Grace had sent out for celebration food for the occasion - we were having sausages with roasted new potatoes, beans and of course, sweet corn. Everyone ate together; we had visitors, residents and staff all breaking bread together. The guards were rotated halfway through supper and the only people not invited to join were those currently being punished resident or servant alike. They were still fed of course but they were ejected from the group meals for a period of time.

The residents were present on a good behavior status: of the five we currently had, four of them came in with an alcohol problem on top of any medical issues or handicaps they had. In some ways the Marine House functioned as a drunk farm; they got room and board with a small stipend as long as they stayed sober and did their assigned work. The better they behaved, the better assignments they got. Obviously the field work was the worst. One step above it was mucking out the barns and cleaning the outhouses; while those jobs stunk you were out of the weather for the most part. Sentry duty was the best, you worked the same hours but under much better conditions.

That covered the basics of how Marine House worked. The barracks were under construction and looked to be nearing completion. The design featured a general area for eating and otherwise hanging out in half of the first floor, the other half of that floor was an open squad bay with no privacy. The second floor was all tiny dorm rooms with just enough room for a bed and a small writing desk, better than they ever had when they were serving. The second floor meant you had your drinking under control and were acting like a sane person again.

Most of the food consumed here was grown here: Grace had picked up the farm next door for a song after it had been devastated by the tornado and was slowly expanding operations onto that property. In the long term Marine House was going to be self-sufficient from creation to consumption. That was my goal for all these projects, the restaurants and bars included. We wanted to take our offerings through the entire life-cycle ourselves, the less we had to rely on outside providers the less money we had to give up to middlemen. We wanted to be a provider of products and services, not a consumer of such.

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After supper I retired to the study for a nice bourbon and some conversation with Grace; she was good company and still very easy on the eyes. The conversation was nice and my belly was full, so it wasn’t long before the sun was going down and I was headed off to clean up and go to bed.

I wasn’t at all surprised when a soft warm body slid into my bed that night, I wasn’t going to kick her out but it sure looked like I’d use up another condom from my diminishing supply. Just another example of time twitchers' well worn lament of ‘If only I had known.’

The sex was good though, a nice mixture of tenderness and energy. The snuggles after were amazing also. I slept well that night, a very relaxed and calm sleep.

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Breakfast was pretty good the next morning. It was obvious that Grace’s cook had spent some time down with Rachel Byrne to actually learn the skill. Hell, she even learned a few things about herbs and spices and thankfully the toast wasn’t burnt again. I didn’t see any talent or creativity in the food that came out but it did finally rise to slightly above the edibility line. Nobody likes to sit in a fine dining room and eat crap food. The service demeanor needed some serious work, though. I figured Clara and Peter could help us improve that across the board because they had grown up as minor aristocracy and were used to having servants around. The majority of people around me these days had never dined in a restaurant in their entire lives let alone had a servant wait on them.

The coffee was an entirely different story and that was definitely a product we had to buy - growing it was impossible. Hopefully we’d be able to get some quality coffee in bulk down in New Orleans; in the meantime we’d simply limp along with whatever we could find in St. Louis or Memphis.

After another quick tour of the grounds, Amos and I left for Byrne’s. I was scheduled to get a tour of the Brewery and Distillery today as well as to take a quick pass through the warehouses. We stopped by Byrne’s for a cup of coffee and more food for Amos; teenagers always seem to be ravenous. After a decent cup the three of us mounted up and he led us over to the brewery/distillery.

There really wasn’t too much to see if you’ve ever been to a brewery before and the only real difference from most modern craft brewers was that they made their own yeast. The kettles were large enough that they could brew one full sized barrel at a time and they were managing to put up four barrels a day on a good day. I had never seen sparging before since most home brewers in the modern age simply bought malt extract.

The still setup was very basic as well; it also could produce a barrel per batch - it simply took longer. To sterilize all the equipment they used vinegar to scrub and steam to sterilize. The sterilization station was pretty clever and I was impressed. John pointed out that cleanliness was the most important step if you wanted a tasty and consistent process.

It was brutally hot in that building and fairly smoky with all of the fires burning, I’m sure it would be a nice place to work in the winter though. We currently had three employees and two apprentices at work and a quick look at the books later showed a substantial cash burn on ingredients, barrels and fuel while we got the thing up and running. John was excited to hear that I had hops and the various grains growing because that would do wonders for the ledger.

That cash burn would turn into cash flow very quickly though as we started shipping the results.