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Most of the food for the meal was from their garden and Jasper’s hunting trips. Things were even relatively peaceful and there were no major weather problems or natural disasters to worry them.
    That changed before Christmas. Southeast Missouri suffered the worst blizzard and ice storm on record just before Christmas. The area shut down for four days. Jasper’s truck was one of the few vehicles capable of traveling through the mix of snow and ice. He chained up all four wheels before the storm hit and with the Minister riding shotgun, delivered food and water to trapped parishioners of their church. They wrapped several of them in blankets and took them back to the church for the duration.
    Jasper had shut off the water to the trailer and drained the lines to keep them from freezing underneath. He then took Millie in to the church to help out, as well as be safe and warm. He wasn’t too worried about the trailer. Their underground propane tank was half full and the furnace in the trailer didn’t require electricity to operate. He turned down the thermostat to its lowest setting to keep things in the trailer from freezing, and still not use up too much propane.
    Jasper didn’t limit his help to his own church members. The county Sheriff’s deputies asked his help to get to some outlaying citizens of the county to again deliver food and water, and to bring people in to shelters that didn’t have heat for whatever reason.
    When the worst of the situation was over Jasper was able to make quite a bit of extra cash using the truck with the snowplow he’d built for it. He bought a commercial dispenser for the bed of the truck to spread ice control material on parking lots after he’d scraped them with the blade. Even with the cost of the spreader he came out well ahead.
    He was still going after most of the city and county vehicles shut down for lack of fuel. Between the loss of power and lack of deliveries to those stations with generators, there was simply no fuel to be had until the main roads cleared and the trucks could run again. Jasper’s one hundred gallon plus capacity kept him going.
    They shivered for a while, until the temperate rose after Jasper turned the thermostat back up when he took Millie back home. They looked the place over and there were no signs of any damage from the wind and cold.
    Jasper and Millie had a quiet Christmas at home, exchanging only small gifts. They were trying to avoid the commercialism of Christmas and get back more to the religious holiday it was supposed to be. They did gladly accept the Christmas bonus the company gave all the employees, including the watchmen.
    The New Year holiday came and went. With it came a small increase in salary for both Jasper and Millie. Millie was getting a few cents more an hour for her alternate Saturdays, and Sara offered her Wednesdays as well. She gladly took it. They were doing okay, but every penny helped. There was no way to substitute anything for the concrete that was going to be needed for the shelter and Jasper hadn’t found a way to trade for it. They would have to pay for it out of pocket and it wasn’t going to be cheap.
    Besides getting the garden in that spring, Jasper began on the shelter. He used the rototiller to loosen the soil he’d so carefully tamped down the previous summer and dug the footing by hand. Jasper had hoped to get rebar from the building he’d salvaged, but that had not worked at all. But the steel shop in town needed some extra help for a month that spring and Jasper took rebar in pay.
    When he had the footings dug and the reinforcement in place for the monolithic floor and footing pour, Jasper and Millie tightened their belts and Jasper called the concrete company. It took all the spare cash they had at the moment to get the concrete required for the footings and floor of the shelter. But finally the concrete was in and curing. Jasper kept a close eye on it and kept the fabric spread over the fresh pour damp