Walking down the creek looking for fallen branches to add to my fire wood collection. prepping for the winter chills. Our wood fire is how we cook most of our food through the winter months.
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As i reach the banks of the creek, i came across something edible i can forage.
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Wild grapes - i will be keeping a close eye on these over the next few weeks, hopefully i can get them before the birds.
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i collect my wood from fallen branches. Not fun when its over 40C, the kilometre walk home isn't easy either with 50kg of logs on your shoulders, but its enough wood to last 3 or 4 days :) and i have cut enough wood for 2 more trips. We try to ensure that every trip out is an opportunity for foraging. Trying to be self sufficient is a challenge and coming home empty handed can be dissapointing, especially if fuel costs are involved.
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On the way back i spy this strange plant - and it's got some spiky flowers!
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Turns out it's a castor oil plant and is considered a noxious weed here in south Australia. While the plant has many uses, it is too dangerous to bring back to the @minismallholding due to its toxicity. i will be leaving well alone :)
One of the bonuses of working to collect firewood is finding all the wonderful plants, mushrooms and fungi, insects and stuff you might normally never find.
I often forage from various berries and have a few wild peach and apple trees and such memorised from fishing expeditions.
Unfortunately, many of the best patches are sprayed now by the ACT government as a noxious weed.
Got to be careful with Australian wild mushrooms / fungi because so little is know about their edibility and many poisonous species are virtually indistinguishable from safe ones - I stick to shaggy ink caps before they black, and field mushrooms - i leave everything else alone - too risky here.
LOL, you go one step further than me. Field mushrooms, no more...Death caps etc grow abundantly in my region, some people died not long ago from ingesting them.
Death caps are easy to spot, - white gills, gills don't meet the stalk like on mushrooms and they don't peel - Death caps are bad - people should not eat fungi without knowing what they are - i know i don't :)
The problem is people from parts of the world where mushrooms are a given part of the diet assuming all are safe.
cool expedition !
hopefully you can get them before the birds.but I'm sure you can't... Because the birds are stronger and faster than you. In nature hehe
thank you friend @realtreebivvy
You are correct @yagoub birds here are bigger, over 6 feet, and they can run at 30mph and have been known to kill people... i bet you don't get emu's where you live :) ha ha ha...
And then there is the cassowary...
The worlds most dangerous bird.
These memes pretty much sum them up...
Never seen one of these prehistoric looking beasties in the wild, but then never seen a dingo yet.. :)
No, I haven't seen a Cassowary yet, despite a lot of time spent fishing Northern rivers. I am not sure whether to be thankful about that.
Dingoes I have seen a plenty. My grandparents lived at the Ridge and we would often see packs of them.
They do not seem to mingle with introduced wild dog packs much and I have seen more than one fight between the two packs.
We used to see Alpine Dingoes in the back paddock where the bush ran down to the creek. They would come down to drink at the pool where the spring seeped to the surface with crystal clear water and drink there in the mornings.
dude , did you think of building a rocket oven to heat and cook on? then ud use like 5 kg a night in winter i reckon at a stab in the dark :)
Looks great where you are, a big contrast to here!
We don't run the fire overnight - only during the day, a lot of the heat goes into the floor and this can keep the house comfortably warm for a whole day without the fire - that's if we aren't using it to cook on.
Houses here are poorly designed and poorly built. They are designed to keep sun out and with very poor insulation and max venting to let heat out which means when its cold in winter the house without the fire would have a temperature of around +2C We even open up the doors and windows to heat the house up if we get a warm day in winter :)
We are in and out a lot during the day also with all the animals etc. i don't waste any wood, i'm the one who collects it all ...LOL
Oh wow that's cold for inside! Yeah that's why I suggest about a rocket oven,saves a hell of a lot of wood,and great for cooking just with twigs :)
Great for cooking agreed :) wouldn't heat a house though :)
You can make one also from an oil drum, with a smaller drum inside, run the chimney along horizontally though a mass of clay, like a clay bench, and then you have a mass heater! I saw some guys on a docu they were in Canada, made one of these and burned 10kg wood for 3days.. they had poor insulation also. There's some really awesome ones really nice if you search Rocket Mass Heaters. Have a nice weekend man!