Every possible effort was made to “limit the invasion,” as the ecologists say, to what was wanted. One thing that I may not have mentioned about the trip out was the fact that our clothes and our baggage were sterilized during the trip and that we ourselves were required to take a special scrub before we put our clothes back on. It was the only good bath I got the whole two months, but it left me smelling like a hospital.
The colony’s tractor trucks delivered the pay dirt I was entitled to in order to seed my farm; I left the Schultz place early that morning to meet them. There is difference of opinion as to the best way to plant pay dirt; some ‘steaders spread it all over and take a chance on it dying; some build up little pockets six or eight feet apart, checker board style… safe but slow. I was studying the matter, my mind not made up, when I saw something moving down the road.
It was a line of men, pushing wheelbarrows, six of them. They got closer and I could see that it was all the male Schultzes. I went out to meet them.
Every one of those wheelbarrows was loaded with garbage and all for me!
Papa Schultz had been saving it as a surprise for me. I didn’t know what to say. Finally I blurted out, “Gee, Papa Schultz, I don’t know when I’ll be able to pay you back!”
He looked fierce and said, “Who is speaking of paying back when we have compost running out of our ears yet?” Then he had the boys dump their loads down on top of my pay dirt, took a fork and began mixing it as gently as Mama Schultz folding in beaten egg white.
He took charge and I didn’t have to worry about the best way to use it. In his opinion—and you can’t bet that I didn’t buck itl—what we had was good for about an acre and his method was to spread it through the soil. But he did not select one compact acre; he laid out strips, seven of them, a couple of hundred yards long each and stretching across my chewed soil thirty-five or forty feet apart. Each of us took a wheelbarrow—their six and my one—and distributed the mix along each line.
When that was done and cairns had been set to show where the strips ran, we raked the stuff into the rock dust five or six feet on each side of each line. Around noon Mama and Gretchen showed up, loaded down, and we stopped and had a picnic.
After lunch Yo had to go back to town but he had almost finished his strip. Papa had finished his and proceeded to help Hugo and Peter who were too small to swing a good rake. I dug in and finished mine soon enough to be able to finish what Yo had left. Dad showed up at the end of the day, expecting to help me all evening—it was light phase and you could work as late as you could stand up under it— but there was nothing left to do. And he didn’t know how to thank them either.
I like to think that we would have gotten the farm made anyhow, without the Schultzes, and maybe we would have—but I’m sure not sure. Pioneers need good neighbors.
The following week I spent working artificial nitrates from the colony’s power pile into the spaces between the strips—not as good as pay dirt from Earth, but not as expensive, either.
Then I tackled sowing the grass, by hand, just like in the Bible, and then raking it gently in. That old pest Saunders showed up. He still did so every now and then, but never when Dad was around. I guess he was lonely. His family was still in town and he was camping out in a ten-foot rock shed he had built. He wasn’t really making a farm, not properly; I couldn’t figure out what he was up to. It didn’t make sense.
I said, “Howdy,” and went on with my work.
He watched me, looking sour, and finally said, “You still bent on breaking your heart on this stuff, aren’t you, youngster?”