From Beyond The Blog - 30/10/12

I'm not sure why I chose last night when I was exhausted to record this, but I did, and here it is.Enjoy, and thanks.

The Not So Romantic Parts - Wednesday 10/10/12

Illness. It is upon us and I have observed it tends to occur around the transition of the seasons.
As our bodies slow down to combat the invasion, one can suffer, or one can embrace the time and change of pace we are gifted.
On this occasion, I have reflected and observed some very important and often overlooked factors when it comes to living the much romanticized, almost mythical 'simple life'.

Thankfully my affliction is minor and its main effect is lethargy. But even this can present a challenge. Energy must still be expended if the fire is to be kept fed and the wood supply replenished. Feeling tired can amplify the feeling of exertion and sap morale.
From the perspective of a father, it appears there is scant opportunity for a mother to rest to the extent her body requires. The demands of infants does not slacken, in fact they seemingly increase if the child has also contracted the infection. This in turn appears to prolong the duration of the illness in the host.
Living in close proximity takes on a new dimension as you cower in the extremities of your abode, hoping that the cough and splutter that just erupted from your eight year old and showered your cheek holds no dire consequence.

Relative to most, my family and I do exist closer to 'nature' or 'the edge' so to speak, but the truth is we are no where as near as our ancestors nor indeed the bulk of the worlds population today.

No, unlike most, when unwell we cannot, and do not, lie in bed sipping on mass produced pharmaceutical 'remedies' whilst heating is activated via a timer, food procured from a freezer, blasted with microwaves and reputedly edible in minutes etc.
Nor do we walk a tight rope where pneumonia or the risk of more severe disease is a reality. This is due in part to having friends and family who dwell in houses with the aforementioned conveniences  where we can retreat if needs dictate, as well as having the safety net delivered by Universal Free Healthcare in the form of the NHS. Thankfully we rarely need to play that card, but it's very existence is a comfort and worth acknowledgement.

I am sure I am not the first modern youth who was flabbergasted when told that the common cold swept like a plague through the indigenous population of the Americas, with deadly effect, when first the white man arrived.

Now, I believe I am closer to understanding why. If it wasn't the disease itself, then a contributing factor could have been the ease of its transmission compounded by the difficulty of functioning and fulfilling basic, everyday needs. A whole family, even village could quickly become incapacitated (this still happens today!) and a vicious spiral could easily begin.

Sadly, a lifestyle such as my own is undeniably elitist. Natural selection at work in its ugliest and crudest form. No amount of currency will fill the void of not being able to lift your head off your pillow to light your stove. Your bank account cannot put food into your mouth. Your estate will not magically manifest a watertight shelter.
Consequently, I admit to being probably overly cautious when sawing and chopping wood for instance. No 'injurylawyers4u' will be able to replace the functionality of a severed thumb or chopped foot. A broken leg could easily mean many weeks of hardship not solely for me but for my entire family.

At Lammas I witnessed dreamers from all ages, backgrounds and walks of life come to visit, nearly all wishing to engage in a similar endeavour. For a few, the realisation that they would not physically be able to do so without relying on another was a sobering and hard to swallow truth to say the least.
Nature does not adhere to any amount of disability or equality legislation.
This is not to say these folk were beyond hope. Far from it. Their challenge only slightly increased by the need to re-unite their family. To rediscover the strength a family unit provides. It is no accident why family is so very very important, perhaps not literally and physically so much in the western world, but you need not travel far to see it in action.

I am able to meet the demands and challenges I am faced with, but this will not always be so. Is the answer a pension plan? No. It is my family, primarily my offspring. They are my retirement fund. They just don't know it yet!

Waste and Dishonour

I had the pleasure of receiving a communication from a forum member today.

He wished to know how he may reduce the waste and fully utilise the parts of the animals he hunted. It was/is a firm belief featuring heavily in the mythology of hunting tribes that to do so is to honour and respect your prey, to neglect to, a sin and a crime.

I may know a smidgeon more than many regarding this field, but I cannot by any means claim to be an expert. I would guess they live in Africa and the Rainforests of South America, but I shall do my best in future posts to share what experience I do have and the knowledge I have gained.

Before I do, I have to say that it was the enquirers mention of having witnessed the people of Afghanistan and “seeing what they do” that really caught my attention and set the little cogs turning. I believe I understand what he is referring to.

When I was fifteen I had the privilege of visiting India. This was a profound experience that I have no doubt has shaped my present and will my future. I, a teenager at the time both blessed and cursed with having been born in an age of rampant technological progress and the economic boom of the 90's, seeing people living in abject financial poverty. These people had few to no possessions of monetary value and yet were seemingly happier and more content with their lot than any single person I had ever come across. From the overcrowded train carriage, a relic of a bygone age, I observed filthy young scamps very much enjoying a game of cricket in the Sun, wickets constructed from gnarled sticks, laughing and evidently happier than any of my fellows in Britain with their Playstations, televisions and mobile phones. An impossible number of houses lined the railway banks, constructed from a myriad of salvaged waste materials. Here was necessity mothering invention on an awesome scale though now the materials were not natural, rather the economic and industrial cast offs in an urban setting.

It is therefore little wonder that whilst my local tip proudly displays a sign claiming to have recycled 73% of the waste handled last year, countries such as India and those in Africa can easily claim over 95%. The common denominator? Money, or rather the lack of it.

Money is a magic bullet that can often bring about a desired outcome or secure an acquisition that outsources the challenge of manifestation to another. I view each pound sterling as a unit of time. Sometimes the exchange is very efficient, for instance an air rifle. How long would it take you to construct and manufacture such a device? If a good quality rifle costs £300 new, and you earn £50 a day, six days of paper shuffling/labouring/bin collecting/filing sees you outfitted with something that it is fair to say would have taken you a damn sight longer than that to make!

Conversely the hundreds of pounds spent heating, running, renting/buying your home each year and the hours spent working a repetitive job you ultimately resent and despise and keeps you from those you hold dear in order to meet those bills is an example of the insanity money perpetuates. I find it more efficient to live close to my family in a caravan with a wood burner and collect and process the wood myself. Gas for heating costs me £35 every five months! Barely a days labour if I do choose to sell my time...

Now it may seem that I have digressed, but the above is intended as a background illustration of why most of us (myself included to an extent) do not fully exploit the resource and opportunity each of our kills presents. We lack need.

I am told that food is the cheapest, for us wealthy countries, than it has ever been before. - We do not need to eat that rabbit.

Clothing is practically disposable, - No need for the fur. 

No need to tan, - no need for the brain.

Needles are mass produced and lets face it, with clothes no longer mended who the heck needs those anyway, so – bones not required.

Glue is readily and cheaply available manufactured from chemicals, - no need to boil the scraps of hide/ eyeballs.

I daresay the list could go on but I think you catch my drift.

To the enquirer and the curious, as a start, I refer you to my 'Make Your Quarry Pay' post.

Regarding pigeons, it did seem somewhat shameful and criminal to use just the breasts, and with this in mind I experimented with skinning it in order to cook it like one would a chicken. Please see this post for further details. Unfortunately I do not believe in this case that the extra effort required is beneficial for anything but the conscience. Amazingly those birds are seemingly 95% breast!

Feathers are the most obvious usable item of avian quarry. Jays for the electric blue wing feathers, prized by fishermen, magpies I believe also. 

For the remainder of my life I will endeavour to experiment, test and research further ways that I may honour that which I kill, but I will say this. In nature, ultimately, there is no such thing as waste. This is by no means a truth upon which we may excuse ourselves, only you can be the judge of the acceptability of your habits, but it is a truth nonetheless. Parts that are presently unusable to me, I 'offer to the woodland gods'. To date, no offering has thus far been rejected and in this knowledge my conscience is soothed.

The Hunters Chronicles - Saturday 4th August 2012

The trees are a-squeak with the news.
Whiskers twitch. Eyes and ears scan for the slightest trace of danger, though it is said the senses are of little use against this dark beast.
Three have fallen in quick succession. Struck down without warning.
All that is heard is a CRACK. Followed shortly by a drop, then a dull thud.

Thankfully this monster that roams the woods is a creature I have control over. It was I who introduced it. I call him,

'The Black Death'.

The first to fall to 'The Black Death' HW97kt .177 synthetic.

I need not seek them. They come to me, and The Black Death wakes from his slumber to perform his vocation with a talent shared by few.

They want my nuts.

They want my berries;

The early, if premature fruits of nature.

This clash of wants (mixed with my flawed notion of possession, as though such a thing were even possible) is the bringer of their destruction. The human digestive system, so evolved that it will process nut, berry or flesh, singularly, or for a very tasty dish, collectively.

There is no need for emotion. No justification required. No serious excuses concocted. Food and Death are woven together to fuel the tapestry of Life. It matters not what fodder you deem fit to dine on. Cut a leaf, and life will expire.

An RWS Supermag 9.4gr .177, 5x magnification, barely 4 yards up, 2.5 mildots holdover.

I have my own personal rituals that assuage any guilt the mind may wreak when my servant takes life at my biding. Ironically, it was as I thanked the lifeless form of this creature in my hands, stroking her fur and softly urging her to find her gods and leave this world, that another presented itself.

Both were oblivious to my presence. The second stayed hidden and elusive until, after much patient observation, a clear shot finally presented itself. The head was obscured, so up through the armpit and into the heart the Supermag was delivered, as directed, by the HW97kt.

The flat headed pellet makes for rather bloody kills, but none have survived such a traumatic blow and that is comforting.

Whilst I may be the master of 'The Black Death', with power to determine the time of the demise of these beings, I do not rule the skies. After the meat is consumed, the Gods of the heavens have made honouring these animals through the preservation of their skins, very challenging. Rain is a blessing, however, when the ambient temperature is too warm to warrant a fire inside, and outside it is wet with precious little covered space, pelts quickly rot. When the signs this has happened occur, it is with a tinge of sadness they are offered to the Earth.

For now I keep a weather eye, the other, in the Trees.

Self Reliant Airgunning - Pellet Production

It has been the one bug bear of mine. That little niggle about airgunning. The tie that keeps me reliant on the world of money and the marketplace.
I speak of ammunition, its consumption and its loss.
We use a lot of pellets!
Accuracy demands that each pellet is near identical in shape and weight, and soft (for the rifling). Killing cleanly requires the material, after accuracy is obtained, to still pack a punch, thus a metal is deemed best.
It is therefore safe to say this means a man in the woods cannot extract or find the materials from the surroundings without mining the ore (if it even exists locally), smelting, casting, moulding, and swaging.
Unfortunately, if one is to stay safe from harassment, bow hunting, despite its 'renewable' ammo, is not an option on this island of ours, and catapults firing stones that are rarely uniform is a challenge I have yet to master.

On and off I researched various methods of banging out homemade ammo, but none were acceptable;

Corbin Pellet Presses and Swaging dies -Too expensive, too bulky and hardly cost effective to have shipped from the US of A.

L.E.M Spitzer moulds - poor accuracy results, becoming rare, none found in .177, production long ceased.

But lo! Whilst browsing for airgun bargains I came across an advert for a product aptly named "Airgun Pellet Maker". A chap had knocked up a prototype and posted a video of it on YouTube (I remember seeing it when it was first posted). He finally bowed to demand and has begun manufacturing them for sale.
He also lived locally so I popped across and we did a deal on a set. One .22 swager, one .177 swager and a dual calibre casting block.

That was on a Monday when the weather was poor and work was called off. I didn't get an opportunity to play until yesterday.

I was gifted some blanks to press and play with so I thought I'd do those and see what sort of weight the products were and their consistency on my new junkie scales bought for the job. Each were on the dot identical.

.177;

.22;

Now being as I'm using a springer, I've turned the weight of the .22s down to 18.4gr. The .177 I'm happy with as I want the punch.
The measurements include the tail flair, each fit beautifully in the barrels of the TX200 and TH208.



Pics of my play time.

Casting Block and eBay Lead Ladle;

The Blanks;

The Melting Pot;

The Finished Pellets;

The 'Workstation';

The lead was obtained from the old roof of this house I'm working on. The swager is to the right of the casting block seen in two parts. I intend to do a bit of a review of it with better pics outlining the method and process.

First test through the tx200 .177 10 yards.

Those two flyers, I think, were me tweaking the scope, zeroing as I went, and experimenting with holds. I was pretty impressed

Melting the old lead In a pellet tin on an old SMA Dried Milk Can using charcoal made in the woodburner;

Ran out of charcoal and had to use wood. I needed more oomph so...;

The process is alot of fun. Not everyone's cup of tea, but for me the value is more in the capability. Both the ability of recycling my shot, and forming it.

Hoorah!

Now to find the lead mine....

Poor In Money, Rich In Life - Wednesday 15/12/10

An early-ish start being that Emma had an appointment with the midwife. An appointment she had in fact lost sleep over and was abjectly dreading. They wanted her blood. Four vials of it. My presence was required, about this there obviously could be no argument. Frances would be left in the company of strangers and charged with amusing herself. such was Emma's fear, she was quite at ease with this neglect.
To distract Emma, and also deter my own boredom, I regaled the midwife with my artichoke fiasco. It would appear people find my horticultural ignorance frightfully amusing. Or just frightful.
Back home I raked the beds until Beth, another volunteer, dropped by to say farewell and give Justin a lift on his Christmas visit home. She won't be returning choosing instead to head to mid-Wales come the New Year in her converted post van.
A few hours later Kit arrived back, with his step father John and some miscellaneous items and luxuries. Some of these luxuries were devoured that evening in a spaghetti carbanara we shared.
On and off I've been reading The Complete Book of Self Sufficiency by John Seymour. In his introduction, it is clear we share the same views. He says "...Man was not meant to be a one job animal. We do not thrive as parts of a machine. We are intended by nature to be diverse, to do diverse things, to have many skills." I couldn't agree more with the words "Self sufficiency does not mean 'going back' to the acceptance of a lower standard of living. On the contrary, it is striving for a higher standard of living, for food which is fresh and organically grown and good, for the good life in pleasant surroundings, for the health of body and peace of mind which come with hard varied work in the open air, and for the satisfaction that comes from doing difficult and intricate jobs well and successfully". With this in mind, I recall an article I read in The Guardian newspaper only a day or two before, in which it stated that a household that earns less than £16000 per annum is considered in this country to be poor.
We are not earning anywhere near £16000. I personally never have done. But never before have I considered myself poor. I have never gone hungry. Never have I or my little family been cold and powerless to remedy it.
This remains to be true, and yet now we earn nothing, subsidised as we are to the tune of £40 odd a week. By the standards set by others, we are currently amongst the poorest people in the country today. Yes, this entry is being written by paraffin lantern because I'd like to save our solar energy for another time/appliance.
To the outsider this could be seen as a mark of our poverty.
But the real truth is we've never had it so good. We generally buy local organic meat and vegetables, (lamb that's grazed on the wild windswept sides of the Presellis should be organic...) we sleep until we wish to rise. I work until I am tired/bored, whichever comes sooner. I certainly never work if I don't feel upto it.
Admittedly the latter is rare as to date I haven't suffered an illness or accident that has rendered me incapable.
We live in a beautiful valley near the sea, in a part of Wales people pay to visit and often travel great distances to do so.
Poor in money, rich in life. I couldn't be happier.
If I may I would like to quote John Seymour once more, this time from the foreword of his brilliant book.
"There are very few processes in this book that I have not performed myself; albeit, perhaps, some of them ineptly. Does this make me a jack-of-all-trades and master of none? Well I'd rather be that than a person who can only do one thing. To me that would be Hell. I have embarked on many an enterprise without the faintest idea of how to do it - but I have always ended up with the thing done and with a great deal more knowledge than when I started". That quote is both a view i share, and an accurate description of my current lifestyle.
Tomorrow, brick laying!

M Jones

E-Coli - Wednesday 30/06/10

Stayed Monday and headed home :-(
Stopped off at the services for a burger and coffee, a good slap of what we want to leave!
Forced back into the services a of junctions later, as the food left me battling my eyelids. Not only did i have a snooze, but so did Em and Fran. Sadly all we've done thats positive is head over to the caravan on Tuesday to stock it with dried stuff. Em & Fran were off until the doctor could rule out this e-coli. Emma's Mum managed to pick it up on holiday with Fran . Means our forced march to Farnborough could be cancelled due to Emma's sister Nicola being paranoid of infection.
Hope her paranoia lasts as I can't be arsed.
Otherwise it's back to the drudgery of mainstream life...BORING. Am tired but I think not from exercise but just wanting the day to end. Would probably feel better if i were sleeping in the garden. Going to read my Primitive Living book as bedtime research.

M Jones