Unlearn, Rewild is done and real(!) – and retiring this site…

At long last the book that takes off from some of the writing I did here, Unlearn, Rewild, has been published and should be in bookstores and available online any day now. I got my first copies a few weeks ago and am really happy with how the book turned out, I hope readers of this blog find it useful and an enjoyable read that is far more in-depth and intimate than I had the energy to make this blog.

Having said that, now that the book is out I figured it was time to retire this site for real (though it has pretty much been retired for some time), and brand myself like all the other authors seem to do with a more personalized site. MILESOLSON.NET is where I’ll be putting future blog posts, as well as info about workshops I’m teaching and any other interesting stuff surrounding the book. Check it out!

Going Feral is hitting the bookshelves….!

As usual, it has been a while since I’ve posted anything here – that isn’t any indication of how much writing I’ve been doing, though. As I mentioned a few months ago, I was writing book - it is now finished and the brave folks at New Society Publishers have decided to take it on and publish it this fall.

‘Unlearn, Rewild; earthskills, ideas and inspirations for the future primitive’ takes off from where I started here – a collection of endangered skills and essays that I am super excited about sharing. It is in the editorial process now, and I have begun another writing project I hope to get published, so expect posting to remain pretty darn sporadic here, but substantial gems to appear in the realer-than-internet realm….!

How To Store Fat….. for Longer!

Rendered animal fat typically has a shelf life of 1-6 months, a year if you’re lucky. In my frantic research I recently discovered a method of storage that extends fat’s shelf life to 3+ years.

This is good news!

The only hitch is that this method is dependant on an unsustainable resource: canning jars and lids. Still, if you have too much fat to immediately consume or want to put some away in the proverbial `larder`, this method is super cheap and requires almost no extra energy. One simply pours freshly rendered, burning hot liquid fat into a jar, plops the appropriate sterilized lid on, fastens and it seals itself. It`s just simple hot pack canning.

Possum Living, and what I’m up to

I just rediscovered a link to a great book, Dolly Freed’s classic ‘Possum living: How to live well without a job and with (almost) no money’. It’s an interesting read, lots of useful tips and hints. You can read the whole thing online here.

In other news, I’m nearly done writing a book(let), a collection of essays and endangered skills. It will hopefully be on paper in the next month, once I figure out how to do that, and available for folks to buy (gasp!). I am really excited about it, it’s somewhat a distillation of the most pertinent ideas and skills I have to share at the moment, that I can fit into a smallish booklet. Some stuff has appeared here, much of it is fresh.

Getting to Know Hazel

I remember first reading about hazelnut trees in a book, ‘food plants of the northwest coast’, when I was maybe 18. I had flipped through and seen that hazelnuts grow where I live before, but at this time I realized how significant this was. I’d never noticed a hazelnut tree, or heard people talking about them, so their presence seemed unreal to me. I looked at the photo in the guide, remembered the shape of the leaf, and kept my eyes peeled as I went about my days. I started seeing them everywhere. Things got really crazy when, in mid summer, I noticed little nuts starting to form. Totally outrageous I thought – nuts, from trees?!

Jellow Time…. plus some new ways to enjoy testicles!

“The truth is there’s only one level of technology that’s sustainable. And that’s the Stone Age. And we’ll be there again some day. And the only question really is, what’s left of the world when we get there?”

-George Draffan

Some friends and I were sitting around eating jello together the other night, made from deerskin, water and flavored w/ blueberry juice. Really good stuff. One friend said: “When things go back to the stone age, we’ll still have Jellow!” This is good news. This is especially good news for me cause I’m not into tanning hides all the time these days, and what better use for them than to chop them up and make one of the best desserts ever?!

Okay…

Okay, it’s been a while. And I have some writing I’m working on that I’m gonna put up here in the near future, but in lieu of thoughtful prose and obscure skills, for now I thought I’d share all of the google search terms that brought readers here yesterday:

GUNDRU

Gundru is a traditional fermented food that has it’s origins in Nepal. By far one of the most amazing vegetable ferments, it requires no salt or brine, just the juicy dark leaves of any member of the brassica family (kale, turnip, rutabaga, mustard etc.). One simply harvests leaves, mashes them up, and then stuffs them densely into a container until it is full and they are submerged in their own juices. The gundru is then left for at least a month, during which lactobacilli proliferate and transform it into an enzyme enhanced, easily digested delicacy, as well as preserving it!.

Rendering Marrow

“I went to the woods because… I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life…”

- Thoreau

Almost Back…

Hey all, it’s been a couple months since anything new has come up here – winter has slowed down my posting, surprisingly. I’ve been keeping warm and dry indoors a lot during these short days and looong nights of wind and rain. Working on lots of projects, spending time with friends, hunting (and eating good food!), reading, writing.
I’m still alive, and will have some new stuff up in the next week or so.