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[alt_poppy]

Alice,

I'm not going to be back this evening. No need for concern. Simply following up on things and enjoying the chance to be out and about in Spring. I've just had quite an interesting appointment with a collection of dodgy individuals at a disused tin mine on Bodmin moor. (From Albus' list; did not disappoint.)

Am on my way now to Merrymeet beyond Liskeard. Felton Parish has invited me to a listening party this evening at the Waymark Inn: he tells me they're collecting quite a crowd that are completely taken with 'The Tuckers'.

(Do tell Ms Morgenstern that she has a burgeoning audience. Parish says it reminds them of a programme from back in the days when a bit of jiggering would get the BBC to come in over the wireless. And they're all on edge whether Tertius Apsted will let his daughter continue seeing young Bran Jones, so I hope we get a bit of progress on that front tonight!)

More farmers in this lot. Parish thinks they're ready to consider new possibilities. Even risky ones.

Which brings me to my report: I'd an excellent visit with Walter Legman out in Torpoint. He's continuing to push me on whether we couldn't Fidelius the lot of them. It's fourteen significant farms in his collective, all of them ready to put in with us if we can protect them and supply them once they're under the enchantment. They know the financial end can't work as they're accustomed, but they've had nothing but falling prices for years now, and they have a vision for being the ones that survive into the 'new era'. That's how Legman put it to me, and he was quite clearly being literal about surviving.

So. May I offer him terms?

Comments

[alt_alice]

Good. Very good work.

We'll need to outline what such support might entail, to make certain it's an agreement we can maintain to the benefit of both parties, but it's a very good move all round, I think. We ought to be able to fold them into the black market and back-door end of the food and barter network we've been growing, and offer a sustainable (if not necessarily enormously profitable) alternative.

We might also tap them for storage and stockpiling as well, depending on space considerations.

[alt_poppy]

As for added possibilities: Torpoint is just on the water across from Plymouth. It's been a ferry point for hundreds of years. And a smugglers' haven. Both of them are.

And as we've said from the outset, it's a key location for us given that it's just across the inlet from Saltash.

For the rest of you: that's why they were eager to talk to us initially. They're all very much aware of what happened at Saltash and they've got ties to the people who were interned there in addition to having done business supplying the camp. Legman and his family have been farming at Torpoint for generations, but most of the other farms were owned by Muggles until they were forced into Saltash camp. The farms were taken over by wizards, obviously, most of them related to Legman one way or another, but they've basically been hiring the farmers back out of the camps all along, and they'd worked out a collective that kept the original owners as parties of the agreement with a secret, but explicit promise that if the Protectorate ever ends, they'll all share ownership, Muggle and Wizard alike. Sadly, they lost a lot of folks to the uprising at Saltash, and it was because they wanted information about people there that brought us together at first.

They're a good fit for us for all those reasons. If we're able to Fidelius on the scale required.

[alt_sirius]

I'm sure that if we plan it out properly, we can manage it.

[alt_poppy]

There's certainly demand for it if we can manage it. I could find us half a dozen new properties a week to Fidelius, and many of them would pay a pretty sum for the service.