those councillors from the rich districts. I'm not sure of the charges, or if they were caught doing anything.”

      “It's political stuff?” Philip asked. “He hasn't been involved with any of that since he's been with me, I'm sure.”

      “Well, it's gotten pretty serious recently,” Andrews replied. “They're pushing back against all the complaints and the unrest, they're trying to make a statement before the upcoming session. They've got to have some judges and who knows who else on their side, I think the mayor is pretty much with them too. Anyways, I just thought I'd let you know, if you didn't already.”

      “Alright, thank you,” Philip said, reeling. He walked over to the empty dorm and sat on the cot, trying to collect his thoughts. He really had no idea how to deal with this, but he felt responsible. He had never dealt with the legal system, his father's dictum for staying out of trouble was always to be useful to your union, and steer clear of the law. You never knew when you might be swept up into the hands of a corrupt judge or a political situation, it was best to stay clear of their view altogether. If Alex's father was still alive, he probably would've let him handle it and wished for the best, but, from what he knew of Alex's mother, she wasn't the person to handle this competently. He packed his bag of clothes and a little bit of food into the cargo tricycle, and headed off for the house of Alex's family.

      Katerina had spent her second day off getting the restaurant ready for the second week that she would operate it. She was buzzing from the evening before, she hadn't had a carefree time like that for as long as she could remember. She felt a little uneasy over the day, when Philip didn't stop by, she wanted some sort of confirmation that he'd felt the same way about yesterday. But, they hadn't made any plans, and the restaurant was closed today, maybe he wasn't planning to come over today? She hadn't known him the last time the restaurant was closed, she didn't know what the routine might be. She smiled to herself at the absurdity of it, despite her nervousness.

      She was looking over a book by a candle at her kitchen table in the early evening, when she heard knocking at the restaurant window coverings below. She looked out her second floor window, and saw Philip pacing below, having dismounted the cargo bike.

      “Hey there Philip,” she shouted down from above, waving. “Did you want to come in?”

      “Yeah, please.”

      She carried the candle down, and set it on the docks when she went to unlock the gate for him.

He looked distraught, and she wasn't sure why he was here.

      “Is something the matter?”

      “Yeah, it's my apprentice, that I had mentioned, he's in some trouble.”

She tried to catch his down-turned eyes. “Hey, come sit down. I'll get some tea.” He walked over to the steps and paced a bit while she went back up to the apartment for the kettle, and came back down with it and two small cups in the other hand. “Hey, come sit down,” she said, setting the kettle down by the candle on the ledge. “What happened?”

      He relayed what he had gathered of the details. “I'm not sure what to do. I can't afford a lawyer, and I'm not sure that would help anyway. We're supposed to be starting back at work later in the week, he supposed to be working with me over the winter. And it's not that so much, it's more that I'm kind of responsible for him, he's living with me, he's under my care, to some degree anyways.”

      “Do you know what he did?”

      “You know, I'm not sure he did anything, he was involved in some political actions last year, on the side of those councilors that got arrested. I think it's more due to that, but maybe he got up to something the last few days in town, I really don't know.”

      Katerina was aware of the politicians he was likely referring to, she read the paper daily and closely, and she'd see a lot of them in the stopping into the restaurant regularly as well.

      He took a moment to sip the tea, and to look up at the law-courts against the evening sky. Katerina rested her arm on his back, and rested her hand on his shoulder, giving it a rub.

      “Hey, we'll figure something out, we will.”



      David Rencit was sitting at his desk, reading through some letters, when he came on envelope with a typewritten address, from a Kyle Chulnak, Attorney at Law, the return address was a post-office box in Charleswood. He didn't think he'd come across this lawyer before, which was a little unusual.

      “Dear Mr. Rencit, I'm writing to you on behalf of my client, Alex Roche, who you may be aware is currently in detention, possibly in relation to some political agitation he was believed to be party to.

      “First, I want to assure you with all sincerity, that the details of this letter have been shared with no one, and have be keep in confidence between myself and my client.

      “That said, my client does have information related to some plans of yours, that may be of interest to you. He knows about the plans for the union mergers, the changes to the ownership legislation for union projects, as well as the names of specific firms and industrialists who have a stake in these plans.”

      The letter laid out a list of names and the details of their alleged business and political plans. It was not entirely accurate, and there didn't seem to be an evidence behind these claims, but it was close enough to get Rencit's heart pounding. How would anyone have known about this? Alex Roche – was this a relative of Bill Roche? Hadn't he be gone for over a year now, and how would anyone in his old office have known about any of this anyways? Whenever David had met with anyone to discuss this in public, and even at home for that matter, they had always been vague and spoken in pretty much in code. He didn't think they had left any sort of paper trail either, it had all been face-to-face meetings, away from their offices.

      The letter continued, “I want to stress that my client has no interest in releasing any of this information, or having any further involvement in political action. He has been employed learning a trade for almost a year now, and would like to continue along that path. Your help in securing his release, so that he could continue his work in his union would be greatly appreciated.”

      David folded the letter. This wasn't the only leak he was dealing with, and once the deals were done they'd be on safer ground, the danger was in being derailed by the public before things were completed. He let out a sigh. It was so much trouble to arrange all this, but in the end, this was how the city was going to stay afloat, it was about investment and not about re-distribution schemes. The communal types would end up creating fair shares of a disappearing pie. Without opening some new industry, all the activity would move up north. Times were changing, and the city had to find new niches in which to compete.

      David calmed himself and considered the letter. It didn't seem that bad, they did not seem eager to go to the papers with this. He appreciated the tone, their deference and tact.


      In mid-December, on the edges of a crowd that was gathering at the markets and shipping yards near the docks at where the Red River and the Assiniboine met, Alex and Katerina were setting up a concession stand. It had become a ritual in the city to see off the last shipping boat of the season, before the rivers froze over for the winter. Things quieted down a little after that, as in mid-summer, there were less goods coming and going from the city, people focused on keeping their houses warm for the cold spell. Katerina and Alex set up a little iron channel holding some hot charcoal that they rested skewers across, a few pieces of meat alternating with vegetables, over which they squeezed some lemon juice, chili flakes, and salt. Philip was sitting nearby on a short brick wall that held the hill back from the pathway, watching the people in the crowds.

      Since his release, Philip had kept Alex's name off of union paperwork as a precaution, and Alex had spent time working on the woks, and learning the cooking style of Katerina's restaurant. Philip still took Alex out on jobs as needed, he still planned to see Alex through his apprenticeship, regardless of the difficulties. He had begun to set up a shop in one of the vacant spaces in the buildings surrounding the restaurant's courtyard, coming and going through the same gate that the deliveries passed through. Philip made some of the deliveries himself, the work at the restaurant allowed him to be a little more discerning as to the jobs he took on, which were growing a little scarce anyways.

      With Alex taking on more of the kitchen tasks, Katerina resumed something more like her old schedule, watching over the accounts and the correspondences, and dealing with the bookstore and the specialized requests of it's clients once again. In these uncertain times, they didn't know how well, or for how long, this arrangement would work. Philip had some ideas of maybe opening a repair shop, or maybe dealing in scrap metal. And if it didn't end up working at all, maybe they could leave and try their luck up north, under Rose's wing.

       Katerina left Alex to deal with the cooking and the crowd, and in the light winter snowfall, went to sit beside Philip. She leaned on to his shoulder, he placed a kiss on her head.

The First Compost Heated Greenhouse

In his book Green Wizardry, John Michael Greer argues that we would do well to look back to the work accomplished in the 1970s regarding appropriate technology and sustainable living.

In particular, he often mentions the innovative projects of The New Alchemists, who founded a research institute in Cape Cod, Massachusetts at the height of the sixties counterculture in 1969, and published the results of their projects and experiments in journals throughout the 70s and 80s.

The New Alchemists collaborated with thinkers like the economist E.F.Schumacher and the technologist Buckminster Fuller, mixing together technology and counterculture values in an attempt to re-think how the systems that support human life and culture might be balanced with the health of the ecosystems that make our existence possible.

Experiments were conducted with solar energy, wind power, their fully integrated 'bioshelter' on P.E.I., and aquaculture: Greer notes that "the New Alchemy Institute is the reason you've heard of tilapia; that tasty, nutritious and quick-maturing fish was the species they chose for their pioneering work..."

Conversations inside a geodesic dome

The New Alchemy Institute came to a close in 1991, a year when climate change was rapidly rising into public consciousness, leading up to the Kyoto Protocol in 1992.

(I still remember painting an image of the Earth on a t-shirt in Grade 5, and painting 1 9 9 1 below the globe, in honor of Earth Day that year. I was picked out to make a little speech about environmentalism at a local celebration of the day, at Assiniboia Downs, the city's horse racing establishment. I'd really like to know what I managed to write for that, and I think a cassette tape might remain of it, I remember recording some practice sessions, and of the event itself.)

The NAI Greenhouse Project

My ears perked up when I read that the New Alchemists had commissioned  a compost-heated greenhouse project in the early 1980s, in Gaelen Brown's The Compost-Powered Water Heater.

The designer, Bruce Fulford, took the concept of harvesting the heat generated by the composting process in a very different direction than compost heat systems of the French organic farmer and forester Jean Pain in the 1970s.

Whereas Jean Pain had set up compost piles of shredded brushwood outdoors, circulating water through piping that was coiled through the compost to collect heat, Bruce Fulford worked in a climate much colder than the south of France, and attempted to keep the composting process inside the structure the compost was being used to heat.

This of course allows for a lot of the heat that would normally dissipate into the air to be retained in the building, but at the same time creates other problems, not least that the gases generated by compost are also kept within the structure.

Bruce Fulford

The design that Fulford came up with is to my eyes really elegant, balancing human needs with the needs of the ecosystems around us, with just a small amount of modern technology to make human life a little easier than by traditional methods, which is I guess is the key to the New Alchemist's style.

I remember the farmer and writer Joel Salatin saying something along these lines, that he tries to follow nature's patterns as closely as possible he moves his cattle through various pastures (and as he moves his chickens behind them in a mobile coop), but that it was one piece of modern technology that made the whole soil-regenerating process possible, his light-weight portable electric fences.

The trial greenhouse was apparently not without its flaws, but I think the details of this experiment were  important, and have been perfected over time in some larger, commercial-scale systems that I think could have real promise, especially in mid-sized agricultural operations. I also found examining the simpler, original system made it easier to grasp the functioning of the larger systems.

Part of an Agrilab System at Jasper Hills Farm.

I'll look at the details of larger systems developed by Agrilab Technologies in a later blog post, but basically any farm that generates a substantial amount of manure and other compostable materials can use these to generate a fair amount of heat and energy.

This saves them on fuel costs and reduces their carbon emissions, while at the same time produces a lot of high-grade compost that used on the farm or sold, further improving the economics of the operations. Some of the dairy farms in Vermont where these systems have been installed use the compost as bedding for their cattle, which reduces the amount of straw they have to buy and apparently is good for the health of the cows. One of these dairy farms also uses the heat from the compost to warm bio-gas generators, for use in their cheese making facilities, again further reducing fuel costs and the amount of fossil fuels combusted.

It's a virtuous circle, as the more compost that can be integrated into degraded soils might increase the amount of carbon held in the soil rather than in the atmosphere. And if anyone is thinking that there may be energy shortages in the upcoming decades, it could be a help to food security and to rural economies if farms had the ability to generate heat and fuel on-site. Add to that adding red seaweed to cattle feed to dramatically reduce methane emissions and adding biochar to the compost, I'm wondering if cattle farms could go from being major carbon emitters to becoming carbon negative, all the while producing food and restoring soils?

So, going back to the basics of the New Alchemist's greenhouse project: they began with orienting one long side of this 576 sq. ft. greenhouse towards the south (the side facing us in this drawing, that touches the ground right beside the lower garden beds) to collect as much solar thermal energy as possible in the greenhouse.

The compost bins were built (along the back half, opening on the north side of the structure. This drawing shows a cross-section of them empty and of them filled, I've labelled them both "A".)

The bins held 25 cubic yards of compost, and were built with insulated outdoor hatches, so that the compost feedstock and the finished humus could be added/removed from outside the greenhouse. In the first year of operation, NAI reported generating 100 tons of finished compost.

To generate heat, the thermophilic bacteria in compost needs access to oxygen. If the piles become to dense or water-logged, anaerobic bacteria take over and heat production comes to a halt. One way to aerate the piles is to turn the materials, by hand or mechanically. Or you can build up materials, like Jean Pain's shredded brushwood piles or with straw, to have enough interstitial air pockets for air to passively move through the piles. Also, the air can also be pushed through or drawn through by fans, which is what Fulford decided on for this design, and then used that warmed air being drawn through the compost to heat the greenhouse.

Blower fans were located at the top of greenhouse, and moved air through ducts down along north wall of the greenhouse, to underneath the compost piles. Secondary fans were located above the compost chambers to draw the hot, steamy, CO2 rich air up through the compost, and move it into ducts located in the soil below the greenhouse plants.

This lower greenhouse beds, labelled "biofiltration beds" in this diagram, are the most interesting part of the greenhouse to me, as they are used to filter the gases being produced by the compost bacteria.

Compost piles in the open-air don't create a lot of strong odors unless the pile becomes anaerobic, but composting in enclosed spaces is, apparently, a different story. The nitrogen content of the compost feedstock, in particular manure and urine, gets forced out as ammonia gas (NH3) as the pile begins to heat up.

Ammonia gas is irritating to the eyes and lungs, harmful to our health in high enough concentrations, and "will damage plant leaf tissue in concentrations as low as 10ppm." In greenhouse experiments where ammonia gas was not scrubbed from compost exhaust, the plants "suffered chemical burns." (p110, Brown.)

However, Fulford found that if a few inches of mature compost and soil are layered over top of the compost exhaust plenums, these problems were transformed into very beneficial growing conditions for greenhouse plants. As the ammonia (NH3) mixed with the moisture in the exhaust pipe and then in the compost/soil 'biofilter',  it changed into ammonium (NH4+) and remained within the soil, while allowing the CO2 to pass through into the greenhouse air, perfect for the plants to respire.

The author, Gaelen Brown, notes that greenhouses often invest in expensive air exchange systems to increase CO2 levels within greenhouse, noting that compost exhaust is one way carbon dioxide can be supplied through biological means.

The benefits don't end there, however: that ammonium (NH4+) is a means of supplying nitrogen to the garden beds. Some of it is taken up directly by plant root hairs, while the bulk of it transformed into "plant usable" nitrates (NO3-) by the nitrifying bacteria who feed on the high carbon content of the bio-filter.

The layer of compost and soil that served as a bio-filter did require maintenance, especially relating to moisture levels, if it dried-out or became to wet, its performance as a filter lessened.

The addition of earthworms and manure worms helped (as usual!), by creating channels in the soil and though the transformations performed by their digestive systems. Also, the inclusion of several types of clays were found to help increase the amount of nitrogen the biofilter could absorb.

When the biofilter became fully saturated with nitrogen, these soils and mature compost could be removed from the greenhouse and applied as a nitrogen-rich fertilizing ammendment to other soils, another way that we can reduce the amount of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer that we use annually.

NAI Grounds

The blower fans were set at a low speed, and were controlled by a photo sensor switch so that they would only operate in the daytime, to avoid drying out the compost excessively, and also to provide CO2 to the plants when they could best make use of it in photosynthesis. The fans were also controlled with a thermostat, so that if the temperature in the greenhouse dropped below 40F during the night, the fans would turn on, and draw heat from the compost to raise up the greenhouse air temperatures.

They greenhouse experiment was taken through the winter in Vermont, and they did have some problems with how they constructed the shell of the greenhouse. It allowed a lot of heat to escape, and apparently they also failed to add new compost feedstocks at a rate to keep the temperatures up.

That said, they managed to keep the greenhouse above freezing for most of the winter, and on some especially cold nights where greenhouse air temps hovered around freezing, the heat retained in the garden beds weathered them over, even the lettuce and parsley crops managed to get through the cold nights unharmed.

In general, Fulford recorded this project to be 23 - 35F (13 - 19C) warmer than outside air, a differential which could be greatly improved with a better greenhouse construction, but which proved to be adequate even as it was.

Brown doesn't mention in his book what happened to the greenhouse after the trial period was over, and the report was written up. I notice in this picture, which I think is of this same greenhouse, I don't see any blower fans mounted along the apex, I wonder if the New Alchemists took out the apparatus and just used it as a regular, season-extending greenhouse after the experiment came to a close?

Conan Eaton's Compost System

Whatever the case, this project was one of the few undertakings that kept compost heat recovery technology alive in the decades after Jean Pain's death. These basics, of using fans to aerate indoor compost piles, using that air instead of water as the heat transfer medium, and using a biofilter to scrub the exhaust gases have been incorporated into larger, much more reliable designs, which I want to look at in the next post in this series, along with some other low-tech, DIY systems that I really appreciate as well.

I would also like to keep looking into the other experiments of the New Alchemy Institute. In Green Wizardry, Greer includes a lot of exercises for the reader & 'green wizard' aspirant, and one of them is to go the local used bookshops, and see what copies of 1970s appropriate technology books might be found. I got a copy of Tomorrow is Our Permanent Address by two of the founding New Alchemists, John Todd & Nancy Jack Todd, I hope to learn more about their ideas on integrated bio-shelters.

Idea for Easy Urban Water Storage?

Like anyone who has become concerned with thoughts of societal collapse, I've looked over a few books related to food preservation & storage.

The best that I've come across personally is Sharon Astyk's Independence Days, which has some interesting programs for developing household food stores, even on a strict budget, covering techniques like gardening, root cellars, dehydration, freezing, canning, etc.

I'd like to write a post that boils down some of Astyk's ideas on building up a pantry on a budget (she also includes considerations for people with mobility issues, or for those living in small spaces and apartments).

I think her advice could combine well with what I take to be a mainstay of J.M.Greer's thoughts on food storage: that dried grains and legumes are a commodity that can be produced, transported and stored on a very limited energy supply. They don't require refrigeration of course, and they can be shipped slowly, by rail and by boat.

My favorite recent demonstration of this point is by Erik Andrus of Boundbrook Farm in N.Y. state, who has established a rice and duck farm, along with a bakery, and has experimented with traditional transportation methods. He has used a horse and buggy to deliver flour to the bakery, and has developed a simple, easy-to-construct river barge in an effort to deliver his dried rice to customers.

Link: "A Sailing Farmer"

(I really like the idea of river boats transporting dried goods and produce. N.Y. state once had "towpaths" along the edge of certain rivers, where mules could tow a floating barge slowly along the waters.)

The basic carbohydrates & the complete proteins provided by these relatively affordable and shelf-stable foodstuffs could then be augmented with the vitamins & minerals of locally grown produce, fresh eggs or shavings of pastured meat, some sprouted seeds/grains, and whatever herbs and spices, oil/fats, and vinegars that might help to make these grain & bean bowls palatable.

* * * * * 

5 Gallon Storage Container

For the topic of this short post however: I've noticed that this and most other food preservation guides have a section on storing water, for drinking, cooking, washing, etc.

Astyk's book has guidelines for urban households to use 5-7 gallon water containers, adding a tsp of bleach for each gallon of water to prevent algae growth, rotating these containers out so that they are in cool storage for about a month before being used and refilled.

(FEMA apparently recommends a tsp of bleach to each quart of water for a year of storage time, but Astyk notes that water chlorinated to this level is beyond what most people would want to ingest.)

I'm glad for the information on decontaminating water storage jugs, but I also can't help but feel that this is far more work than the average person is able to put in towards storing water for emergency situations.

I've also noticed though, that this and other disaster preparation guides often mention that the water stored in our hot water tanks and in the water pipes of of our houses are our greatest asset in an emergency, to be drained out for drinking or washing water. Reading that repeatedly, the thought struck me, what if instead of storing water in separate containers, we could just increase the amount of water stored in the piping of our houses, that could be drained down in an emergency?

Coils of 3/4" Water Piping

At first I thought of increasing the size of water mains in a house to 1" or greater diameter pipe, but quickly realized that adds a minuscule amount of water storage to a household. Then I thought, maybe a person could buy some coils of water pipe, connect them together and tie them together on a pallet before their hot water tank, and maybe add a hose bibb at the base of the coils to drain out the water if needed?

That way one might also have some continual energy savings, having the water that is fed into their hot water tank being warmed to ambient room temperature before being heated. But even then, multiplying the cross-section area of the pipe by the length of the coil, I realized this wasn't that much of an increased volume of stored water.

Last I wondered, what if one was to install a ordinary, easily-obtainable hot water tank on their main water line? They could route their incoming water through the tank and then back into their water main. The tank wouldn't be connected to any fuel source to heat the water, it would just be used to store extra water.

So, in the event that the city water supply was interrupted, the household would have an extra 40 - 80 gallons of fresh water (depending on the size of the tank installed) sitting there ready to be used.

The tanks would be drawn from and continually replenished with adequately-chlorinated municipal water each time one opened a faucet in their house. That would be the equivalent of 8 - 16 five gallon water storage jugs, continually being filled and drawn from.

I mentioned this idea to a few people I work with, and I posted it to a "green wizardry" forum I participate in, to see if anyone could foresee any problems with this set-up. I heard from some rural members who had much larger amounts of water in storage tanks installed on their water supply, and people suggested a few possible improvements, but no one saw any problems with the idea.

The one concern I had with this idea was if bacteria/algae could build up in a tank that was being used for cold water storage. Of course, in urban settings, the tank would be filled with treated, chlorinated water, but in plumbing school we are continually reminded of legionella bacteria, which is common in water and normally harmless, but which can propagate in hot water tanks that are set to less than 140F, and cause a deadly form of pneumonia if inhaled from the vapors of a shower head.

https://www.cdc.gov/legionella/wmp/overview/growth-and-spread.html

The wikipedia page for legionella confirms that this bacteria dies within 32 minutes of 140F, and also states that the bacteria is dormant below 20C, which an insulated storage tank in a basement setting is not likely to warm above very often. (Plus, there must a lot of grey area regarding these temperature limits: if you were to wait 24 - 48 hours between using a shower, the hot water pipes between the heater and the shower must have descended below 140F to ambient room temperature for quite some time, but this normal occurrence must almost never cause illness in the general population.)

Since thinking of this idea, I've noted that there are a lot of buildings whose water supply comes from a cistern or plastic holding tank, that receives a intermittent supply of fresh drinking water, drawn from by pumps, without problems.

Hot water tanks also have drains that can be used to flush a tank, and I guess there would be nothing preventing an owner to installing an energy supply (to an electric tank, gas would be a lot more cumbersome.) to heat up the tank, killing bacteria before flushing. Or maybe a UV unit before or after would be a good idea. I doubt this would be necessary but nonetheless, I would like to find an expert in water supply to give the OK to this idea, before promoting it unreservedly.

I also note that there are almost always used hot water tanks on kijiji for less than $200, probably from people upgrading to larger tanks or to instant hot water systems. I have to imagine that these tanks could last a long time, being not subjected to the constant expansion and contraction cycle of hot water production. (Of course there are likely dedicated water storage tanks that one could buy, I was using hot water tanks for this example as they are easy to obtain.)

* * * * *

One more technical note for this set up - water mains being lower than lower than much of the piping in a house, with a lack of pressure some the water in your house could drain or be siphoned back out of your house. To prevent that, probably best to install some sort of check valve/backflow preventer just after your water meter.

Last, adding a check valve on your water main creates a closed system, and that can cause the relief valve on your hot water tank continually discharge water as cold water in the tank expands as it's heated. This requires a small expansion tank to be installed to handle the changes in pressure.

* * * * *

Reading more about water usage, that the normal daily allotment of water is 60 U.S. gallons of water per person per day, all this trouble and expense to store 40 - 80 gallons of fresh water seems pretty futile.

But, of course, in an emergency situation, we do not have to be so profligate in our use of water. For survival, the U.S. government recommends 3/4 of a gallon for an active person per day. So, without any water usage for washing or cooking, a small 40 gallon tank could supply one person for 53 days, or 2 people for 26 days, etc. (And of course we also have our actual hot water tank storage, that could supply small amounts of water for washing and cooking.)

One drawback to this method of water storage would be if the water supply was somehow contaminated. Unless you were somehow aware of the possible contamination beforehand and closed off the valve on your water supply before the pollutants reached your home, your water stores would become contaminated. Jugs filled before the contamination would of course be sitting there, unaffected.

* * * * *

In general, I haven't really read about or thought through the scenarios where municipal water might be disrupted. I'm thinking generally of my own city here, and things obviously vary a lot depending on your location. Is this disruption caused by damage to an aqueduct or to aquifer infrastructure, so that water cannot reach your city or town, or is it a power issue, such that the city can't provide the pressure to get the water to our dwellings? I imagine that even in a general power outage, cities have ways of generating backup power to keep the water and sewer systems working.

If it were a case of some larger societal breakdown, where infrastructure was not being operated or maintained for whatever reason, a few gallons of extra water storage might not be that much help.

United States of Decay

And I'm not trying at all to promote the idea that a sudden collapse of society is close at hand. You never know, I suppose, but my own guess is that things like climate change, increasing energy costs, resource scarcity, economic troubles are bringing the industrial mode of civilization into decline. To the person on the ground I think this is probably going to feel like a gradual decay and a rising tide of problems to deal with, overall a much slower process than the common idea of waking up to a sudden apocalypse one morning. (However, punctuated crises like those occuring in Venezuela at the moment can feel very much like a total collapse for the people living through them.)

Still, so long as one doesn't take it too literally, the idea of "preparing for collapse" can be useful. I even think its valuable just to try to think through scenarios like this in as much detail as you can: even if nothing like you're envisaging is going to come to pass where you are living, you are making yourself much more conscious of the systems that are supporting your community, the supplies of food and water, the landfills, sewers, and storm drains, the energy and transportation networks.

I think that it's important to consider these things from a community viewpoint as well. One person building up a pantry of (for example) a few bags of white rice and dried lentils, some canned tuna and soup, some dehydrated vegetables, and some drinking water, doesn't do that much for a city running low on supplies. But if a good percentage of a city's residents take up a practice like this, those kilograms of stored food and gallons of water can be multiplied by many thousands, and can be counted along with the grocery store inventories to help weather over a period of emergency.

And the more people in all the various communities who are engaging with and thinking through issues like these, the more resilient we will be, however the problems of our times come to affect our daily lives.

Compost Water Heater: Tabletop Model

Around issues like climate change or economic collapses, I've been aiming to balance out my reading and media-intake. I'm moving away somewhat from general overviews of the predicaments our society finds itself tangled within, to focus more on specific technologies and practices that seem to hold some promise towards making ourselves more resilient to these predicaments, or even being regenerative to the ecological, economic, and social relationships on which we rely.

The idea was to find a series of these technologies, simple or complex, and dial-in on each in detail, one by one, learning about how they work, and how they could possibly be put into practice. And aside from only reading about them I'm trying to get in the habit of finding some way to work with the principles & ideas involved in some sort of physical way, even if it is only making a model or a drawing.

I think that can be valuable in a few different ways. It definitely keeps me thinking about a technology/practice for longer than I probably would've been just reading about it. Trying to implement aspects of an idea in the real world brings up questions that I might have otherwise passed over, sending me back to the books with new questions in mind. As with so many endeavors, the more energy you invest into a subject, from a variety of angles, the more inherently interesting & meaningful it becomes to you.

Not only that, but I think engaging in a physical project sends a signal deeper into our minds that we are serious about an idea: somehow it roots our intentions and shifting thoughts into our daily, physical life. The object itself, sitting around in your living space keeps you coming back to the idea, even if you leave off for a number of months. Objects can become display pieces and act as social beacons to start up discussions with others, maybe sparking an idea in the mind of just the right person.

Materials collected up for a solar oven

A series of these types of projects can initiate a sort of scavenger hunt and leave it running as a background process in your life. The contents of dumpsters, thrift stores, and your parents' garage become much more interesting, as possible sources of cheap supplies to investigate ecotechnic principles.

I think this might be the greatest benefit: building resourcefulness into ones habits, in a way I've always admired in people with a crafty, handy or artistic bent. In times of increasing scarcity, precarity and austerity, I think resourcefulness will be the quality most often called on, as, in Warren Johnson's phrase, we muddle towards frugality.

* * * * *

Best for this are the skills that can be employed as useful parts of our lives, right now: backyard (or front-yard) gardens and clotheslines in the summer, food storage techniques, bicycle repair, sewing and mending, that sort of thing. They can reduce waste right away, increase our skillfulness, and serve as examples, puncturing the optical veneer of consumerism, populating our cities with hints of some simpler ways of living.

Other technologies can be harder to get involved with, especially if one has limited funds or a lack of land or structures to experiment on. Some are entirely out of reach: too expensive, too difficult, too large scale, not currently practical. But there are often ways to break down a resilient technology into aspects that allow one to get at least a little experience in it. For example, a person interested in natural building, once they've done some reading and watched through some videos, might try out making some small batches of natural plasters, maybe they could be worked into a display piece, or maybe take on a small project like a dog house.

These are changing times, and many people who are concerned with the environment and the economy can feel like they are caught between between two worlds, with full commitments within the status quo, and at the same time feeling a pressure and a pull towards a different way of living. I don't see the tension abating any time soon. But, for those who aren't well positioned to make a dramatic leap towards resilience, I think we can engage some of our free time in imagining and experimenting with specifics of the world we'd like to see. At the very least it might bring some seeds of ideas forwards into times when they'll be needed.

* * * * *

Reading up on compost water heaters, I thought there was no way to make a project for the subject. These are fairly large projects: even the smaller ones outlined in this book require 40 cubic yards of shredded brushwood + sawdust + manure to compost, with 300ft of pipe coiled within the pile to collect heat, connected to some sort of means to radiate the heat indoors, whether in a concrete floor, the soil of a greenhouse bed, or a cast iron radiator.

It dawned on me that it might be possible to make a working model. It might capture peoples' imagination if they could see a garbage bin of compost heating up small slab of concrete, especially if they could feel the warmth of the concrete with their own hands, maybe there would be available little aquarium pumps that could circulate the water through the model. This could simplify these systems down to some basic components for people attending a presentation, so they could see a whole system at a glance in small scale.

Here are the pieces of the model and some of the real world analogues:


Heat Collecting Coil: For the model, I wrapped the tubing around a wire cylinder, actually for storing coffee K-cup pods, from the dollar store. In the larger systems, they coil 3/4" - 1" polyethylene or PEX pipe within a large compost pile.








Pump: The heat transfer medium, in this case water, has to move through the hot compost, to the area that is to be heated and back again. I found this little pump that I think is for creating a small fountain in an aquarium.

In the larger system, Brown recommends a 1/8 HP circulator pump, which are very common, used often in hot water heating sytems and for hot water recirculating lines. These pumps can also include flow restrictors, so that one can set how fast the water is moving through the tubing, which is helpful, as too much cool water being cycled back in to the compost pile too quickly can stress the compost microbes.

1/8 HP Circulator Pump

Hot Water Storage Tank: I was a little unsure of why water tanks were added to these systems. The book mentions that they are useful for hot washing water. I wondered too if maybe they simply added more water to the system, and increased the amount of heat energy that was held within the building at any given time?

To me that sets up two other problems. First, if you're going to be drawing water from the system, then you have to set it up so that it fills automatically from another point, and adding too much cool water too quickly can shock the microbes in the compost pile.

Second, if you are going to be spraying the water, unless the water maintains at (I believe) a temperature around 60C/140F, you can risk Legionella bacteria growing in the tank and becoming air-borne when you use the water, which can cause a deadly type of pneumonia. Compost temperatures can get to 140F and well beyond, but from what I read they also drop to 120F quite often.

I included it in the model anyway, as I think it does increase the amount of heat stored in the system, and it was an easy place to include a thermometer to measure the temperature of the water coming out from the pump.


Concrete Slab: Once the compost pile heats up the water and the water is transferred, you need some way of radiating the heat into the space you've chosen. There are a range of options. Some people have water run into old fashioned cast iron radiators. Others have used it to preheat the water going to their hot water tank. The most common seems to be to run it through PEX pipe that is specifically made to radiate out heat, and to either run this radiant PEX through a concrete slab, or directly through the soil of a greenhouse bed. There are also ways to run it between the joists of a floor.

For the model I choose a concrete slab. Like in a regular radiant slab, I lined the underside of the slab with insulation, so that the heat will radiate upwards. I made a little wire grid to tie the tubing to, then filled the box with cement. I included some powdered biochar into the cement mix, just to include the idea of sequestering some carbon into building materials like concrete. I embedded a thermometer in the concrete to measure the heat transferred into the slab.

Compost Pile: I thought the model would have the most visceral impact if people could feel the warm concrete slab, sitting right beside a container of hot compost. I tried at first a container inside a ceramic flower, but it wasn't a large enough mass of compost to really heat up, so I took an old garbage bin, drilled in air holes and made a inner cylinder out of chicken wire, so that the compost could stay aerated from all sides. I layered in straw to make interstitial air pockets throughout.

It was winter, so I had a problem of how to keep the compost from freezing, so that I could see if it would heat to adequate temperatures. I wheeled the bin down into a corner of the parkade beneath my apartment building, and zip-tied the lid down so that security couldn't check its contents.

It did get hot pretty quickly, getting up to 130F/55C in a few days. The stem of the thermometer was hot to the touch when it was pulled from the bin. It did however smell horribly & powerfully filled up a section of the parkade, I'm very surprised I didn't get in trouble for that! They say that compost, once it is oxygenated and thermophilic bacteria is generating heat, is fairly odourless, but to that should be added the caveat that it be in the open air. I've read since that in the early phases of a pile, at lot of nitrogen gases (ammonia, etc) is pushed out of the mass.

I wheeled it in the middle of the night to the service elevator and back out to my balcony, to freeze until spring. If I ever set this up for demonstration, I think it would probably better to get a bucket of water to drop the heating coil into, adding an immersion circulator to keep some water at a constant temperature common in a compost pile, 120F or so.

* * * * *

Those are the basic components of a compost-powered water heater system: the compost itself, pipe coiled within it, a pump, a flow-restricting device, thermometers at various points, and something to radiate heat within the space you want to remain warm.

For the next post on this topic, I'd like to look at another one of the early innovative projects in compost heat recovery, the experimental compost-heated greenhouse set up by the New Alchemists in Massachusetts in the early 1980s.

It had an obvious advantage over Jean Pain systems for colder climates, in that the compost was kept indoors, within the structure that was to be heated, so that all that heat from the compost pile was kept from being directly dissipated into the open air. However, this adds the problem of keeping all the gasses & odours produced by compost within the building as well.

The solutions they worked out, including air instead of water as the heat transfer fluid, have been perfected in some contemporary projects that seem like they could have a place within the appropriate technology framework & help increase the resilience of moderate-sized agricultural operations, especially those that keep livestock. They produce heat that can be used in a variety of ways, reduce bedding costs, process wastes, and return nutrients into the soil.

Two New Alchemists scamper across a geodesic dome.