Friday and the sun was out when I arrived in the morning for an overnight stay. The remit was just to have a nice woodcraft weekend and make something useful. I decided to make two axe-carving stumps on legs to be used when roughing out spoons, bowls etc. I chose two suitable large logs, one is larch and the other, not entirely sure, could be cherry but lacked the distinctive orange colour when it oxidises. They were nicely seasoned and I set to with the scotch eyed auger to drill three holes for the legs. For the larch one I used some dead but hard branches fallen from beech trees. I like the wonkiness of them. The other I used some nice straight hazel. I quickly shaped the ends to fit the holes using the shavehorse and drawknife ( I love using those, feels like a “proper” woodsman) and hammered them in. The axe isn’t my new carving axe which is not ready for use yet, but it’s the bushcrafters’ go-to axe, Gransfors Bruk small forest axe. It’s a nice all-rounder.
The ground where the camper is parked is a bit sloping to one side so I spent the rest of the afternoon wheel-barrowing the soil that was dug out for a pond, to build it up. Then for a bit of variety, started to axe out a blank for a spoon using the new stump. By then it was time for my evening meal. I foraged bushcraft style, to get suitable sticks for fire making and soon had it going nicely. I wanted to keep cooking simple and fried veggie sausage, egg and beans heated up in my army mug with an oven bottom cake – that’s a northern name for a round flat bread like a teacake, sometimes called a barm cake in Lancashire or a stottie in the north east.
Evening came and was spent reading Nan Shepherd’s Living Mountain followed by a walk around the larger woods then sipping wine by the fire listening to the evensong of blackcap, nuthatch, blackbird and song thrush until darkness came and I retired to bed.
Saturday – I slept well in my camper and rose to a lovely sunny morning again. No hard work planned for the day. I wanted to carry on with carving a spoon. It started out intended as a long-handled cooking spoon for a friend but several mistakes later, ended up as a small eating spoon. I didn’t quite finish it until I got home but here’s the part-finished piece. The dark part of the handle will be cut off later. I will post a photo of the finished spoon once it’s dried and oiled.
One of my woodland neighbours came around and we chatted and had a walkabout for a fair while. Then my next door woodland neighbours arrived too. So it was a nice sociable day as well as practical. The woods are fully clothed in fresh green growth now and it’s starting to get dark. In a few weeks it will be even darker and look like a different place. I had a great time, came back tired, smelly but refreshed. I shall be doing it again before too long. I’ll leave you with a few more photos.
