Wild Water

It has been a slow week here. The weather has been yucky to say the least, rain one day and below zero the next. We did get out for a little exploring earlier this week. Here in Wisconsin we have lots of county owned forest. We buy a permit most years that allows us to harvest dead, down trees for fire wood. Of course, so do a lot of other folks so we are always on the look out for some area others might not have checked lately. We had this area in mind for a while but have never got around to looking it over until this week.

While we did find a few trees that are close enough to the road to get them out, this free flowing wild spring was the high light of our day. We often drive 10-11 miles to a spring in the national forest here for drinking water. This spring is only a few miles away and less than 300 yards from the road. I plan on going back and getting a sample to have tested. Considering the fact that we are in drought conditions here, this spring had a good flow even during below zero temperatures.
 On a different note, the top pic is me holding a Eastern Leatherwood , Dirca palustris. As it's name indicates it is very flexible and leathery. It is a good shrub to learn to recognize is you do any wilderness camping or hiking. It can be used for cordage as is or it's bark used as cordage fresh or dry. Very handy if you need to build shelter in a emergency type situation.

DIY Drum Carder

No, this is not a picture of a medieval torture device though it will hurt you if you are not careful! This is my home made fiber drum carder. I built this several years ago to try to speed up our processing of wool. At the time we had about 80 Shetland sheep so we had lots of fiber to process. A big hunk of the price of wool yarn is in the processing and I wanted to keep some of that money here on the farm. When I looked into the price of commercial processing equipment I realized there was no way to just do your own wool after spending that kind of money

 on commercial equipment. For a tightwad like me there was only one alternative, build my own! A drum carder is a fairly simple piece of equipment. The big drum on back collects the fiber, the front drum merely feeds it to the big drum. The trickiest part is the fact that the front drum turns counter clockwise [towards the front} and the big drum turns clockwise[ towards the back]. This is why the belt takes the serpentine route it does. If it simply went from one drum to the other they would both turn the same way.

The whole thing has to turn fairly slow also. Just at a guess I would say the big drum is turning at about 50 r.p.m.s. and the ratio between the big drum and the small drum is important too. The big drum should rotate somewhere close to five turns for every one of the small drums rotations. That is determined by the pulley sizes on the left end of the drums.In order to get the speed low enough I have two sets of pulleys to drop the motors speed down[ right side]. As you can see from the pics I was really not spending any money to build this thing. The bigger pulleys I needed are all made from wood fastened to a small metal pulley. This is a low speed, low power contraption so you can get away with them. Where I really went cheap-o was on the carding cloth, I didn't buy any. I made my own from used rubber belting and a big pile of little bitty nails. If you look closely you will see that each nail has a small bend or curve in it. The big drum's lean back and the little drums lean front. It works but it was time consuming to say the least. If I were to do it over I would buy carding cloth.

 This carder is great for making batts to felt or for quilting batts but they are not combed fine enough to spin from them. Ann runs the batts through her hand powered drum carder once more to get them combed good enough to spin from. Still, it does save some time and I pulled it out of storage to speed things up since we acquired this pile of llama fiber to process.
One other thing I should mention, the distance between the two drums is very critical so the front drum must have adjustable mounts. It needs to be able to slide front and back about a quarter of a inch. At set up, the teeth of the drums should just miss each other.

Spoon Carving 101

Yesterday the temperature was 12 degrees below zero[ F.] and windy, wind chill factor was anywhere from 30 to 45 degrees below zero. What's a homesteader to do? This one threw another log on the fire, put a old Santana tape on, and made a big pile of wood chips. I like white birch for my occasional bouts of spoon carving. When ever I take a white birch for fire wood I try to split out some pieces with nice straight grain for this purpose. Wooden spoons are a nice item to have on hand. Ann already has a good supply so this one will be set aside for a gift or as a barter item.I make all different sizes. This one is one the big side, 14 inches long, just right to serve up that big pot of stew cooking over a open fire.
 I have to put in a disclaimer here, I am not much of a wood carver so don't take any of this as gospel. I do my initial shaping with a machete type thing that is made to prune Christmas trees. It is light and very, very sharp.This pic shows a roughed out spoon, the piece at the left is how it looked when I started.

After I have the rough shape I want, the bowl has to be carved out. I do have a few carving chisels and use these round ones to make the bowl.  I then start smoothing every thing out as much as possible with a knife. I use a box knife for most of it since they are razor sharp and I can simply change the blade if it gets dull. They do make special curved knives for carving stuff like the bowl, but I don't have one. Once every bit is as smooth and even as I can get it, the work starts. I only use one grit of sandpaper,100 grit.

I don't like courser grits since they leave bigger scratches I have to get rid of later. If there is a very rough or high spot I use a rasp to feather it out. I try to keep every thing symmetrical and all the curves long and smooth. Once I have it all sanded smooth I go over it with very fine steel wool. The steel wool not only smooths it  out but will catch on any point that is not flat. I then resand that area and try it again. The last step is giving it a good soak in a pan of warm mineral oil. I let them set in that for several hours to overnight. It will soak in deep and protect the spoon from moisture for a long time.

DIY Laundry Soap

 I have had the recipe for this homemade laundry soap posted for quite a while but since Ann was making a batch I thought I'd cover it in detail.  It is not free as most of the ingredients are bought but it is much cheaper than laundry detergent from the store. Ann is satisfied with the job it does, even in cold water, and it does not have a bunch of extra fragrances and fillers added. The soap needs to be soap, not detergent. Ann has used her homemade soap with good results. The other two dry items, borax and washing soda, both are detergents. They are both rather benign cleaning agents. Borax is hydrous sodium borate, and washing soda is sodium carbonate.  Ann sometimes also adds baking soda which is sodium bicabonate.  Just in case anyone actually cares, soap is a cleaning compound produced by saponifying a oil with a alkali. When caustic soda is added to the oil, glycerin separates out leaving sodium oleate, which is what we call soap.  The remaining ingredient is water. If you have very hard water I would recommend distilled water or some other water with a low mineral content.The recipe I have posted here is slightly different than our original one as it has evolved over time. Ann now makes a more concentrated version. Here it is;  To 6 cups of water add one bar of grated soap. [ 5 1/2 ounces in the case of the Fels-Naptha brand]. Heat the water /soap mix until the soap is melted, then add one cup each of borax and washing soda. Remove from heat and add four cups of boiling water. Once every thing is dissolved, pour into a bucket [ big enough to hold two gallons] and add one gallon and six cups  water . Let stand 24 hours to gel. Use two tablespoons per regular load.
 You can add baking soda if you would like, I don't know if it works better with it or not. This will do about  about 120 loads of laundry. The last time we checked the prices out this cost about 4 1/2 cents per load, that was about a third of what pre-made detergents would have cost us. 
 We work hard, gardening, working with cattle and other livestock, etc. so our clothes are DIRTY when they hit the laundry basket. This  size batch last us about six months.  

Rabbit Stew

Looks like it will be a all bunny diet around here for a while. Apparently this is the boom year for snowshoe rabbits in my area. The swamp is thick with rabbit runs and they are mowing down blueberry bushes and tree seedlings like there is no tomorrow. Either because of the presence of wolves in the area or a low in their cycle, predators like fox and coyote are not here this year. That leaves me to act as predator and bring their numbers down before they eat themselves out of house and home and destroy my orchard. Snowshoe rabbits are not the tastiest wild game you will ever eat but you can eat them, you just have to season it properly. Anytime you are cooking snowshoe rabbits the recipe should start with instructions to boil it for several hours or give instructions on how to sharpen your knives,you will need a sharp one! I believe the proper name of these critters is "Varying Hare" due to the fact that their color varies through the year, they are only white in the winter. If you live in jack rabbit country, this is the northern model. If you decide to eat them, use lots of onions and garlic. We have only got this one so far but we are saving the hides and will be tanning them once we have a few to work with. Although they do shed forever, rabbit furs are very warm and can be used for a variety of garments.

DIY Snow Shoe Bindings

We don't have much snow yet but we always try to pack down trails as the snow accumulates. The bindings on my shoes gave up last year so when I dug them out this year of course they still needed new bindings. I have tried several different styles of bindings over the years but for me the ones shown in the pic are hard to beat. They are easy to put on, don't loosen as you are walking, and are easy to take off. When you add in the fact that they didn't cost me a penny because they are homemade, I don't know how you can come up with anything better. I did buy the nylon rope they are attached to the shoe with. I only used 4 feet of the 50 foot piece though so it wasn't much of a investment. The no cost part hinges on getting the industrial size tire inner tube the bindings are made from for free. Since a damaged tube is perfectly fine for this purpose it is not hard to get one free or very cheap.I ask my tire shop for one while I was there having new tires put on the family van and they were happy to let me take my pick from a pile of damaged inner tubes they had. These inner tubes are about a eighth of an inch thick. A car or light truck tube is not thick enough, it needs to be from a large farm tractor or construction equipment.

 Here is the pattern for a multi size binding. It can be made bigger or smaller depending on which of the sets of holes are used to lace it together.The little hole to the left is for pulling it over the heel of your boot, the next big hole is where your foot goes in. At the far right end is the portion that forms the bottom of the binding.That part folds under at the indented area and then laces to the "wings in the middle.

Start lacing it together with a foot long piece of some type of durable twine or light rope. I used the middle set of holes which will fit a size 14 leather work shoe. For pac boots I would go with the farthest out set of holes.

Fold the wide front part under, tuck the edge of it in until you can line up with the same set of holes on the center "wings'.Pull your line through those holes and tie it off.

Now do the other side the same way.

Use the same line to tie your binding to the shoe.

Push toe in through the big center hole, grab the tab with the little hole and stretch it back over the heel of your boot.
 I tried to figure out how to include a full size template for this but I haven't figured out how to do that. If anyone has a idea of how to do that leave me a comment or email me. I can measure it and give anyone who is interest those. Just email me and ask.

Pony Power

The drought here this past year is keeping hay prices out of sight. Many people are asking over double the price they got last year. Such high prices have forced us, and a lot of other people, to make tough choices.  Livestock markets are seeing near record numbers of cattle coming in.  Several of them were ours, including the steer Ann had been starting to train as a draft animal. Part of our long term goal has always included some type of draft animal. We thought that a oxen would be a good fit for us but these hay prices made us reconsider. Ann's pony, Sam ,had some of the basics down already when we got him. He is a quick study as you can see in the photo. Ann has been using him to haul in water and hay. We don't even have a bridle or bit for him and so Ann is driving him with just his halter on. He is learning his voice commands nicely. We are planning to make a little better harness using automobile seat belts for a lot of the straps. Since neither Ann or the pony have any driving experience, they are training each other ! A pony cart is on my project list along with the harness making. 

Mud Oven Revisited

There has been lots of interest on my mud oven post over the last year so here is a bit of a how to on that. I started by building a level area with large rocks. This is to isolate the oven from direct contact with the soil to prevent moisture from being wicked up. Next I laid some old wire mesh across the rocks and then built a big " wafer" of mud- sawdust mix, this insulates the oven bottom. The wire mesh was put on to prevent the mud-sawdust mix from filling between the rocks. You use two types of material.

Either your basic clay-sand mud, or clay-sand with sawdust for the insulation layer.I did not have sawdust to add so used wood shaving that are sold for animal bedding. The entire oven is made of three layers. An outer layer of clay-sand mud, a middle layer of mud-sawdust mix to insulate the inner layer of clay-sand mud. Since I had them ,I put in  a layer fire brick for the oven floor. The inner layer absorbs the heat of the fire to provide the heat you cook with. The middle layer helps the oven retain that heat, the outer layer is the protective "skin".

To form the actual oven cavity I built a loss basket of willow twigs and covered that with flour paste soaked newspaper. After setting that in place I started building up the three layer walls.As you can see the oven cavity is big on mine. Too big to be efficient really. On the up side, we can bake five loaves of bread at a time and once it is hot it will retain heat until the next day. If I built another it would be smaller though. This size uses a quite a bit of wood to get hot. One important note here, The wood must be DRY. Dry as in absolutely totally dry because the last thing you put in the oven after you are done cooking is the wood for your next fire. And, split it small, you want a very hot fire.

Here I am, almost to the top of the dome. I have started the door area. Check how big you need the door for any pan you might want to use. The thickness of the inner layer is going to determine how much thermal mass you have to heat and to store heat. On this oven I went about six inches. Keep the thickness of the layers uniform. Gauge the thickness with a marked piece of wood or a stick as you go.Your oven will need a tight fitting wood door. Build it first and then form the opening around it. The door is soaked in water for several hours each time you use it.

You do not have to have a chimney as this oven does. Since the climate here dictates that my mud oven be protected from the elements I added a chimney to vent the smoke out of the little shed I built around it. My oven is a plain jane . You can get very artistic if you want to. In the book, "Build Your Own Earth Oven", by Kiko Denzer, you will find all the details on building one of these.
After your oven is built it needs to dry out before you can get baking heat. Several small firings were needed before ours would get hot enough. There is a bit of a learning curve before you are proficient at gauging how much heat you have to work with.

Building my basket.

READY TO BAKE!