On Completing My BushclassUSA Outing #5 and "The Over Night"

   This past Friday and into Saturday morning, I completed my final Outing #5 for BushclassUSA and with that accomplishment I graduated. Having received my Bushclass Basic Certification, I am already looking forward to working on the Intermediate Bushclass lessons and creating even more videos and sharing more experiences with you here at Minnesota Bushcraft.
   As for my outing, it was a great adventure, using the debris shelter I had built earlier this year. I built a natural insulation bed in one part of the shelter, moved the fire pit to a better location to allow for more room and cooked a couple of meals, that turned out delicious. I learned even more about how the materials gathered for such a shelter played a large role in determining the geometry of the shelter and how much space was available. It could have been so much larger inside, had there been some longer, straighter rafter poles available. They might have been there, but I would have to have spent even more time in the woodland to find them.
   I hope you enjoy the video, as it was a lot of fun to put together and in the future I am going to try a few different video techniques and continue to polish my bushcraft story telling style. 

   A lot of questions have been asked of me over at BushcraftUSA about how much room I had available in the shelter and just how many people could fit inside and sleep there. So I put together a short animation on the layout of the shelter and where things are located.

   Thanks for watching and I hope you enjoyed the videos. Please consider taking the BushclassUSA lessons and joining BushcraftUSA. It is a lot of fun, family friendly and will give you hours of things to do and learn.
Stay tuned for more adventures in bushcraft. Happy Exploring.

On Completing My BushclassUSA Outing #4

   This last Sunday I had a chance to get out and complete my Outing #4 for BushclassUSA. It was a great outing and I got a lot accomplished. It started around 11am and the temperature was about perfect for a day in February, about 23 degrees F. I gathered some materials for making natural chard tinder, collected some birch bark, setup my tarp shelter using a braided ridge line and a few basic knots. Then I improvised a pot hanger, heated some water for cocoa, made some bread on a stick, cooked some chicken on the Canteenshop Grill Top Stove and finally chard some punky paper birch wood and some mullen leaves. For fire starting I used an improvised steel and flint and chard cloth which I got an ember started in and then transfered the chard cloth to some dry cedar bark that was made into a tinder "nest". All in all a chance to practice a lot of skills and to enjoy the weather and the peace and the quiet. So without further ado, here is the video. I hope you enjoy the adventure.

   Thanks for watching and I really want to encourage you to checkout the BushclassUSA online course found at BushcraftUSA.com. It is really family friendly and will give you hours of enjoyment, getting out into the wilderness. Next up for me is to complete my Outing #5 and finally graduate the Basic Bush Class Certification. It will be an over-night outing, in the state of Minnesota, in February. It will be fun. Until then, Happy Exploring...

On Completing My BushclassUSA Outing #3

  The adventure continues as I just finished yet another outing for my online BushclassUSA Basic Certification. It did not start out to be an outing involving the foraging for natural tinders, but the more the day wore on, the more fun it got to be. In the end I found, tested and used some paper birch bark, eastern red cedar bark shavings, bull thistle down in the seed pod and some kind of flower silk that I thought would be a nice flash tinder and yet it did not react hardly at all. Finally, I found and tested some Horses Hoof Fungus or False Tinder Fungus, which took a spark from my firesteel and extended that spark to a good coal which I was able to carry home and it burned for 2 plus hours after first ignition. So here is the video and I hope you enjoy the days adventure.

   It has been a lot of fun to make and share these adventures and I am really looking forward to this summer and even more exploration and expeditions. Whether alone or with my bushcraft friends, it is always and adventure worth pursuing. I do like the "dirt time". Til next time... Happy Exploring.