Gutweed

This particular seaweed (an intestinalis) is one of the ones you're likely to find in a Chinese restaurant usually deep fried

Very abundant and easily gathered this is a great fall back food  and can be eaten as is if the water ispure enough or deep fried or steamed.

Woundwort

There are anumber of different woundworts out there, this particular one is Hedge Woundwort..



As the name suggests this plant isused in healing wounds. Made into a compress or ointment it has great antiseptic properties and is also a great styptic and indeed was particlularly used for just this purpose in County Galway,as a matter of fact some herbalists say it rivals Yarrow in it's blood staunching abilities!

A good one to know.

Windfall Apples

It has been a particularly bad year for soft fruit over here, hardly any plums,blackberries,elderberries or their like, even the apples have been in short supply compared to previous years...

still at least we managed to find a few, just in time for Halloween... apple pies are delicious, pity there's no blackberries to pair them with!

Edible Firelighters

The 2 main buzzwords of any bushcrafter should be "Dual Purpose", all items that we carry should have more than one use, and here is a perfect example.. Get yourself a bag of Corn chips, be they tortilla chips, nachos or doritos, as a matter of fact any cooked corn chip/crisp like product will work..Their dual purpose? ,well obviously you can eat them, and secondly..

..they burn very easily and for a long time providing a great firestarter in wet weather or in emergency situations.

Introduction to Blacksmithing

I had the opportunity to have a go at a little blacksmithing project at the R space Gallery in Lisburn run by Anthea McWilliams, it was just a brief affair to show a few simple techniques but which should stand in good use for any future attempts

Eamon giving a brief safety talk and a quick demo of various hammer techniques

They had a great set up with 6 forges all on the go at once, the idea was to make an ornament of some form, most people settled on a leaf

we used cold rolled mild steel to forge our leaf from

Angie and Graham with their "irons in the fire"

Chris demonstrated some of the more intricate manouvers that were needed

giving it some welly!

and my finished piece, there were leaves of all shapes and sizes made,but I wanted a willow leaf, maybe not botanically correct but I'm happy with my first attempt at forging. Maybe some day we'll progress onto firesteels, knife blades and arrowheads!!

Omelette in a bag

If you work with kids groups then this is an easy way to prepare a breakfast for them, Davy has been doing it this way for a long time and I now see it used a lot in other places, it's an idea well worth experimenting with.

All the needed ingredients, eggs from the hens in my back garden, ham, cheese and Davy found some tricorn garlic growing where we set up, perfect for that added little kick

add all the ingredients to a good quality zip lock bag and mush them up

All ready to go

Put the bag in your Trangia and on to a boil for about 15 minutes

looks odd, but tastes fantastic, well done Davy !!!

Harebell

The old Irish believe that this is the flower which gives birth to fairies, each time a new blossom opens a new fairy is born. Keep watch for these opening in the morning sunlight and you may be granted a glimpse of one of the little people. 

Mora vs Hultafors

We received an email recently asking if we knew where to source the original Mora 510 knives as the person in question didn't like the more modern thinner blade..apart from trying to find some second hand Mears Mora's or maybe contacting ragnar at ragweed forge you probably won't have much luck. However there is an alternative, not perfect and not a Mora but still a resonable replacement

It's the Hultafors HVK, similar to the 510 (bottom in the picture) but close enough to be a good alternative, though you will need to remove the large finger guard as it's more a hindrance than anything

Handle is slightly chunkier and a little less comfortable

The blade is the same thickness as the original mora and although the grinds on the Hultafors are a bit miss matched and uneven and it doesn't come as sharp OOTB it is still worth the cheap price and a little time to get the blade up to spec.

One other thing for those who need such information the tang is only half that of the Mora 510, but so is the price..well worth it.