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there was an exceptionally mild one. They still had plenty of masonry blocks and bricks, and Millie and Jasper decided to expand their outdoor garden beyond the confines of the garden plot. Jasper built raised growing beds using some of the block and bricks, incorporating gravity feed deep soil irrigation pipes in the beds using the pipe that he hadn’t sold to finance the labor on the salvage job.
    With the new raised beds and the greenhouse, the regular garden could be used for space intensive plants like corn and potatoes, both of which the two of them loved and wanted. They were able to increase the useable space by planting the various melons they liked at the back of the garden, along the fence, and train the vines up the fence on rails that Jasper had attached for that purpose. Jasper used some of that year’s load of manure from Alvin to sweeten the raised beds for the following year.
    Some of the blocks were used to make a four bay mulching assembly, making it easy to turn the mulch when needed. It would eventually be used on the raised beds and in the greenhouse, with the yearly manure delivery going to the regular garden.
    Christmas that year found the family a soon to be real family. Millie was two months pregnant. They’d always planned on children, and tried, but had never been blessed until that fall. Both were ecstatic, despite the realization that a baby meant a lot more expenses in their lives. They adjusted their plans accordingly.
    The only major expense they allowed themselves, besides preparations for the baby, was the concrete for the roof of the shelter. It was poured the first good day that spring and allowed to cure properly before Jasper rented the high lift, long reach forklift to lift the large box he built and filled with earth up and down so he could spread the fill material on the roof, inside the outer, extended block wall of the shelter.
    Jasper had laid down drain lines around the perimeter of the roof and covered the entire roof with plastic sheet before he filled the area in. One of the changes he’d made to the shelter design had been to build stairs up one side of it so they could use the dirt covered roof of the shelter for additional garden space. That would come later.
    For the moment, Jasper replaced the sod he’d cut before starting the process and stored, keeping it damp year round. It hadn’t fared well, and it took the entire amount to piece out the roof of the shelter with good sod.
    The next low cost project Jasper started was to lay down another brick floor on the raised section of the property next to shelter on the side facing the garden. Using a combination of block, brick, lumber and salvaged sheet metal he’d made a deal for the previous summer, Jasper built a new yard shed over that winter between Christmas and spring, when he wasn’t otherwise engaged. The material from the old shed was incorporated into the new, the contents of the small building stored in the shelter temporarily.
    He built a less elaborate shed on the north side of the shelter and began stacking the firewood he got every year helping Alvin in it on the brick floor. The final additions to the outside of the shelter were worm beds with rabbit hutches built over them, under the stairs that went up to the roof of the shelter. The area could be fully enclosed if the temperature got too cold for the rabbits and heated with a tiny sheepherders stove that Jasper built out of scrap steel.
    Millie lost the baby in the second trimester and she and Jasper mourned the loss, and then carefully packed away all the baby things they’d already accumulated and put them in the shelter. Millie had been advised not to let herself get pregnant for at least two years.
    Perhaps because of the loss of the baby, Millie eagerly took on the responsibility of the rabbits they had been planning on raising for their own use and to supplement their income. Jasper managed the fish in the two stock tanks in the greenhouse,