With Miko badly injured, the team pulls in their horns and focuses on agriculture and infrastructure for the nine days it’ll take that shattered elbow to heal.

Pettimore, Leks, and Magda throw themselves into the harvest. July’s bounty includes black and red currants, cherries, potatoes, and barley. The month’s total yield from all fields harvested is an impressive 6,100 rations of food. On rainy days when working the fields is impractical, the team supplements this with foraging and hunting.

The more mechanically-inclined team members get to work on infrastructure tasks. The drilling rig enables them to sink another well (actually, two, but the first one came up dry – literally). Minka gets her forge set up, and her trial efforts produce a couple of the boar spears that Pettimore had requested a while ago. The team also puts some effort into assembling a welding torch, though they still lack a supply of acetylene.

Arkadi was always a hobbyist mechanic and he’s familiar with Volgas. Against Zenobia’s recommendations, he puts a few shifts into patching tires and body panels and reconditioning other components that caught Leks’ wrath. With the Volga restored to driveable condition, the village’s entire vehicle fleet is repaired. A week-plus of no travel also sees the available fuel increase as both stills are in constant use, though they still have a ways to go before reaching their goal of full fuel tanks and a reserve.

Finally, there’s some discussion of long-term infrastructure improvements. Zenobia and Red both want to restore electrical power to the community. Minka has recently come into possession of a stack of technical documentation for the region’s electrical grid, and there seems to be a small hydroelectric generating facility about 30km downriver (east) of Ponikla…