Hey y’all I’m continuing this thread over here. I’m currently working on writing up what I failed and what I succeeded at during the last week and Urban Scout did a nice summary of what he accomplished on his blog. Anyone else have anything to report? Any failures with traps, stone axes, or boiling with hot rocks or did you fail to work on one of those things? Or did you fail to work on anything primtive at all? I see that Scout is still working on all three and I’m down so let’s keep the same three projects for another week and see if we can’t fail some more! I know you can do it!
The other day I partially failed at eating a ribwort plantain leaf straight off the plant. Lots of little irritant hairs that stick to the tongue. I dunno if that’s just an acclimatisation issue though. That’s about all I’ve done primitive-wise since the earthworm thing…
hairs huh? I didn’t know they had hairs. Sure it was a plantain?
Since most of Scouts weekly goals involve things like falling rocks, exploding rocks and cooking over open fires, I’ve had to set different goals for myself. When I experiment, I have to do it with a 14 month old at my side. 
My main goal last week was to teach my friend Luke how to pound yucca cordage and then to make some actual cordage for myself. I did teach Luke. Between our two babies, we didn’t have a lot of time, so I had to show him the concepts and then go be a dad. But he got the concept. And while I was teaching him, I was able to get another leaf pounded, scraped and twined. I guess I need to set a footage goal for myself of like 5 feet of cordage.
Right now I’m retting some yucca leaves. That’s a pretty easy goal. Soak the leaves for a few weeks. So, count that one a success.
I usually set a daily goal for myself of 3 new wiki pages. We’re running out of Storm’s articles to gank, but fortunately, we’ve been able to get some other folks to agree to let us post their material, like Sassmouth and Torjus.
I have some plans for a rabbit live trap made out of lumber. I think if I actually got the supplies, I could make it in an afternoon. But that involves shopping, which I’m not good at–and spending money, which I try to avoid.
The creek next to my house gets a lot of trash in it, so I’ve been thinking of building a weir to catch the trash. I guess I’ll count that as a goal for next weekend instead of the rabbit trap.
I also need to build some kind of protection for my spearmint and maypop growing next to my house to keep my landlord’s rent-a-mower guy from cutting them down with civilization’s knife (aka the lawnmower.) The maypop just sprang through the ground since the last time the mower guys were here, and I don’t want to lose it.
But now that I’ve attempted and moderately succeeded at friction fire and cordage, I need some other baby-safe skills to try failing at. Any suggestions?
(By the way, Penny, I love the title of this thread!)
Hmm I can see your dilemma. Next week I (or we) will try and pick out some more baby safe goals, though a stone axe shouldn’t be too terribly dangerous during the initial shaping stages, do you think?
I have some unrelated goals as well if you want to jump on any of them–learning more about the weather and the moon, trying to catch a fish in my willow fish trap, and minnows in a pop bottle minnow trap and eating them, developing and writing down some of my wild recipes, developing a cache system (you could try burying just a bit of food in the back yard and check it periodically over the next months and years to see how it holds up in different containers, a grass lined pit, bark container etc.).
Looks like you’ve started to get the fire, food, cordage thing under control, how do you feel about shelter, water, or tracking?
I tried to put together a “squirrel pole”, but no success. Of course, I didn’t have any actual snare wire, so I tried using the wire for hanging pictures. I don’t think it slides well enough, I might try digging out some fishing leaders, maybe I can get smoother action that way.
Positive. The hairs were very tiny though, I think it’s a subspecies variation. I’ve come across plenty of bald plantains, it’s just the ones that grow in and around my little patch that have hairs…
[quote]hairs huh? I didn't know they had hairs. Sure it was a plantain? [/quote]Positive. The hairs were very tiny though, I think it’s a subspecies variation. I’ve come across plenty of bald plantains, it’s just the ones that grow in and around my little patch that have hairs…
Yeah, I think I’ve come across hairy plantain before too. Maybe the difference between the english and the common american variety?
how do you feel about shelter, water, or tracking?
water is something that bugs me a lot. after reading urbie’s giardia article, i got the heebie jeebies.
Aftermath has a pretty good post about filtering water here. I should try some transpiration traps and some solar stills in my yard. I think a solar still could probably produce a lot here, as the creek keeps my yard pretty wet year-round.
the wetness of the yard makes it a crappy place for a shelter. but maybe some of my friends’ yards would be better.
as for tracking, i don’t know jack shit.
trying to catch a fish in my willow fish trap, and minnows in a pop bottle minnow trap and eating them
this sounds fun, actually. and it could earn me some serious street cred with the kids in the neighborhood. they watch the creek all the time and tell “the tall bald guy with the baby” (that would be me) about any turtles, snakes or fish they see. do you have to do anything to the pop bottle to keep the minnows from swimming out, or is the width of the neck small enough to keep them in? and do you use a glass bottle, 2 liter, or what?
speaking of willow, i have a ton drying on my back porch that i should learn to weave. that’s pretty baby-friendly.
learning more about the weather and the moon
always a good time.
thanks for the suggestions, penny
Here are the instructions for your basic boy scout minnow trap:
http://www.boyslife.org/hobbies-projects/projects/69/make-your-own-minnow-trap/
As you can see it is simply the small entrance that keeps them in and of course you can use most anything to make that basic design. Commercial traps are usually pretty large and made of wire. But plastic bottles are pretty easy to find in the wilderness (isn’t that a weird statement). You can also bait it with entrails or dogfood. Where I live it is perfectly legal to catch 50 minnows a day as long as long as your trap has an opening no more than 1 inch in diameter and you put your name and address on it if you plan to leave it unattended. (Larger openings would catch larger fish all too easily, ;)).
I am curious to see if a large catch of minnows would be good smoked or perhaps pickled like an anchovy or even fermented into a fish sauce, or powdered and ground as a stew addition…
thanks for the link, penny. this is totally baby-friendly.
the comments on the boy’s life articles are hilarious. i looked at some of the other projects. on the Solar-powered cooking one (a solar oven made from a pizza box), one kid said:
Works like mad, and I haven’t even tried it!
I harvested a bunch of thimbleberry and salmonberry shoots yesterday, and they were fucking delicious. Also picked nettles for tea. I cut my hand a few days ago while carving my digging stick… I’m currently procrastinating in moving lumber into the forset to build my home.
Okay everyone I finished my article on my failures and successes last week. I worked a looong time on it. Too long. Please let me know what you think so I know it wasn’t a total waste of time. Subjects include coal burning, fish trap, minnow trap, Paiute deadfall, survival kits, survival caches, primitive pottery, sandstone, crayfish, skull collecting, utilizing natural shelter, pump drill AND MORE!!!
http://www.rewild.info/fieldguide/index.php?title=Project_Failure:_April_16-22
My dad just called me into the living room because survivor man was in the desert and he had just killed a ground squirrel in a deadfall and was talking about the Paiute. So that was cool. I think survivorman is lame though. He knows a bunch of tricks but he’s so whiny, always suffering, whah, whah, this sucks I’m scared, every episode is the same whether he is in the arctic or the tropics. He never has any fun. And his closing statement this show was "Ultimately Survival is about getting out. " How misguided.
I feel the same way about Survivorman and Man Vs. Wild. I watch them to see if there’s something I can learn, but I get pretty disgruntled at how “gotta get out” they are about it.
Same here. I’d take a vacation! I’d slow down and make a shelter that works and then spoke out from there. If I got a fire going later I’d probably wouldn’t let it go out or leave it long, unless I felt secure enough with my abilities and resources to make another one. I don’t like the shows either they always rush things. I’ve said to myself, “why do they run so much, can’t they slow down and enjoy comfortable shelters, wild feelings and dinners, clean water, snow, jungles, fruitful desserts, beaches, and so on.” I’d try to walk out alive, not run out alive as if the forest wants to kill me. WTF.
I’m feeling cynical today, so, I’m going with “Not As Exciting”.
Totaly Unrelated:
Penny, was that you that released those deer into the old folks home in PA? I bet it was, you crazy rewilder you.
Deer in an old folks home? I have no idea what you are talking about. Though I did hear that there were two separate cases of bears wandering into emergency rooms in completely different parts of the world through the automatic doors around the same time period. What are they trying to tell us!?
Wow, you guys have really piqued my interest. I had to perform some search-fu to look into these stories.
Bears in emergency rooms:
I found one so far. If I find another, I’ll update this post
[ul][li]BLACK BEAR KILLED AFTER WANDERING INTO ROCKY MOUNT HOSPITAL[/li][/ul]
Deer in the old folks home:
It’s interesting how different news sources painted the picture. Notice the verbs.
[ul][li]2 deer run through retirement home; no injuries - CBS 21 [/li]
[li]Deer Tour Retirement Home - Videos - KNTV[/li]
[li]Deer Rampage Through Retirement Home - News - MSNBC.com[/li][/ul]
Nice verb observation Wilderix!