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.

Here are more detailed instructions:

Wash and sterilize your jars, have lids at the ready in a pot of hot water. Pour your burning hot, liquid fat into jars, avoid getting it on the rims - clean them off if you do. Leave a half inch headroom. Place lids on jars and fasten with screw tops. They should seal themselves as they cool. You are done, this is awesome.

Why don`t you need to pressure can fat?

Because botulism, the main reason for pressure canning, requires water to exist. Pure rendered fat is just that, 100 percent pure oil. No water, not at risk for botulism.

Why does it extend the shelf life of fat?

The main factor that causes fat to degrade (go rancid) is exposure to oxygen (oxidation). When a jar seals, the oxygen in it is displaced through a vacuum effect. One of the main factors that spoil the fat is significantly reduced.

So far I have just canned some ghee this way; hopefully someone out there is as excited about this as me……

It’s a platform for teaching the skills I have been sharing on this blog to the general public, which could include you if you’re on Vancouver Island and interested!

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.

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?!

I wondered why people didn’t eat hazelnuts, my mom told me that in the fall blue jays and squirrels probably gather them all, and I also remembered Thoreau mentioned harvesting hazelnuts while they were still green, off the tree, to beat the squirrels in the forests of New England. So I started getting anxious – at the beginning of September I figured all of these hazelnuts I’d been watching would soon vanish, so me and a friend harvested a few 5 gallon bucketfuls from good spots. The nuts were still green on the tree, in green husks, which we spent hours sitting around talking and peeling off. At this point we spread the nuts out on floors and beds and sheets – wherever we could – to dry/cure.

A month later I noticed that many hazelnut trees had dropped their seed on the ground, and that most of them were just sitting there, with no husk on them, for us to pick up. This made harvesting them WAAAYY easier. Sometimes they even were cured while the sun shone down on them beneath the tree. It turned out there aren’t many creatures that feast heavily on hazelnuts where I live – sometimes a family of Coons will gorge at a few trees, but in general we don’t have the kind of squirrels that come in droves and eat lots of nuts.

That fall I sat for hours in awe, looking at hazelnuts in shell in my hand, cracking them and eating them, that such a substantial food could fall off of trees like leaves.

Nowadays I harvest large amounts of hazelnuts every fall, they’re them one of the most important local, feral foods in my diet. In a bad year we’ll have to scrounge to find a couple onion sacks full, but good years balance that out.

Logistics (harvest, preservation etc.)

Hazelnuts of course grow far and wide across north america, europe and other temperate climates. They are often called Filberts – that’s fine, but Hazel sounds so much more beautiful.

If you are living somewhere with large populations of eastern gray squirrel or other nut crazy creatures, you could ensure your own harvest by gathering still-green nuts off the tree and letting them ripen someplace they won’t get scooped up. Otherwise let them fall on the ground and get down on all fours. If the ground is somewhat barren (short grass etc.) you can sometimes rake them into piles, which is incredibly satisfying.

Once you’ve got them they need to be dried (cured). The fresh nuts taste like coconut or water chestnut, really good, but for preservation they need to get dry or else rot. To dry them one can spread out a layer of nuts on whatever unused, sheltered, creature proof surface they have and let them sit for a month (more or less depending on temperature), put them on screens above the woodstove or someplace warm to dry faster, or, the very best, is to put them in mesh sacks (free from any grocery store, just ask for them for some old onion sacks), about a third full, hung in a warm place (not too close to the woodstove or the nuts will roast).

Once dry, the nuts can be stored indefinitely in sacks. Hazelnuts in shell will stay good for a surprisingly long time – we’ve stored them for 3 years and they still weren’t rancid! That is really long! It makes them one of the most storeable, nutritious foods. They will go rancid faster if they get too hot (roast) while being cured. They will also get much tastier though.

They taste better, and are much more nutritious, if they are soaked or roasted before eating (these processes diminish phytic acid, which interferes w/ mineral metabolism).

Hazels are found in the wild, cultivated, and feral. All are amazing, and if you can manage to find a spot to harvest them, you are lucky.

PLANT THEM EVERYWHERE!

After reading that Vancouver rainwater had 100 times the allowable level of radioactive iodine, that a public notice had been issued on Haida Gwaii warning people that rainwater was no longer ‘suitable for human consumption’, I woke up one morning and took down all of my snares, not wanting to kill anything I wasn’t completely excited about eating. Incredibly sad.

I’ve been talking to people about this ongoing nuclear disaster, reactions range from: don’t care/haven’t bothered to find anything out about it/the world is already fucked isn’t it? – to covering their garden beds with plastic in an attempt to keep soil from being contaminated/being extremely concerned. I’m still trying to process it. It’s still spewing radiation into the sky.

Not that one would hear about it over  “WE killed Bin Laden!” “GO CANUCKS GO!”

The scale of these disasters, the scale of how destructive this culture`s mechanisms are is sometimes beyond our ability to cope with, or even grasp. There are 55 active nuclear reactors in Japan alone. A couple of these are in a process of meltdown that has been going on for 2 months, and the humans that erected them have no idea how to stop it. They’ve been pumping ocean water into them and flying helicopters around scooping water out of lakes and dropping it on them like they are getting their directions from local preschoolers (no disrespect to young readers, I’ve just seen how ya`ll pour water on sandcastles and stuff).

A couple weeks ago I had a breakdown, I had spent an hour or so reading some of the latest on the developing nightmare across the ocean, reading about levels of cesium in milk, spinach, strawberries and rainwater on this side of the ocean. About “worse than Chernobyl”, about how many reactors there are in the world, how long this might go on for. My main source of sanity, physical intercourse with a living world, tainted. On my bike ride home I started losing control of my body, felt like my mind was crushing in on itself under the weight of sadness. I got home and curled up in a ball to wait it out till the morning – sometimes the weight of this world feels unbearable.

It’s a bit of a mind fuck – like I said above this is tasteless colorless odorless, so we can choose to ignore it and maybe that would be wiser. Survivalists and others that are deeply concerned are locking themselves indoors, taping up the cracks around their windows, and stockpiling pre-”3/11″ (that’s march 11, 2011) food, water, medicine, toilet paper etc., or leaving for the southern hemisphere where winds are not carrying the fallout. Perhaps they are crazy, or perhaps they actually understand what’s going on, I have no idea. Though I do think they are crazy…

All of these protective measures are only available to extremely privileged humans. Deer and rabbits are still drinking rainwater in puddles and streams, eating fresh grasses and lichen. Being drenched in rain. Those humans at the bottom of this cultures hierarchy are still eating whatever they can, drinking whatever water is available, drenched in rain, possibly unaware anything is different. As I said above, there are many who are preparing to come out of this disaster unscathed by completely physically disconnecting from the earth until it is over and they decontaminate the soil and water. This seems impossible and futile to me – and maybe not worth it.

How much are we willing to disconnect from the land in order to survive? I am asking this question from the perspective of someone who loves the land like family, like a lover, like everything that matters. And my answer, to myself, is that in order to be sane, feel alive, I need to touch the land. I need our bodies to mix.

I heard one person say that Fukushima was that famous coastal city where innocent, beautiful dolphins have been brutally killed for human food – that perhaps this was simply karma punishing those insensate people for their crimes against the dolphins. Why is it that karma only seems to be capable of punishing the poorest humans and non-humans – there is no logic to this karma people speak of that always punishes the poorest and leaves the perpetrators (CEOs, politicians etc) unscathed. If there is a *God* behind these ongoing atrocities of industrial society, *He* is racist, classist, sexist, speciesist and I hate *Him*.

In the end, I think this disaster will *immediately* effect those humans and non-humans living near Fukushima itself, which is incredibly tragic. Radioactive fallout spreading around the rest of the world will probably just give everyone else an extra load of invisible, radioactive carcinogens. That`s the story I am currently buying at least. I’m almost used the idea of radioactive fallout in the rain after nearly 2 months of it, that is to say I don`t think it’s the end of the world – actually that’s not true, I don`t think it`s going to end the end of the world.

MITIGATION

Having said that I need physical contact with the land to stay sane, I also want to mitigate the effects of these toxic chemicals as much as makes sense and isn’t too ridiculous. This includes: not drinking the rain for the moment (drinking stored rain), not drinking fresh milk from pasture fed cows (pretty easy for me), avoiding foods that contain goitrogens – anti-nutrients that block natural iodine absorption and suppress thyroid function – which includes all brassicas (FUCK!), eating seaweed daily and taking plants that help with detox, getting plenty of antioxidants, spending time with people I love, and doing things that make me happy.

Living in a wounded world is nothing new.

Fuck the scumbags at TEPCO.

Fuck the system.

“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?!

How to make it:

One can use de-haired skin, hooves or cartilagenous bones as a base for jello. Skin is a good option cause it doesn’t have a very strong flavor or any oils on its own, which will rise to the top of yr jellow and solidify. If you are using skin, remove the hair and then let it dry hard. This sounds like a lot of work but it is probably only a half hour for a whole deerskin, which will make many batches of jella.  You can find instructions for de-hairing on here or on other sites.

Once dried, cut yr deer (cow, goat, whatever) skin into bite sized chunks, add water and let them soak it up for a few hours. Or not. The ratio of skin to water is pretty lenient, less skin means a longer brewing time before you get full on jellow; I probably use a cup dried skin chunks for a gallon of water.

Now brew it, a woodstove works well for this, you don’t want to boil it furiously, more of a gentle low simmer. If you have the luxury of wood heating, let it sit gently brewing for many hours. Strain, flavor to taste (berries and berry juice come to mind) and let cool overnight. IT’S INSANELY GOOD!

And apparently amazingly good for digestion, building structural tissues in the body (cartilage, skin etc), plus lots more.

TESTICLES FOR FOOD

Another overlooked delicacy (along with skin), testicles are super delicious, and obviously store incredible nutrition in every bite. To harvest, simply save the scrotum/penis when gutting creatures with such organs. Cut the scrotum open and remove the testicles. They have a membrane surrounding them that one can remove to get at the tender morsels beneath. Deer have testicles about the size of humans, sometimes smaller sometimes bigger. Sheep have testicles larger than their hearts!!!! If you put both together they’re bigger than their brains!!!!

Some great ways to prepare testicles are roasted over a fire – the thin membrane splits and juices ooze and sizzle as they cook just like a smokey – they actually taste incredibly similar to hot dogs. Balls broth is another excellent way to prepare them, chop up testicles and brew for several hours, with bones or hooves if you have them, they make a very rich, salty broth.

A fantastic treat.

-wounded knee massacre

-live bone marrow

-drinking horses blood

-indigenous vegan

-women like “pulling out”

-tanning leather with tea

-my contraceptive method is having my husband take it out before jaculation

-sioux people being laughed at       (wtf?)

-how deep do i scrape cowhide

-oil through the digestive system from oil spills

-bark tanned leather

-leather tanning methods using tree bark

-is braintanned leather waterproof

-anasakis encysted

-is veganism sustainable

-is pull out before cumming effective

-world’s nastiest roadkill dog

Keep ragin’…..

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!.

LET’S DO THIS!

To make gundru happen one begins by harvesting some big leaves – I have only done this with members of the brassica family, though I have heard of folks using beet and chard greens. I would’nt try it with any really tender greens (lettuce, chickweed etc), I suspect they would just turn to mush. If you are using kale (that’s what I usually have around), you’ll probably notice the light powder that coats the leaves – this is yeast, just like the light covering of yeast on grapes. It will help activate the fermentation – don’t wash it off. The next step is optional – let the kale wilt in the sun. I don’t fully understand what the purpose of this step is; it could be partially ceremonial (welcoming sun medicine into the greens?), it could begin breaking down cell walls to make the next steps easier. Make sure to just let the kale wilt, not dry out, you need those juices. You could skip this step, I have and it still worked.

Now you need to crush and smush the kale good to really get the juices flowing – a rolling pin (or wine bottle, jar etc.) on a board work for this – use some force. Try not to lose the juices. When the kale has been crushed, you pack it into a jar as tight as possible. Do this bit by bit – crush some kale, stuff it into the jar and tamp it in there really well with a bottle, peice of wood, whatever will fit in there. Again, use some force, you might be surprised how much kale can fit into a small jar.

Gundru station in action - I use a peice of alder to tamp/cram the crushed kale into jars

After a while, dark green juice should cover the kale when you push down with your tool – by the time your jar is almost full you won’t be able to push down without juices overflowing, don’t let them out! When you are at this point, add enough smushed greens so that when you put a lid on, the juices come right to the top.

Now put your gundru some place warm, or warm and sunny, and let it sit at least 3 weeks. Put something under it (a plate etc), it has a tendency to bubble and ooze juices out as it ferments. When you eventually can’t wait any longer, or remember you forgot about it, open it up – it should smell and taste sharp and tangy, really good. It can be eaten fresh or dried in the sun – when it gets crispy dry it taste like ketchup flavored potato chips (in the very best way possible). Dried, it can be used as an enzyme rich green condiment or snack. It is really good fresh though. It also stores for quite long if you don’t open it – we’ve had gundru stored for over a year, through a hot summer and frozen winter – it was totally delicious (and didn’t make us sick)! I don’t open a jar of gundru and then plan to store it for another couple months, it seems to need to be eaten or dried within a few or so of opening (refrigeration might change that).

Sometimes batches don’t get that nice sharp acid flavor, so make smaller batches, not big gallon jars of gundru. That way if a batch doesn’t turn out it won’t break yr heart. Rinse yr equipment and jar with boiling hot water if you can – it will reduce competing bacteria. Greens from grocery stores have never worked for me – that special yeast is usually gone, they have been kicking around for a long time since harvest, and may be irradiated, washed with bleach or chlorinated water. If you don’t have a direct source of such greens, find some living plants near you or help some grow, they are good friends to have around.

Freshly packed gundru, ready to be aged

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

- Thoreau

Recently, we were given the bones of a large, healthy cow, and I knew it was time to enact a dream that I have had for a while now – rendered bone marrow. Bone marrow is pretty much mineral rich fat, traditionally wherever cultures depended on larger mammals for food, they prized bone marrow as an essential source of nourishment. Marrow can be consumed as bone broths, the bones broken open and simmered gently for a long period, it can be eaten raw – straight out of the bone, and if you have enough of it, it can be rendered for storage just like any other animal fat. Traditionally, pemmican consisted of dried, pulverized meat stuck together by rendered marrow fat.

For the uninitiated, what I mean by ‘rendering’, is heating tissue fat until the oil liquifies and separates from the proteins. The best example of this process is bacon – when you cook bacon, the bacon grease left over is rendered fat, it was seperated from the protien (bacon) through heating.

Most of the marrow lies inside the ‘marrow bones’ – long shaft like bones of that make up the front and hind legs (femur, ulna, all those shafts..). Ribs, shoulder blades and the spine do not (usually) have extractable chunks of marrow in them. For rendering, we smashed the marrow bones open, and took all the greasy chunks out…

At this point, the raw marrow is absolutely amazing! Apparently it contains stem cells, crazy nourishing growth hormones, no doubt eating it raw is the most amazing. We wanted to render it at the lowest heat possible, so we chose the ‘wet’ rendering process, putting all the marrow in a pot, covering it with water, bringing it to a low simmer for quite a while (it was on the woodstove, maybe 3 hrs very low heat?), then letting it cool overnight.

Raw marrow, ready to be covered with water and gently heated (rendered)

The oil seperates from the water, rises to the top and solidifies. It is then skimmed off, and gently heated in another pot just enough to liquefy and evaporate some of the excess moisture that might be kicking around. Pour the liquid oil into a jar, and, if you want my advice, store it uncovered, in a cool place. We store all of our rendered fats uncovered, and have noticed they do not go rancid or mold half as quickly as rendered fat that can’t breathe. If you have a fridge or a freezer, putting a lid on it likely won’t do any harm, but if it is at all warm, we just tie a cloth around the mouth of the jar and leave it at that. If creatures scavenging your food (mice, rats..) is an issue, then you will have to figure something else out. After skimming off the fat, we rendered what was left in the pot again, for just as long or longer, and after cooling go just as much fat as the first skimming.

The rendered marrow is amazing! Buttery yellow, rich, one of the best fats I have ever tasted (in my top 3).

Looks kind of like ghee - amazing stuff!

The ability to make waterproof clothing, footwear, and containers from indigenous materials is an incredible asset for those trying to reduce their dependance on industrial society, survive ‘the collapse’, or deeply connect to their landbase. Using the tannins in local tree barks to preserve skins as leather – bark tanning – is a simple, magical and utilitarian method of providing ourselves these things. Bark tanned leather resists rot, is water repellant to 100 percent waterproof depending on how it’s tanned, and, of course, is extremely beautiful. Several years ago, when thinking about the eventual fall of civilization, I would sincerely worry about how we would survive on this rainy coast without plastic raingear and gumboots when the system that produces them halts, and whatever we have around from before falls apart. Well, turns out we don’t need ‘em (the system, the gumboots). The art of bark tanning has almost been completely lost – it is shrouded in myth and obscurity, but, what we have uncovered so far makes me confident that we can make our own gumboots, rainjackets, and water bottles, independant from industrial society.

In this post I want to relay some of what we’ve learned about bark tanning over the last few years, sharing a basic method for tanning deerskins, the most abundant and easily tanned skin in my experience.

Brain tan vs. Bark tan

In the modern primitive skills movement, hide tanning is usually synonymous with ‘brain tanning’, or buckskin leather; velvety soft, porous, and as absorbent as cotton. There is a ton of amazing info widely available on making buckskin or brain tanning furs in books, online, or from knowledgeable people. It is a skill that has been very well revived. It was not used to any extent as outerwear by the indigenous people of the rainy northwest coast, where I live. It’s soft porous qualities make it excellent to wear right against one’s skin, but in the rain it soaks through very easily – like a cold wet sponge. Bark tanned leather is fuller (not as soft) and has water repellent qualities, making it much more useable as outerwear in a cold wet climate. I think of buckskin as a functional equivelent to cotton, and bark tan as an equivalent to a plastic rainjacket. Bark tanning is much less understood – actually for someone trying to learn it is quite the mystery. It is a more complex process, chemically, and evolved with more complex human societies – the kind of leather I describe in this post would actually have evolved with civilization – but we can do it without.

A canteen I made from hemlock tanned deerskin (yes, it's waterproof), the strap is brain-tan/buckskin. Notice how soft, velvety and flowing the strap is - bark tan can can get quite soft, but never that soft.

A BASIC METHOD:

This is a method of tanning Deer skins that has been working very well for me and many friends. Tanning is a complex process and this short post cannot really do it full justice, but it might help you get started or fill in some grey areas.

DEHAIRING

This can be done two main ways, by soaking the skin in a pond, puddle stream bucket etc. until the hair starts to ‘slip’, that is, you can easly pull it off (you shouldn’t even have to pull, more ‘slip’). It can take a few days to a month+, depending on temperature, the skin etc. This method works okay, but can result in the skin itself rotting and even falling apart if things get out of hand. The second method, my preferred, is soaking the hide in a strong alkaline solution, also known as ‘bucking’. The bucking solution can be made from ashes, lye or lime. For ashes, you’ll need ALOT. With hardwood ashes make a 1/1 mixture of ashes/water, let the ashes settle, then see if an egg floats in this solution. If the egg sinks, add more ’till it floats. Softwood ashes are weaker and cannot be too strong, make a milkshake-consistency beverage out of them. It takes a few days to a month in the ashes for the hair to slip. I prefer an alkaline solution because it keeps the hide from rotting/it’s predictable, as well it removes glues from the hide which results in leather that tans easier and turns out softer. If you ‘buck’ your skin, after you have dehaired it put it in a stream or some flowing water overnight, to rinse the alkalinity out of it – otherwise it won’t tan properly.

A deer skin being scraped on a beam (salvaged pvc pipe). The hide is pinned between the beam and the tree, I use a dull scraper, and pulling towards me, aplly only enough pressure to get the loosened hair and epidermis off, so not to make marks on the grain of the hide.

Scraping the hair off shouldn’t be hard. Use a beam and dull scraper like in the photo above. The textured surface of finished leather is what folks call the ‘grain’ layer. The grain helps repel water. You want to remove the hair and the scummy epidermis, which is pretty much nonexistent and you will remove unintentionaly with the hair, but try to go easy on the grain, use a dull scraper and don’t use excessive force. Marking or cutting into the grain won’t ruin your leather, it will just make it look a bit shabbier and be less water repellant wherever there is no grain. If the hair isn’t coming off easily, the hide needs to soak longer.

TANNING

After you’ve removed the hair, the skin is ready to be tanned. This means extracting tannins from some tannin rich plant (usually tree barks) into a tea, and immersing the skin in this tea so that tannin particles can bond with the skin’s fibers, making it rot resistant. Black tea is rich in tannins, know how it tastes astringent and has a somewhat drying effect on the mouth – that’s what it feels like for the leather.

The best sources for tannin in this bioregion are (starting with the best): Western Hemlock bark (excellent), Douglas Fir bark (good), Spruce bark (good), Alder bark (supposedly makes ‘brittle’ leather, though I doubt this is true), Aspen and Willow bark (pretty weak but useable). Oak is reputedly one of the best barks, if it lives where you do. Birch is supposedly good, too. So, if you live near a wooded area, you have a source of tannin close at hand. Bark is strongest in the spring, though still useable any time of the year. Harvest it from living or freshly fallen trees, as tannins leach in the rain. I prefer to kill a tree and take all of it’s bark over injuring a ton of trees to get a bit from each. I use the de-barked tree as firewood, planks, posts etc. Bark mulch from garden stores might work, too. I use hemlock bark 90% of the time. It is the richest source of tannin on the northwest coast (aside from oak, which doesn’t grow where I live), and produces a deep red-purple to black leather that is way too amazing!

Making the tea:

Fill a pot at least half way with chopped up bark – the finer the bark is chopped/shredded, the more tannin you can get out of it. In the old days people had bark mills that would grind bark finely for this purpose, I just chop it into bite-sized chunks with a sharp hatchet. Fill the pot with water, rain water preferably, as water from wells or coming thru pipes will have mineral in it that react with tannins and make black blotches on the leather (a purely superficial consideration). Using a cast iron or aluminum pot will also create blotches on the leather, a result of the tannins reacting with those minerals. I use a big stainless steel stock pot. Bring the pot to a boil and let it simmer 1 to 2 hours. Let it cool, pour it off into a bucket or whatever you have, then re-use the bark for at least 2 more teas. Now you will have a decent amount of tea, which is good, you’ll need it. Bark tanning turns out to be more consumptive of water and fuel (for making tea) than of bark itself. One 40 year old hemlock tree that I fell last spring has tanned almost 20 deerskins, a cow hide, and many other smaller creatures. I still have some of the bark left.

Deer skin after about 4 days in hemlock tea - this tea was being re-used after already tanning another deerskin. Fresh hemlock tea has a darker color.

Collect your bark tea into a container, ideally something wide like a plastic storage tote, garbage can etc. A bucket will do, but having the hide scrunched up will make it tan unevenly – you’ll just have to take it out and readjust it more often. Mix your tea 1/1 with water, then put your dehaired (and rinsed if you ‘bucked’ it) skin into the tea, make sure it is submerged and there are no folds. After a few days you can strengthen the tea by taking some out of your tanning bath, putting it into a pot of fresh bark and decocting (simmering). This way you conserve water and make the tea even stronger than if you used new water.

MEMBRANING

After the skin has been bathing in tannin tea for a few days, I take it out, and put it back onto the beam I used to dehair it, this time with the flesh side up. I put a trashy old towel beneath it so that the grain doesn’t get marked up by the beam. Then, with a dull scraper, I remove any membrany tissues that might still be left clinging to the hide. I have friends that don’t do this step, but it does help the skin tan faster and more evenly, as this membrane blocks to absorption of tannin somewhat.

Peeling off a peice of membrane - notice the lighter color where the membrane had been blocking the tannins from entering. This whole skin had only this one peice of membrane to remove, sometimes there is alot, but if you can't find it, it probably isn't there. Note the old towel I use as a cushion between the hide and the beam to prevent marking.

How long ’till it’s done?

A skin is done tanning when tannins have penetrated all of it’s fibers. Checking by snipping off a sample from a thick edge (above photo) is the easiest way to see this process. For thicker skins (cow, elk, moose_ making too strong of a tea can ‘shock’ the hide, meaning the exterior of the hide tans too fully too fast, blocking tannins from getting to the interior fibers of the skin. These skins must be started in a weak tannin bath, that is gradually and carefully strengthened over many months until the skin is tanned though. Deer skins, in my experience, are usually thin enough that this isn’t much of a consideration. I usually put them into full stregth tea and have them tanned through in 2-4 weeks, but to be safe, you can dilute yr tea half and half with water like stated above, strengthening it after (or every) few days. It will take a bit longer than starting in full strength tea, but usually not more than a month to tan through. Cow and other thick skins can take 6 months and longer.

A skin is done tanning when tannins have penertated to it’s core. Check this by snipping off a thick edge (the neck) and seeing if any color has struck through to the center. It doesn’t have to be dark, any hint of color is enough. Above is a fully tanned and an unfinished section of cowhide.

After the skin is tanned through, take it out of the bath (right away if you are using full strength tea, as too much tannins can make the leather brittle) and put it in a body of water (pond, river etc) overnight to rinse out the unfixed tannins.

SOFTENING

Softening is the final step, and will be done differently depending on how soft you want your leather to be. It is done by applying oil to the skin and stretching it as it dries, so that the fibers do no glue together like rawhide. Let the skin dry with no stretching or manipulation, and it will be completely stiff. Oil it well and keep it’s fibers moving around while it is drying, and it will be pliable to soft. Think of what you want the leather to be (a knife sheath doesn’t need to be as soft and pliable as mittens), and only bother working it enough to get it that soft.

Using the top of a wooden pole to stretch a well oiled deerskin as it dries. The backs of chairs, your knees, and a friend who can grab on and pull the hide into a nice big shape are convenient to have around for this

Here is how i go about softening:

Take the hide out of the puddle I had it rinsing in overnight, then squeeze as much moisture out of it as i can (by putting it on my scraping beam, flesh side up, and squeegeeing the water out with a dull tool). I then hang it some place warm so it can start to dry a bit, and when it looks like it can soak up any oil, I start lathering oil on (lard, bear grease, seal oil, olive oil – liquid and semi-solid oils are best). I usually only apply it to the grain side,for clothing that will be the outside usually, and having a greasy film on the inside of your garment usually has no benefits. I hang it someplace warm, near the woodstove in the winter, in the sun during the summer, so that it will dry faster. Periodically I stretch it out, in my hands, or work it over the edge of a chair/pole. Whenever it starts to look a bit dry, like it could soak up more moisture, I apply more oil. Keep letting it hang and dry out a bit, working it periodically, until it is fully dry. If a spot is drying stiff, work it harder. If it doesn’t come out as soft as you’d hoped, then rehydrate it and try again – whatever softness you already achieved is more or less permanent, any additional work will only make it softer. It can take anywhere from 2 hours plus. If you are getting tired of softening and the skin isn’t fully dry, you can roll it up and put it into a plastic bag where it won’t dry out any more, coming back to it when you want to and starting where you left off. The more oil you apply while softening, the more water repellant your leather will be.

Amazing deer skin mittens made by one of my housemates. On the left is a removeable inner liner of hemlock tanned rabbit fur, on the right is the deer skin mitten with fur liner inside it.

WATERPROOFING

The tanned skin itself is not all that water proof/repellent – it’s the application of oil that really makes it shed water. The more oil you apply to the skin, either during or after softening, the more water repellent it will be. Apply oil to the grain side, since that is usually what will be the surface that comes into contact with weather/water. Leather can also be waxed, but that is a complex enough process to leave for another time.

This post turned out to be much longer than I anticipated, there are many steps, but once you’ve gone through it a couple of times it will seem very simple and basic. I am sure I’ll find things to add and revise here, but if you want to get started making leather I think it will help. Bark tanned leather is filled with magic, and is quite sexy.

For more info:

If you are seriously wanting to learn this skill, check out the book Deerskins to Bucksins by Matt Richards, it will help you understand leathermaking immensely. Also, www.braintan.com. There aren’t many books available on bark tanning specifically, it has fallen into obscurity, part of what makes it fun to learn.