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..

Rainbows on a Midgit Digit

 I love old lures, well I love lures in general but the older ones tend to get neglected for all the modern fancy ones we use. 

So I presented myself with a challenge, I had to use a lure that was at least 50 years old on my recent fishing escapade, no modern lures allowed!

It actually took a while to cycle through some lazy ikes, creek chub pikies and river runts until I found one that worked, the good old midget digit, first made in 1948 and last production run was 1974..

This little baby did the job and cleaned up for me!

But now comes the messy part, 

 

Quite a bit of work to clean them all out, but we now have plenty of fish for smoking, brining and whatever else we might need it for in the months to come.

Making Hazel withies

 At this time of year, young fresh growth of certain trees like willow and Hazel can be made into a rough, tough form of cordage or binding material called withies.

To make these, hold the end of the young branch in both hands and twist in opposite directions, this starts the internal fibres breaking, 

As you work along the stem start twisting it in a cranking motion almost like you are peddling a bike with your hands, the bark may start to break off at this stage but that doesn't matter

Once it gets too hard to crank anymore cut it from the tree and put it to its intended use, either fence making, shelter building or basket handles, if you've done it correctly you should even be able to tie the branch in a knot!

Get out and practise those skills!!

Buzzard Bushcraft in the top 25 again.

 It's that time of year when Feedspot list their top 25 Bushcraft Blogs and Buzzard is very pleased to announce that we again made it into that list, as a matter of fact we came in at number 6! 

Considering we are up against some of the best Blogs in the UK we are incredibly proud of this achievement.

So a very many thanks to Feedspot and to everyone who voted for us, we greatly appreciate it.

Getting to know your greens

 At this time of year all the lovely greens are sprouting, but the issue can be that if they all come up at the same time they can be tricky to distinguish from one another when they are young.

So here's a test for you, 3 new leaves, 3 different plants, ground ivy, herb Bennett and lesser celandine.. but which one is which?