Coming soon - SURVIVAL 5

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..

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?

Eowyn and the fall of the Ents

 I meant to put this post up a few weeks back but it slipped my mind and I only remembered after our recent visit to our permission.

Storm Eowyn did some serious damage to the forest and brought down quite a number of trees, the scary thing was, 3 fell right over one of my favourite camping spots. I had often heard the trees knock against each other in high winds and it was always in the back of my mind that one could come down on me, I'm very glad I wasn't there when the storm hit...

And the donimo effect, this beech toppled taking an oak and a sycamore with it, not all trees get hung up when they fall, I will have to be incredibly careful when camping there again, the trees are all so shallow rooted there's no telling when they'll drop. Be safe out there folks!

The beauty of new life

 It's awe inspiring to see all of creation start to come to life at this time of year, the colours and scents of the plants are wonderful and they fill my heart with the wonder of creation. How anyone can look at nature and say it is all a random process that happened by chance is totally beyond me, they must be willfully suppressing the truth. Here are a few pics I took while we were out today, I hope you too can see the Handiwork of God in them..

Willow

Hazel

Blackthorn

Salmonberry 

Wild Garlic

Colossians 3 v10

Put on your new nature and be renewed as you learn to know your creator and become like him.

                             

From Billhook to Big knife.

 In the temperate environment I live in an axe is of less value than a large knife. I don't often have a need to cut down a tree but I regularly need to cut back on brambles, bracken, salmonberry canes, scrub willow, gorse bushes and the like. This cannot be done with an axe, so a big knife [the Sami call it a Leuku] is a much more effective tool to have around.

I did recently buy a couple of cheap billhooks and thought they'd be good for modifying into Big knives.

As you can see they are rather rough and ready but for a tool that will be heavily used in the woods I don't need anything expensive, just effective.

The handle was in particularly bad shape and needed quite a bit of work. So out came the angler grinder, a series of files, sandpaper and linseed oil and after a little bit of profiling I ended up with these

The steel is decent and the edge easily maintained with a chainsaw file, they work well on thick brush and can take limbs and saplings up to about 4 inches down with ease. So for those who often ask what the best tool is for our native environment any big knife similar to those above will be your best bet.