Casting Stones

We're in trouble, serious trouble. The storms that have swept through here off and on for the last two days have done some heavy wind damage, but the worst came yesterday afternoon when we got hit by hail. Lots of hail.

At first it wasn't all that bad as the stones were only pea-sized. The hail trailed off and died, and we thought the worst was over. About fifteen minutes later, we got pelted with stones the size of golf balls. Our homes weathered the storm of rock-hard ice pretty well, but we took substantial damage to our remaining crops.

If we hadn't lost an entire farm, it wouldn't have been so damaging. Since we have, also losing a quarter of our food crops is devastating. I don't know what we're going to do to come back from this, or if it's even possible to do so. Our people need to eat, and not just enough to live. They have to be strong to endure zombie attacks. If not, we'll be easy targets for a large assault.

That's not even considering the construction work and other bits of industry we've got going on here. We're in a bad place right now, and there isn't a lot of help to be had.

Surprisingly, the homesteaders have taken this latest piece of bad news without too much griping. There hasn't been a lot of reaction from that camp, other than to say that we need to come up with a way to feed people without letting everyone go hungry. Yeah, that's super helpful.

I've been on the horn with people since last night trying to find anyone that can help us. Our closest allies in spirit if not geography, the settlement of North Jackson, don't have extra to spare. The huge detail of soldiers that peacefully settled and integrated with them some time back brought much with them, but they're still on rations as their greatly expanded farming has yet to reach maturity and full production. Even then, they'll be running a tight ship as far as food goes, having to save enough to last them through winter and into the spring.

So it has gone with everyone else I've talked to. While those of us who were refugees wandered around this part of the country, Courtney and her team were running missions of mercy all over the rest of it. What our allied communities had to spare, they spared. There's no extra to be found.

I won't give up. Any resource we can pull from, any service we can trade, every possible option, will be explored. I will not allow the people here to starve, and whatever it takes to accomplish that goal, I'll do it. Anyone who's out there that can help, send us a message. We need you, now more than ever.