There's a well with an old-fashioned hand pump under the rubble of the outbuilding. It still works. The solar-powered electric pump near the house does not. We couldn't stay here long without a dependable water source. With the well, though, its hard to leave -- hard to walk away from possible sanctuary -- in spite of arsonists and cops.

Bankole owns this land, free and clear. There's a huge, half ruined garden plus citrus trees full of unripe fruit. We've already been pulling carrots and digging potatoes here. There are plenty of other fruit and nut trees plus wild pines, redwoods, and Douglas firs. None of these last were very big. This area was logged sometime before Bankole bought it. Bankole says it was clear-cut back in the 1980s or 1990s, but we can make use of the trees that have grown since then, and we can plant more. We can build a shelter, put in a winter garden from the seed I've been carrying and collecting since we left home. Granted, a lot of it is old seed. I hadn't renewed it as often as I should have while I was at home. Strange that I hadn't. Things kept getting worse and worse at home, yet I had paid less and less attention to the pack that was supposed to save my life when the mob came. There was so much else to worry about -- and I think I was into my own brand of denial.... But all that feels like ancient history. Now was what we had to worry about. What were we going to do now? . . .

"There are no guarantees anywhere," I agreed. "But if we're willing to work, our chances are good here. I've got some seed in my pack. We can buy more. What we have to do at this point is more like gardening than farming. Everything will have to be done by hand -- composting, watering, weeding, picking worms or slugs or whatever off the crops and killing them one by one if that's what it takes. As for water, if our well still has water in it now, in October, I don't think we have to worry about it going dry on us. Not this year anyway." . . .

"What seed do you have?" she asked.

I drew a deep breath. "Most of it is summer stuff -- corn, peppers, sunflowers, eggplant, melons, tomatoes, beans, squash. But I have some winter things; peas, carrots, cabbage, broccoli, winter squash, onions, asparagus, herbs, several kinds of greens. . . . We can buy more, and we've got the stuff left in the garden plus what we can harvest from local oak, pine, and citrus trees. I brought true seeds too: more oak, citrus, peach, pear, nectarine, almond, walnut, a few others. They won't do us much good for a few years, but they're a hell of an investment in the future."

-- Octavia Butler, from Parable of the Sower