Return to Leather working...

Now that my garden has shut down for the winter with all of the attendent grunt work complete, I decided to continue a previously aborted attempt at leatherworking.

I had decided to embark upon the mystery of leather working last spring, but my attentions were quickly diverted towards the arts of bow-crafting and metal working. Thus, after the consumption of enormous amounts of food over thanksgiving, I clumsily traversed down the basement of my house to fetch several pieces of cleaned rawhide, which had been drying for the last 5 months.

Now animal hides naturally contain high levels of collagen, the elusive protein that tends to make hide twist and contort in many different directions. Obviously we want fabrics to be smooth and pliant, thus more or less fashionable into clothing, containers, shoes...etc. Thus, rawhide needs to be purged of it's collagen, that is, it needs to be tanned. Pre-industrial societies around the planet found several ingenious ways of acheiving this result, none of them are very pleasant to the senses however.

Stone age North American Indian cultures tanned their leather by smearing a paste made of animal brains all over a wet piece of rawhide. Apparently, certain enzymes within brains neutralized the contorting effects of collagens. Europeans of the Middle Ages figured out that the alkaloids within wolf dung did much of the same thing...thus your average middle age tannery consisted of strips of hide being smoked by a dung fire.

And then there's the middle eastern method of tanning. They apparently figured out that the bark of certain trees contained tannins which easily leached out the collagens within rawhide. Unfortunately, the leather thus produced were more than a bit poisonous to eat.

Thus, when all things are considered, I took the middle eastern option. I gathered all the left over maple and oak branches and shrubbery from last week's compost making and boiled them down. To this potion, I added sheets of rawhide. After hours of this boiling, the hard rawhide absorbed the reddish brown tannin elements and became soft and pliable. Drying took hours more.


I took a small strip of this leather and quickly fashioned the material into an ancient shepard's sling. The leather was very workable. It was easily cut into the right shape and held it's shape and dimensions with surprising durability. Just playing around with the sling, I managed to easily chuck stream pebbles out to 100 yards with it. The creation of the leather took at least 20 man hours of scraping, cleaning, boiling and drying. But the actual utilization of the material to create a very functional tool/weapon took less than 10 minutes.

Primitive Leaf Compost Heap

The annual ceremony was replete with the usual assortment of suburban pagentries. Here in the northeast, the first weekend after all of the foliage have fallen is the weekend of the great gathering....the great leaf gathering that is. Armed with leaf-blowers, lawn-mowers, and an arsenal of rakes, the neighborhood happily proceeded to do away with kilo-tons of fallen leaves. Our entire block ringed with the sound of humming machinery, gossipy chattering, and radio broadcasts of the latest football game. As the day wore away, every house around us accumlated dozens of huge black bags, stuffed to the brim with leaves.

Obviously, tremendous amounts of effort would be spent by all parties, and a great sense of accomplishment is felt at the end. After all, the lawns are no longer marred by heaps of unsightly brown leaves. But what exactly are we doing every year? Well, we're extracting fine organic compost from our properties at great cost, and having them shipped away to be burnt at an even greater cost. Knowing this, I decided to try something different this year. After reading a few chapters from the Rodale's book of composting, I decided to create my own leaf compost mounds. Compost mounds works by the same basic principles as my existing hot compost bins. The mounds are usually vastly larger than bin-based compost heaps. They are uncovered year-around and uses the natural process of decay. The mounds utilize the slower method of cool composting versus the rapid hot-compost method of the bins. Hot composting involves the injection of water and baterial laden animal wastes into a ventiliated humus-rich compost heap. It also involves periodic rotation of the compost layers either through manual labor or through biological organisms(worms, centipedes). With the cool-compost method, none of that effort is required, you just gather the biological materials into a pile, water it, and leave it there. The catch is that cool-composting takes four times as long as hot-composting. So the compost mounds that I set down now, will produce the black compost that I need by the spring of 2008.

Books and theories aside, building the actual mounds were incredibly labor-intensive. Firstly, about 200lbs of leaves were manually gathered into a huge centralized pile. A leaf-mold was used to compress sheaves of foliage into dense layered leaf-packs. Hundres of such leaf-layers were manually constructed. Then another 100lbs of dirt and brush were gathered with the handy shovel and brush-clipper. Then the process of applying a layer of dirt, a thick layer of compressed leaves and a layer of brush were repeated 10 times for each mound. The dirt served to weigh the leaves down, while the brush provided the ventilation structure to let in oxygen and let out the bacterial-processed methane. After the construction of a mound, about 10 gallons of water was poured upon it to fix it's structure and kick-start the decomposition process. I opted to not use any petro-powered machinery for this task. And obviously, I suffered greatly due to that decision. By saturday evening, my entire back felt like a single burning mass of cramped muscles. By the time I finished everything this evening, my entire body was stiff with pain.

After all is said and done, however, I had constructed 4 huge compost mounds, enough compost generation capacity to power a garden 20 times my current plot's size. These compost mounds would be renewable, since every year I would need to only take the processed compost from the mounds, and add in the year's new fallen leaves as replenishment. A garden that uses the entire output capacity of these mounds plus my hot compost bins should be able to produce some 50% of a person's minimum diet. Thus with the completion of the compost mounds, I've taken one giant, joint-stiffening, muscle-cramping leap towards self-sufficiency.

Ripening has taken it's course

The final batch of green tomatos have ripened in the cellar. Over 70lbs of tomatos were harvested this year, which is quite impressive for the two dollars and 50 cents spent on 2 tomato saplings. I covered my square meter garden with leaf molds to prevent soil erosion over the winter. The weather is getting progressively colder here in the northeast, though with stark exceptions. I have to give some small iota of thanks to Global Warming for the 70 degree weather last week.


In anycase, hunting season is in full swing, and I have made a new heavy hunting bow for the task at hand. It has a draw weight of 80 lbs and can pierce an inch thick oak board from 20 yards away. My archery skills are still not up to the task. I have taken multiple shots at small game in the last several weeks without once hitting the target. What really stings is that I've been practicing archery for years. And in this time only 2 rabbits have fallen to my missiles. It seems absurd that humanity had once relied upon hunting to survive. But with hindsight it is clear that as the last Ice Age ended, vast regions of tundra were replaced by forests and the grass-fed Megafauna were consequently replaced by smaller, more agile creatures. Thus man must have been FORCED into agriculture as a way of supplementing the ever diminishing animal resources that were obtainable by his primitive weaponery. The longbow, though elegant in it's design and function, is still outmatched by the cunning and agility of woodland game. While my arrows are fast, they are still not as fast as the speed of sound, and animals like deer and rabbits have more than once dodged the missiles in mid-flight. Moreover, the motion of drawing the bow to loose the arrow more often than not served as early warning for the animal targetted. Thus, successful bowhunting requires great stealth, coupled with extreme accuracy and speed of release. And these skills will take me many more seasons to master.

The last pillaging

Another dozen tomatos were ripened in the cellar. My garden, otoh, has been entirely ravaged by squirrils and rabbits scrambing to fatten up for winter. All the winter kale seeds and turnip saplings have been chewed up. Hunting season has begun in earnest,all of my weapons have been polished and honed to take on a lethal edge. I'm almost certain that I can deliver one rabbit/squirril BBQ by year's end through my skills with the bow!

Autumn Mosaics

The vibrant foliage of autumn speaks volumes about the austere and often transient nature of beauty. For half a year, the flower beds of our neighbor provided a most pleasant atmosphere when working in the garden. Behind the pretty tulips and perennials stood groves of trees: oaks, pines, and a smattering of willows. Throughout those warm months, the trees served as a stage of the flowers, an unassuming curtain of green. Now though, the brides-maid has outshone the bride herself in splendor. What is truly amazing however, is that while the flower's greatest beauty occurs during the xenith of it's youth, the leaf's moment of majesty comes just ere the darkness falls.

As the days become shorter and colder, my garden has become dominated by turnips. The cabbages simply couldn't withstand the onslaught of the rabbits, who cleverly chewed through my snares. The green tomatos in my cellar continues to ripen, I collected another half a dozen rosy ones today.

Cornucopia of food and pests...

Some 40 lbs of tomatos had been ripening indoors for two weeks. Wrapped in newspapers, these tomatos are kept warm and free of pests. Today, I harvested 10 beautifully ripened tomatos. When kept from the harsh autumn environment, the green tomatos are ripening indoors as flawlessly as they had outside at the end of summer. The full measure of ripening would be complete within a month. Of course, we have far more tomatos than we can readily consume. So a good number of them will have to be canned to last us the winter.

The dwarf kale, which had gotten off to a great start, was abruptly ravaged by a family of rabbits. These marauders had intruded upon my garden one night and nibbled off dozens of the tender cabbages at the bud. By the time I found their paw-prints, almost half of the kale buds that I had back-breakingly cultivated were destroyed. If I was to sentry beside the garden, no rabbit would escape my arrows, but I can't be there all the time. As such, a bit of ingenuity was required upon my part. After some educational reading, I proceeded to set several snares along the garden fencing, hopefully, I can trap a few of these vermin while egressing out of the garden.

The turnips were spared by the local wild life for some reason. As such they have prospered beyond my wildest expectations. The turnip section of the square meter garden had turned into a patch of broad, lush green leaves. The turnips are naturally cold-resistent and fast maturing. All of it's heat-loving wild competitor weeds were either dead or going into dormancy.

It's only garden rival, the kale, had been badly mauled by furry pests. Thus with almost no competition, and abundent resources, the turnips are growing like wildfire. In less than a week, the turnips have taken over almost a quarter of the garden area intended for the now weakened dwarf kale. The area that these plants have already conquored was further thickened with hundreds of new turnip green leaves. As such, I collected 5 lbs worth of the largest turnip greens today. When steamed, these greens had the delightful texture of butterhead lettuce interlaced with a spicy undertone, they were absolutely delicious. And if the winter is mild enough, continuous cultivation of these greens can be maintained until late december. That should produce enough fresh greens to strech through most of winter!

Coming of the frost...

Last week the autumn's first hard frost came one night. The end was swift and sudden for the tomato plants. Fundementally, life is composed mostly of water. Plants in general can be looked upon as billions of packets of water held together by thin walls of cellulose. The water pressure applied upon those walls gives the plants shape and structure. When the ambient temperature dipped cruelly below the freezing point, those packets of water turned into razor sharp blades of ice crystal. These crystals stabbed clean through the cellular structure of my tomatos along the entirety of the plants. The final stake was of course to be struck in the morning. With the coming of the sun, the temperature rose above freezing point, thus melting those ice crystals. In a matter of hours, the life blood of my tomato plants leaked out of a billion microscopic cuts. What had been in full bloom the day before was transformed into a dark, shrunken, and collapsing mass of plant matter.

I did my best to salvage the remaining tomatos on the vine. The tomato plants have apparently devoted the last iota of their energy onto their offspring. A dozen tomatos had to be thrown away due to frost damage. A handfull of semi-ripened tomatos went to the fridge, and about 30 still-green tomatos joined their siblings down in my basement cellar to ripen indoors. Of the plants themselves, I promptly proceeded to cut and shred into pieces. This green manure, I applied to the compost bins. What came out of the good earth shall be returned back into it. And the land that the tomatos had occupied was quickly replowed. I threw upon that land a fine layer of my own compost and then proceeded to sow seeds of winter dwarf kale. In the days since the sowing, the kale had been growing like weeds. Dwarf Kale, along with turnip have special enzymes within their cellular structure that serves as a form of anti-freeze. Thus, for all intents and purposes, these plants are nearly immune to the cold weather that we get here in the Northeast.

Tomato Destroyers....

This morning I woke up to a terrible deed. 5 fully ripened tomatos were snatched from the vine, crushed and dumped on the grass besides the garden. Words does no justice to the rage that one feels inside at such waste. Only someone who doesn't realize the pains of producing food would destroy another man's crops so carelessly. I know that I'm being irrationally mad here, but one really can't help it. This could be the work of children from this neighborhood. In anycase, this incident along with frost warnings for early next week prompted an emergency action on my part. Every large tomato on the vine whether ripened or green has been harvested. The 7 ripened tomatos are going in the freezer and the 30 some green ones are going to be wrapped in newspaper and ripened in the safety of the garage. I left more than a dozen small green tomatos on the vine. These fruits are probably too small to notice, let alone be worth destroying. Next week, the entire tomato plant will be mulched and it's plot of ground planted with more winter kale.

Peak Tomato!

The two tomato plants have given their utmost this weekend. I've harvested 37 tomatos today. There are still over 20 tomatos left on the vine. If the weather would but hold out for a few more weeks, all of them can be naturally ripened. The turnips are doing quite nicely in the recent cool weather. Next week, if the garden gods are kind, we shall have fresh turnip greens in our salad bowls!

Nomadic Vacation 9/29-9/31 Conclusion

On the last leg of this journey, my ethanol powered vehicle ventured near the population centers of NYC, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C in that order. Cities always possessed a kind of fascination for me. They are such complex mega-systems, magnificent and at the same time fragile. I was going to these cities to drink and party with good friends and colleagues from days gone by. One must keep in mind that for most of the last two weeks, I've been traversing the under-populated regions of the Northeast. The largest number of people I had seen had not exceeded the population of a small village or town. Thus seeing legions of people densely packed into small areas were quite disconcerting initially. But as food and liquor flowed, and stories exchanged, one cannot help but miss the social aspects of life. Though too much drink could've been consumed, I do not believe that humanity evolved such a proclivity towards alchohol without due cause. However, good friends and good company are essential components of life, and as such, I thoroughly enjoyed these last few days of vacation.

Nomadic Vacation 9/25-9/27 Carp Dreams

The vacation continued with renewed vigour on monday as I drove vaguely northwards towards Cape Cod in Massachusetts. My goal was to eventually see the humpback whales that are rumoured to be prowling those northern waters. With ethanol mixed fuel in the engine, my Honda civic meandered in fatigue ever northwards. I passed through New Jersey and into New York. As usual the course took on a very irregular pattern. Stops were made here and there. I watched some loggers busily at their work at the shire of Woodbridge. Observations were made on some farmers harvesting corn outside the Village of Gardiner. Finally, after hours of random driving, I drove over a bridge near the town of Wytheville. As I drove by, I saw these incredibly huge fish swimming underneath the bridge. Obviously, one cannot let such a good opportunity pass by. So I parked the car nearby, grabbed my rod and went fishing.

The giant fish turned out to be Eurasian carp, an aquatic nuisance species that is devouring entire marine ecosystems along the eastern U.S. There must have been dozens, scores of these huge carp swimming lazily under that bridge. Trouble was, I couldn't catch them! I tried every lure and bait line that I had to no avail. The huge critters simply won't bite.

Along the way I caught a whole lot of other fish, but no carp. That night, at a local Hostel, I researched Eurasian fishing methods in regards to capturing carp and also of the carp species itself. This Eurasian species apparently reproduces four times faster than native American fish of the same weight class, it is a carrier of waterborne diseases that wipes out other fish, and it eats everything, including grass and garbage. I learned of the hair rig created by the English, and of various chumming techniques mastered by the Chinese. Next morning, with these new tools in hand, I went back to that bridge. I chummed the waters with hundreds, nay, thousands of kernals of corn, and I used the English hair rig. But the fishing gods were unkind that day. I caught dozens of other fish, but the carp just won't bite. No wonder they are so bloody effective at wiping out other aquatic species here, Carp is simply far superior at surviving human predation. In anycase, I managed to acquire:














15 Black Crappies
5 Sunfish
3 White Perch
2 Pumpkinseeds
1 Small Mouth Bass
1 Yellow Perch
1 Catfish

Roughly 30lbs of fish were thus harvested. I wandered some more before heading back to home. My plans of seeing those whales will have to wait.

Nomadic Vacation Hiatus 9/22-9/24

I spent a good 3 days to rest and recover from the boar hunt. Back at home, the garden was in a fine shape. The tomato plants were hanging on strong due to absorbing the warmth generated from the compost pile. The turnip seeds had all sprouted into 3 emerald rows of turnip leaves. Turnips being a cold-resistent plant will continue to grow even during the harsh autumn and winter months here in the North East. The beauty of it all is that turnips serve 3 purposes. It grows fine white tubers which are edible, it's leaves are also edible, and it's non-edible roots fix nitrogen into the soil, thus making it more fertile for next year. Turnips are perfect crops to improve the conditions of the soil. Since next year, I plan to triple the total surface area being farmed, the turnip land will make a fine base to grow a heavy feeder such as squash or sweet potato. I added on another layer of fresh grass and leaves to my manure bins and topped it off with heavy helpings of water and half-rotted grass clippings. The bins are now up to the brim with rich black compost. This fine compost will be made richer one's the leaves start falling. Next spring there will be enough of the black gold to fertilize some 9 square meters of garden land!!!



I gathered some 10 tomatos on saturday. There are at least another 40 tomatos still on the vine. I plan to transplant the remaining green tomatos to an indoor location within the next two weeks, before the first frost sets in. It is critical that the green tomatos not be exposed to a frost since that would induce rotting rather than ripening. However, detaching green tomatos from the vine would immediately stop these tomatos from growing any bigger. Thus a careful balancing game must be played to maximize the number of big tomatos ripened.

On the fishing front, a quick trip to the lake on sunday netted 3 sunfish and 1 yellow perch.

Nomadic Vacation 9/20-9/21....The Boar Hunt

I woke up at 6am Wednesday and prepared myself. A wild boar's best sensor is his snout. Thus, I gave myself 2 separate showers with de-scenting soap to remove all traces of human scent from my body. I hadn't eaten anything in 12 hrs so as to minimize scent from breathing. My camo-suit had been resting in an air-tight bag from the rest of my clothing, that suit I now stuffed with leaves and pine needles from the surrounding forest. The suit's charcoal linings will capture the sent of the local vegetation and allow the wearer(myself) to blend in with the scents of the forest. At 7:30 am, my guide Lathern arrived at the lodge. We quickly gathered our tools and weapons and headed out into the forest. After about 20 minutes of hard trekking, we arrived at an open area where I proceeded to test out my weapons.

Lathern produced a pie-sized target that was covered by a hard bony plate, and he set that target some 25 yards away from us. He then told me that to safely hunt wild boar with the bow, my arrows must pierce that target completely. With that in mind, I drew my longbow to it's fullest extent and loosed three of my best arrows upon that target. At 25 yards, all 3 missiles flew straight and true. Unfortunately, none of them managed to penetrate the bone plate. I tried again at 20 yards, to no avail. Finally, at a range of 5 yards, my arrows did indeed pierce the target's armour, but it did not penetrate all the way through the target. Alas, my longbow was simply to too weak to fatally wound a boar. At best it would have inflicted a broken rib on the boar, but more likely, my sharp arrows would only produce mere cuts and bruises on those beasts. I should've brought my 80 lb warbow instead of the 55 lb light hunting bow. So after little debate, we decided to go with the rifle instead.

Off we went to the ambush site. The weather was glorious, and the mountains of Tennessee was indeed very beautiful. The ambush site was simply a camoflouged tent placed some 40 to 50 yards behind a clearing in the forest. We laid down about 50 pounds of corn at the clearing as bait for the Boars. With that deed done, we got into the tent and waited for boars to show up. And we waited and waited and waited. Morning turned to noon, and we waited. Noon turned to afternoon and yet we were still waiting.

Late afternoon was turning into evening, and in the gathering twilight, I was drifting in and out of conciousness. A greyish/blackish figure quietly emerged from the tall grass around the clearing, it made almost no sound. I would've missed it had it not been for that sudden contrast in color at the periphery of my field of vision, it jerked me into full alertness. I looked next to me, Lathern was fully alert and intently gazing at the clearing as well. That greyish figure was a boar for sure but almost as soon as we spotted it, the beast faded back into the tall grass. For the next 15 minutes, we didn't see a soul, by then I was beginning to doze off again. Suddenly, I heard very quiet foot steps coming towards our tent from behind. Very slowly, the steps came closer and closer until I was sure it couldn't have been more than a few feet behind us. There came this heavy breathing sound from behind, and a hideous warmth resulting from that breathing permeated the thin fabric of the tent right onto my back.


The tension at that point was thick enough to cut with a knife. Needless to say, my free hand was grasping my hunting blade so tightly that it was turning bone white. Lathern mouthed the words "don't breath, don't move" as his hand silently unsheathed his hunting knife. Every single nerve within my body seemed to be anticipating that boar charge into our tent. I wanted to scream out and run for it. But obviously, I held myself as steady as a stone, my hand never leaving the blade. After about a minute, we heard the foot steps softly move away from our tent. Less than a minute later, the boar re-emerged into the clearing from the tall grass. It was a huge beast, and far quieter than it's size would've ever suggested. Twice, nay, three times it looked at our tent and took a few steps backwards. But eventually, it headed towards the corn bait, lowered it's gigantic head and began feeding. At that point, my last shreds of self-control seemed to rest on that trigger finger. "Take him now?" I whispered to Lathern, "take him out!" was the reply. My bullet thundered out of it's barrel at supersonic speeds. In the blink of an eye, the projectile had bridged the distance to bite into that boar. It chewed through hide, bone, and flesh to reach the beating heart of the beast. Once there, it's poly-carbonate tip unlocked an expanding core of copper alloy which caused a miniature explosion in the boar's chest cavity. The boar's heart was shredded by that rotating disk of death into a ghastly puree of blood and muscle. The mighty beast grunted with sudden agony and charged off into the forest.

Almost at once, we were out of that tent in pursuit. Night was emerging and it should've been cold, but my body felt like it was on fire. I could hear every little sound, I could see colors as vivid as broad daylight in that spreading gloom. The 20lbs of gear in my hunting vest felt like nothing, as I ran like a madman through the trees in pursuit. The hunting rifle that usually weighed so heavily, it was a mere twig in my arm as I charged towards my dying prey. I was in rage, I was in ecstacy, I felt like a white-hot jet of molten steel, it was a feeling of ungovernable, uncontrollable, unintelligible anger and joy and dominance all at the same time!

100 yards into the deep forest, we found our prey. The boar died in an orgy of it's own blood. The blood was everywhere, it covered half the beast, it was splattered on trees and bushes, pools of the dark liquid were all over the ground. We tied the animal up a tree branch and took some photos. Afterwards, the boar was disembowled on the spot and it's organs heaped into a steaming pile on the ground. As Lathern torn out the beast's stomach, liver, and intestines in great handfuls, using my hand and the blade I clumsily ripped off the Boar's genitals. That I placed on the nearest tree as an offering to the Guardian Spirit of the Hunt. We dragged the corpse out of the woods onto Lathern's truck and eventually handed it over to the local Butcher at Robbins. Afterwards, Lathern told me that two years earlier, he had been on a similar hunt. Only in that hunt, the hunter had breathed. That boar picked up the scent, charged into the blind, mangled up the hunter's arm, and put a tusk through Lathern's leg. After hearing that story, I felt lucky to be alive. This was a very fair hunt indeed. I gave my boar the chance to strike me down, his mistake resulted in his death.

In anycase, the next day was quite anti-climatic. I spent thursday morning stalking deer with the longbow, to no success. At mid-day Lathern arrived with 70 lbs of de-boned pork straight from the village butcher. I took the pork, thanked the guide, and drove 12 hours back to PA.

Nomadic Vacation 9/19 Middle of Nowhere

I left Grundy early in the morning and drove onwards. The roads became quite treacherous with many twists and turns. To make matters worse, the roads ran along mountain-sides or across steep ravines. These geographical obstacles served to impede my progress. There seemed to be deer everywhere, I saw them along hillsides, mountaintops, and valley bottoms. Every so often a small settlement or homestead was seen. They all seem isolated, self-contained, and rather cut off from the wider world. In a sense, these homesteads are closed-systems where most foodstuffs are collected and consumed locally. Every little homestead seems to have at least some land being farmed and some domesticated animals. Every settlement seemed to possess either windmills, water-wheels, or solar panels. One cannot help but envy these smallholders, their societies have far greater sustainability than the Mega-cities and suburbs that we live in.

By early afternoon, I had crossed from West Virginia into the Tennesse border. Quickly speeding past Knoxville, I caught sight of several M1-Abrahm Tanks along with an unmanned Robotic Predator Drone. It appears that through a quirk of planning a pre-industrial era society is existing alongside an information age military. In anycase, I drove onwards. Past Knoxville, the Smokey mountains region was at last reached. After driving ever deeper into those mountains, I arrived at the small village of Robbins. 10 Miles west of that village, I came upon my hunting lodge, located at the absolute center of nowhere.

After getting in touch with my hunting guide Lathern, I settled down in that little lodge. Lathern mentioned that early tomorrow we should try out my boar hunting weapons: the rifle and long bow before proceeding to hunt. For apparently, the wild boar has some major differences in physiology when compared to the domesticated pig. Some 6,000 years ago, the wild and domesticated hog would've been identical. But humanity stepped in and modified the basic structure of the pig. The tusks and fangs for hunting were the first features to cull. It's thick, furry hide was then selectively breed out in favor of a hairless varient for ease of butchering. It's brain was then bred to be smaller and smaller to the point where the domestic pig's average brain size is 2/3 that of the wild varient. Wild boars have 2 thick bone/hard cartilage plates extending from the base of it's spinal column down to it's rib cage, these bone plates protect the boar from his prey and from other boars. Humans bred out the feature entirely so that domestic hogs have only small vestigial plates of soft(edible) cartilage.

Knowing that wild boars will have the advantage of tusks and fangs, thick hide and bone armor, I at once began preparing my weapons. The hunting knife, the weapon of last resort, was sharpened until it took on a wicked edge. I made sure that my rifle was clean and well oiled. My home-made ammunition was examined and re-examined for defects. Each and every bullet was precision loaded to be able to consistently hit a quarter at 100 yards. My hand-crafted ash arrows were all spined to within a pound of the bow that it'll be shot from. These spined shafts were then braced with Turkey feathers for flight stabilization, after which, a coating of tallow was applied to prevent wood-warping.

Each arrow was tipped with a triple-bladed carbon steel broadhead. These broadheads, I sharpened on a soapstone until each carbon-steel edge could slice through a piece of paper. Then the edges were coated with a thin layer of vegetable oil to aid in the smooth penetration of flesh and bone.

A precisely spined arrow will consistently hit a pie plate at 40 yards. A sharpened heavy broadhead will slice entirely through the upper torso of large animals like deer or goat out to 30 yards. With my weapons in a state of extreme readiness, I felt at last ready for the hunt tomorrow.

Nomadic Vacation 9/18.....Mountain settlement

A bright and beautiful day it was on monday. I sped away from home towards the remote smoky mountains of Tennessee. Being a journey of some 800 miles, I brought along a huge supply of trail-mix along with the last few pounds of acorn meal. The journey was off to a brisk start. I quickly sped through Delaware and Maryland to reach coastal Virginia. While driving through this span of fertile Virginian territory, I made frequent stops at sites of historical significance.

At the small town of Shenandoah, I visited the famous battlefield where an outnumbered army of confederate soldiers charged up a hill lined with Union artillery and repeating rifles and won the day. The small villages of Roanoke and Greenville which boasts as the respective birthplaces of General Stonewall Jackson and American Explorer Davy Crockett were also visited. Last but not least, the railroad station at Manassas Junction could not have been left unseen. At Manassas, the rebels under the command of Stonewall Jackson, held back 2 separate invasions by the armies of the Union. While one can argue that the intentions of the confederacy may have been tainted with the tarnish of slavery, noone can doubt the courage and warcraft of it's fighting men. In anycase, the bravery of the South was no match for the industrial might of the north. The crushing of agricultural societies by industrial ones is an event all too common in the recent history of mankind, regardless of cause or intent.

On I drove towards my destination, from the coastal plains of Virginia into the mighty Appalachain mountains. I quickly crossed from Virginia into the state of West Virginia. It appeared to be a very underpopulated region with miles upon endless miles of mountains and forests. Small isolated communities were seen every 10 miles or so. The views of this state were simply breathtaking. Perhaps before the industrial revolution, much of the planet would've been as beautiful as this. In anycase, several hundreds of miles were traversed in West Virginia. The mountains and valleys grew ever narrower and more claustrophobic. At last all I could see was the road and perhaps 20 to 30 yards on either side of the road, after that, nothing but tall overhanging peaks. At last, I reached Grundy, a town of around 1000 souls. Grundy used to be a coal-mining camp that had the good fortune of having a road built through it. Now that the era of industrialization had passed, a small town somehow spawned itself upon the tiny sliver of ground that exists alongside of the highway. At no point along the entire span of the town, did the total width of flat ground ever exceed 150 yards. And even that mere sliver of flat land was only built through the accumulated rubble of countless strip-mining operations, it was indeed a sad sight. Backed by mountains on both sides, there's a strong sense of gloom and claustrophobia surrounding the place, I was more than a little uncomfortable there. At Grundy, I visited a good friend of mine, and gave her a special delivery of Oriental Moon Cakes for the upcoming Spring and Autumn Festival.

At one point in my life, Allison was perhaps the dearest person in the entire world to me. But time, distance, and perhaps fate had conspired to make that bond all but dissapear. Allison was hospitable enough to offer me boarding at her own home, and we spent many hours that night in dialogue of days gone by. I realized that much distance had grown between us, distance not of mere space and time, and that saddens me more than a little. That night, I was plagued by strange and melancholy thoughts. If things had been just slightly different, Allison wouldn't be stuck here in this claustrophobic mountain town, I wouldn't have allowed that to happen. But if things had turned out differently, then I would never have discovered my one and only, chances are that I wouldn't even be on this side of the continent. But one cannot spend one's nights dwelling on what might have been, not when the undiscovered country of the future still holds such a promise of happiness.

Nomadic Vacation Hiatus 9/17

Today has been one of rest and recuperation. Nomadism is a hard way of life regardless of the technology. Tomorrow, I shall take off for the smokey mountains of Tennesee on a quest to slay a full grown boar of pure Eurasian stock. But first, several significant short-comings were recognized during the two day "dry-run."

• The collapsable hunting tent is a vital component of any hunter. It serves as 360 degree cloak to deceive large game into coming within the kill-zone of one's bow or rifle. It performs admirably as a temporary shelter and sleeping rig. On stalk hunts, the tent serves as an adequate "home base" of sorts where weapons, supplies and communication equipment can be cached. During the dry-run, my tent proved roomy enough, but the tent stakes were too short and feeble. Additionally, the seating cushion that I had proved to be very bulky during transit. This could be due to the warm weather though. The tent stakes I replaced with thick wooden dowels. The seating pad was replaced by a fabric stool.

• The longbow proved to be a clumsy weapon when traversing forrested terrain. The trees and branches complicates the process of maneuvering and fully drawing the bow for that smooth shot. Additionally, the backquiver during the stalk causes significant noise which may alert the more cautious animals to my prescence. With that in mind, I replaced the 70-inch longbow for a shorter 60-in varient that I crafted last year. This bow is weaker but the decrease in arrow speed should be more than compensated by the bow's stealthier and more flexible profile. The quiver, I padded with some cotton to reduce it's noise signature. In anycase, the shorter bow should still suffice to deliver that killing blow out to 25 yards.

• While on the move, the experienced hunter must seek to absolutely minimize his visual, infrared, audio, and olfactory profile. My hunting camoflouge jacket, trousers, and backpack proved to be rather inadequate for the task at hand. While the camo clothing provided enough visual concealment, it was not very good at releasing heat. After 20 minutes of walking in the forest, one is left sweating profusely. That predatory scent of sweat would flag me as a threat for miles around. The sound of my bow quiver(rifle for that matter) bumping against the backpack while I'm moving is unforgivably loud. The problem cannot be easily solved via a low-tech solution, so I decided to go all the way. To solve this issue, I finally coughed up some hard currency and purchased a modern hunting vest. The vest has built in modular compartments that tightly seals necessary items such has food, water, tools, navigational/communications equipment. So in effect, a person is wearing his supplies, and this creates comparatively minimal sound. Each major compartment can be detached from the vest during transit to reduce weight if the need arises. The vest is camoflouged in the visual light spectrum and it absorbs body oders to lower the olfactory profile. An additional innovation, the vest has a perforated backside which allows some of a hunter's body heat to be dissapated into the air behind him, thus significantly lowering his frontal Infrared signature.
  

Nomadic Vacation 9/16

I began the day by driving some more in a northerly direction. The terrain was distinctly more mountainous and less populated. There were mile long stretches without any signs of human habitation. But then again, mountains are inherently difficult to inhabit on a permanent basis. The rains of the night before had dissapated and everything had the appearance of profound beauty. There was no hurry in my driving since I wasn't going anywhere in particular. My car passed by some state game lands. I got out and turned hunter/gatherer with the longbow. After a few hours of wandering in the woods, I chanced upon some wild slowberries which I collected, washed with some spring water and gobbled down.

A short while after that, I spotted a woodchuck just sitting there staring at the sky. I let loose one of my arrows from 35 yards away....and MISSED!!! My horribly inaccurate arrow flew into a bush a several feet away and the woodchuck fled in the opposite direction. I went back to the car and drove on.


Several hours more of driving took me to a bend in the road that presented a magnificent, panoramic view of the valley below. There was a post by the road, and it mentioned that this road used to be part of an old Native American trail network. About 400 years ago, a tribe called the Huron inhabited the land that I drove upon. The Huron fought the English and French colonists who tried to subjugate them, they also fought other Indian tribes. That trail over the mountain side was part of a strategic defense over that piece of their territory. Needless to say, the stone-age Huron had no real chance against the European colonists. The French introduced diseases such as smallpox which wiped out large swathes of their population and the English gave their greatest tribal rival, the Iroquis, muskets and cannons. The Huron had nothing more than primitive bows and wooden hatchets. Huron flint and obsidian couldn't defeat European steel, and arrows were no match against gunpowder. And thus the Huron were massacred by their Iroquis enemies. All that remains of their legacy is this little road and a few dusty books in forgotten libaries.


I began heading back home around mid-day. After several hours of driving, I came upon the small town of Hamburg. Right outside the town, there was a huge Hunting Outfitter store called Cabela's. It was massive, truely gargantuan, the size of a large mall. I suppose this one store must be responsible for the bulk of the Town's employment opportunities. I went into this shrine of the Outdoors and browsed their archery section. The dismal performance of my home-made bow and arrows is an embarrassment that needs to be rectified. A very friendly old gentleman by the name Elliot was of great help in that Store. We spent an hour chatting about the primitive bows of North America and that of traditional wooden arrow construction. Elliot was formerly a machinist at an industrial plant near Reading. After the Industrial Revolution passed the region by, the only employment he could find was to become an arrowsmith at Cabela's. Making a long story short, I ended up buying half a dozen razor sharp carbon steel arrowheads that perfectly matched with my quiver of wooden arrows.

The rest of my journey was fairly uneventful. I reached home late saturday night along Route 61 South.

Nomadic Vacation 9/15

My car meandered northwest-ward without any particular drive or purpose. There was no need to rush or follow directions. There were no pressure to take this road versus that. I simply went where fate took me. And there was a lot to see on the way. Our state used to be at the heart of the North American Industrial revolution. Only 2 generations ago, the land over which I travelled produced a quarter of all the steel consumed by humanity!

But seasons wax and wane, and few glories of that era remained. I passed many abandoned factories and mills. Derelict looking factory and rail-road towns blurred into one another due to their frequency. The all-pervasive ambiance of nature towered over the works of men now deceased. High above the abandoned buildings and grimy towns were emerald mountains and hills cloaked with mist. Such a duality of beauty and ugliness was a sight to behold. At some point, I passed through the city of Reading, and lost track of where I was going. The terrain became kind of mountainous with a smattering of isolated farms and villages. The strange thing was that I didn't care the least bit about being lost.


After several more hours of aimless driving, I happened to chance upon a small village called Friedensburg. There alongside of a rather empty and non-descript road, under a drizzling sky, was a kiosk manned by a young woman. The stand read "fresh Organic Produce", so I decided to stop and buy a few ears of corn. The price of the corn was dubiously cheap, and I suspected fraud. So I asked the girl, Andrea was her name, as to the source of her produce. Apparently, Andrea didn't quite know the difference between organically produced versus mass-produced corn, since she was just selling some corn for her uncle. For some odd reason that conversation went on for much longer than I thought. Maybe it was the fact that we were the only two people along an empty road in the middle of nowhere with nothing better to do. Maybe it was just the corn.

The girl was rather lithe and very easy on the eyes. She looked to be in her early twenties, a brunette with big brown eyes, though I obviously didn't ask her age. Apparently Andrea never went to college and her family were mostly farmers or retired steel workers. Apparently, selling corn in the middle of nowhere is one of Andrea's 3 jobs. For some reason, I had the nerve to ask her what her future plans where. And her reply was to be a DJ in NYC. What an odd and out of place dream for someone who is probably my age, I thought then and there. But this Oriental have enough common sense to remain silent and let the girl continue her story. Andrea was obviously in love with a man from this place called Pottsville. He was studying at some sort of a trade school to fix cars in that "city." The standard story was then told. As soon as he was done with his learning, he was going to marry this girl and they'll live happily ever after. At least that's what she blurted out to me. I was foolish enough to ask when the ceremony was planned. The girl seemed uncertain, even fearful and replied that she didn't know. I don't know what was promised to her, but she sure seemed hopeful. I bought my corn, thanked her for the company, and left.


That night, after hours more of wandering, I rented a motel room at another tiny, non-descript village called Shoemakersville. Late at night, lying in bed, thoughts raced through my mind. Is this what love is like? Or is it just a desparately lonely country girl trying to tell her story to someone, anyone, who would take a moment to listen? In a person's life, there must be that special someone, that immortal figure, the one and only. Andrea believes that her one and only will marry her one golden day, such a simple and sweet ending. I wonder if my feelings for that special someone would ever be requited, but by the gods, how much I do want to believe it as much as that simple farm girl...

Nomadic Vacation Initial Planning

Some prefer the excitement of pre-planned, pre-packaged adventures in "exotic", far-away lands, while others content themselves within an environment of profound luxery and opulence. Neither options would suffice to quench that hunger of the spirit, that thirst of the soul. I'm referring to the wander-lust which inflicts the hearts of the young. The desire to explore the undiscovered country so hard to reach( or so easily overlooked ) by others burns strongly within me. And for two and a half weeks out of the year, one can actually follow that desire.

I wanted to go off the beaten path, to take the roads less travelled. There are hundreds of small villages and towns tucked-away in the mountains and backroads of this nation. Within these little communities are lives and adventures worth exploring. I have 16 days on my hands, so an initial short-ranged roam around my home state of Pennsylvania was in order. This journey will flush out any inadequacies in planning and/or equipment related to long range wandering. I intended this trip to be an abridged version of the ten day long road trip across the Eastern U.S that will begin first thing monday.

Thus, with such plans in mind, I gathered a plethora of supplies for the journey. The material possessions that I took were simple, like that of most nomads. For defense and hunting, I brought along the rifle/longbow/knife triage. A collapsable hunting-blind came in handy for a makeshift shelter of sorts. For communications, I brought along my trusty consulting laptop and PDA phone. A miniature kerosene heater for cooking was carried along. For sustenance, I took the remaining 3lbs of acorn meal, some chocolate, and a few gallons of spring water.

With those supplies in the trunk of the Honda Civic, I was off.

Weather Warrior II

Now that summer has passed the weather has turned ugly yet once again. The cold resistent kale and turnips that I planted last week have already sprouted out of the good earth. The problem seems to be that after a recent thunderstorm, these tender turnip and kale plants are being attacked by viscious hordes of slugs. I've yet to devise biological means of defense against these creatures, so for the time being, slug-slaying has become a weekend chore for me.

The two tomato trees are unfortunately being affected by the cold and damp weather. Here in the north east, september night- time temperatures can dip below 60 degrees, and all it takes is one light frost to kill my tomatos.

There are some 50 tomatos growing on the vine and it would be a shame to lose them to bad weather. After consulting the handy Cold Climate gardening manual, a few strategies were devised to counter this threat. Firstly I put up a lean-to structure of bamboo lashed with hemp ropes over the two tomato plants. A rough hemp fabric is draped over the structure during stormy and/or windy days to protect the fruits.


On clear days, the hemp blankets are piled on top of the compost bins. Effectively, the hemp blankets holds in the heat generated by the rotting compost and releases that heat slowly over the night. Since the bins are located immediately behind the tomato plants, the air around these plants are raised by several degrees during the night. I'm hoping that these measures will prolong the time of the tomato plants by several weeks, just enough for all of the green tomatos to ripen on the vine.

Garden Update and Imports from East Asia

My tomato plants have apparently reached a state of full maturity. Right now there are over 50 tomatos growing on the vine. Additionally, the biggest harvested tomatos are far larger than average, each about a pound in weight.

The String bean plants have yielded their last bit of harvest. The plants themselves were cut down and added to the compost pile. I intentionally left the roots in place because these roots fix nitrogen from the atmosphere into the soil thus making the soil more fertile than before the beans were planted. A week from now the exposed patch of soil will be planted with Kale. This is a cold resistant variety of the cabbage family, and it shall hopefully provide some sustenance during the winter.



During a trip to a neighbor's organic garden, I managed to barter a very unique item, a Chinese Calabash of good stock. The calabash is one of the oldest domesticated plants in the world. It serves the dual purposes of food and container. In this case, I traded 1/2 of all my heirloom squash seeds for 1 single Mature Calabash of around 15 pounds. This plant is very uncommon in the U.S and my neighbor only managed to obtain it from seeds that were passed to him 2 years ago by yet another friend. Apparently, Americans haven't yet developed an appetite for the calabash, nor has the North American environment produced enough pests to attack this plant in earnest. The calabash plants were growing like weeds within my neighbor's garden with no signs of disease or natural predation. As such, Calabash plants may be very easy to grow here in the North East. Needless to say, I shall proceed to consume this calabash and save it's seeds for full scale production next year.

A glut of tomatos

I've gathered yet more ripe tomatos from the Garden today. There seems to be a never-ending supply of them. However, I've also noticed small tomato bugs attacking the leaves of my plants. Clearly the tomatos have reached the peak of their productivity and a gradual weakening of vigour can be expected in the coming weeks. The String Bean plants are looking rather worn out right now, and this they should be. After delivering six batches of their wonderful beans, it won't be too many days before these plants return to the happy compost heap from which they came. Thus the old and dying are recycled into the new. Speaking of the compost bins, the earth worms have clearly done their work. After 3 weeks of composting the huge heap of vegetation has shrunk considerably. The two bins now contain a combined 160 lbs of decaying organic matter, enough to fertilize an area 5 times the current size of my garden next year.



I've noticed that food plants in their natural conditions face tremendous challenges just to survive. They need to extract every last bit of resources from the soil to support their growth. They are greatly affected by changing weather and availability of water. During youth, they are attacked by a host of pests and diseases, during old age, yet another plague of pests and parasites work to shorten their days. Yet the wonder of it all is that the produce of these unmodified heirloom plants taste so much better than any mass produced variety of the same type.

Could it be that the tomatos, beans, and potato plants that survives the ordeals of their natural environment to reproduce simply has better tasting offspring? This question can be conversely applied. 70% of all tomatos currently consumed in the U.S are Genetically modified. Almost all of these tomatos include the insertion of a certain gene from a deep sea eel. Why are there eel genes in tomatos one may inquire? Well, the eel gene prolongs the life and appearance of the tomato fruit by 8 fold. That is, a normal tomato that is allowed to ripen on the vine, will shrivel up and rot within 1 week, a genetically-modified tomato of this type will stay as fresh and beautiful looking as the day it was picked off the vine for 2 months. Yet there is one defect, they just don't taste very good and couldn't be made to taste any better after a decade of additional genetic tinkering. For some odd reason, gmed tomatos of this kind lost the intrinsic freshness and tartness that real ripe tomatos have during it's brief days of youth and beauty. But people simply bought what looked good and wholesome, and the eel-derived tomato is now on everyone's dinner table. Some food for thought...

Gathering Acorns

While fishing and gardening has provided a large amount of consumables, I decided to give the arts of gathering and herblore a try. Seeing that I have the day off from work, the normal "munday" tasks have been replaced by activities that induces some small degree of sanity. I went into the woods to gather some acorns and mushrooms. Unfortunately there hasn't been rain in almost two weeks here in the northeast and thus no edible fungus was to be found. On the flip side, I did manage to collect some 25 lbs of ripe acorns. Acorns, the seeds of oak trees, are rich in carbohydrates. However, the catch is two fold:

1. You would have to compete with squirrils and other wily rodents to get your share of the crop. To my chagrin, this turned out to be no easy task. 2 out of 3 acorns that I found have been thoroughly gnawed by these frisky devils.

2. Each acorn contain trace amounts of tannin which is extremely bitter and has to be leached out of the meat of the acorn.

The native american tribes of the North East used to consume large amounts of acorn meal. They would first remove the acorn shells and collect the meat. The meat would then be pounded into meal. The meal is wrapped tightly into a semi-porous sack and left for a day under a cold flowing stream. The stream water carries away the tannin and leaves the acorn meal ready for human consumption. I'm going to try a much faster approach. A few pounds of the collected acorn will be shelled and mashed. This mash will be boiled in water until the water turns yellow, then the water is drained and fresh water poured in for more boiling. This boiling will quickly leach out the tannin.

So I took 3 lbs of acorns and shelled them with a nut cracker. About 10% of them were rotten/discoloured/worm-infested. The acorn meat was then pounded in a metal bowl until it turned into a fine pasty meal. This paste was then boiled repeatedly with tap water.

After each boiling the water was drained off and the acorn meal quenched with clean water. The run-off water was of this cloudy yellow-orange colour. After the second boiling I tasted a morsel of the acorn meal, it had a very bitter after-taste. So I boiled it some more. After the 4th boiling, the water became somewhat less yellowish and more clear. After the fifth boiling the water was entirely clear. I then drained all the water and pressed the excess water from the meal. The processed acorn meal was left to dry overnight on some paper towels. When considering the potential of acorn meal as a food source, I do not have the greatest of confidence. 3lbs of acorns and 2 hours of work produced less than 1/3 of a pound of acorn meal. And I know the caloric value of this meal couldn't possibly be greater than 1/3 pound of flour or even millet. Moreover, the taste of this acorn meal is bland and very coarse, kind of like flat, unflavored, canary seed.