Winter Camping 2012 - Rabbit Preparation
February 21, 2012, 6:34 pm
On the weekend of February 3 to 5, 2012, members of Soul Searching Tree completed our third annual winter camping course. This year, we introduced a new component: Rabbit Preparation. To achieve this, we all participated in the snaring, dispatching, skinning, dressing, and stretching of the hide, ending with the preparation of stew for dinner. What an experience/journey we all faced.
The weekend started with a 1 km hike into the woods, hauling our sleds loaded with all our gear. Upon reaching the site, we started setting up our tarp tents, as there was not enough snow to make a quinzhee to sleep in. Once shelters were completed and gear stowed, we were taught how to make and properly set a snare. After practicing the skills, we went into the forest to find game trails and to set our snares. As we completed each step of the process, we gathered in a group to discuss and reflect upon our reactions.
This process allowed us to support each other and helped to prepare the group for the next lessons. We all went to bed with thoughts on the events of the coming day.
Saturday morning came, and we all set out to check our snares. No rabbits this time; however, I arranged to have some brought in, just in case this happened.
This course was organized for the sole purpose of learning the best way, the most humane way, to dispatch a rabbit in the woods in order to eat. I personally had to get my mind wrapped around and understand that I was learning how to dispatch a rabbit for food in order to survive in the wilderness.
I got up early to meditate, thanking the universe for supplying us with the rabbits for this weekend. I honoured the rabbits for giving up their lives for us. (There was a lot of soul searching that went on with everyone this weekend.) Not everything in life is easy and this next step was the hardest thing that I have ever had to do. It’s funny how your mind thinks; it would have been easier if I was going to dispatch a rat instead of a rabbit. In the end, I missed the rabbit and hit my knee. At this point, our instructor took over and completed the task for me.
In addition, we were taught how to sharpen knives properly in preparation for skinning the rabbit and cut it into stew. While our stew was cooking, we made hoops out of basswood saplings. This was done by warming them over an open fire to soften them, and slowly bend them into a curve. We used two saplings, tying them together to make the circle of about 3 feet in diameter.
We were then guided through the process of stretching the hide onto our hoops by threading string through tiny incisions on the rabbit hide and around the frame. We had to make sure that the hide was tight and all knots were secure. The end of the day was fast approaching by the time we finished, dinner was ready to eat.
After dinner, we gathered around the campfire, where divided into two groups to have a debate on “killing for food” and “not killing for food”; we debated for an hour. Each team made strong points and arguments. In the end, the team discussing “killing for food” was judged to have won. It was a lot of fun and very educational at the same time. I found that trying to debate a side that you don’t agree with is very hard.
This course was designed to teach the participants the proper techniques for dispatching a rabbit; however, as I went through this program, I found myself on a totally different journey. Only the people that were on the course will know and understand what it took to make it though the animal preparation component. One lesson I learned is that I’m a lot stronger then I ever thought I could be, I’m very thankful and grateful for the experience.
In the Native Community, Rabbit hide is used to make a Wahbose blanket. This blanket is made by cutting the hide around and around in strips. The women would weave the strips together to make the blanket approximately 2ft by 3ft. They would then place dried sphagnum moss (used as a diaper and medicine) in with the baby. Would wrap the baby in the Wabhose and place it in the Titanaken. This carrying board is a frame that is wrapped in deer hide to hold the baby. The women would wear this on their backs to transport the babies.
Thank you to Gino Ferri and Jennifer Khan, Survival In The Bush Inc. Their expert guidance and teaching provided us with a better understanding of the cycle of life and a deeper respect for nature. We learned about teamwork, leadership, planning and preparation, and much more than any of us expected.
Thank you to my clients. I know each and everyone of you went away with a very different experience. We all shared a common experience that will forever be woven into our daily lives.
Treat Yourself
January 24, 2012, 6:48 pm
“Treat Yourself” Spa Parties
by Sandra Howe
Spa parties “are a great way of getting together, sharing laughter and joy, and trying new experiences. Friendships are strengthened as women relax and have fun together,” says Janet Schnurr of Soul Searching Tree. Janet hosts a regular spa day at her home where participants share food, conversation, and personal support. Holistic health practitioners are available for professional, private individual sessions. These enhance the relaxation experience, and allow participants to explore personal growth. Natural beauty treatments are also available because self-image is important to self-esteem. Feel good and look good go together.
Janet does wonderful Indian head massages, and notes that “women hold so much tension and emotion in the head and neck area. This work provides release and relief.” She also does Reiki, energy healing, and detoxifying footbaths. Arbonne natural skincare products enhance Janet’s sessions. She serves clients in body, mind, and spirit health.
Energy Therapy with Leslie Curow (www.lesliecurow.com) provides insightful Tarot card readings. “It is such fun and you never know what answers you’ll get,” she says. Leslie also does crystal therapy, Inca healings, and Reiki which are deeply relaxing and soothing. “Spa parties are spontaneous, inspiring, and joyful. We learn and grow together, connecting with our higher selves and the Universe. We have a blast!” Leslie is an excellent photographer and is available to record adventures together.
Frances Brown is a gifted Reiki Master and mindfulness meditation teacher. Her website: www.fabnewworld.com, tells her story most eloquently. Frances says, “I love this work because it is rewarding to see how people change, realize their inner strength, and move through energy blockages. I help people in transitions to heal themselves.” Frances enjoys connecting people with their spiritual aspect in new ways, opening up greater possibilities.
Sandra Howe of Sole and Spirit Wellness Services has provided holistic healthcare sessions for 12 years. She does BodyTalk, reflexology, and Reiki. “What I love about BodyTalk is that is guided by our innate wisdom so that each session gets to the root of issues. It strengthens our inner knowing, our trust in self and in a benevolent Universe. It empowers!” Spa days bring us together to celebrate, laugh, relax, and learn in a supportive environment.
If you would like to attend or host a “Treat Yourself” Spa Party, let us know. They are a great way to celebrate birthdays, showers, girls’ nights, staff or team gatherings, or to chase the winter blues away! We operate as a collective offering a wide range of professional services in our space or yours. Each party is as unique as each group. We look forward to serving you. Contact Janet at www.soulsearchingtree.com or Sandra at soleandspirit@hotmail.com for more information.
Wild Edibles
January 24, 2012, 6:45 pm
Taste the Wild in Grey County
By Paulette Peirol
I learned to identify stinging nettle the hard way, after wading through a field of it growing knee-deep in my own backyard shortly after moving into a new home. The leaves left red welts on my skin for several hours. Yet curiously, my neighbour balked when I told her I wanted to get rid of it. “Save me the leaves if you do,” she said. “It’s a great tonic.” I thought she was crazy.
Years later, taking a course in wild edibles with local experts Gino Ferri and Jennifer Khan, I would learn she was right. While I remain partial to stinging nettle, I have grown to know, like and even respect many other edible plants commonly dismissed as weeds.
Give me a salad of freshly picked watercress from a stream, lamb’s quarters, violets, lilies, oxe-eye daisies and young, succulent dandelion leaves and I’m in heaven.
Yet there were far more exotic things on the menu at the Advanced Wild Edibles workshop organized by Janet Schnurr of Soul Searching Tree in Hepworth and taught by Ferri and Khan of Survival in the Bush Inc. last summer.
Consider: Bear, goose, venison, rabbit and pike wrapped in pond lilies and pickerel weed, along with wild carrots, cattails, garlic mustard and other herbs and vegetables roasted for hours in a deep pit of smouldering embers.
Sounds like something you might expect at chef Michael Stadtlander’s world-renowned Eigensinn Farm near Collingwood. But if you came only for dinner, you wouldn’t see the hours of labour required by six people to prepare such a meal -- chopping wood and tending fires for the pit roast, harvesting aquatic plants while waist-deep in mucky water, and combing fields and bushes under a hot summer sun for wild edibles to stew and use as seasoning.
There was no question of us starving, and we didn’t have to hunt, though we did catch a pike in the Saugeen River by canoe at dusk the evening before. The challenge and intrigue was in harvesting as many nutritious wild edibles as we could recognize and learning how to best prepare them, given the season. It meant learning the difference between some edible species and their poisonous or less palatable cousins (eg: pickerel weed versus blue flag, or dandelion versus sow thistle). We were told we'd be doing well if we could become intimately familiar with five new plants each year.
There were more than a few surprises. One was the arduous task of harvesting cattails, wrenching them from the mucky river bottom. Although the entire plant is edible, we were most interested in the tender stalks near the roots and cut off the tops before throwing the rest into our canoes. When we were done, that portion of the riverbank looked as though it had been ravished by cattail-loving beavers.
We had harvested from an area where cattails grew in abundance, and had left the rhizomes intact, ensuring the plants would regenerate completely, as if we had never been there. But still, we were shocked and a little embarrassed to realize the extent our human imprint, simply foraging for food. What if that was our habitat? How quickly would we use up all available land and have to move on, just to feed ourselves? By the time we got to the raspberry bushes, (using the leaves for tea and the fruit for bannock), we had learned an important rule of thumb: don’t harvest unless you see at least 25 plants in a group, and then take only a few and move on.
Cleaning and peeling a few bowlfuls of wild carrot later, we got to talking about the people we knew who used to harvest wild plants for their own consumption, people a generation older who saw them as delicacies or survival food, or knew some of their medicinal qualities. Almost everyone had a story to tell. My mother picked fiddleheads from the forest, my grandfather mushrooms and young dandelion leaves. For my in-laws here in Grey County, the first sign of winter abating was watercress in the springs and creeks flowing through crevices in the escarpment – a welcome dose of Vitamin C after months of only preserved vegetables.
“It’s the stories that help link us back to our roots. Everyone taking these courses has a story,” says Ferri, who’s taught survival courses for more than three decades.
Yet what our ancestors harvested so innocently is not always available to us now due to pesticides, lead and other pollutants found in the soil of most farms, parkland and even highway roadsides. Unless you know that a property has not been contaminated, do not harvest plants from there, Ferri advises.
Khan, who co-authored a book, “Eating Out,” with Ferri, suggests people cultivate herbs and medicinal plants in their own backyard or kitchen window so they will know that what they harvest is safe.
Advanced Edible Plant Course
June 16, 2011, 11:00 am
What an amazing trip!!! Our group started out by canoeing into our site on the Sauble River and setting up camp. Dr. Ferri brought along his North Canoe for all of us to enjoy for the weekend. One way of feeling native to our land and a way to get each of us to recognize the hardships of years gone-by. Perfect way to start the “Advanced Edible Plant” course.
Friday afternoon we became familiar with our surroundings and found plants that we could recognize from the Edible Plant course in June. Dr. Ferri pointed out more plants that we could harvest for salads and teas. Then we all went canoeing and learned canoe-over-canoe and how to rescue people with the canoes. Lots of fun and laughter was had by all. Since we were already wet, we swam for a time in the river.
Now it was time to learn how to start a fire. More laughter on that one. Learning how to chop wood was easier for some and let’s just say, I have a lot of practicing to do before next year. After dinner, we all sat around the camp fire learning what we had to do the next day to harvest plants for our dinner. Only one meal was prepared with the plants that we harvested and that took us all day to gather and prepare.
First we harvested cattails, a lot of groaning and moaning, pulling und grunting went on with harvesting them. Those roots are tough to pull out. On to lily pads, to wrap our meats into, to cook and pickerel weed to spice up our tinfoil dinner. All the plants have a nutritional value that is really good for us.
We headed out into the fields to harvest wild carrot, lambs quarter, raspberries, raspberry leaves, grape leaves, burdock, to name a few, large variety of plants to pick before lunch.
After lunch, we started to prepare the food we had harvested. It took us 4 hours to harvest and another 2 hours to prepare the food. By 3:00 pm we are putting our tinfoil dinners together with a choice of meats; bear, elk, venison, duck, rabbit and pike, to go into the fire pit to cook. By the way, we also learned how to make a fire pit.
The long awaited meal, unbelievable, every mouth full was worth the effort it took to harvest the food. We just had to watch how much we ate the first time, never know how our bodies will react to this new taste… To do it everyday like this, years ago, reminds us how fortunate we have it now. We all reflected on how much effort it took to harvest and how much destruction we did in just harvesting a few cattails. This is the reason why the natives moved on as the food source ran dry. They were very careful to only pick 20% of the food, in order for the food to be there for years to come.
This course was more then I expected, canoe techniques, fishing, plant harvesting and preparation, unbelievable amount of laughter and comradeship and at the end of the weekend, we even had a mule ride around the surrounding area.
Thank you Dr. Gino Ferri, Jennifer Khan, and Nathan Bamsey for sharing your knowledge and expertise with us.
Soul Searching Tree will be offering another Advanced Edible Plant Course
July 15,16,17, 2011
For more information contact Janet Schnurr at 519. 935.2581