Wild Garlic Recipes: RamsonKraut

This is the easiest one yet.

1. Vigorously chop your wild garlic
2. Sprinkle with salt
3. Leave it for an hour or so - it'll start to give up liquid
4. At this point I gave it all a thorough squeezing to get more liquid from it.
5. Once you've got enough liquid to complete submerse it in its own juices, I put a plate and a weight on top to keep it all under the surface.
6. Put the lot in a sealed jar or brewing tub with an 'Bubble Seal' and leave it in a cool dark place.
7. After a week you should be able to smell that fermentation has started.

More soon
Your pal
SBW

Wild Garlic Recipe: Kimchi

It's that time again! The Northern Monkey and myself are afield in search of, I know this sounds unlikely, vegetables.  

Our perennial favourite is Wild Garlic/Allium Ursinum, aka ramson, jack-in-the-hedge, buckrams, wood garlic,  and where applicable, ‘bear’s garlic’. This year we've upped our game and so far have collected three rubbish sacks full. One for the 'Trophy Room' or as you may know it chest-freezer, and two for our favourite preserve. 

Salads and Omelettes aside our favourite way to eat wild garlic, has long been KimChi. We're now in year four of Kimchi making and have a few tips to pass on.

South Korea consumes 1.85 million metric tons of kimchi annually, or nearly 80 pounds a person.

I wouldn't dream of preparing any foraged food stuffs without recourse to Hunter, Angler, Gardener, Cook, the website of my wild food guru Hank Shaw. Look up any game or foraged food and Hank has blazed a trail. In this instance Hank is fermenting with Ramps (Allium tricoccum) which from the picture look a little closer to the Spanish Calçot, so he neatly folds the green fronds over the white stems. Hank also cooks by weight - we cook by volume - so you'll be better off following his proportions.

We used:
Two bin bags worked out to roughly 44 litres of leaves, stems, buds, and flowers.
We add liquidised Ginger - lots - the biggest, freshest root in the asian supermarket - the stuff in the regular supermarket is crap.
Sesame Seeds 500g/1.1lbs - last bag in the shop.
Korean Pepper flakes 250g or a whole jar.

Hank adds a couple of spoons of sugar, lots of people forego the sugar and use a liquidised Pear or an Apple. Both have worked well for us. 

We add rice flour, beaten into some boiling water, allowed to thicken and then cool, wizzed up with the Ginger, to give the ferment a head start.

After we've given it a rinse in cold water, we Brine the chopped leaves to kill off any other bacteria that might be malingering.

For the Brine - 1 cup of salt to 5 cups of water.  

We put a plate and a weight on top of the leaves to ensure they submerge,



the other advantage is once the brine has taken affect, you can see at a glance that the leaves and stems have decreased in volume, they'll also become a bit darker and intensify in flavour.

VERY IMPORTANT rinse and rinse again, in year two we didn't rise nearly enough and the Kimchi was way too salty.

We use a mix, usually 2-to-1, of Fish sauce and Soy sauce 

VERY IMPORTANT Kikkoman is the minimum bid for Soy sauce, if you use that Chinese crap or the rubbish the supermarkets pass off as soy sauce, you literally only have yourself to blame.

"If a Korean goes to space, kimchi must go there, too, without kimchi, Koreans feel flabby. Kimchi first came to our mind when we began discussing what Korean food should go into space."
Kim Sung Soo, a Korea Food Research Institute scientist.

A week or two seems to be the online consensus for how long it takes to let the ferment do its work. I'd say it was edible from this point but, longer is stronger.  I've got kimchi in my fridge that's well over a year old, it's fierce. 

While most sources will point you in the direction of well established woodlands, Wild Garlic is a marker species for ancient woodlands, our main collection areas are by steams - wild garlic loves damp ground. I'd always associated it with shady forrest floors, but 'up north' its growing in bright sun light on the banks of a stream. Follow your nose, you'll find it.

More soon
Your Pal
SBW

London Locavore: Wood Pigeon

Five wood pigeons and a Rock dove

Lots being written and blogged about the Locavore diet recently, (food footsteps not food miles) but most of it is about growing vegetables or buying vegetables from someone near by.Where's the protein?
A by product of growing your own is crops in the suburbs is raiding by Pigeons and Squirrels, think of it as the Pigeons and Squirrels inviting themselves for a snack and staying to dinner. As the main course.

London's Grey Squirrel population seems to have been hammered by the recent cold  winter so they are off the menu for the time being. For the main course we'll be having  Wood Pigeon - these are the pigeons with a band of white around their necks.

In the UK you're allowed to shoot pests in your garden as long as the projectile doesn't leave the boundary of your property, so having ruled out the .50 sniper rifles, so with your air rifle over seedlings is probably your best bet.

As anyone who's been pigeon shooting with shotguns will tell you they are pretty much pellet proof unless you can entice them into close range, with an air rifle shooting roosting or bait eating birds head or spine shots at about 30 ft are the way to do it.

Pluck and refrigerate - pretty straight forward, if you want to eat the whole bird pluck the feathers in the direction in which they lie otherwise you'll get a lot of rips in the skin. I usually just eat the breasts pan fried but I'm on a nose-to-tail tip at the moment.  Pigeons really seem to benefit from being hung for a week or more, if that not an option, at least stood in the fridge for a couple of days.

While this post was in the making I saw a TV show mention that the manky Rock Doves from Trafalgar square that we think of as flying rats are actually NOT carriers of any diseases that are transferable to humans, then I saw that Jackson Landers AKA our friend The Locavore Hunter has been eating them in the US. You can see his film about it HERE. If I can get myself past the life long assumption that they are inherently unhealthy they represent an unlimited source of free local food. I tried the Rock Dove pictured; didn't die and wasn't able to tell the difference in a blindfold taste test.

If you can't safely shoot where you are, try calling your local pest controllers - once you convince them it's not a crank call - they're very likely to be able to help out as most of them are shooting gents themselves. One pest control guy I spoke to suggested traps and an air pistol are the way forward for the dedicated locavore. The Trapman sells traps for just about anything you'd want to eat trap.

Hardcore Preppers will tell you that as the oil crisis starts to bite this will be how we all get our inner city dinner. For more about the history of Urban hunting see HERE

More Soon
SBW

Woodcock Recipe

At the end of the season we had one of our all too infrequent 'Bloggers Armed Ramble' where The Bambi Basher, Mc Shug and your pal SBW took a walk in the woods, giving the dogs one last romp and taking potshots a Tree Rabbits and Woodies. As we were about to call it a day, with nothing in the bag, McShug produced this beauty from his game pocket saying" You said you'd always wanted to scoff one - its had a week, pongz a bit" and I became the proud [if slightly smelly] owner of a Woodcock.

The Woodcock had been hanging for week when I got it, I hung it it until that well known barometer of ripeness - more than one flat mate asking about the smell - announced it was freeze-it or eat-it time. In old Blighty legend has it that a Woodcock should be nailed by the beak to a post in an out-building and only cooked up when the body falls from the head. Sadly that's about two weeks longer than the flat mates patience, so mine was ripe but not maggoty. I saved the head for an art project, but when roasted the birds skull should be split in half and using the beak has a handle the roasted brains should be sipped from the halved skull.

The Woodcock is an almost mythic gamebird, after a solitary migration in early November they over-winter in woodlands, living in a scooped nest on the ground and feeding mostly on earth worms, until the frost hardens the ground when as needs must they eat seeds and berries. In a very harsh winter even visiting bird tables.

McShug took this one with 'the wife's 20g semi', and over the years I've seen a few versions of the 'woodcock gun' all short-barrelled fast-to-the-shoulder shotguns, with Berretta even making a specialised set of rifled shot-dispersing barrels for their Ultralight [mmmmm want]. As bursting from the ground cover a Woodcock famously zig-zags though the woods at alarming speeds they are often many many outings and indeed cartridges to the bird. What has to be the most exclusive of shooting organisations is dedicated to this elusive bird. Since 1949 the Shooting Times Woodcock Club has welcomed members ONLY when they have pulled off a 'left and a right' without taking the gun from the shoulder, and done so in front of two witnesses.

With its well deserved reputation as the ultimate gamebird I wanted to savour the full experience, the bird seasoned with just salt, cooked whole and served 'old's cool' with its guts as the seasoning.



Perhaps a little over cooked - rescued from the oven after 12 minutes, still pink and bloody



The guts are very very strongly flavoured, a potent, forceful taste of the woods, they wont be to everyones taste, think of them as a woodland caviar.



Thigh and breast of woodcock, Black pudding [aka blood sausage aka Boudin noir], roast aubergine and browned halloumi, and for the dipping sause a reduction of pan juices with unsalted butter and woodcock guts.

Lots more to tell, just little time to tell it

SBW

If You Only Had One Wild Food Cookbook

'We live in an edible world. And yet many of us have forgotten the feast that lives all around us'

Regular readers will know that I'm a HOOJ fan of Hank Shaw's writing and recipes, his enthusiasm for reclaiming the foods of the wild is a massive inspiration to me, his book is finally out and for you lucky people in north america his book tour is under way. Hank has pulled off that rare feat of being a blogger who has been lauded by the publishing mainstream, twice nominated for the James Beard Food Awards basically the Oscars of the food world.

"I am not simply cobbling together all my old blog posts into a book. You will definitely see some of the same topics I write about here, but Honest Food will go deeper, be more helpful for those looking to get started on these endeavors, be less regional in focus (I’ve lived all over the country, so the book will not be California-centric.) and will – I hope – not only tell readers how to hunt or fish or forage wild greens, but will also tell them why they should bother in the first place."

So far Hank has confirmed for 20 dates across the US over the next three months and if you ask nicely he may well take a detour to vist your local book shop!

UPDATE several people have asked for a visit and Hank has now added:
San Diego, Toronto, Memphis, Billings, and probably Boulder, someplace in Michigan, Eugene and maybe even Bozeman. With Los Angeles TBC


Hank is updating this post with dates and adresses

Amazon have it for less than $15 and you can try before you buy at his blog Hunter Angler Gardener Cook

If I can scrape the money together you may even see me at the readings in Boston and or NYC

Your pal

SBW

Confit de Lapin AKA Knifeless Rabbit

Little Rabbit Foo Foo

Hoppin' through the forest

Scooping up the new shoots and
stuffin' 'em in his gob

Along came the Bambi Basher, who said:

'SBW, with the Rigby, could ya bop him in the head?'

I work the bolt and send Little Rabbit Foo Foo a dinner invitation

Little Rabbit Foo Foo
Hoppin' through the forest

Scooping up the vegi's and turning them into protein

Little Rabbit Foo Foo

I've cooked a fair few of your friends

I've got something very special planned for you too

The Confit [con-fee] has always had a special place in my larder and my heart. Meat boiled in fat, pretty much defines YUMMY. The traditional preservation method of south-western France where geese and ducks are cooked in their own fat and can be stored for months or bottled/canned for even longer. My Confit on the other hand has never lasted longer than a meal and a sandwich the next day. This one is seriously easy and delicious, it just takes a long time to cook

 Slice shallots and crush garlic

 Bone out the cuts of rabbit and save the carcass for the stock

Use the cuts to cover the bottom of a solid pan with a tight-fitting (and preferably heavy) lid

Lay the meat on top of the  shallots and garlic (for a little extra umami I added the rabbit's heart)
Pour in olive oil (or goose/duck fat if you have it) until the meat is almost covered

Add some springs of Rosemary. Get the pan hot and then turn down the heat to the lowest possible setting, put the lid on.

I added a glass of this really rank Zinfandel - A reminder that Ex Mrs SBW is not to be trusted in the wine section of a supermarket - to the stock pot with a couple of carrots and a stock cube. In it's defense the Zinfandel did sit well with the shallots adding a pleasing sweetness. 

Once I'd reduced the stock to half a glass I added it to the pan, and that's it. Come back in three hours and test the meat with a fork. 

This is the knife-less bit: if it's not falling off the bone, give it another hour, before testing again.  
You could use the results as the basis for a cassoulet, or serve them with pasta, polenta or mashed potato.


Enjoy
Your pal
SBW

Venison Carpaccio

First shoot your deer. 

This is the loin or backstrap, the muscle that runs down the animals spine. 

Not having sufficient larder space, instead of hanging the meat I let it stand in the fridge for a week, before marinading it in maple syrup for 36 hours then coating it in ground pepper.

I seared it all the way round in a very hot pan with a little sunflower oil (too hot to use Olive oil) and left it to stand until stone cold.

 Served sliced thinly with a 'drizzle' of Olive oil added just before serving.

Your pal
SBW

This Weekends Recommended Reading

Blogs. Just like buses, ya wait for ages and then three come along at once. Two of them by the same dude.

First up I'd like to introduce Hubert Hubert an Air Rifle hunter from the bit of england between 'darn sarf' and 'oop north'. Lets call it the 'mid-lands'. The writes a blog he calls Rabbit Stew. Self described as

Surviving the credit crunch! Middle-aged bloke takes to the fields with an air rifle in search of free food.

.... because of a nagging sense that the stranglehold that the all-conquering giant alien supermarkets have on both the farmers that produce the meat and the Joe Publics that buy the meat is a fundamentally crazy, rude, unfriendly - and moreover, somehow, and this is where it gets a little less rational, I fear - yucky state of affairs: it just feels queasily, weirdly wrong to buy lamb chops from Tesco's. So, I don't really seem to do it any more. What I seem to do is go out and try to shoot rabbits instead (except I'm not very good at it, get very few, and have become, as a result, much more of a damn veggie than I'd have thought likely at the outset when I proudly purchased my manly, German, hell-bent-on-meat-eating air rifle). I seem to find myself thinking more and more of a little shack on the edge of a wood somewhere where I can dwell hermit-like with my Weihrauch, pot rabbits, pick mushrooms, grow a giant beard and, unbelievably, wash even less than I do now.

Nicely written and for such a new blog quite a few posts too. Welcome to the blog roll Hubert.

Best make your self a cup of something hot and a sandwich before you start on this one. For, dear reader, this is some blog. 

Alcoholism, Divorce, Penury, AIDS, Third world debt, Kleptocracy, Corruption, Land mines, and the fun doesn't end there. This blog contains all sorts of insights into the human condition, from the  grotesque to the inspirational. A really genuinely unique voice, and frankly the reason I've achieved so little this afternoon. 

A Hippo On The Lawn - the diary of an involuntary expatriate

Here's how it starts:

I am sitting in a 20-foot container, a reasonably well-appointed container admittedly but a container nevertheless. The kind of container in which people stuff cars, or building materials, illegal immigrants, whatever, or wash up on the southern coast of UK loaded with BMW motorcycles, that sort of container. It is one of a few that sitting on their little wooden blocks plugged into a generator together form the residential half of the industrial site that I am running........

......I came here nearly 14 years ago for a six-month humanitarian demining contract. Apart from occasional interludes in places like Gabon, Nigeria and Uganda to name a few, I have been here ever since. I have been shot at and stabbed in this country, I survived a plane crash here, got married and divorced here, have been formally expelled from the country and then very grudgingly and still precariously allowed to stay, been arrested three times and detained many times, went through a week long court case facing ten years for trumped up charges before being acquitted. I am raising a son here, have had seven varied and interesting jobs here, have a farm down south on which I intend to run sheep and have just finished building a house in the southern suburbs to replace the one I lost after the divorce. As much as the immigration services want me to leave, I want to stay.

I really can't do justice to his writing in a few short exerts, READ IT yourself. I promise you won't regret the time you spend on it. 

The last of this weekends blogs is also written by Hippo. 

Cooking In The Frontline is a recipe blog of stunning (and mouth watering) simplicity. 

.........I had better teach myself to cook. Easier said than done when in a war zone. It is all very well getting the best cook books but all of them assume that the local delicatessen or well stocked supermarket is but a short drive away. So I stopped lugging the books around in my back-pack and started to look at the ingredients that were available around me. I then figured out the best way to turn, what were sometimes collectively quite an odd assortment, into a dish that would not only sustain me, but was a delight to eat. Well I wasn't always successful, my rats in Satay sauce were, quite frankly, gut churning but I was desperate at the time.

To my surprise, however, I found that cooking in the front line, so to speak, was an enjoyable experience. It took my mind off the horrors around me and the discomfort we all suffered. It brought me close to a surprising variety of people and I am sure that on more than one occasion, instead of being ambushed, the smell of cooking wafting through the bush encouraged my would be assailants to appear sheepishly out of the gloom, weapons pointing safely towards the ground, politely asking if there was any going spare.

Sure he's no Hank, (but who of us is?) the great beauty of his writing is his knack of reveling just how easy it is to knock up terrific grub even in seemingly adverse circumstances. Think of him as an older, wiser, wittier Jamie Oliver, based in Angola. 
Off for a spot of fishing. 

Don't stay up too late reading will you

SBW

Over Night Sensation

A while back I spent a month in the Languedoc region of southern France, and did we do some great eating. Here's the local specialty.

Cassoulet was originally cooked in the ovens of the village bakery with every family having an earthenware dish with their own symbol or crest on it, the first part was done at home and the dish dropped off at the bakery to be picked up on the way home from the fields the next day.

This should be enough for six of you

600g of dried Haricot beans

600g of pork shoulder diced (how a frenchman hunts a pig)

400g of Toulouse sausage

50g of pork rind 

6 confit duck legs (how a wild food hero confits his duck legs)

1 large onion chopped as fine as you have the patience for

1 large onion studded with cloves

1 head of garlic chopped even finer than the onion

1 generous bundle of herbs (AKA bouquet garni -The green part of a leek, some thyme, a couple of bay leaves and some celery tops - tied up with a piece of string)

2 hearty pinches of rock salt

1 spoon of crushed peppercorns (green if you've got them - black at a pinch)

A glass of wine

And as much duck fat as your conscience will allow.

Lets get into it:

Blanch the beans in boiling water, skimming of any foam, 20 minutes should do it.

Change the water, add the studded onion, and bouquet garni, bring it all to the boil and turn it right down to the lowest simmer you can set you hob to. You'll need to cook this part for about 1.5 hours.

Brown the pork in some duck fat, a few pieces at a time and set aside.

Brown the sausages and set them aside.

Brown the duck legs and set them aside too.

Brown the pork rind in some more duck fat, then add and sweat the chopped onion down to mush, adding the garlic when the onion is well under way so as not to burn it.

Put all the browned parts in an oven proof dish, cover with water and simmer until everything is cooked.

Assemble the whole lot in an oven proof dish, making sure there are a good layer of beans on the bottom to avoid sticking. Add the wine and top up with water. 

leave the whole lot to stand, traditionally over night, but I usually just wait until the oven is up to 180c. Cook for about 1.5-2 hours adding more water if you need to.

Serve with proper bread, a big red, and finish with a fat cigar.

bon appetite 

SBW

Only The Good Bit

Hanks comment about being 'Scots-Irish' set me thinking aloud (in the relevant accents) about our own heritage to Bushwacker Jnr.  We're Northern European Heinz 57, and more comically, a mix of Welsh hookers and Russian aristocrats, but that's a story for another day.

Bushwacker Jnr. 'Am I a bit Welsh too dad?'  

SBW (in silly Welsh accent) "Only the good bit, boyo, Only the good bit"

After years of only eating under duress Bushwacker jnr has finally started to show an interest in the sport of his forefathers, face stuffing. I'm an eater, BoBs an eater, our Dad's an eater. 

On the other other side of the river [ex] Mrs SBW's brothers are all eaters, and even the legendarily skinny Mrs SBW can put away huge amounts of grub.

Bushwacker jnr: "What do they eat in wales?"

SBW (still in a comedy welsh accent) "Leeks, Lamb, and that most perfect of foods The Welsh Cake. Bud."

Welsh cakes are very very easy to make, even easier than Bannock and Biscuit. You can make them in a skillet over your campfire, or in an un-greased frying pan at home, but my guess is that they were originally cooked on top of a  range, where they could cook on the residual heat left from other cooking or heating water.

The recipe has only five ingredients

2 parts flour

1 part fat

1 part sugar

some dried fruit (or as I explained it to bushwacker jnr 'anything other than Currants')

1 egg

Blend the dry parts together in a bowl with your fingers as though you were making a crumble, then stir in the egg with a spoon.

Form the whole lot into a sausage shape and slice it into discs. The little people liked shaping the cakes by hand , but you being as sophisticated as you are dear reader, could cut them out using the rim of a Champagne glass.

Cook low and slow in an un-greased pan until pale brown on both sides.

If they seem a little soft in the middle, just turn off the heat and come back in a while.

Great fun to do, and anything that sells the kids on the idea that they could cook for themselves is bound to be labour saving in the long run.

Enjoy

SBW

Thanks For Stopping By

One year ago I decided to check whether or not BoB (Brother of Bushwacker) had visited my blog. So I installed Cluster Maps and sat back to see if a little red dot would appear over New Zealand's south island.

As of this morning 16,320 visits have been logged, which either means some of you are coming back for more of the same or there is another site with a similar name that a lot of you miss spell as you type its name into your browsers!

During the next year lots of new avenues will be explored and if all goes according to plan some more actual hunting will take place.

Thanks for your support, I started the blog for my own entertainment and I'm delighted that I've managed to entertain you too.

Cheers
SBW

Jus' Like That!

After my recent outburst on the comments section of Andy's Blog, and this weeks exaltation of the biscuit there are two reason to show you the picture at the top of this post.

One: Tra-la! They really are as easy as I said, and if you get down to the shops later today you've still got the chance to be a hero tomorrow morning.

Two: Andy's point about the farm shop being the best place to buy your eggs from is so true. Look how flat the yolk is on that egg. It's perfectly cooked, but being from a supermarket, it's not really fresh and so instead of being a perfect hemisphere the yolk has sagged.

Such is suburban life
SBW

PS Here's how I poach eggs

Breakfast - It's All Good This Weekend

This one you gotta try!!

American readers will already know this, so this post is really for those of us not residing in the USA. America leads the world at breakfasting, really, and here's for why...

It's not just a legend, there really are special breakfast beers brewed in Germany, a wonderful idea, shows real imagination, but no. It's not quite what I'm looking for.
A croissant, even a chocolate stuffed croissant or pan au chocolat, washed down with a bowl of hot chocolate is good. But not good enough.
The 'full English' while a fine thing in itself could do with a few additions. Those additions hail from the US. The American take on the pancake, all risen and fluffy is a wonderful thing too, and may well become the subject of a future blog, but this post and this weekends breakfasts are dedicated to the majesty of the Biscuit.

By biscuit I don't mean the English word for cookies, I mean the half way house between bread and scones that ANYONE can make in TEN MINUETS. Transforming themselves at a stroke from kitchen lummox to culinary hero in less time than it took me to write this post. TRUE.

I've eaten biscuit with American family's and in dinners loads of times but it never occurred to me just how easy they are to make.Until I read A Proper Breakfast by GWH (the Great White Hunter). His recipe cannot over state just how easy they are to make!

Shortening isn't that easy to come by in the UK so I use vegetable suet which all the big supermarkets sell. You'll find it in the baking section it looks like this


The only things I would add are;
Don't make them too thin. At first I was nervous of making them too doughy and rolled them a little thinner than the recommended three quarters of an inch, as soon a I started to roll them out a little thicker I got a perfect biscuits.
A sponge tin (round and not very deep) is perfect for making one large biscuit which you can serve slices of.

This weekend you're a hero, even if it's only until the end of the meal!
Thanks for reading
SBW

PS This summer while camping out, at the music festivals or later in the year at deer camp, this recipe makes a good alternative to banock -you can mix and bag the dry ingredients and take them with you. While the others are lamenting the state of the squished, soggy loaf they brought with them, you can bake your biscuit in a Dutch oven over the fire. How bushwacker will you look then!

I've Got A Sample For You!

The other day my office neighbour, she has the space next door to us, popped her head 'round the door saying 'I've got a sample for you' as she handed me this bottle.
You should have seen the look on the interns face!

Of course it's Elderflower cordial, and so delicious even the kids liked it!

The elder flowers in our garden have all gone now, roll on the elderberries!
Any elderberry recipe ideas gratefully received!

Thanks for reading
SBW

Ashleys Site - Natural Bushcraft

Imagine if you wanted to find (nearly) all of the cool things that appear on the bushcraft websites and forums but you didn’t have the time or inclination to wade through the arguments and pomposity. Good News. A fella called Ashley has painstakingly collected together most of the best bits! Natural Bushcraft has the videos, the tutorials and a fantastic bushcraft quotes section. Life just got easier!
Well worth a visit, he really puts a lot of effort in, every time I visit I've seen something else interesting.

Thanks for reading
SBW

SubUrban Harvest

After my own efforts with chestnuts and blackberrys I'm pleased to report that one of my friends has taken the urban foraging in a new direction, with delicious results.
Last night I popped in on R&E of Stoke Newington and was delighted to try their Sloe Gin. Made with Sloes gathered on Hackney Marshes and gin gathered in from the off-license (liquor store) at the end of the road. Much better than the commercially available stuff. Interestingly E has booked herself on one of Ray Mears' six day courses. And after a bit of arm twisting WILL be writing a guest review of proceedings.

She also under taken a bit of guerrilla gardening, well more guerrilla small holding actually. She came to know where the local council were planting ornamental plants in areas where the public could see them but not walk all over them. These beds are weeded watered and fertilized by the council, she has already harvested her first crop of gooseberrys with more variety's on the way this summer!

Well Played E!!

Thanks for reading
Bushwacker

Dig For Victory

I've just seen a really interesting blog post over at Earth Connection a bushcraft school in northern Virginia. It set me thinking............

Looking out of the window, towards my my sit spot at the far end of the garden, it's really high time I got to digging over the garden to plant a vegetable patch.
Last summers apple crop was massive, but our month in France came at the right time for us but the wrong time for effective harvesting. We left unripe apples on the tree and returned to overripe wind falls on the ground. apples aside this year I want to get into it a bit more than last summers tomatoes and chills on the kitchen window sill.

During the second world war the efforts people could make at home were a valuable source of both morale and nutrition. The concept was sold to the public as 'doing our bit' on 'the home front'. The project proved to me a huge success - the British haven't been as health since! A fact that's always worth pointing out to fatties when they moan 'its my genes' - the nation had pretty much same genes '39 through '46 as we do today but the availability of processed foods was massively restricted by rationing. So people grew their own vegetables and hunted rabbits, hares and pigeons with a previously unknown vigour and were healthier and slimmer.

I once read an interesting account of a German woman's post war experiences in Berlin, after the war food and pets were thin on the ground. She said she became something of a local celebrity due to her skill at trapping! Oh and she confirmed, dog is a lot better eating than cat.

The climate change, food miles, rising food prices, and city air quality issues (lets gloss over my need for mass reduction)are compelling reasons to take up a little suburban smallholding. Could I really live in the suburbs by the estuary, on garden grown veg, and the proceeds of shotgun, rod and ferret?

I proposed as much to Mrs SBW
'Stop blogging and go back to work'

Thanks for reading
SBW.

Show The Bushwacker To The Rabbit

Sunday morning dawned cold and transport-less, so I dressed up in a base layer of nylon sportswear, hoping the static generated would act as on-board central heating, with a layer of cotton work wear on top to keep out the thorns. I chose a bag that I'd be able to hose down if I needed to and said goodbye to the kids. As I was leaving the house I could hear Mrs SBW sniggering and singing Simon and Garfunkel's well known ode to successful rabbit hunting

'Bright eyes,Burning like fire.Bright eyes,How can you close the pain. How can the light that burned so brightly Suddenly burn so pale? Bright eyes.'

After three changes of train due to engineering works I was finally on my way to meet James for a spot of old-school rabbit hunting. With Ferrets.

And what a great way to spend the day it is,James and Sara met me at the station and we drove through the Sussex countryside. For readers in the US - it looks just like the farmed parts of my adopted home of Northern Virginia, except the roads are narrower and the cars are smaller.

James's dad's place is big enough to have several warrens all in different states of occupation. The biggest coney conurbation we investigated had been flooded out by the recent rains and was unoccupied. Of the five warrens we tried, two yielded a total of three bunnies.

The Ferrets are charming, they have an animated curiosity about them and while I'm sure rabbits view them as dangerous thugs, to me they look very pet-like and from what I've been reading are easy to keep as companions and hunters. Here in the UK their role in feeding a hungry nation is quite well documented with references in court papers going back at least as far as the twelfth century when a ferreter was listed as part of the Royal Court. Today Ferrets ownership and hunting counjours up an images of working class countrymen in flat caps and long coats (to hide the booty) with bulging trousers using them for poaching for the pot or pest control for the land owner but it wasn't always the case. In the 1300's you'd have needed an annual income of some forty shillings (I'm not exactly sure of the exchange rate - but it was quite a lot of money) to own a ferret and the penalty for unlicensed ownership would have been harsh. King Richard II issued a decree in 1384 allowing one of his clerks to hunt rabbits with ferrets and they're mentioned again in 1390 with a law prohibiting the use of ferrets on Sunday when feeding your family wouldn't be allowed to interfere with marshal archery practice.

Ferreting is very simple, at the end of the afternoon I asked James if there was anything more I needed to know and he replied 'that's about it'.
First you need a business of ferrets, two seems to be the preferred number. I'd recently read that one male one female was considered the best ratio, with males being more aggressive and females being more through, James reckoned that whatever you had would do at a pinch. We used the modern locator collars which certainly made things a lot easier when it cam to the digging. In days gone by you'd have had to tie a tread to your Ferret and let it pay out as the Ferret went down the hole, when the Ferret stopped taking line you'd know that it had either killed a rabbit and was taking a nap (something they're notorious for), or it had backed the bunny into a hole with no exit and wasn't letting it out. Either way it would be time to start digging along the tread until you got to the action. With a locator you're spared a hell of a lot of digging as you can find the spot from above ground and dig directly down. In the wet clay laden soil it's still hard work. If your lucky and it all goes according to plan, you've put you ferrets into the right holes the rabbits bolt out of the warren into 'purse' nets that you've secured over the exits. As the rabbit barrels into the net it's own momentum pulls the drawstring tight capturing it. These bolted bunnies are the most highly prized as without teeth marks from the Ferrets their flesh is untainted by coagulating blood and the make slightly less gamey eating.

On the subject of eating special thanks and a commendation must go to Janet (james's mum) for the huge, hearty country lunch she served us that kept out the cold and the AMAZING bread and butter pudding she made.

James has posted a video of our hunt here.

As Ferrets usually come in pairs, they offer up some amusing naming opportunities.
James had a pair called Dead and Buried and a lad called Robin who lives in Scotland and has a Ferreting blog calls his business Purdey and Kalashnikov!

At the school gates I ran into young R, (well he ran into me) a lad in bushwacker jnrs class, he's absolutely fascinated with everything 'survival' and was proudly showing me his copy of The Dangerous Book for Boys when his mum showed up. She'd heard about the forthcoming trip from Mrs SBW and wanted to know if I'd been. I told her we'd gotten three rabbits
S. 'where are they? in a shed in the garden?
SBW 'No! they're in the freezer!'
S. 'NO!!!'
She scuttled off dragging young R behind her leaving me wondering is she still speaking to us or are we now a family of evil rabbit killing hillbillys?
As they say up north 'there's owt as queer as folk'
Thanks for reading
SBW

PS If your interested in getting started yourself Deben have a DVD, sell the locator collars and net making kits.

Picture Credit
Stained glass, Long Melford,Suffolk. Picture by chris chapman
Have a look at his fascinating site about the motif and it's appearance in medieval art across the world.

Really Actually Tasty?

Much to my surprise the office has yielded a lesson in preparedness and survival this week.

Due to the early January lull when the rest of the world seems to still be on holiday. Last weeks office life was at a much slower pace than could be productive. The morning football conversation extended beyond its mandatory 20 minutes and peaked on Friday at an hour and a half.
Work, as it was, centered around half-hearted researching, most of the day went on teasing each other and reading stuff out from the internet.
One viral email caught everyone’s attention and made me think about the nature of our dinner and our expectations of it.

LOOKS GOOD

EASY TO COOK

PLENTY OF THEM ABOUT TOO!!


As we watched to squeals of horror, the question everyone was asking, well more shrieking than asking, was ‘Would you? – Could you!”.
Mr. Bojangles (the resident song and dance man) has lived in Senegal for ten years so he speaks with an authority the others cant muster.
“In lots of the parts of the world people eat all kinds of stuff”
Would you? Have you? You didn’t!
“I wouldn’t be surprised if I had, in a lot of places people just need to eat, you never know what you’re being served ”

In the Southern US and much of eastern europe squirrels are well known as good eating, a few people shoot them to eat here, and a couple of the more adventurous London restaurants have them on the menu.

Well they call squirrels ‘tree rats’, maybe these fellas should be re-branded as ‘ground squirrels’. Hmmmm?

Thanks for reading
Bushwacker.