A busy weekend

On Friday, at work I was given the job of photographing the moving of our hamburger grill in Gällivare. Due to mining in the nearby town of Malmberget, many people and properties are being relocated. On Saturday morning my friend Janne came with a skylift to help change the facia boards on the roof, from wood to metal. Myself and Kelly went up in the skylift We went up 13 metres. On Sunday my friend Tomas came to help replace the platform to the stove flue. I had drawn a design for it and then Tomas had welded it together. During the evening, myself and Kelly went out picking Lingon berries.

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Coke can whistle and a podcast interview

At the Bushcraftfestival Harry Sepp demonstrated how to make a whistle from a drinks can.  Mors Kochanski taught me this when I was in Canada, so I thought I would re-post the how-to that I wrote ten years ago;

Cut a strip from the side of the can about 20mm wide and break off one third of this strip as shown below.

Bend the short piece into the shape of a hill and place across the longer piece a few millimetres from one end forming the mouth piece.

Fold one end of the long piece and both ends of the short piece to secure in place as shown below.

Now bend the long piece at a ninety degree angle to the mouth piece and then curl it around to form the air chamber and you should have a shape rather like a question mark.

Place your thumb over one side of the air chamber to form a seal and your index finger to seal the other side, just leaving the narrow opening immediately after the mouth piece.Ensure the gap at the front of the mouth piece is wider than that at the back (this will take some adjustment and experimentation to get right), then blow!

While I was at the festival, Paul Kirtley did a Podcast interview with myself and some of the other attendees, and this podcast is now available to listen to here;

http://paulkirtley.co.uk/2017/pk-podcast-22-bushcraftfestivalen-conversations/

ENJOY!!!

 

Bushcraft Festivalen Part 3

The evening meal that we prepared on Saturday included a roasted pig and lamb, potato salad and 3 different BBQ sauces.

On Sunday I did have time to attend one workshop, run by Harry Sepp (one of the original founders of Swedish Survival Guild, alongside Lars Falt) on what children should do when lost in the forest.

Harry is a very inspiring man, with a great amount of knowledge (and jokes to tell).  I passed on some of the things we learnt in his workshop, to my daughter Kelly when we were out fishing last weekend.

If a child realises that it is lost, the first thing Harry teaches to do is to hug a tree for a sense of security.  Hanging items in trees will also help rescuers to find a missing child, but hanging items in trees can also help a child to find their way back to their parents.  I sent Kelly 30 metres away and then hung some items in trees to help her find her way back and to show how it helps

In this picture you can see the life vest from 30 metres away

It was great to able to spend some time in the forest with the family on Sunday.

Kelly caught a Pike while we were fishing

Of course we made fire and grilled sausage!

Lets hope that this sunny, warm autumn weather continues.

 

Bushcraft Festivalen Part 2

I’m not sure how much garlic and how many kilo onions we we had to slice and dice,but it was a lot.

Erik from the “Swedish Survival Guild ” was head chef and he made the chilli sauce. We fried the onions

and the minced beef

We made 35 litres of chilli in total.

We served 70 people and no one complained, which was great. The rest of the evening we had live entertainment

It was only 3 degrees during the night, but I was warm in my Alpkit PipeDream down bag.

Next morning I used my Biolite camp stove today make a cup of Chagford tea for breakfast.

Bushcraft Festivalen 2017 Part 1

I arrived at the festival on Friday, with my friend Louise.

We would be working at the festival and in return we did not have to pay for food and accommodation over the weekend.

As soon as we arrived, there was working to be done. Our first job was to help put up the information tent.

After lunch, we set up our accommodation for the weekend. Louise had bought a new tent

and I slept under a tarp

Our next job after that, was to help cook chilli for 70 people for the evening meal.

More about that soon!

An evening out

I am working 12 days without a break at the moment but did manage to get an evening out with Kelly last Saturday.

I taught her about plants to use from the forest for medicine and we picked Blueberries and threaded on to grass stems

We also spent some time along the edge of a stream, but there were so many mosquitos that we had to make a smudge fire to help keep them away.

This weekend I will be working at the Swedish Bushcraft festival, so I will be writing about that next time.

Preparing for the winter.

Preparations are underway for winter already (the first snow fell in the mountains last week).

There is dew on the grass in the mornings, the leaves are changing colour and it’s getting cold and dark at night.

Some of the facia boards on the house are rotten which can allow snow to blow in under the roof,

so today I have been painting new boards to replace them with.