Back in the Time of Plenty, we often joked about building a family compound centered on the property Dr. Evil’s parents own in southeast Ohio. Mostly, it was a comical reaction to public idiots such as antivaxers, III percenters, and Tea Partiers. Then came Trump.

But the line was not quite that straight. Dr. Evil’s folks—whom I suppose I’ll have to name, now that they are characters in this play—so we’ll call them what their grandkids call them: Safti and Zeyda—were among the back-to-the-landers who descended upon West Virginia in the late 60’s to early 70’s, hoping to . . . . well, if you want to know about that, just ask, and I’ll be happy to send lots of links to scholarly articles. Point being, West Virginia (and lots of other rural areas) became a refuge for many hoping to escape the pressures and ideologies of the Vietnam War era.

Safti and Zeyda landed in southeast Ohio when Safti accepted a position with a local university, and they built a house on a few acres in a sparsely populated county. They later added more acreage, and built a new house more suitable for their age. This was when Dr. Evil and I took over the small farm (the “tall house,” as opposed to the “flat house” in local parlance). Does two houses a compound make? Well, we have neither ramparts nor palisades surrounding us, and a county road bisects the property, so probably not technically.

The coronavirus has prompted a surge in survival instincts, however. We’re not hoarding toilet paper or anything (although we do have a whole case of brown bread, but that’s another story), but what we have done is start building what I’m calling Fort Bountiful. Zeyda has been a gardener for decades, and when we moved to this house, we took over his garden (the “hoop garden” because it was basically a quonset hut made of arcing livestock panels.

But we found that setup unworkable and gave it up after two seasons. We also planted an open garden, but it was decimated by hooved rats, aka: white tail deer.

Enter: Fort Bountiful. It will be a protected garden measuring about 50 feet by 32 feet, with tall posts all around, upon which will hang 8 1/2 feet of livestock panels. Seeds are on order and construction began yesterday.

I’ll keep you posted. Get it? Posted.