Rebecca Lerner writes some great stuff about wild food and medicinal plant uses. She just used hawthorn to treat a heart arrhythmia in her dog Petunia

Robin at Eat Weeds brought us his rather delicious looking alexanders chutney

A little ago back Bryan at PaddlingLight recommended 5 Canoe and Kayak Books to Read in 2012

Paul Kirtley at Frontier Bushcraft showed us his Wilderness Canoeing: Personal Bushcraft & Survival Kit

Gary at Bearclaw/Survivall/Nordmarken Canoe UK/Weiss (Gary’s a busy man these days!) is thinking along good lines with his back to basics One blanket and a frosty weekend

Another great video from WinterTrekker on YouTube. Here he shows us the key points of his ski-hauled toboggan setup. As ever he’s got some good ice safety tips.

John Mac’s been busy with spoon carving and making charcloth and trying his hand at flint and steel firelighting

Francois at Francois’ Birchbark canoes doesn’t say much but he’s still making birch bark canoes like this 14 foot Algonquin. Nice.

If you follow Skills For Wild Lives on Google Plus you’ll have already seen this video. A tour round the Gränsfors Bruks factory. Interesting. Even though alot of the factory’s rather quiet.

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Bushcraft & Wilderness Skills On The Web

When living outdoors I’ve sometimes experienced the hangover-like headaches and slight disorientation that we know are the first symptoms of minor dehydration (although as we found I’ve probably lost 2-3% of my body’s water content at this point already). I’d describe this best as ‘feeling a bit wonky’ – not scientific but if you’ve experienced it you’ll know what I mean.

This was easily remedied by upping my intake of fluids.

It’s such a basic thing but so easy to get into a situation where you’re not taking in enough fluids. It takes some extra diligence on your part to read the signs and know what your body needs. The situations that have led to me finding myself with symptoms of minor dehydration have included:

• Longer periods of living outdoors at times when I’ve generally been conditioned to life indoors.
• When I’ve had to purify drinking water for an extended period. This can easily become a chore and in warm weather or when hitting the trail you can soon find yourself not getting enough fluids.
• When I’ve physically stretched myself or encountered unexpectedly warm conditions.

Practical Ways To Avoid Dehydration Outdoors

Dehydration is one area where prevention is definitely better than cure. Just bearing this is in mind is a step towards ensuring you are adequately hydrated.

Remember thirst isn’t a reliable indicator and often lags behind your actual need for hydration. There are a couple of easy ways to keep an eye on your hydration.

The old favourite is to monitor the frequency and character of your urination. If your bladder is full at least every 3–5 hours and your urine is a light straw colour, it’s unlikely that dehydration is occurring. If your urine is deeply coloured and/or you urinate infrequently or not at all, your fluid intake probably isn’t enough to maintain proper hydration.

Another quick indicator is saliva. If you can draw plenty of saliva into your mouth – as if you’re about to spit – it’s a rough and ready indicator of adequate hydration.

As part of your normal body function you lose water in urine and through the bowels, through the lungs as water vapour and through the skin by perspiration. The factor you have most control over is perspiration. In warm or humid weather or during heavy exertion the water loss can increase through perspiration. In extreme cases, the losses may be great enough to exceed your body’s ability to absorb water.

Sweating should be regulated by paying attention to your fitness, your activity level and the ambient temperature.

When large amounts of water are being lost through perspiration and being replaced by drinking water, maintaining proper electrolyte balance becomes critical. If travelling in an environment where heavy perspiration is likely your kit should include some means of replacing lost electrolytes.

In dry cold climates you can lose a surprising amount of water through the lungs as water vapour. In a cold environment you also tend to urinate more frequently. Fortunately there’s likely to be snow on the ground so it’s easy to keep an eye on your urine colour.

You’ll read much about coffee and tea being diuretic so speeding up dehydration. This is true. Many sources advise you to avoid them but you still take in more water in tea and coffee than is expelled by their diuretic effect. In extremes – in a survival situation where every single drop counts or in a hot environment – you’d probably be best to avoid them but in more normal circumstances they’re just another good way of getting fluids into your system.

Establish a firm routine for collecting and purifying drinking water and making sure you’re adequately hydrated.

My normal routine is to make sure enough water is available to have a good drink in the morning. If I’m boiling my drinking water I’ll do it in the afternoon or evening when I cook. In the morning the coffee or tea is brewed while camp is cleared up. A cup or two chased down with a good chug on some water and I’m ready to go.

Aim to get your urine to the straw-like colour at least once in the day. Of course you can do this whenever you like but doing it in the morning sets you up for a day on the trail and reduces the risk of interrupting a good night’s sleep with bleary eyed stumbling to have a pee.

Above all, pay attention to your body and its needs, bear in mind the science and you shouldn’t go far wrong.

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10 Ways To Avoid Dehydration Outdoors

In this article you’ll learn:

• The importance of water
• What is dehydration?
• The symptoms of dehydration
• The Particular Problems Of Dehydration In The Outdoors
• Am I dehydrated?
• How to treat dehydration

The Importance Of Water

All known forms of life depend on water for their survival.

Medical textbooks generally agree that somewhere around 60 percent of adult male, and 50 percent of adult female body weight is water. This means a the amount of water in a man of average weight (70 kilograms or 154 lbs) is approximately 40 litres (85 US Pints).

Water is vital to your body both as a solvent and as an essential part of many metabolic processes within the body. It helps digest your food, transport waste, and control your body temperature. Without water, these metabolic processes could not exist and your body would begin to malfunction at a cellular level.

In short, water is essential to human life.

What Is Dehydration?

Dehydration is defined as the excessive loss of body fluid. It’s important to remember that dehydration does not only mean loss of water. Water and electrolytes (mainly sodium and potassium) are usually lost in roughly the same proportion they exist in blood plasma.

The Symptoms Of Dehydration

If you’re dehydrated, you’ll start to notice thirst and discomfort, headaches similar to having a hangover possibly along with loss of appetite and dry skin. If you’re hiking, skiing, biking or some other strenuous activity, you may experience flushing, low endurance, rapid heart rate, elevated body temperatures, and rapid onset of fatigue.

Dehydration symptoms generally become noticeable after 2% of your normal water volume has been lost.

Think about this for a second. If you weigh 70 kilos (154 lbs) your body contains around 40 litres (85 US Pints) of water when you are hydrated. A 2% loss is just under a litre – 800ml to be precise (1.7 US Pints). This means by the time you start noticing the symptoms of dehydration you’re probably already short of nearly a litre of fluids.

If dehydration continues, you may notice other symptoms including decreased urine volume, abnormally dark urine, cloudy urine, stinging during urination, sudden episodes of visual snow, unexplained tiredness, irritability, lack of tears when crying, headache, dry mouth, decreased blood pressure (hypotension) and dizziness when standing due to orthostatic hypotension.

In moderate to severe dehydration, there may be no urine output at all. This is where it starts to get serious. Symptoms include lethargy or extreme sleepiness, seizures, fainting, and sunken eyes.

The symptoms become increasingly severe with greater water loss. Heart and respiration rates increase to compensate for decreased plasma volume and blood pressure. Body temperature may rise as the body struggles to sweat.

At around 5% to 6% water loss (this is still only around 2 litres (2.1 US Pints) for our 70 kilo example) , you may become groggy or sleepy, experience headaches or nausea, and may feel tingling in your limbs (paraesthesia)

With 10% to 15% fluid loss, your muscles may become spastic, your skin may shrivel and wrinkle (decreased skin turgor)

Fluid losses greater than 15% are usually fatal.

Particular Problems Of Dehydration For The Wilderness Traveller

As you can imagine from these symptoms, anything beyond minor dehydration can cause serious problems when you are engaged in wilderness travel, using cutting tools or making navigation decisions. In a survival situation longer than a day or two, your ability to secure water will probably make the difference between life and death.

When you are removed from the reliable, easy, clean sources of water you usually have on tap (sorry!) you need to take care of what you drink and work hard to make sure you drink enough. Water, rather than being a commodity, assumes its rightful position as something that is precious – a vital preserver of your life and your body’s ability to function.

Both hypothermia and hyperthermia are very much linked with hydration. Blood plasma volume is key to your body’s ability to maintain an optimal core temperature. Think of your home heating system or your car’s cooling system. When either of these run low on fluids the entire system breaks down.

If you lead or travel with groups in the outdoors, dehydration, along with hypothermia and hyperthermia, should be closely monitored in the group as one individual’s problem can quickly turn into a serious situation for the whole group.

If water is being lost through vomiting or diarrhoea, an electrolyte imbalance can develop very quickly into a medical emergency. In remote wilderness areas this is a dangerous situation, especially for the lone traveller. To avoid finding yourself in a survival situation you should make it your business to know the ins and outs of purifying drinking water and pay close attention to hygiene and sanitation.

Similarly, fever and burns (including sunburn) increase body temperature requiring more fluid for the body to function properly.

Am I Dehydrated?

Thirst isn’t a reliable indicator and often lags behind your actual need for hydration. There are a couple of easy ways to keep an eye on your hydration:

The old favourite is to monitor the frequency and character of your urination. If your bladder is full at least every 3–5 hours and your urine is a light straw colour, it’s unlikely that dehydration is occurring. If your urine is deeply coloured and/or you urinate infrequently or not at all, your fluid intake probably isn’t enough to maintain proper hydration.

Another quick indicator is saliva. If you can draw plenty of saliva into your mouth – as if you’re about to spit – it’s a rough and ready indicator of adequate hydration. This is an easy way for the an outdoor group leader to monitor their group. Group members are often less than keen for you to closely inspect their urination habits! (Of course for the outdoor leader working in snow the urination of others can be monitored easily!).

How To Treat Dehydration

The most effective treatment for minor dehydration is drinking water and stopping excessive fluid loss. Small, frequent sips provide your body with the best chance to absorb fluids. Remember that plain water restores only the volume of the blood plasma and doesn’t restore electrolyte balance.

For minor dehydration this shouldn’t be a problem but if you’ve been sweating heavily and rehydrating solutions are available it might be worth taking a sachet. If you don’t have rehydrating solution with you dissolve a small amount of salt in water or try flat fizzy drinks (soda) – if you happen to have such things with you.

More severe cases require the replenishment of necessary water and electrolytes through oral rehydration therapy or fluid replacement by intravenous therapy. As oral rehydration is less painful, less invasive, less expensive, and easier to provide, it is the treatment of choice for mild dehydration. Solutions used for intravenous rehydration must be isotonic or hypotonic. Pure water injected into the veins will cause the breakdown of red blood cells. At this stage you’re needing professional medical care and evacuation.

Sources for further in depth study

Textbook of medical physiology, Guyton & Hall 2006

Textbook of basic nursing, Rosdahl & Kowalski 2008

Human body composition, Heymsfield 2005

Oxford handbook of expedition and wilderness medicine, Johnson, Anderson, Dallimore, Winser, Warrell 2008

Wilderness and Survival Medicine, Breen 2011

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Dehydration – Its Importance For The Wilderness Traveller

So, here is the first of my reviews.  I use the word review in the loosest sense. I’d like you to get a flavour of how I’ve used these items and what you might want to consider yourself rather than some in depth technical discussion.

All the stuff I’ll present to you over the next few weeks I have exhaustively used in all sorts of conditions and it’s all stuff I love – much of it after ten or more years of use. It’s not always going to be pretty or appeal to the gear heads out there but it’ll be honest and it’ll be stuff that works – for me anyway!

May I present the humble billy can

A billy can is something it’s easy to take for granted and I often do. For anyone new to bushcraft, you’ll tend to hear bushcraft folk going on about billy cans rather than cookpots or pots and pans. For me a billy needs to be able to work for both campfire cooking and for cooking with stoves. A jack of all trades.

For anyone not familiar with the humble billy can, Wikipedia tells me that the term “billycan” is derived from the large cans used for transporting bouilli or bully beef on Australia-bound ships or during exploration of the outback, which after use were modified for boiling water over a fire.

The most basic of billy cans is just that – a used tin can with a handle attached to it. It’s functional. No messing.

What I want in a billy can

When using a cooking pot on a camp fire it’s far easier to have a handle (technical term bail arm, just like on a bucket and on fishing reels too!). The pot can then be suspended using some sort of pot hanger to avoid your delicious campfire cooking ending up in the fire as it inevitably will if you try to balance a pot on the fire wood.

Pot hangers also remove the need to use stones as pot supports and leave a scorched and unsightly mess behind at your camp site.

Some people use a length of braided cable such as bicycle brake cable for a bail arm so the billy is easier to pack.

I like to have a fairly sturdy billy can. It does all sorts of things when I’m out on the trail. I boil water in it, wash in it, make coffee in it, cook in it, boil up wood ash to soften cordage in it. It needs to be equally at home on a camp fire, on a tent stove or on a lightweight wood or gas stove.

A volume of about a litre and a half or two litres (one litre = 2.11 US pints) has always been enough. Much larger and it’s a pain in the arse to pack.

When it came to choosing my billy can I was driven by simplicity

Billy, as I call him, started life as a stainless steel storage tin. He came from a cash and carry for £2.50 (about US$4 back then) if I remember correctly. This was probably summer 2003.

He was brought home and unceremoniously hit with a centre punch before two holes were drilled and a piece of steel coat hanger wire inserted in him.

At the time I bought a few other cans and have used some while teaching but for my personal kit have never had need of another billy can since. He’s still going strong and doing everything I ask of him whether it’s campfire cooking, boiling up coffee or washing my underwear.

You can buy the almost quintessentially “bushcraft” Zebra billy cans at most good retailers but I can assure you it won’t be the same. For a couple of quid and fifteen minutes work you can have your very own Billy.

Some pictures from the family album

This is billy when he was fresh faced and not yet dirtied by soot. Ahhh. You can see the bail arm here and how it’s suspended using the pot hanger. The bail arm looks quite long and it is. As you can see in the photo at the top the Zebras (at left and right of the line up) have a bail arm that rests against the side of the can. Billy’s bail arm reaches down far enough to tuck away underneath for packing.

The soot situation soon changed. On rapid boil up duty for a brew!

This bit of stainless steel and coathanger wire has been a companion on many a trip. Here we are wild camping somewhere near Bowfell in the Lake District (can’t quite remember where!). Billy is just visible in the grass at the front of the tarp.

Next up it’s a good old boil up and a bit of campfire cooking on a frosty night in January. A big fire with a reflector at the back as this was a night with no sleeping bag.

In conclusion

A billy can is an exceedingly simple bit of kit. It’s not sexy and not something people collect or salivate over but it’s one of the most used items of my kit. Never underestimate the usefulness of a vessel that can be used for collecting,  storing, washing, heating, boiling, baking and more besides. Having said that, a tin can’s a tin can isn’t it?

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Bushcraft Kit – Billy Cans

I think it’s something far more basic – being comfortable in the outdoors. Comfortable enough that you can deal with unexpected weather conditions, equipment failure, and most other things without too much drama and without ending up in a potentially dangerous survival situation.

How do you get this comfortable in the outdoors? I believe it’s through knowing yourself and how you react to stresses. It’s about finding out how to tread your own path. I don’t mean this in a navigational sense – think of it like finding your way through the maze of bushcraft and survival information and kit recommendations to find what suits you personally.

Rediscovering the Zen of Bushcraft

This year I’m working hard to take my bushcraft up a notch. For the past couple of years I haven’t had the time to devote to it (and between you and me I’ve become a bit soft). 2012 is different and I’m planning some trips that will involve remote wilderness travel. To avoid a) disappointing myself, b) doing anything silly and c) finding myself in a survival situation it’s time to put some work in to make sure I’m in shape for some longer spells of wilderness living.

I think being comfortable and at ease with what the outdoors throws at you takes both education and experience. The education part should take you through some some science and human physiology. The experience part should help you find out how this information applies to you personally and how to incorporate it into your normal routines. Once you’ve done this the way is open to simplify, to lighten your load, to improvise using natural materials, to get out of sticky situations and above all to gain more freedom.

It’s worth mentioning that here I’m describing a do it yourself approach. I have quite a bit of experience under my belt already. Some of this has been my own experimentation but a good deal has been under the supervision of professional bushcraft and survival instructors. I’d thoroughly recommend hiring a professional if you have the and funds. It’s a great way to speed up some of the learning.

Well, you may ask, “how does this apply to me?”. I think it applies to everyone using the great outdoors even if you don’t recognise anything you do as “wilderness travel” or “bushcraft”. Knowing how your mind and body deal with different stresses will help you to become more skilled and more able to take care of yourself whatever you get up to.

So let’s get going

This introduces a series of articles that will take you on a journey to find yourself – to tread your own path. The series is mushrooming every time I think about it so fasten your belts for a long journey! Through the weeks we’ll consider the factors which have the potential to make us uncomfortable. Some of these would ultimately kill us if left unchecked. We’ll do the science bit and then we’ll form some ideas and techniques for dealing with these factors in the field.

How to start down your own path

Like I said before, I’m using the phrase ‘treading your own path’ in a zen kind of way, not a physical, navigational one. One size definitely doesn’t fit all when it comes to wilderness travel / survival / bushcraft / wilderness living – whatever it is you like to call it. One person’s comfort can be another person’s living hell.

To gain confidence, comfort and to then get a shot at achieving mastery in the outdoors you need to go through a process of learning. This process should provide you with at least these two things:

a) Knowledge of yourself and how you interact with nature and the environment- where you fit in.

b) The knowledge to make some smart decisions regarding kit choice.

Ooh, a fancy graphic that shows us the steps we’ll be taking on this journey:

And here’s what these steps mean…

1. How does my body deal with with stress?

In this step you’ll dig into some theory – a bit of human physiology, a bit of science and a bit of risk assessment.

You’ll learn more about these stress factors as we progress along the path:

• Environment – temperature, wind, rain, snow, water etc
• Hydration
• Sleep
• Nutrition
• Physical activity

2. Prepare mentally and physically

In this step sets you’ll experiment with what you learned in the previous step and find out how it affects you.  You’ll also practice some of the techniques and skills that will get you out of a hole if something bad happens (that old survival situation again?!).

All of us learn about the environment around us from an early age without even thinking about it. In adulthood you tend to be less used to adapting and rather more set in your ways. When approaching wilderness living and travel you can’t afford to be rigid in your approach. When you head off into remote wilderness areas you must acknowledge that the odds are changed – there may be little chance of rescue. A small mishap can easily become a serious situation.

So you must really understand your own response to stress factors and you must really understand the mechanisms you can use to re-stack the odds in your favour. You must build a toolbox of ‘go to’ skills that you can rely on. If you train well this starts to become second nature.

3. Develop my style and kit to suit my physiology and chosen environment

We’re all built differently. Embrace this. Don’t just take someone else’s word for it. Find out what works for you.

In stage 2 you will have discovered how specific activities affect you and learned some solid skills and some opinions about gear. This will stand you in good stead to work out what you really need and more importantly what you don’t need. Efficient and enjoyable wilderness travel requires a level of simplicity in both gear and in your outlook. This stage will allow you to hone both of these.

Once you begin to understand how stress factors affect you personally you can start to make some very informed choices.

4. Recognise problems

Once you know how you react to stress factors and what feels ‘normal’ you’ll be much better placed to recognise when things aren’t quite right. You’re a very good judge of this once you have sufficient knowledge and experience. Just keep an eye on what you’re doing and how you feel. For lone wilderness travel this is especially important – there’s no one else there to look out for you.

5. Improvise and adapt my style and/or kit

With the knowledge you’ve built up at this point you are in charge of your own destiny. Using some solid bushcraft skills you can improvise your way round equipment failure, unexpected weather conditions, whatever. The key is understanding what to do as well as how to do it.

Now you enter a continual loop of improvisation and refinement. Keep a close eye on yourself and use your knowledge wisely.

In the next article we’ll start to look at each of the stress factors, find out how they affect you personally and what you can do about them.

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Bushcraft – How To Tread Your Own Path

Since I started this site I’ve rarely had enough time to do it justice. I’ve just about kept my head above water and occasionally knocked out some writing I’m pretty happy with. I’m constantly happy to see regular readers have stuck around and new ones have joined the throng. Thanks to all of you.

In 2012 I will have enough time to devote to it and this means that this is the year to take our bushcraft to a new level together. I have some key themes I’d like to explore throughout the year. The content will tend to be driven by them:

Back to basics

2012 seems like a great year to go back to basics. If you ever find yourself in a sticky situation it’ll likely be the knowledge you carry in your head and an ability to improvise that will save you. We’ll visit some familiar topics but really dive deep into theory and practice.

Low tech kit

If you’re a regular you’ll know I don’t really discuss kit too much. Personally, I don’t think anyone should be given the idea that they need x y and z to travel or live outdoors. Catalogues and websites of shiny kit are an attractive thing to many of us and I’m no exception. However, unless you’re doing something technical like climbing you’ll be fine 99% of the time with 99% of what you have already. Trust me.

So no pizes for guessing that 2012 will continue this theme. There might be a slight relaxation of this while I cover a few things I’ve had for years and explain why they’ve remained favourites (more of a demonstration of what works rather than the new must-have item). There definitely won’t be any shiny new kit reviewed this side of hell freezing over.

Improvisation

I’d rate our ability to improvise as one of the key skills for living in the outdoors whether it be planned or unplanned in a survival situation. With all the kit we have at our disposal we often get hung up on it and forget that people survived for millenia without any of it. Now I’m not saying throw all the modern stuff out – we’ll just think about what we might do without it.

Knowing yourself

I believe another of the key skills for living outdoors is knowing yourself. You might call it knowing your limits although I’d suggest knowing what’s possible is a better name. The limits are always fewer than the possibilities.

Knowing what’s possible through a series of focused training exercises will allow you a great deal of comfort when it comes to doing it for real. Couple this with the knowledge and practice you’ve already gained and you have a formidable set of skills.

Other News

I’ve just set up a Google Currents edition of Skills For Wild Lives. If you have a smartphone, an iPad or other fancy tablet it’s a nice way to read. Note: It’s not yet officially available in the UK but if you run Android you can install it unofficially.

As ever, if there’s anything you’d like to see more (or less) of, please get in touch and I’ll see what I can do. Thanks for reading. I’d better go and start writing something…

2012 – Nose To The Grindstone

• It takes about 30 minutes for your eyes to acclimatise fully but most of this happens in the first five or ten minutes. The most simple way to improve night vision is don’t use any artificial lights and let your eyes acclimatise with the dusk.

• The eye has two types of photoreceptors – rods and cones. Rods are much more sensitive to light and are almost entirely responsible for night vision. Rods are concentrated around the edge of our retina. Take advantage of this and use averted vision in low light – don’t look directly at something but slightly avert your eye and you’ll be using the very light-sensitive rods.

• If you have to travel along roads with car headlights, meet someone shining a headtorch straight in your face or have to pass houses with security lights, shut one eye to avoid losing your night vision in both eyes.

• Walk with your eyes looking ahead rather than at the ground. You might want to practise this during the day first. You’ll soon get used to it. At night you’ll travel more quickly with your head up using your peripheral vision and feeling the ground with your feet.

• The rods in our retina have only one type of light sensitive pigment (compared to three pigments in the colour sensitive cones) so play little or no role in our colour vision. Tests have shown they aren’t sensitive to wavelengths longer than about 640 nm which equates to red in our vision. This means that using red light will have little or no effect on your night vision. If you need white light then use a very low intensity – as low as you can manage to read or carry out other tasks.

We tend to rely on artificial light more than we should. Work on some regular exercises to improve night vision. On a moonlit night you’ll be amazed at how quickly you can travel once you’ve become used to the light. Moving through the landscape without artificial light also makes us more a part of that landscape and in tune with all the other inhabitants who don’t have a 3 LED multifunction head torch stuck to them!

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Five Ways To Improve Night Vision

Note: The specifics of this article refer to the European or Common Beech, fagus sylvatica. Other beeches may vary!

Beech facts:

Beech trees do not start flowering and producing mast until they’re quite mature – somewhere around 30 to 40 years old.

Individual trees go through cycles. Every three or four years they produce a bumper crop of mast. You won’t find mast on every tree every year.

Beech mast as food: The research

Separating fluff and mast

When it comes to wild food I’m always keen to see what other people say and then draw my own conclusions with some experimentation. Most wild food books are pretty sketchy when it comes to beech mast. I think their fiddly nature makes them rather unattractive to the casual wild foodie. For the dedicated forager or someone in need of some calories I felt there was a need to explore further.

A google search turns up a few discussions concerning the edibility of beech mast. They usually end up declaring it not worth the effort or just plain horrible. Armed with this rather unappealing view I set out to make up my own mind.

How to find beech mast

Beech trees flower from April to May, and the mast ripens from September to October. When the mast is ripe the prickly seed cases start to open.

You can easily tell when a tree is having a good mast year. Even from a distance you’ll see the branches drooping under the weight of the nutty goodness.

How to gather beech mast

There are a couple of options here depending on how much you need the nuts:

If you need calories and you need them before the squirrels then harvest the mast from the tree as soon as (or slightly before) they’re ripe. If the spiky cases haven’t opened yet, arrange them in the embers next to a fire for a few minutes. In my experience the heat opens them up.

If you can wait and it’s a good crop year then you’ll find the mast covering the floor under the tree once the husks have dropped their payload. In a bumper year the mast is so abundant even the squirrels struggle to hoover them up. I’ve got an idea they even get fed up with them.

While gathering you soon learn the best techniques and start to naturally get a feel for underweight or empty mast which can be discarded. After half an hour under a beech tree you’ll have a reasonable quantity of mast.

Processing and edibility

Toasting the beech mast

Before eating any plant seeds and nuts, we need to think about the natural lifecycle of the plant and the measures it takes to protect future generations. Plants have evolved a number of ways of making sure their seeds are ingested to distribute them but pass through the eater without being digested.

One of the common compounds found in plants are tannins. Beech contains tannins and and the mast is reported to contain tannins.

Tannins are widely found in the bark of trees, insect galls, leaves, stems and fruit. They are are useful to us medicinally as they are the chief plant constituent responsible for astringency. They contribute a protective function in the bark and heartwood of trees and plants. Tannins dissolved in water from nuts such as acorns, bark or leaves of plants containing tannin produces a mildly acidic and very effective antiseptic wash.

However, when eaten, some tannins aren’t as useful. They can act as a digestive inhibitor and cause reduced absorption of proteins and other nutrients. Tannins have a puckering, sour taste when ingested (if you’ve ever eaten sweet chestnuts or acorns raw, you’ll know what I mean!).

The reported tannin content in beech mast leads many people to write them off as a potential food. However, from my own experience I’m not sure that the nut itself does contain that much tannin. Maybe this varies from tree to tree. Unprocessed I found the mast to be fine to eat. Maybe slightly astringent but quite palatable. In the past I’ve spent a few days with raw beech mast as one of my main foods and suffered no ill effect.

In sweet chestnuts the tannin is supposedly found in the soft skin surrounding the seed but not in the seed itself. I wonder if this is the same for beech mast. I found that after toasting the beech mast (which tends to make the “skin” flake off the outside) that the mast were actually very edible with a nutty flavour.

This improved them to the extent that I’d be happy to add a bit of salt and serve them for guests to nibble with a drink. This is at odds with what my research may have suggested. Yes, they’re fiddly to shell but if that’s the only negative are they worth the effort?

Is beech mast viable as a food source?

The little pile of handy looking fluff

The stats:

• I gathered 162g (5.71 oz) of beech mast for my experiment.

• It took me about half an hour to gather this quantity from the ground under the tree.

• I shelled 110g (3.88 oz) of this before all my fingernails fell off (an occupational hazard of the beechmast harvester).

• The shelling took a little over one hour.

The product of this was:

• 63g (2.22 oz) of nut meat

• 47g (1.66 oz) of shell

• A little pile of handy looking fluff (just like the fluffy stuff in sweet chestnuts if you’re familiar with them) which I removed from the shelled nuts by shaking them in a bag.

Nutritionally speaking

From the USDA nut data website:

Conclusion

The amount of mast I collected would yield a gnats whisker off 100g of actual nut (i.e without shell). Add on maybe another half an hour to shell the remaining mast (and the cost of a manicure) and you’d have 576 calories for two hours easy work.

I think this makes beech mast a viable food source despite what you might read or think when you start shelling the little buggers.

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Beech Mast As A Food Source

Trying to capture any sort of encounter with animals on anything other than your brain is difficult. All your senses combine to leave you with memories of the not just the visuals but the sounds, the feeling of the wind on your face and the smell of the forest. It also reminds you just how much work goes into capturing anything near decent quality images of this stuff.

Nearly all the photos on this site, and this video, are taken with a fairly simple point and shoot digital camera as I find it much easier to carry around and easier to use but on this occasion I do wish I’d made the effort to carry the ‘proper’ camera! Maybe next time…

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Making A Birch Bark Canoe – César’s Bark Canoe