Vinegar of the Four Thieves

This is an old and mysterious recipe said to have been developed by 4 thieves in France during the time of the Black death enabling them to steal from the victims of the plague without catching it themselves.

 Recipes have changed over the years and no one knows for sure the original one, but what the vinegar does do is act as a insect repellent a disinfectant and an antiseptic, It's a very handy mixture to have around.

My recipe is as follows

a handful of plantain

a handful of selfheal

a handful of meadowsweet

a handful of yarrow

( and not pictured)

a handful of rosemary

a handful of watermint

mix all the ingredients in a large jar of white wine vinegar and leave for 3 months, then strain and use... it's a very effective solution for cleaning, healing and disinfecting.

Where did it all start for me?

When I meet people on various occasions I'm often asked where did I get my knowledge or how did I become interested in this type of life, well for me the answer is easy, its always been a part of me and it started long before I ever realised what foraging or bushcraft or primitive living ever was.

You see being born in Belfast when the 'troubles' were bad my family wanted a way to keep us all safe and away from harm, so my grandfather (whom we all called Nanger) bought a Nissen hut along the coast in rural County Down, and that is where quite a few of our extended family spent our formative years.

This is a Nissen hut, developed by George Nissen from Norway..(pic taken from Nissens.co.uk).

It's a corrugated iron structure with wooden panelling and was originally used to Billet soldiers during the war.

We called it home.

Now pictures from this time of my life are scarce but there are a few..

This is a picture of my grandmother with me in the pram, (shows you just how young I was when this all started) and you can just make out the Nissen huts behind her.. the blue one on the left was ours..

this is a detail taken from a photo more than 40 years old (my cousins pictured) showing the huts in the background..

Life in these huts was strange, there was no electricity and no running water, that came from a pump at the top of the field that was shared by a number of families.. the loo was outdoors at the bottom of the garden. As I mentioned before the hut was made of sheets of corrugated iron, it was heated by a coal or wood fired range and lit by tilley lamps and it had to be tarred on the outside every year to keep it waterproof and stop it from rusting through, there where 4 double beds and 6 bunks inside all sectioned off, so it could hold a lot of people.. we lived this way for years and years.. as a matter of fact we only had to sell the hut about 20 years ago as the owner of the land wanted it to build houses on.

We foraged on the seashore for crabs, seaweed and whelks ( we called them willeeks) and the hedgerows for wild apples,berries. nuts and fruit which my grandmother would have used for jam, apple cakes and other sundries.. I often could be found on the edge of farmers fields digging up the remnants of potatoes left by the farmer, they were then taken home to thicken out a huge pot of what my uncle Freddy called see-through stew, usually made with a tin of corned beef and used to feed 14 people, supplemented with big thick lumps of homemade soda bread smothered in butter... !

On a friday evening we would all head round to the local harbour to watch the fishing boats coming in and see them unload and sell their catch, any thing left in the boxes after that we were allowed to take home, usually gurnard, lemon sole and prawns !! the food was simple but we ate well.. (and I won't mention the seagull soup !!).

Great memories of a time that I took for granted but that sowed the seeds of what I would become afterwards, wild places, wild food and simple living.. you really don't need much to be happy,

This year's wreath

A very happy Christmas to all buzzard bushcrafters and we hope you all have a very healthy and bushcrafty new year

Tramontina Bolo Mod

I recently got a couple of tramontina machetes, these are brilliant for light bush work and basic shelter building, if I need to cut anything thicker than about 3 inches I revert to an axe but these days I rarely need to build primitive shelters so for the likes of framework for benders or tripods etc I can get away with poles less than 2 inches thick and the machete deals with these admirably.

However there are times when I need something even a little smaller than a machete, and if I don't have my Leuku with me I tend to revert to a modified machete..

I started by marking out the shape of the mod and how much I want to take off the machete

then got to work with a dremel and cutting wheel to cut the machete to shape

the tramontina is quite thin, about 2mm thick so it doesn't take long to cut through 

I then finish the edge, sand down the handle and wipe with linseed oil then drill a lanyard hole.

Here you can see the original tramontina bolo with the modified version above, I guess it looks more like a parang now but has nowhere near the thickness that a parang has, it's a cross between the two so I suppose it's a Marang !

It's very light indeed, you can swing it all day and it cuts way above it's weight, the blade now being about 11 inches rather than 14 is now more day-packable too.. and for the price these cost theres no reason not to have 4 or 5 of them !!

Hultafors HY20 axe Disappointment.

We all know Hultafors produce some decent knives, they're rough, ready and cheap, though often poorly finished with uneven grinds and in need of a touch up. However I've heared good things about their axes so I decided to take the plunge and went for the HY20, probably similar in size to the GB Scandinavian forest axe. It arrived in good time from the superb service of Heinnies and I took it out of the box for a quick look over.

First thing I noticed was the poor finish on the head, it had been badly ground to shape leaving seriously large grind marks and a very uneven edge profile

Looking closer at the edge showed a massive burr that had been left on with no signs of it having been taken to a finished edge, even the burr was uneven proving the grind was anything but neat.

The face of the axe has been covered in a silver lacquer and I always thought this was the natural steel colour but obviously not, I tend to believe that a paint job on a hand made item is there to hide something and not to embellish it.

next disappointment was the profile of the edge, the heel of the head has been seriously ground away leaving a very distorted looking profile, not that it is unusable but just disappointing for what is supposed to be a handmade item, it doesn't look like the craftsman has put much care and consideration into the product.

Here you can see just how much of the heel has been ground away and also the grind marks left during manufacture.

Now all these niggles do not render the axe unusable just maybe a little disappointing. I've often heard that Hults Bruks is good competition for Gransfors Bruks but after seeing this tool in the flesh I'd have to disagree.

For the price it's a decent enough tool and will do what it's supposed to but if you want quality in fit and finish you'll need to spend more than twice the price of this axe for a Gransfors, is it worth it? Well only you can decide that.

Himalayan Balsam Snack

I don't like invasive species of plants particularly ones that tend to take over, I have little time for them unless they are particularly useful, like bamboo, but generally they are anathema to me.

One that I really dislike is Himalayan Balsam, it grows everwhere even through the cracks in the pavement, but we can get our own back in a small way.. eat the seeds.

The seed pods of these plants pop, scattering the seeds over a fair distance so you have to be careful harvesting the seeds, not to shake the bush and thus help it propagate. Gently cup your hands round the pods and gently squeeze, when the pods are ripe they will pop in your hand

you can see here the tear drop shaped pods and the curls after they have popped to disperse their seeds

It doesn't take long to gather a handful and they are very tasty indeed and make a great wild food snack and they taste a little like pumpkin seeds. It's a good way to get your own back on this plant and get some wild food at the same time.

Fire with Spruce Resin Candles.

In coniferous forests it can be hard to find tinder but it shouldn't be hard to light a fire.

 

Find a tree with lots of readily available resin

get a few dry sticks and rub them in the resin to form a coating at one end, a spruce candle.

 

 

if you can add more resin do that, and align the sticks so that the resin is all in the center

 

scrape your ferro rod gently and gather a pile of the scrapings in the middle of the resin, once you've got a decent pile strike the rod onto the pile to ignite the scrapings

 

 

it may take one or two goes but once you get experienced at it you can do it first time most of the time.

 

once the resin is burning well you can move the sticks around like little candles or pile them in an area where you intend to have your fire and just add the kindling.