Bender Trial

I finally have enough straight Hazel and Rowan rods gathered to try out the bender build.

I marked the size of the structure back in Feb by the simple expedient of drawing a circle in the snow with a walking stick held at arm's length. This gave me a circle approximately 3 metres across which feels big enough to be spacious but small enough to be cosy. Human scaled.

Today was idyllic weather for a change, and I loved working in my outside studio with a big pot of wild-gathered nettle soup cooking on the open fire ready for lunch.

It's interesting how as soon as the skeleton of the structure was up there was a clear feeling of inside as opposed to outside.

It's also interesting to find that rods I thought were really straight in the woods turn out to be very wonky when I try to bend them.

Gathering Wood

 Lovely long rods for building a Bender...

Watch this space!

Blaeberry Mead step 2

Straining off the must

 Fermentation is properly under way and I have strained the the juice out of the berries. It's smelling good, looking good and bubbling through the airlock convincingly...

First ferment with airlock

Blaeberry Mead

Fermentation slowly begins...
Perhaps the wild yeast is shy? I will be patient, wait and watch, keep it warm and stir regularly.

Gathering Blaeberries

Testing birch polypore plaster

 Interesting to see how the polypore stood up to being worn in bed over night, wetted with blaeberry juice, scraped by heather twigs and generally coping with rough usage while I was out wild gathering. It's looking a little ragged and has lost some of its width, but its still covering and protecting the wee cut on my finger.

Blaeberry Gathering film still

Fine Art Foraging

Expanding on my exploration of primitive ways, a new aspect of my art practice this term is foraging. As I found last year, it's the Process that is the Art, any object is just evidence of the Work.

My plan is to make a Blaeberry mead, using wild yeast off the berries to start the process, local honey for extra sugar and some heather flowers for extra flavour... The magic of fermentation transforming ordinary to extraordinary. Another form of alchemy.

As usual while out gathering, my eye is open for anything I can work with or eat. This time I picked up a young Birch Polypore off a fallen branch, thinking that I would have a go at making tinder or a knife strop. However, as I dinged my finger off of something it came in handy as a first aid plaster instead!

Fragile Fabric

Fragility

Elderberry cordial

My jeans are fragile after lots of wild-food gathering this autumn. Scrambling through brambles and heather is tough on fragile old fabric! The layers of erosion and repair in my jeans make me think of the soil ecosystem: leaf litter building up is like the layers of patch and stitch, but without that constant rebuilding the soil wears thin and the bones of the earth show through.

Elderberries to keep flue at bay

Wild mushrooms

It feels really good to stock up the larder with free food to keep me going through the winter. I should have enough Elderberry and honey cordial to keep me cold and flue free through the winter term with luck, and the Ceps and Boletus, dried into crisp slices, will enrich soups and stews all the way to the next wild harvest.

Brambles and Rust

More Eco dye experiments over on my Flickr stream.