Will Harper, late afternoon, Saturday July 21, 2040
Author's note: This starts a little abruptly, especially if you haven't been following the series. So here is the last bit of episode 12 just to tie things together.
"But after ten years, you're still a going concern," said Will, "so you can't have too many problems."
"Seems not," said Allan. "We make every effort to resolve interpersonal conflicts before they get out of hand, of course. We've all had training on participatory democracy, mediation and things like emotional intelligence. It all helps, and it does work most of the time, except when it doesn't. People being what they are."
"No doubt," said Will. "What's next on this tour?"
Allan stepped back from the fence they'd been leaning on and turn around, pointing north. "Well, that row of buildings is our industrial heartland, so to speak."
"Really?" said Will in a doubtful tone.
"I'm not entirely serious," said Allan with a grin. "We don't have anything on the scale of chemical valley in Sarnia, or the steel mills in Hamilton. But what little we have of that sort is concentrated here. Given your background, I think you'll find this quite interesting."
"Great," said Will. "Let's have a look."
"OK, next stop Industrial Row" said Allan and started off toward the buildings just to the north. "Many of the processes here involve fire and to avoid burning down the rest of our buildings, we put them down wind and a fair distance from anything else. Woodworking, textiles, and papermaking are in the second pole barn. And our sawmill is back near the woodlots."
"So what exactly do we have here?" asked Will, as they stopped in front of a pair of silo like structures."
"Well, these two outfits here at the south end are our charcoal and lime kilns," said Allan. "The one on the right is the lime kiln. It's pretty traditional. Basically just a short silo built from stone with an iron door at the bottom where we put in wood and a hole at the top where we put in limestone. Light the fire and it gets hot enough to change the limestone (calcium carbonate) into lime (calcium oxide) and carbon dioxide. After the fire goes out we rake the ashes and then the lime out the door at the bottom. It can be a filthy thing to operate, even though we put in a cyclone in at the top to spin out most of the particulate matter from the exhaust. The carbon dioxide released is an inherent part of the process, nothing to be done about it. So we make no more than the absolute minimum of lime that we need—mostly for mortar in the stone foundations of our buildings."
"If this is anything like Dad's farm, a fresh crop of limestone comes up with the frost every spring," said Will. "So at least you don't have to worry about supply."
"True. Picking stones on the newly worked fields is a regular activity every spring, just like when you were a kid," said Allan. "You know, one thing to keep in mind about this operation is that we build stuff so that once it's built, it doesn't have to be done again for a long, long time. No planned obsolescence here—just the opposite. Things are designed so that what maintenance is needed can be done easily and we're all careful not to damage things unnecessarily. This reduces our resource use and the wear and tear on our production equipment. And it reduces the amount of work we have to do."
"That's a big difference from the way things were done under capitalism, where planned obsolescence and continual growth were needed to keep the system running," said Will.
"Yep. And an infinite supply of energy and materials, which we don't have. But with all this talk of industry, it's possible that I'm creating a misunderstanding," said Allan.
"In what way?" asked Will.
"About work," replied Allan. "There was a lot of work the first few years. Getting the buildings erected, and the industrial stuff working, setting up gardens, orchards, coppices and such. But even then, we set a precedent of valuing free time rather using those hours to create a bigger surplus. And that's even more true now that the big projects are finished, and we've salted away ample food and such to carry us through bad years."
"So Tom's estimate of 32 hours a week turned out to be true?" asked Will.
"On the average, yes, maybe even somewhat less than that," said Allan. "During planting and harvest or when there is a big project on, people work from dawn to dusk. But that's only a few weeks each year. The rest of the time, there are a few hours of 'shit jobs' each day and then the opportunity to spend time doing stuff you like doing."
"So, what are these shit jobs and how do you get people to do them?" asked Will.
"Things like taking care of the composting toilets, laundry, cooking, weeding the gardens, shovelling snow and feeding the heating stoves in the winter," said Allan. "It's strange what some people like doing and others don't. But if you're not feeling like working at all, odds are that someone will come looking for an hour or two of help with a job you'd rather have avoided. Best to be seen as willing in that case, or you'll get stuck regularly helping with the very worst jobs. For most people, sitting around doing nothing gets boring after a while anyway and being helpful turns out to be enjoyable."
"I've noticed that most people develop a whole different attitude towards work when they aren't being forced to do it just to get money for rent and groceries.," said Will.
"That does make a big difference. Also, you'd be amazed at the things people like doing and work hard at, voluntarily," said Allan. "Anyway, carrying on... the charcoal kiln, the one on the left, isn't actually a traditional kiln but something a little more modern and efficient," said Allan. "Nothing fancy though—just a big steel pot with a fire underneath it. Plus some brick walls and insulation to keep the heat where we need it. The pot is moderately air tight, so when we heat up the wood inside it turns into charcoal instead of burning. The gases produced in the process are flammable and we pipe them down to the fire and burn them, giving us some additional heat so that it takes less wood.
"The scaffolding around them both gives us to access the top and between the two is a crane for hoisting things into place. And in the case of the charcoal setup, taking the pot down once the run is over."
"It looks... I don't know... very industrial," said Will.
"Ha ha," said Allan. "Does the job, though The first building past the kilns contains our foundry, forge and welding shop."
Beyond the kilns, Will observed a squat building, which didn't seem overly large considering what Allan said it contained. It had a field stone and lime mortar foundation, rammed earth walls and sheet steel roof. A big chimney was built into the nearest end of the building and a couple of stove pipes stuck out through the roof near the far end. They walked along the west side of the building and stopped in front of a big double door.
"I'd like a look inside," said Will, "but I'm guessing we don't have time for that today?"
"Oh, I think we have time for a quick peek," said Allan, stepping forward to open one of the doors. "For more detail, you'd be better to come back another day when this stuff is in use and there's someone to show you around. Which, by the way, I think they'd be glad to do."
"OK," said Will, stepping forward to stand beside Allan and look inside.
"In the wall on the right is our charcoal fired crucible furnace and the blower that force feeds it to get the temperature high enough to melt iron," said Allan. "Various sizes of crucibles are sitting on the shelf to the right of the furnace. Just pots made of clay and graphite, which can stand the heat of the iron we melt in them. We can melt about 50 pounds at a time in the biggest crucible. And on the left side is a stack of wooden molds and a box of casting sand."
"That all makes sense," said Will. "What's that contraption in front of the furnace?"
"That's just a big set of tongs that grip the crucible to set it into the furnace and take it out once the metal has melted," said Allan. "Hung, as you can see, from the rafters on chains."
"Right. And I can see the roof framing is all steel too," said Will. "I imagine you get enough sparks flying around here to set wood framing on fire."
"We sure do," said Allan. "Like the sheet steel for the roofs, we picked the I-beams up cheap from businesses that were shutting down. We considered tile for the roofing, but at that point clay was a rarer resource than structural steel.
"Anyway, in the back corner on the right is our forge. And next to it a power hammer, and a small rolling and wire drawing mill."
"And in the corner nearest to us is your welding table?" said Will. He took a step inside to get a better look and took in a nice assortment of electric welding equipment, a plasma cutter, a chop saw and a big heavy duty vise.
"Yep," said Allan. "We decided not to put the effort into manufacturing oxygen and acetylene. The forge, plasma cutter and electric welders do everything we need."
"I see you've got both TIG and MIG welders," said Will. "What do you use for shield gas?"
"Argon," replied Allan. "It makes up almost one percent of the air and liquefies at the high enough temperature that's it's easy to separate out."
"OK, looks like a pretty nice setup. But other than what you bought years ago before the economy shut down, where does all your metal come from?" asked Will. "Surely you're not mining it around here."
"Hardly," answered Allan. "But there is still a lot of scrap metal to be had. We have a close relationship with an auto wrecker a concession north of here and two side roads to the west."
"You've said you avoid using money, so...barter?" asked Will.
"Not likely—barter's really no different from using money, just more awkward," said Allan. "That kind of trading we reserve for strangers we don't trust, but we'd rather not do it at all. So, nope, like I said, it's a close relationship—essentially they are part of our commune. So they supply what they have that we need, and vice versa. No accounting involved."
"You say 'accounting' like it's a dirty word," said Will.
"One of the dirtiest," said Allan. "A tool of domination, oppression and exploitation."
"I won't argue with that," said Will. "Still, metal is a non-renewable resource—whether you're digging it out of the ground or salvaging it. Won't you run out eventually?"
"Sure," said Allan. "But with some care, eventually can be a really long time, especially since we are not committed to growth. The first thing is to use as little metal as possible. And then to make sure what we make from it is durable, easy to fix and easy to recycle. And nothing gets thrown away. We even sweep up the powder that accumulates behind our grinders and sharpeners, and recycle it."
"Well, it doesn't seem like your 'industrial heartland' is continuously spewing out pollution, anyway," said Will, nodding to the chimneys.
"Of course today is a commune wide holiday so nothing is happening here, but other than that, there are two issues, really," said Allan. "First, we don't need to run our factories continuously to pay off the bank or greedy investors. None of this was built with borrowed money. And our economy, such as it is, is based on demand pull rather than supply push. All our equipment works in batch process mode, and only has to run when we need whatever it produces, and then only to produce just as much as we need.
"Second, we've tailored our processes and equipment to limit the amount of pollution we create when this stuff is running. Starting out with scrap iron instead of iron ore, it's a much cleaner process. Not completely clean, but a lot closer than conventional industry."
"So you've got casting, forging and welding covered here," said Will, stepping back out of the doorway. "What's next?"
"The next building is our machine shop," said Allan, closing the door and leading the way over to another set of double doors in the next building to the north. "It doesn't really have to be here, but it's awfully handy to have it next door to the foundry and forge."
"So... lathes, milling machines, drill presses?" asked Will..
"Sure, all those and more," said Allan, opening one of the doors. "Take a look"
Will stepped up to the door and saw a very nicely set up machine shop, much of the equipment the sort that had still been commercially available a decade before, along with some that had clearly been made here at Porcupine since then.
"Our metal working crew, which got together right at the start of things, back in the spring of 2030, ended up in these two buildings, which we built in '33," said Allan. "They repair broken and worn out tools and machinery and build some new from scratch. Without them, we wouldn't have gotten very far. Even starting out with all of Jack's farm machinery."
Will took note that the machine shop had sheet metal walls as well as roof. "And let me guess," he said, "your machine shop is timber framed with the sheet metal on the outside to protect it from stray sparks from adjacent kilns and furnaces."
"Exactly, the machinery in here is not too likely to start a fire" said Alan, stepping back and closing the door. "Moving on, the next building, with rammed earth walls again, is our ceramics and glass shop. There are a couple of wood fired kilns at the back—it's probably worth taking a look at them."
He led the way around to the east side of the building. "The big one there is where we make bricks and tiles as well large runs of pottery, and the little one is for small runs of fine pottery. Anyway, I don't how much you know about ceramics—it's certainly not my specialty."
"It's something I've always been interested in, but never got a chance to try," said Will.
"Well, I guess we should have a look inside anyway, as a shortcut to the other side, if nothing else, " said Allan. He opened the door in the east wall of the building and led the way inside. Will followed, shutting the door behind them. "We had one amateur potter with us from the start and a couple of professionals join us in '32 and a glass blower in '33. Most of what's here is stuff they brought with them. You should have a talk with them this evening.
"About all I can tell you is there are a couple of electric kilns, a glass blowing furnace and another for melting glass to cast it.Plus all the other equipment that's needed for this kind of work. The electric kilns give you more precise control of temperature but the elements wear out, and we don't have a source of the metals needed to make new ones. We've got spares, but they will eventually get used up. Gas and liquid fuels are in short supply, so the plan is to switch over to electric arcs for a heat source—a project still under development."
"Looks good to me," said Will. "Can you make porcelain insulators? For electrical use, you know."
"I do," said Allan. "We don't actually have the right kind of clay locally for porcelain, but we make a type of glazed stoneware insulator that works pretty well."
"You have deposits of clay here on the commune land?" asked Will.
"Yeah..." said Allan. "Not the very best clay for pottery work, but far from the worst either. It is a non-renewable resource though, so we have to be careful how we use it. Broken pottery can be glued back together or ground up and mixed with clay to make new pottery. Makes it go farther and actually better to work with too. So like metal, with some care, clay can be made to go a long way."
"Moving on?" said Will, gesturing to the door in the west wall of the building.
"You bet," said Allan and led the way outside. "The next building to the north is the one I share with the rest of the electrical crew."
This was another structure similar to the machine shop.
"It's divided into three parts," said Allan. "At the south end is a room containing the main power supply for this whole complex. A 600V, three phase, 50 KW generator that powers the heavier equipment, and a 25 KW split phase 120/240V generator for the smaller equipment that needs that sort of power. Both are driven by uniflow steam engines with wood fired boilers. At the north end is a 50 KW DC generator driven by a steam turbine and another wood fired boiler, which powers the Acheson furnace in the chem crew's hot shop, where we produce graphite and silicon carbide for abrasives.
"In the middle is the shop I share with the rest of the power crew, where we build and repair electrical equipment. Motors, transformers, switches, circuit breakers—the kind of thing you used to work on, but on a much smaller scale."
"Now that I'd like to see," said Will.
Allan led the way to the door of the electrical shop and they spent a few minutes looking around inside, and then had a peek at each of the generator rooms.
"This really is impressive," said Will. "The more so since I recognize most of the equipment and know what it's used for. Are you still using digital test equipment, or have you switched back to the old style analog stuff?"
"Some of both," said Allan. "the digital equipment itself is pretty tough and long lasting, but batteries are no longer available, so we've had to set up power supplies to make them work off AC power and they aren't very portable. Eventually, the solid state stuff will wear out and we can't replace it. We've been working on analog meters with fairly sensitive movements, and vacuum tube voltmeters where more sensitivity is needed. Not that hard, it turns out. And doable with the technologies we have at hand."
"Well, they got along just fine with analog meters until the last quarter of the twentieth century," said Will."I could sure spend longer here, but I guess we'd better move on. What's next?"
They exited the electrical shop and again walked northward.
"These two buildings are the realm of our chem crew," said Allan."The first is the chemical hot shop and the second is the 'chem kitchen' where they cook up a great many things. Soap, alcohols, oils and greases, dyes, paints and varnishes, rubber, glues and resins, even some pharmaceuticals."
The first was another rammed earth building. The top of a fractional distillation tower was visible over it. Allan gestured toward this structure. "We don't have any crude oil to refine, but we cook a bunch of different gases and liquids out of wood and use that refinery tower to separate them."
The second building was another steel clad, wood framed building, without the chimneys, but with several pipe stacks penetrating the roof.
Allan walked over to the door in the west side of the hot shop, opened it and stepped in, followed by Will. "To the right is the Acheson furnace I already mentioned. And the rest of this stuff is various reaction vessels for making stuff that needs heat and pressure."
"Did you say you make rubber here?" asked Will.
"I did indeed," answered Allan. "There are just too many things we couldn't make without rubber, so we decided we had to find a way. Rubber trees are out, of course, due to our cold climate, and there is a fungus that is killing them off worldwide these days anyway. But dandelions produce latex too, and one species, the Russian dandelion, is especially good at it. We grow a few acres of it and produce a few hundred pounds of rubber every year from the latex in the roots."
"Amazing," said Will. "I can remember hearing people say that our technology was dependent on a complex, interconnected, global web and once it fell apart, we'd be back to the stone age or medieval times at the very least. Doesn't look like that has happened here."
"Yeah, I've heard people spouting similar nonsense," said Allan, "mainly because they had no idea how anything worked— it all just seemed like magic to them. Knowing how to make stuff is the hard part. It took hundreds if not thousands of years to figure that out in the first place. But once you've got it, and the will to hang onto it..."
"Great things can be done, eh?" said Will.
"Yeah. Dad used to talk about 'self contained suites of technologies' that support each other," said Allan. "You don't have to have the whole of early twenty first century tech to still hang on to some pretty useful stuff. As we've done here.
"We decided that we wanted to have certain things tech wise. And it turned out that each of those things required a certain minimum set of technologies, given the raw materials we have available, to make it possible. And typically each of those technologies required a further set. It might seem like there would be no end to that, but in fact, many of the end products we wanted were supported by the same underlying technologies, so the cascade didn't get out of hand."
"OK, I think I see what you mean," said Will. "Say you decided you couldn't get by without sharp, metal edged tools. The simplest way to do that would be using high carbon steel. Lots of scrap steel around to salvage, charcoal to fire your foundry, silicon carbide for abrasives to sharpen the blades, and so on. I see you have all that in hand. But there must be some technologies that were just too much of a reach...?"
"For sure. We've settled on what amounts to an early twentieth century level of technology," said Allan. "There are a few things we just had to reconcile ourselves to doing without. Solid state electronics is one example. And all the things that cascade out from that. Computers, cell phones, some of the medical tech from the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries. Even relatively simple things like LED lighting and power diodes. We stocked up on those and use them very carefully, so as to make them last."
"Do you think that will ever change?" asked Will.
"Well, we aren't pushing too hard in that direction here at Porcupine," said Allan. "But the newer communes often specialize in one high tech area rather than being generalists like us. I hope one of them will eventually manage to produce some of the simpler types of solid state electronics."
"There'd be quite a market for that," said Will.
"Probably," said Allan. "But reviving a market based economy is not something we're interested in. Whether facilitated by money or barter, as I was saying, we avoid trade like the plague. But we do like to do things that can be helpful to others. I know it sounds pretty simple, but maybe that's why it works so well. With the profit motive gone, people have no real reason to take advantage of each other. Some of the people you'll meet at supper may be able to explain it better than I can."
"OK. Not that I'm doubting what you say, but a deeper understanding might be useful," said Will. "In Inverpen we're only now beginning to get our heads wrapped doing without money and not keeping track of accounts. Some people just worship those ideas and can't seem to let them go."
"Yep, when you've grown up immersed in capitalism, that's a big step to take," said Allan. "Sure simplifies life, though."
"I can see that," said Will.
Allan closed the door of the hot shop and they walked over to have a look in the chem kitchen.
Will had a quick look around inside. "Looks very impressive, though I must say I don't have a clue about what most of this stuff does."
"Me neither," said Allan. "Another time, I am sure the chem crew would be glad to clue you in."
Back outside, Will looked to the north and noticed there was a gap and then more buildings. "Are those buildings part of your industrial setup too?"
"That's our abattoir, tannery and our flax and hemp processing facilities. Many of us don't eat as much meat as we did before coming here, but it is still an important part of our diet. And leather and other animal products are critical parts of those tech suites—the basis of things we are not willing to do without. All of that stuff is pretty smelly, so that's why it is even more isolated," said Allan. "If you look past the tannery, towards the woodlot at the back of this farm you'll see our sawmill and primary firewood drying and storage facility."
"A major part of your operation, I take it, since most of your power comes from firewood," said Will.
"Yes indeed," said Allan. "And we make a lot of things from wood too. Let's not walk all the way back there today, though."
"OK, where to then?" asked Will.
Allan turned and pointed toward the bank barn. "Looks like the milking crew are heading out to bring in the cows and ewes. We should join them and have a look at the north side of the barn and then what's on the east side of it. That'll brings us closer to where we will be eating supper, as well."
Will followed Allan's gesture and saw that three young people had just come out of the big door on the east side of the barn.
"Sounds good to me," said Will. "Let's give them a hand."
Coming soon, episode 14, the tour continues.
Maintaining the lists of links that I've been putting at the end of these posts in getting cumbersome, so I have decided to just include a link to the Porcupine section of the Site Map, which features links to all the episodes I've published thus far.
