Wild Brew Part Two!

Blackberry Spice Bush Mead

It was finally time. A month had gone by and it was time to bottle my Spice Bush Amber Ale and my Blackberry Spice Bush Mead. The Wild Blackberry Wine was still bubbling pretty steadily, so it gets to ferment a while longer. These are the intoxicants my daughter and I learned to make at Tim MacWelch's Wild Brew 101 class last month.

I broke out the plastic tubing and siphoned off the ale and added the priming sugar. Yes Tim, I was very careful to add exactly the amount you said so I didn't make beer bombs instead of beer. (Wouldn't  blowing up that fantastic ale be a terrible case of alcohol abuse?) In about a week, I'll chill them and try not to drink them all before my daughter gets a chance to visit and drink hers. I am fairly certain drinking her share is wrong.

The mead was next up for bottling. I did taste a little bit as I was bottling and it was very good. It will be even better after aging a while. It also looks lovely in the bottles.

In the spirit of wild brewing, I decided to build on Tim's class and also started a batch of peach wine today. It is currently in a five gallon bucket starting stage one of fermentation. I think it is going to turn out well. The must is mostly white peaches with a few yellow peaches to add a little variety to the flavor. One of the great things about making my own wine is that I can leave out the sulfites by pasteurizing the fruit to kill the wild yeast.

By the way, it takes a long time to pit and chop up 13 pounds of peaches for five gallons of wine, but I am fairly certain this is a very valuable survival skill!

Can I drink NOW?

Summer Wild Edibles and Wild Brew! Woohoo!

After a break to accommodate real life and my addictions to pick-your-own farms and canning, I finally made it back to one of Tim MacWelch's (@timmacwelch) wild edibles classes and a wild brewing class. This time I dragged my daughter along as well. (Okay, getting a 22-year-old to a brewing class didn't require much dragging.)

Dried Sassafras Leaves

Of the edibles classes so far, the summer class was one of the best and I have to credit the blackberries. I love summer fruits and I'd have been perfectly happy if all we did was park in front of the blackberry bramble to graze.

It was a large class, but we were still able to cover a lot of ground. I know. I have the step count on my pedometer to prove it. I learned a few new plants and was able to identify a few that changed their appearance for summer.

I also got to bring home some sassafras from the Wild Brew class and I dried the leaves and will go into some stew or gumbo this fall. The roots will most likely end up in a soda or an ale. I haven't decided yet.

The ale brewing
over the campfire.

Mallory adding
the spice bush
to the ale.

Wild brewing was a blast and not just because Tim brought samples.  We started off the morning with a maple wine toast to the day, then jumped into brewing basics and beer brewing. It took some discussion, but the group finally decided on a Spice Bush Amber Ale. The students set off to find the spice bush from the previous day's class. Thankfully, we had a ringer who knew the property. A friend of Tim's was there to chaperon or I'd have been lost for sure. (I can get lost in my own small condo!) Mallory got to add the spice bush and pitch the yeast for the ale.

Moving on to the wine, we knew we'd be doing blackberries and all of us (except Tim - he's a sly one) braved the blackberry brambles, ticks, and sun to acquire our three pounds of wine in waiting. This wine will be amazing considering the blood, sweat, and tears we all shed for it.

Blackberry Spice Bush Mead
in the making.

Tim's hibiscus flower mead  rounded out our afternoon break and set the mood for the final project - mead!

The flavorings for the mead were a source of great discussion. We considered a great many things, even wild carrot, but finally settled on blackberry and spice bush. We had enough leftover from bottling that we all got a taste of the unfermented juice. It tasted fantastic. It is going to be a fantastic mead.

Mallory had enough fun in the class, she's all set to start brewing at home too. She's scouted out the local brewing store and priced out the basic supplies on Amazon already. She's got a steady supply of bottles courtesy of her also 22-year-old friends.

The class was also great fodder for things you don't normally hear in conversation:

• "Kiddo, please get the blackberry branch off my butt."
• "Burn that sum'bitch. Burn him. Burn him." (about a tick found on someone's pants)
• "A tick will turn a die-hard pacifist into cold-blooded killer."
• "This stick smells like french fries." (About the oak stick we stirred the ale with.)

Ale, Wine, Mead

The Next Bite - Spring Wild Edibles

Redbuds are pretty and taste good!

I got to take the next bite of wild edibles this past weekend at Tim MacWelch's Spring Wild Edibles class (Advanced Survival Training). I was excited for this one not only because the weather was (a lot) better than it was for the winter class in January, but also because I was really hoping to identify a few things on my own as well. (I did!)

We found several of the plants we were introduced to in the last class -  the common plantain, the seaside plantain, wild onions, and my favorite, the yarrow.

I learned that the weeds growing in between the pavers of my patio are Pennsylvania Bittercress, which I quite enjoy. I'd pull them up and put them in my salad if I didn't know what pesticides our homeowner's association sprayed on them. That, and the neighbor's dog pees on my patio to torment my dog. I'll find a safer place to forage.

The Pennsylvania Bittercress's cousin, Wintercress, I didn't enjoy so much. It was tasty at first, then the bitterness sneaked up on me and smacked me in the head. I'll eat it in a survival situation , but I don't think I'll be making it part of my everyday diet.

Spring Beauty
aka
The Fairy Potato

The actual Fairy Potato

My favorite of this class was the Spring Beauty, or as it was billed, the "elusive Fairy Potato". The flower is beautiful and incredibly delicate and if you dig it up, you get a tiny little potato. I was surprised how delicate the plant was.

I brought home two of the tiny potatoes and made itty bitty Fairy Potato Chips. It was a lot of work for a few tiny chips, but they were very good. I think if I cook with them again, I'll just cut them in half and drop them in a cup of soup or something.

We did find a small patch of wild strawberries. They'll be ready in June. Sadly, I won't be there for those, but maybe someone will get lucky and get a strawberry before the wild animals do.

One of the other bonuses of this class? We scoped out all the blackberries and other summer goodies are for the Summer Wild Edibles class and the Wild Brewing class - mostly the Wild Brewing class. That reminds me... I am off to empty three wine bottles for the Wild Brewing class so that we can refill them! (Don't worry. I won't empty them all at once.)

Salt and Pepper Fairy Potato Chips

Snowy First Steps to Wilderness Survival

At first I was afraid, I was petrified...

Okay, not really. I'd been looking forward to my primitive skills class from Advanced Survival Training and Instructor Tim MacWelch for a month now. For one, it was the first weekend in several that the weather didn't make getting outdoors completely miserable or life threatening. (People in Northern Virginia can't drive in snow and icy weather.) Second, I got to learn several basic skills that get me closer to my goal of being more self-sufficient.

I was most excited about learning to use a bow drill. We assembled our bow drill sets and all attempted to make an ember. I'd like to go on record stating that bow drills are hard. They are even harder in five inches of snow and a strong wind. I'm told that bow drill friction fires are difficult under any circumstance. That doesn't make me feel a lot better about not getting it right. Only one student managed to beat the elements and got an ember going.

I confess I got mad because my arm quit before I made an ember, so I used my fire steel and lit my tinder bundle. I wasn't going to leave without making fire, even if I kinda cheated. (Everyone knew, by the way.) At least I didn't use the lighter I had stashed in my backpack. I'll keep practicing with the bow drill. The damn thing won't beat me forever!

We need a lot more leaves
and a door!

The class was more successful at building shelters. It's a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun, especially scouting for good locations and materials. I like figuring out jigsaw puzzles and shelter building is a lot like a jigsaw puzzle. Find the right location. Place the pieces in the right direction and the right shape. Keep building until all the pieces are filled in.

We didn't complete the shelter because we had other things to learn, but we were pretty impressed with how much we could get done in a couple of hours, but it is obvious it would take much longer if we had been working solo. Primitive survival would definitely be a full-time job.

One of the other critical lessons of the day was the appropriate use of snow. It should definitely be used for snowball fights. Yeah, you can also melt it for water or if you had enough, build a snow shelter, but really, the best use of snow is pelting people with it.

We also learned basic flint knapping and the principals for signalling in a rescue situation. The best thing about Tim's classes is that everything is hands-on. We all built the shelters. Everyone made big and little rocks into useful tools. Everyone got a bow drill set and at least attempted to make fire. Everyone over the age of 21 got maple wine too.

Oh, Tim learned something too. If you dare me to squee like a teen-aged girl and ask for your autograph AND promise me maple wine if I do, I'll do it. I'll make you really sign the magazine too! (If I'm going to look silly, you're gonna sign!) The maple wine was fantastic, again! Thankfully, there was no video and to my knowledge, no pictures!

...I will survive!

Knife Safety: Lessons in Attentiveness from a Teen-Aged Girl

Safety is key in almost everything you do, especially in bushcraft and survival. So is attentiveness. I learned those lessons as a teenager. (That was last year. If you don't believe me, ask my 21-year-old daughter. She will attest to it!) If your attentiveness fails, it is very likely your safety is compromised, and 16-year-old girls are easily distracted, especially by 16-year-old boys.

There are all kinds of rules for knife safety and whittling. Keep your knife sharp. Face the blade away from you. Take it slow and steady. 

Watch what you are doing should be high on that list. Maybe my dad thought it was so obvious it didn't need saying. I was his first (and only) daughter, so he didn't have the prior experience with raising teen-aged girls. 

Not the knife in question,
but this is one of my favorites now.

Both my parents grew up camping and generally being outdoors, so it was important that my brother and I had a similar childhood, right down to the whittling lessons. Gifted with a new pocket knife, I couldn't wait to impress my dad with natural talent at anything considered a "boy thing." I was big into the "anything a boy can do, I can do better" movement for a brief time. Then I realized there were more fun things to do with boys. (I might still be into this a little. I love the outdoors, guns, knives, and muscle cars. Also, high heels, Coach purses, make-up, and Eyeore.)

Which brings us back around to pay attention to the knife, not the boy.

The whole family was camping in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. There were a few other families in neighboring campsites. I'm fairly certain anyway. I'd been a bit fixated on the cute boy one campsite over so I wouldn't swear to anything in court. We were sitting around the camp fire when I decided to put the new pocket knife through its paces. Yes, I was trying to impress him. I didn't know if knife skills were what boys were looking for, but hey, it was worth a try.

Knife and stick in hand, I started whittling away, then I caught his eye. It might have been the knife that caught his eye, but I like my version better. Cue the smiles, embarrassed glances, hair flips, and Murphy's Law. I had flipped around the knife to trim off a small branch (I know, I broke another rule.) and the knife jumped on the tiny knot and right into the knuckle of my thumb.

The ensuing commotion was a sight to behold. I screamed, my mother screamed, my father yelled, my brother laughed. I lost track of the cute boy when my mother whisked me off to the station wagon to patch up my thumb.

Mom had plenty of experience patching up my brother, so she had the wound closed up pretty quickly. The ER doc was sufficiently impressed that he didn't even undo it and sent me off to nurse my wounded pride. I never did get to meet the boy.

To this day, despite mom's best ministrations, I have a 1/2 inch scar on my thumb to remind me of two things: Always point the blade away from you and pay attention to your knife, not the boy in the next campsite. 

Where Am I Going? (And Could Someone Please Give Me a Map?)

One of my least favorite things to do at work is our annual performance goals. Every day I go to work, I do my best and I work hard. I strive to do my job to the best of my ability. Part of me argues that should be enough, but I can also see the value in setting goals. It gives you a target to shoot for, and on any journey, you need at least two of the following three things: a starting point, a direction, and a destination. With any two of the three, you can derive the third. (I find it disturbing when I can talk myself into doing things I hate because it is good for me. Tea and cookies would be so much more fun.)

One of my favorite sources of information for bushcraft, Paul Kirtley (@pkirt), posted about joining the route to mastery and one of his suggestions was setting positive constraints for yourself when it comes to bushcraft. Essentially, setting goals. (I think he's in cahoots with our HR department. It's a conspiracy to get me to write the damned things. Thank goodness he didn't start in on SMART goals...) He threw out the added challenge of putting your goals out in public so that if you blow it, everyone will know. He said it much nicer than that, but he end result is the same.

I started off learning more about prepping/bushcraft/survival with the two vague goals: getting back to nature and learning. I'm a huge fan of knowledge for knowledge's sake. In the case of skills like fire making or identifying edible plants, books and blogs aren't enough. That was apparent to me about five pages into one of my books, so I found a class on wild edibles. I'm kinda hooked now. More learning. I wants it. Practice. I needs it.

(I have the misfortune of living in a condo in a suburb of Washington, DC, with a homeowners' association that objects to me starting fires on my patio. I think they're worried I'll set the golf course ablaze. Practice is a challenge.)

The trick is there are so many paths on the journey. Knife skills, shelter making, plants, natural navigation, and on and on. I can't run blindly down all of them, so I should probably pick a trail to start with. I thought about it a while and I need all of the basics to support honing individual skills. It doesn't do me any good to know all the edible plants in the woods if I freeze to death because I can't start a fire.

So, goal number one: Learn the bushcraft basics. Learn how to start a fire, build a rudimentary shelter, find my way out of a paper bag, improve my knife skills.

After that, I really need something to focus on. With such a wide array of topics to choose from, I thought it would be good to start with something for which I already have an affinity.

Goal number two: Hone my edible plant knowledge. This one dovetails with one of my existing hobbies. I love plants. I raise herbs, orchids, and African violets and if I could, I'd have a snake-free jungle in my house. Learning more about the flora around me is fun and I'm always looking for new plants to cook with. (Homeowners won't let me have a garden on my patio either.)

I have a third big goal, but I'm not quite ready to put that one out there, partially because it is heavily dependent on my soon-to-be-a-college-graduate daughter not getting more expensive, and partially due to security reasons. A girl can't give away all her secrets.

Wild Edibles in Bit-Sized Pieces - Winter Edition

Learning about wilderness survival and bush craft is a journey, and not a quick one. I know I can't learn everything I need to know from books, so I'd been debating which bush craft class take first. The first challenge was finding classes in NoVA. Luckily, the Crazy Goat Farmer sent me a tweet about Tim MacWelch's (@timmacwelch) Winter Wild Edibles class.

I perused the course list on Tim's site (Advance Survival Training) and was torn between several classes. They all looked like fun and lord knows I have a lot to learn. I mentioned to the Crazy Goat Farmer I was having trouble deciding, when Tim piped up.

"Not to sway you, but  I'll be serving some 1yr old maple wine @ #winter #wild #edibles."

Like that isn't going to sway me. Wine? I'm there.

The first test of the class was finding the camp. Passed that one. (*whew* That is a tough one for me. I'm navigationally challenged.) The second test was starting a fire. Fortunately, that was taken care of by my classmates.

The class was fantastic. It is all hands on, including food-finding expeditions. I was genuinely surprised that you could find so much edible food in January. I could go through every plant we found, but I think you should take the class instead. I will mention a couple of my favorites (aside from the Maple wine, which isn't nearly as sweet as I thought it would be).

My absolute favorite was the yarrow. It has a great flavor in addition to being pretty close to a super medicine plant. Of all the plants we found, this is the one I took back and added to my salad for lunch.

We even found a wild carrot. The flavor is so much better than anything you get at the store. There was no artificial orange to distract you from the way a carrot really should taste, as opposed to the bland woody flavor of a store-bought carrots. I'm having a hard time putting the store carrots in my grocery cart now. (By the way, we let Tim identify the carrot given its resemblance to many things you don't even want to touch!)

Lunchtime was wine time!

After lunch, we moved on to trees. I am definitely none to fond of unprocessed acorns, but I did loved the pine needle tea. Why wouldn't I? It was tea and there are very few teas I don't like.

The class included information on plants to avoid, especially those to avoid at all possible costs. That information alone was worth the class. It is as important to know what not to eat as what to eat.

I highly recommend the class and will be registering for more classes soon. He promised more maple wine at the next class if I bring friends. Register and tell him I sent you! (end shameless plug for wine)