Blogs and blogging

I don't know.  You start out on a journey and you don't always know where you are going.   3 days in, and a third entry in my blog and what to you know?  I get round to finding out what a blog is.  I now know it is a "web log".  I guess that means a regular log on the web.  Well, that sounds like what I am doing at the moment!  So, may be I have got something right.

Fire, fire, fire

I was doing a sort out of my bushcraft drawer (not a pretty sight) and put various fire making bits and pieces together in a box.   Now,  there is no way on earth I can do such a thing without a huge temptation to try something out!  So, I gave in.  It was a sunny day so out came 2 magnifying glasses.  First off, could I get a fire with the 3 inch lens and some dead leaves.  Yes.  But then I have done it before.  Then the trickier challenge;  can I do the same with the 1 inch lens?  Now, a lens of this size gives a tiny hot spot and it is good at igniting char cloth and such quality tinders, but direct with dead organic matter, uncharred?  I  DON'T THINK SO.  I can get a tiny curl of smoke but no more.  It was the same today.   This is the sort of challenge I like.  Uncharted waters.  So, how might I do it?  Well, I can (I think) do it with char from bow or hand drill.  Now, that is a very fine dust.  My tinder is normally maded from crumbling dead material in my hands and then sorting the dusty stuff away from the fibrous, and then starting the fire in the dusty bit.  But the chunks are still much, much bigger than char dust.  So,  next time I will work on separating out some truely dust material if I can get it.  No doubt I will get the curl of smoke again, but can I get the tiny coal (size of a dust grain I guess) to transfer into more uncharred material with gentle blowing.  We shall see.

Then I reminded myself how easy it is to light - birch polypore, true tinder fungus and punky wood with a lens.

Then I got out the fire piston.  Now, fire pistons are great with beautifully dry materials. But my shed is not beautifully dry!  So, it didn't work with char cloth or with true tinder fungus.  Hmmm. :-(

Then I got out something to make some sparks with.  I had some iron nodules I had dug out of some raw chalk last year.  Soft metal!  Can one get a spark with that?  No good with a flint edge.  How about a flint cobble (rough surface).  Struck at high speed....  YYEESSS!!!  I got a few sparks.  Not very strong and didn't last at all long, but it's a start.  A couple of years back I got some high speed sparks off soft iron to catch charcloth.  Basically I made a large char cloth target so I increased my chance of catching the spark.

 Bible insight

I was reading in bed in "Seed to seed" the author's recollection of his one and only experiment with cannabis back in his student days.  He recalled the drug openning up a strong feeling of anxiety in his mind.  At the same time visual  experiences became more intense and relevant to him.  He recalled car headlights seemed to be trying to look into his mind.  Then it was up and out and off to church.  There, one of the readings was the Genesis account of the fruit tree that it was forbidden that man should eat.  And when they did - the experience was one of increased anxiety about their nakedness and they feared God and hid.  I had never connected that story with mind altering drugs, but now the 2 are permanently linked in my mind.  Don't try mind altering drugs folks!

 Seed planning

For an ordinary gardenner it is vegetables you usually look to sow.  For the bushcrafter?  Well, I have got some French beans to sow, but it is a little early.  After that it gets more weird.  I looked up the patch of Woad seeds I put in in the autumn.  No sign of growth yet, but I did note that there seemed less other weed seedlings at that spot (this is expected as it gives out growth inhibitors for other sorts of plant).  The linseeds need to be planted (planning to grow some linen fibre). The Sea Buckthorn seeds need to go in somewhere.  They might find a home down the allotment, probably too big and spiny for the garden.  Down at the allotment, last years spread of mullein seeds has a reasonable crop of plants ready to grow the flower stems (for fire hand drills) later in the year.   I collected some teasel seed heads from a bit of waste ground and scattered them in my allotment.  (They also can make reasonable hand drills.)

Oyster Mushrooms

And here is one of my 2 jars of dried oyster mushrooms.