How Great Thou Art

 

 

I cannot fathom how someone can spend time in creation and not see the hand of the creator, it is always there in the visible and invisible. 

And although this world grows evermore dim and darkness encroaches, we can still see the works of the savior in the nature around us. We need not fear that which opposes us, we just need to see that Christ has dominion over all and all will be done according to his will. When I stand in the midst of his creation the only words that echo through my mind are "How great thou art".

If you have not asked Christ to be your saviour, now is the time. 

Can the Kephart fillet a fish?

 So I'm still using this new kephart knife and my interest in it has not worn off, I've put it through it's paces on a number of tasks and it has performed perfectly on them all. However, there is one task a lot of bushcraft knives fail on and that's filleting a fish, so can it do that?, pics below....

How about that? Absolutely no problem at all, it seems old uncle Horace knew what he was doing after all..my impressions of this knife just keep getting better.

How to make Sumac lemonade

 We were fortunate to find some sumac horns recently while out on a forage and I thought I'd show you guys a very simple way to make sumac lemonade 

First, pick a couple of nice ripe sumac pods, make sure it's not poison sumac!

Put them in a pot and slowly bring up to a very low simmer

As soon  as it starts to simmer take it off the heat and let the pods sit in the pan for 24 hours, then strain.

After pouring through a muslin cloth, squeeze the berries to extract any remaining juice

Add a little sugar syrup if its too tart, chill in the fridge and enjoy, this is a really delicious drink somewhere of a cross between lemon and buckthorn.. 

Quick cooking tripod

 This is a very quick to make and disposable tripod to use with a pot or pan. No need to suspend it from a large tripod just cut three green sticks, hammer them into the ground, put your pan on top and place your fire between them. Of course they will eventually burn through but there's usually about 45mins to an hour of potential use before they do that and that's plenty of time to cook your food.

Scots Lovage - Ligusticum scoticum

 This is a plant of northern regions of Europe, quite rare here except for the most extreme points of the island. Its a member of the carrot family and is said to be quite edible and platable..

Only...its not, its supposed to taste like parsley or celery only...it doesn't,  its rank, one of the worst tasting plants I've ever eaten, even worse than scurvy grass. Now it might be better cooked but I wasn't going to try it after the offensiveness of the raw plant. However I'm glad we found it, as I say quite rare in Ireland but I'll not be adding it to my list of culinary foraged delights. 

Captivated by a Kephart

 It's a very very rare thing these days that I'm ever captivated by a new knife, I've seen them all a hundred times before, and as the good book says, there's nothing new under the sun.

However I've recently acquired a knife that has completely captivated me, it's a new take on an old model, the kephart.

It's in DC53 steel, linen micarta handle and a coyote colour kydex sheath and it has completely blown me away.

It is weighty, fills the hand, beautiful fit and finish and a joy to use. Unlike most modern bushcraft knives it's not a scandi, it's a full flat grind and it just looks and feels right.

Now it may not do every task perfectly but it does most of them well, the universal perfect all rounder may never exist but this beauty is close.

It even feathers beautifully, I'm going to put it through it's paces over the next few months and see just how versatile it is, for the time being, it's my new favourite.

Ore Smelting in the Antrim Hills

 We had an absolutely cracking day up in the Antrim hills smelting ore into iron in a primitive clay furnace, I had never seen it done this way before except in YouTube videos, so this was a completely new experience for me.. I'm not even going to say anything about the day, you will gauge how fantastic it was from the pictures alone!! Enjoy..