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Roe buck, with out a care in the world !!!!!
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tufted vetch
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thistle cotton for tinder
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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
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