Enjoying the countryside, it’s nothing to fear!

It’s interesting with the rising impact of food, fuel and gas prices, how at a time when probably growing your own, and wild foraging is becoming more of a viable option, I hear a programme being advertised on the radio which is about the dangers of gardening! Tetanus, and other diseases which you could catch, even I was scared and I am out in it everyday!! But people lived for years growing their own, foraging etc, before we even knew about these ‘dangers’, and in many respects were very healthy.

I really do think the media just want to create a level of fear around those things which they can’t control, and for which large corporations don’t benefit from in any large way. They of course want you to stay in, you are using up electricity, and gas that way, which we don’t do when we are out all the time! It’s going to be hard enough for some people to afford to live a quality of life, but to have this fear of the unknown continually pushed at you is ridiculous. I’m not saying that there isn’t a level of knowledge and mostly common sense needed, but the rest is scare mongering.

The outdoors is not enjoyed enough, yesterday we were out walking and picking apples, apples which people are leaving due to not really knowing if they are ok to eat or not any more. Isn’t that ridiculous, that people have become so distanced from something which really is so easily identifiable. But it is the fear that you might catch something which is constantly played out through adverts, and the media which has created this cycle.

We enjoy the countryside everyday, eating from it 2-3 times a week, collecting everything from berries, to mushrooms, to herbs, and greens, it is something which we love doing. We met a family yesterday out playing, and they were saying how they were so different from their friends who would never consider taking their children out in the evening to play as they were doing. What a real loss of true world experience, the media scare parents into thinking their children need keeping in the house, within our sight, even tagged, yet I really believe the danger is from the media and large corporations that run them with their business interest solely in profiteering, not from the woodlands that we play in!

Stormy weather

Both me and R commented tonight on how we noticed the air change when we were out walking, the atmosphere just seemed to feel so much different to us. Then we looked over to where we needed to be heading, and the clouds looked amazing. All building up on top of each other, a huge strip of them, and the sky behind them was getting black. Clouds are the most amazingly beautiful things, huge, and we ended up taking photos to show you, but truly we stood looking at it like it was the most beautiful work of art. That is how we are seeing nature now, and I regret that I hadn’t taken notice earlier in my life.

We have been waiting for a storm for days, and each time we have been out, we have anticipated it raining that evening. Last night in particular we thought a storm was on its way whilst we were out blackberrying, but nothing, although it was very warm. But today we really noticed the air, something that I would never of really thought about, and I think we are getting distanced from being able to anticipate these things. I really understand how we are energy ourselves, and how things around us really can affect those energetic levels, and in ways that we don’t realise.

I used to work with someone who could tell me when the rain was likely to stop, and invariably he was right. He said to just become aware, and I couldn’t understand then what he really meant, but I think finally I am.

Pendulous Sedge

We have half a pound of Pendulous Sedge seeds which we picked last night. Funnily enough garden centres sell them as ornamental grasses, which grow in damp and dark places, and we collected them for free on the woodland just where we live. They are the most beautiful grass, very elegant, and they edge one of the pathways we use, and we spent about half an hour collecting it., after watching it mature for weeks, keeping ours eyes open for the right time, and to be honest it was so quick, and fun.

Today we have just separated the husk from the seed, and now we are drying in out in our greenhouse, once dry we plan on making some form of biscuit, like an oat cake with it. We could make it into a form of flour but that is possibly for next time! We separated it by pouring the seeds through the air into another bowl, and the seed drops with the husk blowing away, well that was the idea, and we are both now covered in brown husks! R has realised that he can use this for his week in the woods that he is planning, he is hoping to live from a high percentage of wildfoods whilst doing it, and this is something which is probably going to be highly beneficial to them to be collecting to eat.

We love our wild crafted foods, they have so much more integrity about them, and we are finding the whole process to be so fulfilling. Although only a small percentage of our food is home grown and collected it is slowly growing as our knowledge of what is and isn’t edible grows.

Later on we are going to collect apples, the woodland we live near has a multitude of apple trees and they are bursting with apples which no one picks anymore. Not sure if people don’t know about them, or they are not bothered about them, but then that leaves all the more for us.

A walk in the woods……

Roe buck, with out a care in the world !!!!!

tufted vetch

thistle cotton for tinder

burrdock

Its amazing how many things we could miss whilst out walking. As a keen hunter and out doors man, I’m more or less in tune and on the ball to every sight and sound when I’m out walking. The wind blowing in the trees makes a distinctive sound, yet once you’re tuned in to the sounds nature makes you then pick up on the other sounds. A black bird in the undergrowth, or a grey squirrel jumping from branch to branch, maybe even a Roe deer stepping on dry brush only feet away. Its amazing the amount of times D and myself go for walks and she never sees what I see, and even more amazing is the fact that the dog or FD1 as we call her, see’s even less than D does.

Tonight as we went walking, we didn’t see a huge amount of anything new or unusual, but what we did see was still worth the walk.

One of the woods we use seems to be getting used less and less by walkers, we have been commenting on how few people we now see whilst walking. D was wondering if it was anything to do with the increased usage of HD LCD flat screen TV’s that have taken over the living room? Is it true what the conspiracy theorists say about the brain working at 57 flickers a second, the exact number digital TV works at as well? Anyway, good news for us because we don’t have a TV and what ever is making people stay inside is great for me as I can have even more countryside to myself, more wild crafting and foraging, hooray!

Anyway back to the subject, we saw a few Roe deer not 10 meters away from us, they’d been feeding behind a fallen tree, and seemed quite easy with us being so close to them, it wasn’t until the flash on the digital camera went off that they thought to run off. In the same woods we found a beautiful burdock that stood as tall as I am which is 6 foot 2 inches, there was a whole path way lined with these wonderful plants. I’ll be returning once its rained to dig up a few roots as the root makes quite good eating. We also found another variety of Vetch. The Tufted Vetch is a tiny little Mangetout type pea, very delicate in taste and quite time consuming to collect but worth collecting. The other thing we saw were thistles coming in to seed, the seeds aren’t edible, but the cotton likeness is great as tinder for making fire, as and when I get a chance to collect natural cotton wool type materials I will do so. I don’t believe in buying cotton wool just to set it alight when I can gather better quality material for nothing.

On the way to and from the woods we had a chance to check up on how the wild apples and pear trees were doing, won’t be long until they are fit for picking, some for eating straight away, others for storing, and yet more for cider making, all of which are free. All for the price of a couple of hours of time and some shoe leather, beats a PS3 and an LCD TV any day.

So if your following our blog close enough you’ll be seeing a trend emerging, which is our fascination with wild crafting (foraging) which we do on an almost daily basis, we link this with the dog walking which is something we have to do every day. Combining these two time consuming tasks which are fun and free are worth doing, I find I sleep better having been out in the wilds, if it works for the dog then it must be good for us to. R

Contact lenses

Today I went off to try and change my contact lenses and what an interesting time I had with the optician. Something that isn’t really advertised by the optician you visit if you wear contact lenses is that the majority of your lenses have UV ‘protection’ or as I call it ‘blocker’. You will know from previous blogs, that I have been reading Roger Coghills work on light, and other work on the importance of it and creating melatonin. The more I have read about light, the more I am now outside in it, allowing it to touch my skin far more, and not wearing sunglasses.

Although I have found the lenses I want to replace my current ones with, trying to get an optician to give them to me, and not have to go into a whole explanation about why has been really difficult. The problem with people who dispense advice on the body nowadays only seem to know about one part of it, and not how it all works together, medicine has seriously lost its way as far as I am concerned, You can’t be an optician without understanding how by blocking light rays into the body, you are having a knock on effect on the immune system. I would love to know how many people who wear contact lenses with UV blocker on them are finding they are suffering from SAD at the beginning of every year.

Anyway, when I went into the reason why I don’t want any level of blocking on them, they told me about how dangerous UV was now to the eyes! How I had to protect myself from it, sunlight is now seen as bad, to reiterate the optician stated how people got cancer due to the sunlight. Scaring people into wearing something which suits them to sell not my body to have.

How did people cope with sunlight in years gone by I couldn’t help but ask the optician? No answer to that one really! What is this message about how sunlight is so bad now, isn’t it interesting how companies don’t want us to have something that is so important for the body, and its immune functioning. The more we are kept in the dark so to speak, away from sunlight, in doors, we suffer from Vitamin D deficiency, low melatonin levels, having a knock on with seratonin, and poor immune system, The interesting thing is that the information is all put out by the companies that financially benefit from this, and it is just reiterated by those who are incentivised to then sell it. Those same companies are also producing sun block, and other products which enable them to financially benefit from providing us with products which in the end we need to take due to them making us ill in the first place.

Sunlight is such a lovely thing, we don’t spend enough time in it. D

Late nights

One of the things that is starting to really hit home with me, now that I am making a huge effort to live with the cycles of life more, is getting to sleep on time and not burning the midnight oil. From working half the night, reading to catch up, and chatting to my friends half the evening on the telephone, I have become an avid sleeper! No one can get hold of me after 9.30pm!

After reading about the pineal gland the other week, and how important light is to us in the creation of melatonin, and how we need to be creating melatonin for good health, I have not only been trying to find new contact lenses which don’t block out the UV, I’ve almost given up wearing my sunglasses, and more importantly I have been changing my sleeping routine. Getting to bed on time, getting comfy, and making sure it is really dark in the room I sleep in as any light disturbs seratonin production, is now paramount to having good health, I have finally understood.

We all know that getting to bed early ends up with us feeling worse in the morning and often I would avoid doing this knowing it wouldn’t really make me actually feel better, it can’t of only have been me that has felt like that? Also the rebel in me just didn’t really want to go to bed early, isn’t that for old people? Am I now old???? Probably! But seriously, I am starting to become so conscious of when it starts to go dark, then getting myself settled to make my body ready to relax and sleep. I am now getting myself into a regular sleeping habit, and getting more sleep on a regular basis.

Making my life far more simple has meant that I have given up trying to pursue as many things as I used to, which is meaning that I am not trying to do so much. This has made my life less stressful, and even R has said how much calmer I seem, and I think it is due to sleeping properly, as well as a few other factors, exercising outside, meditation with Holosync, growing and eating our own foods, and finally being happy with my lot.

Until I started reading about how vital the production of melatonin was to the body, I never realised how I was so jeopardising my health by being permanently stressed, working late into the night, and cutting my sleep short continually. I had and still do have a job which is very busy, and this means that it has been difficult to juggle all the things previously I have wanted to try and do.

Stress also stops the production of melatonin, when people say stress is bad for you, you don’t realise how bad until you start to read all these things! I am working on making stress a thing of the past, because I have realised that if I don’t then I will make myself permanently ill. When you are told by the magazines that sleep is important, you kind of weigh up the benefits of staying up, against what, being boring and going to bed early, this is how I would of originally thought about it. They don’t really make it clear how sleep is vital to melatonin production, and that then has a knock on effect in seratonin, I can see why over the years of stressful working, eating chocolate, another melatonin blocker, burning the midnight oil, wearing contact lenses and sunglasses that block out the sun, I had become to feel so awful in the early months of the year, each time it came around. As well as have late evening depressive lows.

I’ve also just read that low levels of melatonin are found in people with certain types of cancer, with the the high amounts of stress in society, and the lack of sleep we all generally now get, is it any wonder we are all becoming ill?

The future is in your hands and your hands only!

This blog may come across as a bit of a rant and rave, but there is a reason for this. Sometimes you’ll read something that stirs something inside you, something you can’t quite understand nor explain at the time. Something stirred inside me after reading Cormac McCarthy’s book The Road, which Is a very disturbing vision of what the future may hold in store for us.

Basically the book is about a father and son, set some time in the future, after some world changing event that has wiped out the vast majority of the population, leaving only a hand full of people are left. The world is a dead waste land with no trees, plants or animals, other than man. Man has been reduced to scavenging to survive. The boy and his father are travelling south in the hope to find warmer weather and food, along their journey they come close to starving to death several times, as well as coming close to becoming some one else’s meal. Cannibalism comes easy to the marauders and road walkers that are left, horrendous acts are carried out by people all in the name of ’survival’. All except the boy and his dad, who no matter what happens to them, remain human and civil, choosing starvation over cannibalism.  This book is worth a read but only recommended to those with strong stomachs and constitutions, but it was this book that really had me thinking about today, right now and what tomorrow might bring…..

For those of you who are into either survival or self sufficiency, take these on the loosest of terms, as there are so many other categories, you’ll probably be doing so for a number of reasons. Whether you just want to live a more natural life, or something has switched you on to what might lay ahead in man’s future and want to minimise outside influences on your life.  I personally have, over a long number of years, been learning bushcraft, hunting, and trapping skills and techneques, as well as foraging and plant recognition, because I always felt the need to learn what we have lost. I’m a country boy at heart and like to know that I can survive almost any where with nothing more than a knife in my pocket, failing that I can knapp a flint or other quartz stone to make a blade to survive.

If you’ve followed our blogs to date you’ll know that we are also trying to go small scale self sufficient. Growing a few easy crops to subsidise our store bought produce, as well as wildcrafting (foraging) as many types of food as we can. We hope to one day buy some land that we can turn into a small holding for us to go off grid and become self sufficient with at least 90% of everything we’d use and want. We realise that 100% is almost impossible because of clothing and raw materials such as metal and grains are hard to come by.

Coming back to the point in hand. No matter what you do now for the future, we don’t know what our future holds and preparation is something worth considering even on the smallest of scales. You may live in a flat and long to own a farm, you may live in a grand house with land but not have a clue what to do with it all. Sit back and take a look at the picture and see whats important to you.  Myself and D are looking at all options as to what to do to get what we NEED and not want. When we set out on our journey to a more natural and self sufficient life it was a fairy tale dream, but the reality is some what different, as we looked in to the life style other horizons unfolded in front of us. Horizons we hadn’t seen. We became aware of a whole world that hadn’t been shown to use till we sought it out.

I am referring to the stories of a one world government and the new world order. To global conspiracy, the poisoning of the masses with food additives, medication and water supplies, brain washing via TV and media, the global dumbing down of our children. To the removal of old skills and techniques, the laws introduced to stop you defending yourself by disarming, laws passed to stop you wildcrafting foraging and hunting. Then there is history being falsified to make you believe what they want to you believe. there are the stories of Nibiru or planet X, the 13 familys who own the world, the climate change and green taxes being nothing more than a cover up about what is really happening to the world and so on. I’m not going to tell you about these things, its all here on the world wide web to read and find out for your self.

All of these reports, stories and conspiracies make for interesting reading and deep thinking, which make me want  to go self sufficient all the more, which all comes down to planning and management of what we have now in order to get what we want tomorrow. Management of money now should allow use to either save for or buy what we need for the future. Simple steps such as getting rid of mobile phones, those brain tumour making contraptions of convenience that ultimately we don’t need, the mobile laptop broad band is going too, between myself and D we’ll save just over £1000 a year, that’s £1000 of food, or 1K off the credit card. That’s a lot of money, we don’t play the lottery any more as we worked it out as a couple of hundred £’s a year on zero chance of winning. We don’t have take away food any more as these are quite frankly full of unhealthy fats and sugars we don’t need. Instead we spend our time learning and practising the skills we’ll need for our future, the skills that have in part been largely forgotten, skills we can teach others in time, we forage and enjoy our time in the countryside when ever we can as its free. Just last night we were collecting wild blue berries in a wood close by. Planning is what has stood man the test of time and I’m sure it will continue to do so for the rest of time. No matter what it is that led you here to read this now, I’m sure it will have you thinking just a little bit more about tomorrow than you did before you found me today. R

Flax tea

I love flax tea, and it is so nice to drink, as long as you don’t make it too gunky! But to be honest it is that mucousy part which is what is so good about it. It does have its draw back, which is that it can make the cooker into a wreck if you let it boil over. But saying that it does chip off!

I make flax tea when I am feeling my body is tired, needs a bit of loving, and to feel a level of comfort. It is a really nice change from other drinks, I don’t drink tea and coffee, mainly water and my own picked herbal teas, and this is a drink which is truly beneficial to the body, I often make a huge pan, and put it in a thermos flask to drink for the rest of the day.

The great thing about flax tea is that it holds the water through your body, gives your body a water message, and your body probably needs it. We really don’t drink enough water, drinking caffeine laden drinks instead which dehydrate our bodies, but this is truly hydrating, and can be a god send on days when you are feeling stressed. The other great things about flax tea is that it holds onto the EFAs in the flax and so unlike most drinks is truly helping your body, flax tea is hugely beneficial for soothing and cleansing the kidneys and the bladder.

I make my flax tea by soaking 2 tablespoons of flax seeds overnight, then bringing them in a large saucepan in the morning to a simmer for 30 minutes, turn it off, and put it into my flask. I used to drink gallons of tea at one stage, and even R is giving up his tea to drink this, with a bit of vanilla pod put into it, it really is lovely.

Food experience

Since we’ve been taking the time to grow our own, I can now understand the real cost of food production, and I know that when I go into the supermarket to get the things we can’t yet grow that a lot of the food is underpriced. How can real food be grown at those prices, shipped half way across the world, packaged, and refrigerated, for in some cases a couple of pounds. It’s not that I want food to cost anymore than it does, like most people we prefer to pay less than more. But after growing my own I can’t see how they can charge what they do and make any level of profit, someone somewhere is not doing well out of it, and my understanding is that it isn’t the supermarkets!

That food we have previously bought pales into insignificance beside that which we grow ourselves, and that is the point of loss for me in particular. I know now that the taste of food straight from the garden far surpasses anything I have ever bought, incredibly so, and I would not go back anymore. The supermarket food is tasteless in comparison, worthless to the taste buds, if you can’t taste it how can your senses actually enjoy the food, and how can your taste buds trigger those reactions that are needed to tell the stomach food is coming? Is it any wonder that we have obesity if we can’t really taste the food that we are eating, and it is a pale imitation of itself both in taste and nutrition, no wonder our bodies keep requesting more, we haven’t given it the nutrition it really needs.

Our needs in regards to food are changing, we are eating less, mostly due to the juices that we make each day, but our bodies are requesting less food, we have both commented on it. We are also very conscious of the amount of food we need, never picking or making more than we need, we don’t want to pick too much and have it thrown away anymore, as we both know the hard work that has gone into growing or making it. Waste in our flat is becoming far less, and that is a good thing.

One of the foods that we now make ourselves continually is bread, and the bread we make lasts longer, and tastes lovely, neither of us can ever wait for the loaf to come out of the oven, and we always end up eating a slice warm, you don’t get that level of experience with the supermarket food. And it has been the same with the vegetables we have grown, R keeps telling me off for eating them too soon, lettuces before they have truly grown, I can’t help myself I keep eating the leaves as they grow. But they taste so good, like no lettuce I have ever tasted previously, so why wouldn’t I want to experience real food on my palate which is as fresh as it comes. I will run the gauntlet and keep taking them, blaming it to slugs probably!

With the rising cost of food, which is tasteless anyway, it makes sense if you can to grow your own and take the time to do it, and experience the difference. We are both realising that the experience is what now matters, as it makes eating the food that much more enjoyable. Just knowing what has happened to it from being planted, picked, to being put on my plate makes such a difference to how we feel about it, our whole food experience has become one which we really do look forward to and enjoy.

A bit of a porker……

Now for those of you who’ve been following our blogs and have read the bit about camping, you’ll know that I’m writing a book about living and hiking for a week in the wilds of the East of England.

In my last blog I was on about preparing and taking a test run with all the gear, Well this is a follow on to that article, and second of many more to come. We’ll be going out between 17 and 26 August 2008 for the weeks fun and adventure.

As part of all this I was looking into food types to take with us, staples would make up our daily rations. We’re not going to go unarmed and rely on what we find alone, reason behind this is because we will be trekking 100+Km over the 7 days. As well as the hiking we’ll be carrying our loads, both of which will use valuable calories, calories we can ill afford to lose. By carrying at least 50% of our ordinary daily allowance of 3000cal to consume we’re only having to find the other 50%, please bear in mind that we should in fact be consuming 4000Cal because of the amount of calories we’d lose.

So in order to bring up the calories a bit more, I’ve found a wonderful resource, pork belly. I had to do a bit of a search on the Internet for suitable ways of making pork safe to carry and eat when it won’t be refrigerated for any time at all, on looking around I found this website http://waltonfeed.com/old/brine.html. This is a brilliant way of preserving the bellies for the journey.

Why are we not taking ration packs or prepacked backpacking foods? This is something a number of people who know about this little expedition have asked.

Well my personal belief is this, why try to live in nature, then stuff yourself with chemicals such as aspartame, sodium benzoate, and potassium nitrate, these chemicals are in almost all forms of back pack meals and ration packs. The simple recipe of preserving pork is ideal and as I have the time to do it, I’ve put the wheels in motion and the pork’s brining as we speak.

All in all there’s a little bit more to our outing than just walking from A to B over seven days. The idea is to make the experience one that others may want to emulate and follow in our footsteps. Bringing together old techniques, modern equipment and a different approach to doing so.