sixthiterationlogs | We can push on through till morning; [OTA

We can push on through till morning; [OTA | MINGLE POST]

WHO: Mark & Anyone
WHERE: The Town Hall
WHEN: Feb 16, afternoon through evening
OPEN TO: EVERYONE! This is a mingle post!
WARNINGS: N/A - Please warn in thread subject lines if needed
STATUS: Open

When we all get together and have our town meetings, the truth is that a lot of times we don't come up with the sort of solutions we're looking for. I'm not trying to say we're complacent -- Or at least not all of us, not the people speaking up in the meetings -- but just that the nature of living here, such as it is, means that answers aren't exactly forthcoming.

But the latest meeting, the one about organizing, creating some kind of formal entity to oversee the group of us, it threw something into sharp relief for me: I've been talking for a long time about how we all need to be sharing our knowledge as a safeguard, but I haven't been doing much to make this happen beyond sharing my own personal knowledge. And that's really just not acceptable -- Not here, not when we've apparently got an entire section of the population asking for active leadership and another section who might just be too shy or apathetic to admit it.

So, I've been trying to figure out a way to kickstart this project. A way for people to even put out there the sort of knowledge they have to share. You have to start somewhere.

I've never had a problem getting people together to help with the field, but somehow we've been neglecting the town hall building right next to it this entire time. It's one of the biggest buildings in town, but it's still coated in dust and cobwebs, piles of leaves drifted into corners. The inn is starting to get a little crowded during meetings; it might be nice to have a little more room, a place where people come to share.

Regardless of how you feel about community leadership, I think most of us can get behind that.

A couple days before, I put out the call: A cleaning party. We get together, clean out the town hall, and afterward we have a little potluck. People can bring premade dishes, or we can cook out back over a bonfire. We can just be around each other, in a relatively safe space, just having a moment to relax and say hello. Meet someone new, find out where to begin.

After everything that's happened recently, I really think we could use it. I'm just hoping I'm not the only one who shows up.

[CLEANING PARTY & MIXER! Threads can take place during the CLEANING portion, after during the MIXER or BOTH. They can be indoors, upstairs, in the attic, out back by the bonfire, chowing down, whatever -- It's 100% cool to improvise! Mark will have expressly told folks this is about getting to know each other and what they can each do, too. There are some additional OOC notes here.]

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The building is large, but the work is made much easier with plenty of hands to help. The dust was the worst of it, but the weather was forgiving today, so we were able to open up the front and back doors so we didn't all choke on what we stirred up. The attic is probably still a little questionable, but who has a meticulously clean attic?

I made a sort of stew entirely on my own, and it doesn't taste terrible. Stock made from leftover bones -- Smaller fowl mostly -- and veggies I've had tucked away. No potatoes, but some beets and greens and even a few little tomatoes along with basil, and sure, it could use a pinch more salt (as in, any salt at all), but it's hot and decently flavorful. Granted, anything not plain potatoes seems pretty flavorful to me, but my point is, I don't think it's a bad effort.

I've brought over the pot and a stack of bowls from my own kitchen, and now that the room is scrubbed, I settle down on one of the benches to dig in as I scope out who all has showed up.

Edited 2017-02-17 20:50 (UTC)

Pietro is not here to """mix""". It strikes him as childish somehow, everyone coming together to share food and get to know one another, as if any of them would be so eager to share with their newfound friends the moment food became scarce. He doesn't believe it, and is disinterested in pretending he does.

What he is interested in, however, aside from doing his part to assist in making this building useful again, is sharing knowledge. Harsh as his words had been at the last communal meeting, Pietro did not disagree with what this man had said, about the importance of ensuring everyone had the necessary knowledge to survive. Certainly, there have been times in his life when that sort of knowledge would have made his own survival much less precarious. It's only the idea that he might be allowed access to said knowledge that has him skeptical. He'll believe it when it happens. But he'll try, all the same.

"Watney, yes?" he starts, a lanky youth approaching from along the wall. "You are the farmer?"

This has got to be the first time I have been so decisively labeled as a farmer since -- Well, ever. It's difficult not to laugh, but I manage it. It's an honorific, if you think about it; I'm not just a farmer, I am apparently the farmer.

"I am the person ostensibly in charge of the farming, yes," I reply with a smile. "And Mark is fine with me if it's fine with you." You never can tell, although with hair like that, I'm guessing this kid isn't exactly subscribing to Kate's level of personal propriety.

Pietro gives him a bit of a look, like he isn't so sure they're going to be as friendly as all that, but, well, "Pietro Maximoff," he offers in return all the same.

"I worked in barley fields, when I was young," --as if he isn't still young. "I have no interest in being anyone's field hand again, but if you know how to keep us all from starving, I am a quick study."

"Well, we're all field hands here, but that's fantastic. Not a lot of people have experience, so anyone who can help teach the others is great. The more people we have helping, the better and bigger the crop will be."

Last year we'd gotten started so late we were lucky to have enough to scrape through winter. This year, our capacity will probably be three or four times what it was last fall, and that means more people helping and more people needing to learn.

We're not going to talk about how I'm apparently thinking of this place in terms of years now.

"Do you have an experience with planting, or just doing the harvest?"

Pietro tries to imagine himself having the patience to teach a human anything. It doesn't last long. -But he'll worry about that when the time comes. Maybe he can teach one of them, and the rest can learn from them. Maybe he can write a book on farming in the time it would take any of them to catch on. Maybe he can plant the whole godforsaken field himself first.

Anyway.

"Some. I've had the pleasure of driving a plow before," which he manages to make sound akin to the pleasure of slogging through freezing mud in wet socks, "But I don't suppose our captors were kind enough to leave us any draft horses."

"Or plows," I add with a resigned tilt of my head. "We do have a cow, but she's for milking and I'm not sure her owner would appreciate use using her for hard labor." We get by because we have to, but what I wouldn't give for a couple of horses or oxen.

"We're in slightly better shape this year -- When we planted at the end of last summer, we didn't have much in the way of tools that we didn't make ourselves, but some folks got a few tools in boxes, or on that weird day with all the presents a couple of months back. The good news is we don't seem to be lacking volunteers, so it could be worse. They just have to be told what to do at the start of the day."

"That I can help with." Bossing people around is Pietro's specialty, as it happens.

Egotism aside, however, the rest of Mark's explanation concerns him. Their food situation now is all consumption; no production. Always a precarious position. Clearing and tilling a field without a draft animal isn't easy, and perhaps more importantly with an uncertain growing season, it isn't quick. (But he is.)

"Last summer you also had fewer mouths to feed, yes?" He'd been reading the notes and logs at the Inn. "What we have to plant, is it enough to feed a group this size, or bigger? If it can be planted in time, and if it grows?"

Which is a lot of ifs.

"It was," I agree with a nod. "At the time we first planted, we were mostly gathering and hunting. It wasn't an optimal crop when it came in at the end of fall because we had a very short season, but it could have been worse. We had..." I tilt my head, considering. "Probably about two-thirds the number of people here then, and we were trying to put away for winter, too. But I actually think we're in a very good position going into this spring."

It's good that he's asking these questions, that he even thinks to. Most people don't. They're used to food simply being there and don't worry about it until it isn't.

"The arrivals are random from what I can tell, so it's difficult to guess how many people to plan for, but I feel pretty confident in my calculations. The main thing is getting the crops planted and harvested on time. The more efficient we are, the bigger harvest we'll get."

"Then we will have to be efficient," he agrees. 'We.' Well, that's almost honest.

But the fact that Watney has thought this through with any more precision than a ballpark estimate impresses Pietro, more than he's comfortable letting on. It's a mistake, in his experience, to get his hopes up about anyone, let alone advertise that fact. Circumspect as he may try to be, though, he can't hide the new glint of interest in his eye.

"Could you show me how you make your calculations? -In case something happens, like you said." Or because he's curious. "The farmers I knew, they were mostly idiots."

Tell us how you really feel, Pietro.

This time, I don't suppress my snort of laughter. At least the kid is honest, even if most of the farmers I knew were running impressive, high-tech outfits that wouldn't have lasted under an actual idiot. But different times, different places.

"Absolutely, I'd be glad to. It's not all that complicated, although I base things like yield on knowledge I have that I can't realistically expect many other people to have. If we can wrangle some paper, I can make notations for you, if you like -- Germination times, yield, things like that for any crops you might not be as familiar with. I'm the only one organizing all of this right now, and like I said, we're going to need to have a much bigger and more efficient harvest, so I'll take all the help I can get."

Pietro nods, relaxing a touch with the other man's enthusiasm, and silently glad that the math at least sounds uncomplicated. Most anything else he can pick up from context, without having to ask any embarrassingly elementary questions, but mathematics aren't so straightforward.

"Paper would be faster," he agrees, which– sounds odd when he'd not been planning to explain the fact that he can read faster than Mark can talk. "–Easier, I mean," he recovers lamely. "Sometimes it's easier to read English than to just hear it." Anyway. "I will see if I can trade for some."

"How did you learn all this?" He's guessing not from being a farmer.

"I have a doctorate in botany," I reply. "Before here, I worked for NASA—" I hesitate, arching my eyebrows. "Sorry if that means nothing to you. I worked for the space program."

Of course, now that I've said it, I realize that could just as easily mean nothing to him, depending on where he's from, or thinks he's from. I haven't decided yet which explanation I prefer for the diversity of our populace.

"So, you know." I shrug. "I'm the plant guy, which comes in handy when you're trying to avoid starving." I tilt my head, watching him. This kid doesn't look like a typical field hand, but who am I to say who should and shouldn't be harvesting barley?

"Where are you from? If you don't mind me asking."

NASA. Pietro's eyebrows go up a fair bit at that. So much for trying not to look too impressed.

"Transia. It is mostly mountains, between Romania and Yugoslavia. We do not have a space program," he adds, wry. They're lucky if they have electricity, most of the time. "But I know NASA. You were losing the space race, last I checked."

Just saying.

"–I wasn't aware there were many plants in space." Or any plants. What does NASA want with a botanist?

Well, that dates the kid easily enough. "We haven't been in a space race for long time," I counter, not bothering with getting into who won. It depends on who you ask, although I guess I'm supposed to say it was the U.S. out of loyalty.

"I was part of a team that went to Mars. I actually ended up staying there over a year. It was mostly exploratory, but part of the mission was determining how feasible it would be to grow crops, should we decide to set up something more permanent. People have to eat." Hopefully more than potatoes.

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We can push on through till morning; [OTA | MINGLE POST]

Mixer | OTA

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