Mother of the forest

It's very easy when in the presence of the forests veteran giants the venerable Oak and Beech to overlook the smaller trees of the forest. Take the Silver Birch (Betula pendula) here, a very common tree, often not that tall and short lived by tree terms, only lasting three score years and ten, or thereabouts. That's a mistake. For the Silver Birch is the mother of the forest and the bushcrafters' friend. The forest mother as it would've probably been the first tree to colonize this land when the ice sheet retreated, creating a beach head and nurturing environment for other trees to prosper; it's still common to see samplings of oak and beech planted amongst sampling birch, the former coming into their own as the later fades. The bushcrafters' friend as it and what grows on it offer a wide range of valuable bushcraft resources. It's a beautiful and understated tree.    

Whittle

It's amazing how one's eye can so often pick out what's not natural in the natural world. As we walked through the stands this morning a piece of wood or a stick about 10m away amongst the leaf litter caught my eye, ostensibly a piece of wood, though as I drew closer it was a whittled piece of wood. Turned out to be a half finished wooden spoon. Some one had been practising their bushcraft skills, they'd completed the basic blank, though not yet begun in the bowl. Definitely wasn't carved this year, could be a few years old in fact. Nice.

Covert ops

Whilst out walking in Brinken Wood this morning I came across something you shouldn't, clear signs of someone wild camping/having a fire.  It's something that frustrates me, folk leaving signs of their activity, it's just not the thing, it brings the rest of us on top. To their credit, not a single piece of rubbish, and the fire had been properly extinguished which suggests good practice, and maybe the visible remains were a result of a lack of bushcraft knowledge. It took me only five minutes to disperse the remains, camouflage the site and leave no trace that there had been a fire.  That's all it takes, and it makes all the difference. If people see the site of a fire they report it, the rangers or landowners check that area out more, and another wild camping opportunity is lost.  We wild camped a site on Dartmoor (on Dartmoor you can wild camp, though can't have a fire) up to 10 times a year for ten years before being rumbled by a ranger.  Even then we were only caught because we'd hung about too long in the morning.  The ranger told us that for years they'd regularly had reports of fires in the woodland beyond the river at night, although every time they went to investigate they could see or find no evidence, no trace of fire nor camp. That's how it should be.  He went on to commend us, before casually reminding us that fires were prohibited. Through good practice we'd got away with it. Even afterwards we continued to use the site, less though still regularly, and were never bothered again. The lack of bushcraft knowledge is a consequence of our culture in which increasingly folk aren't socialized to the outside and nature, nor are they encouraged to practice wild camping skills. To contrary, there are few areas where wild camping, and fewer still where wild camping with fires, is even permitted. Our countryside and wild places are all sown up, owned or controlled, with camping legislated against.  Lost to our detriment are the basic and fundamental survival skills of the ancestors.

Leafy den

Somebody has built a very tidy little 'leaf hut' or 'debris shelter' in Wilverley enclosure. A nice wedge shaped version of a standard a-frame shelter, solidly constructed with tightly woven sides, and about a 10 - 20 cm leaf litter covering. And, you know what...although the forest floor is wet, it is perfectly dry inside. It was clearly built before the recent wind and rain, as the area around the shelter where the leaf litter for the covering would have been gathered was deep in leaves again, accordingly the shelter looks very organic, as if poking up from the forest floor naturally. It just goes to show how effective a shelter you can construct from woodland debris, and how it blends with its surroundings, had it been a lower profile, it would have been easily overlooked at not too far a distance. Of course you can always improve, and you can never have too much covering on a shelter, the deeper the leaf litter the better.

And this is a .......?

Anybody have any idea what this is? Or, how it's used? I wonder how many do. I'm going to tell you what it is, it's the central ridge pole of a 'Bender', a Romany style of shelter/tent. Pairs of hazel or willow rods are dug into the ground a couple of meters apart, they're then bent over to join each other, and that's where the central ridge pole comes in, the ends of the rods being inserted into its corresponding holes. What you have, is an incredibly strong frame, which can be erected and dismantled with ease and speed. Tarps, or some such, are then laid over the frame and secured. A very effective shelter. What it's doing up here on the 'Hill', I have no idea.

Camouflage and concealment

Do you ever think about camouflage and concealment, or things like escape and evasion when you're out walking? No. It's just me then, isn't it. Today I was wondering how hard it would be to be spotted from above whist travelling beneath a summer canopy. A person must be near impossible to spot, don't you reckon?

Opportunity knocks

When opportunity knocks it's silly not to take it. Many bush-craft skills are reasonably easy to perform with practice, though as is the nature of practice, practice is usually done under the right conditions with all the resources prepared to hand. The thing is, nature's not really like that,  the conditions can vary wildly and resources may require sourcing and preparing. That's why I believe it's always worthwhile practicing in less favourable conditions. It took about 15 minutes to gather the resources I required; a good handful of last seasons bracken, dried off in my trouser pocket, a handful of papery Silver Birch bark, a handful of dry needles and a bundle of dead Silver Birch twigs graded into three groups. I found a sheltered spot in a closely planted juvenile conifer plantation on the edge of Burley Old, and through proper preparation and execution in under 5 minutes from putting my bag down the birch bark had caught a spark and I had a fire going. I was pleased, as the last couple of fires I'd tried were slow and laborious to get going due to complacency on my part, slack perpetration and general stupidity. It was nice to sit out in the snowy forest and get a little fire on the go. I have to say, it's a lot easier raising a fire snowy conditions than it is when it's wet, most of the materials are still quite dry.

Hooves

Cantering out of a mature Oak, a pair of hooves in the form of Hoof Fungus (Fomes fomentarius). Rattle your fingers on them and you can ever hear the horses clattering along. It's an inedible fungus, though has lots of uses, the main one being as a excellent tinder to catch a spark. Otzi the Iceman carried pieces of Hoof Fungus in his fire starting kit over 5000 years ago.

Practice makes .....

At this time of year, with the threat of harsh weather to come, my mind turns to bushcraft skills. If truth be told, my mind often turns to bushcraft usually prompted by some threatening government policy or disturbing news article, the consequences of which may find me having to survive in the woods, eating squirrels or similar and bark. Though today I kept with the basics, fire. Whilst walking I gathered the required materials (papery birch bark, bracken, graded kindling), and finding a suitable exposed gravel river bed prepared my fire. It didn't take too long to get a fire started, it shouldn't have, the conditions were good. A much harder feat when the elements are against you. It's always worth keeping that in mind.

Nettles

The nettles (Urtica dioica) are just starting come up. I've not seen enough for a meal yet (not without clear cutting which I don't like to do when plants are just starting out) although it wont be long. It struck me that frequently when I write about plants I'm taken by how many uses so many of them have and how nature provides us so much. Take the humble nettle here, the 'stinging nettle', enemy of the bare legged; an invasive, enemy of the gardener. Yet this common plant can not only provide nutritious food (and can be re-cropped several times in a season), it provides fibres for clothing, string and rope, a wool dye (yellow from the root and green/yellow from the leaves), as well as having medicinal properties. And people call it a 'weed'... silly people.

Gorse

I used to worry when I saw Gorse flowering in the winter, worried that it was a sign of impending climate doom. And, although the climate may be doomed, gorse flowering isn't a sign of it. Then I discovered that there are several species of subtly different Gorse, and that Gorse can be found in flower somewhere at any time of the year.  Gorse (Ulex) is a spiky evergreen shrub, very common across most British environments and is a useful plant in many ways. In harsh winters livestock will forage for Gorse, the forest ponies particularly enjoy the regrowth from forestry Gorse burning. Humans too can enjoy the flowers in salads, or as Hobbit and I used to do, make a very palatable white flower wine of it. Best picked for wine in Spring, when as the sun begins to warm the land the heady aroma of coconut created by the Gorse flowers fills the air. Beautiful. Just thinking about it reminds me of the joys of foraging and wine making, and drinking. If you've ever burnt Gorse you'll know it burns fast and fierce and in many regions it was utilized to heat bread ovens, being very sustainable and being invasive, easy to cultivate. It's wood is durable and weather resistant, and being tight grained and non toxic is good for spoon whittling.  All round a useful plant, although I'd imagine now much overlooked.  

The wrong way

There's a right way and a wrong way, this is most definitely the wrong way.  My heart always drops when I come across sights like this, as it reinforces the view that we can't allow wild camping in the forest (or elsewhere) because people can't be trusted. The truth is the majority of wild campers wouldn't leave a site like this and it's only caused by a lack of experience and education. If we were socialized from a young age as to how to camp, how to build a fire or shelter, how to clear up after ourselves, leave little, no trace and to respectfully cohabitate with nature, then things like this wouldn't happen. It's the most natural thing in the world to have the urge to camp and to live with nature, to experience that connection, after all it was our modus operandi for thousands of years. We know how to do it right.  We just need to remember. 

Earth stove

It's that time of year when my mind turns to bushcraft skills, in particular fire making and outdoor cooking.  To that end I decided to brew up whilst out today; and my lesson today was to be humility and the dangers of complacency and over confidence. As we walked I collected dry ferns, the outer papery bark of the Birch and thin dry twigs, this was going to be the basis of my tinder and kindling. At a suitable point (a spot by Red Rise Brook where I've traditionally practiced fire making) we stopped and I set about preparing. I'd decided to have a go a building a rocket style cooker directly into an earthen bank and so dug an L shaped hole; the horizontal hole was to be for fueling the fire and the vertical hole as a flue on top of which I'd place a metal peg as a cup/pan support.  Simple I thought. The structure completed I used a piece of bark on which to build my fire and to transport it to the fueling/fire hole. It didn't take me long to get a fire started and I was feeling rather pleased with myself, though my cockiness was a bit previous as keeping the fire going was a more difficult operation than I'd anticipated.  The problem I discovered was that the horizontal hole wasn't big enough to hold the fuel without almost being blocked and the vertical hole was, even with the cup support, almost smothered by the cup and consequently the fire was being starved of air flow. I had to remove the fire, make some adjustments and start again, and even then I had to keep blowing through to ensure the fires survival. All that said I did have a hot drink at the end of it and had had a healthy reminder of the dangers of over confidence.

Breakhrough

A young Birch Polypore (Piptoporus betulinus) breaks through the bark of a truncated Birch (Betula) trunk, the top half of which has long fallen and lies rotting nearby. The young white flesh of the polypore looks tasty although it's not supposed to be that good to eat as it's tough, rubbery and bitter making it inedible really, although, it's far from useless, with plenty of bushcraft applications. This young example may be soft and bit squidgy though as they age they become firmer and firmer. It maybe inedible but the Birch Polypore (Piptoporus betulinus) is a medicinal miracle with antiseptic, anti bacterial, anti viral, anti-inflammatory, anti parasitic and anti fungal properties, it can also strengthen the immune system and that's just the beginning as new medical application are continually being identified, such as anti tumour and cancer fighting properties. It's usually consumed medicinally as a beverage. It has external uses too, thin strips of fresh skin from the underside of juvenile examples can be used as an antiseptic, anti bacterial and anti-inflammatory plaster. And it's not medicinal properties. When dried it's useful as tinder as it can take a weak spark, it'll also smoulder for a long time which makes it ideal for transporting embers. Birch Polypore was found with the body of Ötzi (the 5000 year old prehistoric man found locked in the Alpine ice) as part of his fire kit, although the multipurpose nature of the ploypore means he could have been carrying it for another use or for several uses. The tough upper surface of the Birch Polypore has traditionally been cut into strips, stretched and used as a strop to sharpen blades.  As you can see from my small description the Birch Polypore (Piptoporus betulinus), just like its host tree, has a cornucopia of bushcraft applications. Check it out, it's certainly worth knowing.

How now not so brown cow

It's funny how conditioning works and how deep it goes. Even after all this time I'm still taken aback to come across cattle (Bos taurus) roaming and grazing the woodland. So ingrained are the images of cattle in neat fenced fields fed to us from our earliest days through the old Macdonald had a farm world view, that it's easy to forget the cattle were here before the farms or fences and they got on just fine. It wasn't until the Neolithic (relatively recently in human evolution) that cattle began being domesticated in this part of the world and they'd have been very different beast both in form and size.  These early cattle were domesticated Aurochs (Bos primigenius), the now extinct giant Ox. Although they've only recently been reintroduced to the forest woodlands, they were only absent for a relatively short time; up until the enclosing of the forest in the 18th century cattle roaming would have been a common sight, as attested to by tree management practices such as pollarding (like coppicing although done above 1.8m) which were banned after enclosure. Pollarding allowed the collection of withies (straight juvenile stems) for craft purposes and was done at afore mentioned height to protect them from cattle browsing, showing cattle were common place in the forest before timber production took over. I like seeing cattle or pigs in the forest it reminds me of what the forest would have once looked like. As I say, our conditioning must be strong when something looks out of place in its nature setting.

Lesser Burdock

You're seeing Lesser Burdock (Arctium minus) frequently at the moment in the hedgerows, sunken lanes and woodland fringes of the Chase. Their pinky purple flowers remind me of thistles. A valuable resource plant all parts are used for something and has both medicinal and culinary uses: Medicinally Burdock acts against bacteria and inflammation, is used to treat skin conditions, slows blood clotting, lowers blood sugars, reduces fluid retention, helps digestive disorders and that just scratches the surface.  The leaves are eaten raw or boiled as a vegetable through spring and early summer, whereas the root is collected in autumn and best peeled, julienned and boiled or stir fried. A valuable wild food resource, easy to identify and containing plenty of vitamins and minerals, including vitamins C, E and potassium. Now, have you ever tried to dig up a Burdock root? It's a proper bugger. The roots can be deep and well anchored, and in my experience found all too often in hard to dig soils.  A sturdy chisel ended pointy digging stick, metal tipped digging stick or spade are essential. I remember the first time we tried to collect roots, years ago over on the Purbeck coast, we tried just using sticks we found lying about and the whole exercise was arduous and lengthy.  Still, we learnt a lesson and I'm sure they tasted even nicer for the hard work employed in their retreaval. 

Nuts are forming

I noticed my first hazelnuts this afternoon, and you know what it's like, once you notice one you notice them all and it appeared that many of the trees were amply covered. The foragers friend, high in protein, carbohydrates and un-saturated fat, along with ample vitamins and minerals, hazelnuts make for an important wild food resource which stores easily and well; there's evidence of wide scale collection and processing of hazelnuts in our island since the Mesolithic and no doubt they'd have been utilized for a long time before. It'll be awhile yet before I'm out collecting, though it's nice to see them coming along.

Pignuts

The woodland fringes and meadow edges where covered with Pignuts (Conopodium majus) in flower today, once a favourite with children who'd dig for the sweet tuber or 'nut' which is similar to a sweet chestnut or hazelnut, it has all but been forgotten now as children find themselves increasingly disenfranchised from their natural world and from playing outdoors. The nut can be quite hard to recover as it's located at the end of a fragile and twisting root, though when a fair sized example is recovered it's well worth the effort and makes for a tasty treat; care needs to be taken when chasing the nut, the stem as mentioned can twist and the nut may not be where you think it is and if you break the stem you efforts may end in failure. I'm always cautious of members of the Umbelliferae family as it contains some poisonous members and you can easily misidentify which is which, although only the Pignut forms a tuber of this sort. The photo above shows all the parts of the plant; their white umbel  flower, their much divided leaves, the developing seeds, the long winding root and tuber. These nuts have always been a collected food source, being identified from prehistoric contexts Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age; their continuation in folk tradition up until recent times is testament to their value as a food source. 

Elderflower

The Elders are just beginning to come into flower, their Pungent aroma filling the evening air, the hedgerows and the woodland fringes. Such a versatile plant, Elder (Sambucus nigra) is a valued deciduous shrub and like so many much neglected today; the flowers are used to flavour teas, cordials and wine, you can also fry them in batter, whilst their berries* can be used for jam and wine. Various parts of the tree have been used in traditional herbal remedies for colds, coughs, respiratory infections and fevers. I must get some yeast and make a demijohn of wine this season. 

* It's been suggested that the berries can be mildly poisonous when unripe.

Hawthorn blooms

The Common Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) is one of our most beautiful shrubs and also a valued plant; it's blossom, synonymous with the arrival of the May Queen, signifies the beginning of the growing season and nature fecundity; it's flowers, it's leafs, both edible when young; later it's berries are edible too, used to make jams, jellies, wines and syrups as well as that it's known to contain beneficial medical constituents and a is valued wood for small woodworking projects.