This site has now been retired. I've moved to my new site Silverknife, where you'll find new blog posts and all my latest projects and photos. These pages will remain for at least a while, as I know some of you are still looking through the archives, but I'm reposting my travel journals and many other articles on the new site. Come and check it out.
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Well, looks like I (or someone else - I'm certain someone told me it was the 18th) mixed up the dates - I don't actually get my results till Wednesday. Not that big a deal actually, I don't feel particularly tense about this (although I did start to sweat when I was searching the site for them, for some reason). So, results Wednesday now! Watch this space.
Been having more barefooting joy with the recent rainy weather, squishing around in puddles etc. Still very relaxing and refreshing. I did pick up my first injury - a tiny piece of glass which I ended up having to dig out with a needle - but that's going to happen less as my callouses settle in, which they're doing quickly. It's already almost comfy walking over gravel paths which hurt like buggery before.
My herb and wild food database draft 1 is finished, printed and tucked away in my second filofax, although I'm still finding odd things to add to it so I'm printing additional cards now and then. Today for the first time I tried out one of the items - pine needle tea! This has come up in a bunch of sites and books, it's supposed to have loads of vitamin C (better than fresh-squeezed orange juice) and be pretty tasty (but subtle).
Between bouts of squishing around in the park this afternoon, I was sitting under a big pine watching the rain come down when I remembered the tea idea, so I picked up a couple of nice fresh bundles of needles which had fallen on the ground nearby and stuffed them in my pocket. Note for future reference: Pine needles can go right through your trouser lining. Must take a bag next time.
When I got home I washed them off in the basin (extracting an amazing profusion of creepy-crawlies and lumps of gubbins), then clipped off the needles and steeped them in boiling water for 15 minutes as directed. The tea was actually really tasty - I can see how you'd find it tasteless (several people said it tasted like hot water) if you were expecting something like brown tea, but I'm used to my green tea leaves which I keep re-using till it gets to what I call "homeopathic tea", and I found the pine needle stuff detectably flavoursome. It's got a nice slight thickness, and tingles gently on the tongue as well. And it prevents scurvy! What more could you ask for?
On a related note I've found a couple more great resources for wild food etc. which I'm going to add to a box on the left for "Wild Resources". Trueways Survival School's website, while mainly geared to selling their (apparently very good) courses, has a great set of forums with loads of info, several relevant blogs and a nice little plant directory. Bioimages is a brilliant site, a free "virtual field-guide" to British plants with a great Google-based search that found what I wanted every time. Really good for getting nice clear images of plants you want to identify.
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