Winter Trek

Because everyone loves pictures here's some pictures. These are from a lovely day when Dano and I went out to identify as many trees as we could. Not the easiest job in winter. He'd just bought a book on the subject because sadly we never grew up learning to recognize and love trees. We found 12 different varieties of tree. Maples, birches, poplars, spruces, pines, tamarack and more. Lots of amazing beings to keep us company.

And what healthy breathing! Crisp, clean winter air and a healthy, if young (because we cut down all the trees, everywhere) forest.

The pine pictured below was just massive.

Buckskin Reflections

So, in typical fashion, what I began in the middle of the summer now nears its end with the arrival of the solstice. Thanks to the guidance of a patient and good friend, this summer I started tanning my first deer hide. Now having softened the hide last week, I just need to smoke it and it's finished.


When I started I really didn't know what to expect. Would I be able to work a dead animal's skin after years of veganism? Would the smell repulse me much like parmesan cheese? Would I be covered in blood? Would my clothes be ruined?

I benefited from the fact that I didn't have to kill and skin the deer. I'm probably not ready for that yet, though I'm psyching myself up for it. I should probably take some responsibility for killing the animal. Though there are so many wasted hides that hunters leave behind you almost don't have to.

I don't actually remember all the steps in great detail but I'm going to do my best from memory. My first job was to scrape off the remaining flesh from the hide. When any animal is skinned there are pieces of muscle left behind. Naturally you don't want this on your finished hide. It didn't take me that long to do. I was also fortunate to be dealing with a younger deer so I didn't have much surface area to deal with. Some mature male deer are monsters. Start small.

Then the hide was submerged in a solution of water and lye which helps to dissolve a couple of layers of skin on the hair side of the animal. It's left there for a few days including time in a water barrel to neutralize the solution.

I returned to scrape off the grain and hair from the outside of the hide. It came off really easily without much effort. At the time I was a little disappointed to lose the hair. Isn't that the whole point of wearing animal skins, to benefit from their evolutionary success and our evolutionary denial? I later found out that you can leave the hair on and its wonderful insulating properties. It just takes a slightly different process. I'm probably going to work on a rabbit skin next and save the hair.

The next step was to treat the hide with an acidic solution to break down the last layer of skin before focusing on the buckskin. It didn't take long and then I had to scrape off the membrane. At that point, conveniently I could stop and store the hide dried out. There it sat patiently for me to return.

To finish the job I had to purchase a dozen eggs to dress the hide. Essentially you are introducing oil to the hide which opens up the fibres in the skin. You can also use soap and oil or brains. Brains is the dressing of choice of most of my friends. I was glad for the eggs because I'm not up for squishing brains between my fingers just yet. Though I am amazed by the fact that the deer contains all the parts necessary to make buckskin from brains to skin to bones for scraping. It's actually perfect.

Essentially you dunk your hide and let the egg solution penetrate every inch of the hide. You can leave it overnight then take it out and wring it out, catching all the eggs back into the bucket. The wringing is an effort. I was wimpy though, imagine if I'd had a large buck instead. But there's no way that you can tear the buckskin. Amazing. Then you redress the hide and repeat.

The next step took just over a half day and really blew me away. You have this sopping wet hide and you turn it into a chamois. All you have to do is stretch it with your hands and keep the fibres moving so they can't set as the hide dries. If they are moving then they become soft and smooth. So I was stretching it apart with my hands, pulling it over my knees and using random pieces of furniture to keep it moving. We also put up a cable to buff the edges of the skin. Very useful tool.

I had my doubts that it would work but in the end I was left with a beautifully soft buckskin. I think I'm going to make some moccasins out of it. The other day I was on the Internet and I noticed an ad for boots and I scoffed that in time I could make that.

But seriously, it's not as hard as we might think. Once you actually do something you take your power back. You don't need to rely on a destructive system to provide all the things you need. That's the operative word, “need”. The system tells us that we can and should only do one or two things and that we should trade those things for little pieces of paper that we can then trade for all the things (food, clothing, shelter) that we need. Why not just make those things ourselves? We are amazing. It's time we recognized it.

And my new buckskin moccasins will last almost forever. That's quality, unlike the crap that we get from China that falls apart when it gets wet. And if I don't need them anymore, I just have to throw them in the forest and they will be gone in no time. No pollution along the whole process, no out of sight out of mind. Composted to become deer food.

Long term I want to tan a hide with the hair on to use as a blanket. There's apparently someone nearby who raises buffalo. That would be cozy.

Sorry if I missed any of the intricacies of tanning buckskin. I'll keep learning and one day this will be second nature.

Waste Not . . .

Before I left Hamilton, I wanted to organize a talk simply entitled: Shit. A night where people could begin to learn about their "waste" in a realistic and thoughtful environment. We usually think of it in fear and disgust. For the night I even had a few speakers lined up because more and more people are realizing that their "waste" is actually more valuable than they have been taught. It's in fact, something not to be afraid of but part of the natural process of decay and rebirth.

I chose Shit because it's a word that we use all the time but never think about. It's a curse, literally, and the product from which it draws its name is equally undesirable. So we perch on porcelain thrones and deposit it into the very same drinking water that comes out of our taps. We drink it and brush our teeth with it. Does that make sense?

Regardless, it must be removed as quickly as possible, lest it poison us and our community. It is the embodiment of our evil, full of bacteria and viruses, and every time we expel it, it reminds us, tragically for the civilized, that we are no different from any other animal on this earth. We must deny this at all costs.

How many times have you needed to purchase composted manure for your garden? Why pay anything at all? There's a perfectly useful large mammal under your skin. You don't even have to drive to the store. Despite our desire to dump it into bodies of water or burn it or bleach it, shit was made to be composted.

And it's not that hard to do. First you need a three bin composting centre. Just hammer together seven skids which are open at the front and top. Fill the middle section with hay or dried leaves or straw.

The next step is to construct a composting toilet. Not one of those thousand dollar models you seen in "green" magazines but something you can put together almost for free using lumber lying around the house or your city. You'll need a strong plastic bucket which you could get from Tim Horton's. Build a box to contain the bucket and cut a whole out of the top. Slap a toilet seat on and you're good to go! Well almost, you'll need some sawdust, available from lumber yards (avoid treated wood) to accompany your composting toilet.


Every day make your visit to the box and deposit your "waste". Piss freely as well. Cover your "waste" with a generous portion of sawdust and repeat. When your bucket is full take it out to your composting centre and add it to one bin. Bring another bucket of water and your toilet brush out to clean it quickly; pour the water on the pile.

Over the course of a year you should fill this bin with compostables and straw. Everytime you add a bucket load, cover it with straw. This is important to keep in oxygen to feed the micro-organisms that are going to break down your compost and it keeps the smell down. You can also add your kitchen waste to this pile and any yard waste--don't give it away to the city!

After a year, start a pile in the other section of the composting centre. Let the original pile season for a year and it's ready to be used in the garden and the empty chamber for "waste" again.

We've been at it for a month now and everything is going great. In fact we just built our second toilet for downstairs (see picture) and are planning to take out a dismal flush toilet that drains into our beautiful brook. What were they thinking?

For more information on humanure and simple and effective composting toilets check out Joseph Jenkins' Humanure Handbook. It's telling that despite being a bestseller, no publisher will touch him.

He must have kooties from composting all that shit.

Buyer Beware

Deciding to abandon a wandering life can be bewildering. I suppose that I am no longer a renter, having a new home to call my own. No more rent, no more lease agreements, no more landlords threatening or repairing things, no more new places to be. Just here. The change has come so suddenly.

It's a strange experience to go from owning very little to realizing that if I am going to make a commitment to this place that I will need certain things. In most cases, this means driving somewhere to pay for something; there aren't many dumpsters around here. So the credit card is definitely getting a workout. I guess in one way the timing couldn't be better since fewer people are spending there are more deals to be had. I probably shouldn't feel as bad as I do since spending a few hundred dollars on practical things isn't much compared with what most people spend. But I wish that I could just do everything myself or get everything all at once and never have to venture below bright fluorescent lights anymore. But there's always something new to buy. It's designed that way until it is no more.

Right now I'm wrestling with the purchase of a vehicle. Yes you heard correctly, a vehicle. Our current car is on its last legs and, realistically until the pumps run dry and we can grow our own food, having a car is a reluctant necessity outside of cities. But when I think of the purchase price, insurance, repairs, gasoline, vehicle inspection tests and all those other little incidentals it's definitely off-putting.

And if this is the big one and our recession will never end as I think it might, then surely prices are going to drop a lot further. Car prices are a strange thing to worry about at the end of the world. But our minds are still in this system and not wholly in the one that we are all going to build in the years to come.

Yesterday at the kitchen table, where most of the action in our house takes place (because it's near the fire), we joked about the uses of hummers in the years to come. One suggestion involved digging out a hill and moving one inside to make an earthship (or perhaps earthshit would be more appropriate given their propensity to defecate where they live) for chickens or ducks. Seriously though, a vehicle can make a good food dehydrator in the summer so there are potentially some uses.

So maybe buying a new vehicle is not so bad after all.

Kraut, Mushrooms and Apple Cider

So we're getting on with a lot of things. It's been fun and we've had some company which has made life better as it usually does. The fall keeps hanging on. Yesterday it was 15 degrees.


1) Thanks to the help of three intrepid wwoofers we fermented a large batch of sauerkraut. It fermented over the course of approximately three weeks and tastes great. It's really easy to make your own kraut. Use three tablespoons of salt for every five pounds of shredded cabbage. In a ceramic crockpot sprinkle the salt on top of each four inch layer and throw in a few peppercorns or whole cloves. Toss it around with clean hands then add other layers until you're out of cabbage. Put a plate upside down on top and put a heavy weight on top of it (maybe a large glass bottle filled with water) and cover with a clean cloth. Keep it in a warm place for a few weeks.

2) Did you know that most apple "juice" sold in Canada comes from China? Pretty crazy stuff considering the number of apple trees on our street let alone in all of Canada. Happily our house has a large apple press which we used to make cider a few weeks ago. It tasted great and sadly didn't last long. The best part was that it was made with apples picked within a few hundred feet of our home. With a few carboys you could make hard cider easily too.

3) It's damp near our house and there's a wooded brook which is home to numerous species of mushrooms. Did you know that mushrooms breathe oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide? I just assumed they were plants but they are something else, something special. We've seen chanterelles and turkey tails not to mention hundreds of little brown mushrooms which are almost impossible to identify and therefore should be avoided. We're hoping to inoculate a few logs soon to grow our own mushrooms. You could also do this easily at home with some freshly cut hardwood and some inoculated plugs.

Will keep you posted.

Beginnings

Welcome to a new blog. Yet another voice in the wilderness. Another person you'll never see or hear or touch but whose blinking words will perhaps bounce around in your eyes. Maybe some of these words will make sense to you. Maybe you'll think I'm crazy. Maybe we all should be a little crazier, take chances, breathe deeply in wild places.

This blog is here to document a new life and a new way of life for someone who has always lived with concrete underfoot. Where trees were imprisoned against their wills in parks and outside the city. Where food magically appeared and we traded pieces of paper to get it, and every year it was cheaper. Where the real world didn't exist. Where civilized humans reigned.

That old world three weeks and 2,000km ago still stands. But the cracks have arrived. It wasn't built to last you see, like a forest or a mountain. Now I am home, since home is where you are. I couldn't have asked for a more beautiful place to be. I am learning this place and perhaps, if I could be so presumptive, it is learning me. I want to fit in here and this place wants me to fit in. I want to stop being in charge, controlling everything.

I should probably explain the Museum Fremen. The series of books that have had the greatest impact on my life are the Dune books by Frank Herbert. Mentats are his creations--human computers and believe me you're infinitely more intelligent and perfect than any machine.

Museum Fremen, though despised by their fellows, exist to carry the old ways in a world that had forgotten them. Since all life is cyclical, one day these skills would be needed again. Museum Fremen would be the teachers. Nothing lasts forever least of all a world built on a depleting store of cheap energy.

Herbert's stories are so complex and thoughtful. He was talking about peak oil and permaculture long before they were developed or widely understood. And for Herbert a key theme was ensuring that humans, all humans, reached their infinite potential.

We, civilized humans, are not reaching our potential. We are fat, lazy, blind, dim-witted, disgraceful beings. And to make matters worse we are destroying the planet through, paradoxically, our ignorance and active participation. It's getting harder and harder to ignore this truth.

I don't want to be part of the death machine that's destroying the planet. It seems to me therefore that I have two options.

I can first pick up a gun or a bomb or a stone and smash the destructive system before it removes me and the earth permenantly. I likely won't do much damage and will be seen as a "terrorist" or "madman" by the civilized, who like to be told what to think. There is nothing wrong with this approach and I encourage anyone to embrace it if they feel the call. But it's not for me.

My second option is to live as I believe I was meant to live, to become a Museum Fremen. This means dirt under my feet and under my fingernails. Stars lighting up the night sky. Hard, physical work. Offering and bartering my labour, not selling it. Not taking too much and giving back all, and I mean all, I take. Embracing appropriate technologies like those developed in the stone age. Harvesting perennial crops. Planting trees to feed me and other beings and to capture some of the greenhouse gases cooking this beautiful earth.

This also means embracing poverty. Not the kind of poverty you see on TV but the peasant's poverty. We're told all the time that poverty and peasantry are terrible fates but they're most certainly not. They are essential if we are to live in harmony with the earth. Neon and skyscrapers need not apply.

And teaching and learning with others. This is the most important thing. We need to learn from those, and there are a lot of us, who are beginning to see through the blinding haze of civilization.

Stay tuned, I'll let you know what we're doing and maybe you'll be inspired to try some new things yourself. And we're always open to suggestions.