This is a shaving horse, I made it of some leftover wood. It is basically a clamp for greenwood carving.  With your feet you push down on the lever that clamps the wood down so you have your hands free to use a two handed drawknife.

A drawknife has the advantage that you can take thick shavings off, while still have control and precision. You grab the drawknife and pull it toward you while your feet push against the lever and fix the wood in position. Therefore is physically impossible to cut yourself this way, it is possible to fall of the shaving horse.

I’m still experimenting a bit with the clamp itself, I used a piece op round wood now. But in retrospect it might be better to use something with a hammer shape that has a bigger clamping surface.

See more shaving horses here

Does the boat tail work

The boat tail, is a simple tapered extension on a truck and saves 7,5% fuel. Considering that there is not much more efficiency gain on the internal combustion engine, 7,5 % is a lot.

The man who came up with this idea, Gandert van Raemdonck, says: “In the ideal situation the extension should be 10 meters long, but that wouldn’t be very practical”. It is still in testing phase and right now you couldn’t access the loading ramp or open the doors of the truck. All of this can be easily solved.

Another reason that makes this idea good is that it can be retro-fitted on existing trucks. And even more important, this idea will also save energy on future electric trucks.

Well, does it work enough? some simple Maths!

 How much is 7,5% fuel reduction, sounds like a lot right?

In the Netherlands there where 19.800.000.000 (19,8 billion) road-freight km a year in 2006, that is a lot for a country that is only 350 km long and 200 wide.

Lets make this a more comprehensible figure. 19,8billion/365 = 54.246.575 km each day

54.246.575/24 = 2.260.273 km each hour.

2.260.273 / 60 = 37.671 km a minute, there is a figure that we can work with. That is just slightly less then 40.074 km which is the circumference of the earth.

So each minute in the Netherlands, trucks transporting stuff almost go around the earth!

After some research on the internet I found out that a “normal” truck uses about 26 litres of fuel for 100 km on long distance driving. So If the freight kilometres where driven with this “normal” truck then they would use 37.671/100*26 litres of fuel. That is 9794 litres of diesel each minute.

Now, diesel is more or less C16H34. Molecular mass is 16*12 + 34 = 226. 1 litre weighs 830 grams, that’s 3,67 mol. If you burn this it would give you 3,67 * 16 = 58.72 mol CO2. So per liter diesel that is 58,72*44=2.583g or 2,58 kg.

So 9794 * 2,58 = 25.269 kilos of CO2 each minute because of trucks in the Netherlands, that is 13.281.386.400 kg CO2 each year!

If we are talking about a 7,5% decrease of fuel consumption, (9794*0,925) * 2,58 = 23.373 kg of CO2, Almost 1896 kilos CO2 less each minute. Still 23.373kg/minute is a staggering figure.

My conclusion.

Alltough a 7,5% decrease in fuel consumption is quite good, also because you can retrofit this on every truck in the world. I would say retro-fit every truck now.

According to the IPCC we would have reduce the GHG 80% of year 2000 level to sort of stay in the clear. So, it would not make enough difference in the larger scale of global warming. The only real way is to cut the transport down to 20% of 2000 level, and then, with the boat-tail you could drive 7,5% more then 80% of 2000.

Note

I assumed that all road freight km are done with trucks, but there are also vans and cars involved. They have a lot less fuel usage but also carry less freight. These are just kilometres driven, not tonnes transported, so efficiency of each type of transport is also not taken in account. It is very raw data.

These figures are for the Netherlands, a country the size of a post-stamp, imagine Germany, the U.K., France or U.S.

For the UK it is 156 billion ton/km in 2006. If a truck carries 10 tonnes it would be 15,6 billion km a year, assumed again that it is all truck and they are fully loaded.

I had a go at knife making, I promised a couple of knives as presents but, I still had to try if I could actually make one. Well this is prototype 1. The blade is a Sami type, the handle is oak leftover from making a table, antler from a caribou and some leather.

I made the handle puukko style, a  tool for cutting food, wood, leather, hunting and fishing.  The knife lacks the hand protection that you see on many other knives. That protection is ment to keep your hands from sliding down the edge and thus hurting yourself. However this is a working knife not a stabbing knife. The guard would be pointless. I even think that the guard is in the way when carving wood.

Grip on the handle is maintained by the oval shape of the handle. The thick part sits in the palm and the thin part is grabbed by your fingers.  You can also see that same shape on my woodcarving knife here. It works very well, you have more flexibility how to hold the knife and you can push the knife with your wrist.

Here is  a nice video with Ray Mears giving a lecture for the University of Liverpool.

 

Today I made this bread, this one didn’t only taste well it also looks nice rugged and home made. Usually the bread comes out much uglier.

Recipe:

• 800 grams of spelt flour.
• 600 ml water.
• some salt.
• spoon of yeast.
• some seeds to go on top.
• 10 minutes work and an hour of two time before you actually need the bread

Knead the mixture well. I usually use lukewarm water, to give the yeast a kick-start. I let it rest under a towel until I am sufficiently pleased with the work of the yeast usually 1 to 2 hours. Than I slightly knead again and shape the bread and put it in the oven on 200°C. It takes around 15 minutes to bake it, I test if it is done by stabbing it with a knife, if it comes out clean, the bread is done. Another way is testing it by knocking on the bottom, when it sounds hollow the bread is done. You’ll do that only once and then you will stick to the knife test method.

Finally Ray Mears is back, after a year or two silence there is a new series. Well it is out on BBC2. For the occasion I dusted off the television and put an extra cushion on the couch.

Ray Mears is visiting the boreal forest or taiga in Canada for 6 x 1 hour programmes. I might be a bit biased as a Ray Mears fanboy  but I thought it was a very good programme, the filming was stunning. And all thou  Ray has made hours and hours of television on bushcraft and living in the wild, he never stops surprising. It is almost like nature.

This programme features a first nations woman making decorations out of birchbark using her teeth only.  I’m going to try If I can make some myself but the birchbark in the Netherlands is might be too thin, the warmer the climate the thinner de bark. Results will be posted.

For those that live in the UK you can watch it here on the Iplayer. Else you have to wait for the discovery channel.

The next episode is on Sunday 1 november at 20:00 GMT on BBC2

“Bushcraft is what you carry in your mind and your muscles.” – Ray Mears

From late August until November it’s time to start pulling out the carrots and parsnips. In itself the carrots are a very easy crop to grow. As long as you make the ground nice and loose they will grow. If you use crop rotation most of the plagues will stay away.

Carrots have only one major plague on them, the carrot fly (Chamaepsila rosae), which can do a lot of damage. It is not the fly itself that does the damage, but the larvae creamy white maggots that do the most damage. The fly lays their eggs next to the carrot and the maggot starts digging and eating.

The carrot fly can have up to 3 generations in 1 year after that the larvae lie dormant for the winter. While the 1st generation of larvae only eat the little hear roots of the young carrots, it is the 2nd generation that does the most damage. They eat themselves straight trough the carrot leaving brown boring holes in it. Making it inferior in taste and, well it doesn’t look very appetizing either. Also carrots that have damage cannot be stored well.

Now except for pesticides which are not an option for me, what can we do?

Positioning.

The carrot fly does not like wind, so if you can, put your carrots unsheltered from wind. I my case there is not to much wind in the garden so I need a different solution then this.

Crop rotation

The larvae lay dormant for the winter in the soil. So if you put the carrots somewhere else next year, tough luck for the flies!

Earth care.

If the soil is disturbed by for example thinning, harvesting or walking  it is easier for the fly to lay the eggs and the larvae to get to the root itself. So thin early and don’t disturb the soil.

Onions.

“According to Misses E. Smit from Westernieland, carrots in her garden grew undamaged and more beautiful if she planted some onions in between them. Where she got this knowledge is unkown to me. ” This is an passage in an article from the Dutch Phytopathological Society in May 1923. This article further teaches us that shallots have the same property. According to Mister Heidema, the author of the article, the repelling properties of the onions comes from the strong scent which is not appreciated by the flies.
So unions, shallots an garlic work well, I’ve tested it and until harvesting the unions and the garlic I did not see any carrot flies. Remember for onions to efficient there need to be lots of them, think 1 row carrots, 1 row onions.

Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare).

Another effective plant against wormflies is the tansy, in dutch it is called boerenwormkruid, farmers-worm-herb. Tansy has a mix of oils and one of them is called Eucalyptol, which is used as a insecticide an insect repellant (and a number of other things). The tansy also contains camphor which is also used to repel moths. If you break a leaf and rub it on your finger you smell those two clearly.

It turns out that the tansy is a very versatile plant;

-Tansy is highly toxic to internal parasites, and has been used by herbalists to expel worms for centuries.
-It can be used to keep flies, moths and even ants out of the house by hanging it in the windows.
-It keeps flies and worms away from berries.
-And, my wife is going to love this: it can be used as a natural dye in colouring wool to a golden yellow.

I can also find lots of recipes where tansy is used, like this one:

‘Beat seven eggs, yolks and whites separately; add a pint of cream, near the same of spinach-juice, and a little tansy-juice gained by pounding in a stone mortar; a quarter of a pound of Naples biscuit, sugar to taste, a glass of white wine, and some nutmeg. Set all in a sauce-pan, just to thicken, over the fire; then put it into a dish, lined with paste, to turn out, and bake it.’
Tansy is a flower that grows a lot in the area around our house, so I think I’m going to cultivate some next year among the carrots, and probably in other places in the garden. For now I picked some here and there and put in the windows and amongst the carrots. And I’m drying some seeds.

The Absinthe Drinker by Viktor Oliva (1861–1928)

One more thing….
According to wikipedia (and others) the tansy is toxic for herbivores (some among them horses) and humans (if eaten in large quantity) mainly because it contains Thujon. One of the components in Absinthe and the component that made it prohibited in 1907, however you will probably die of alcohol poisoning before thujon poisoning. In the Netherlands Absinthe is legal again since 2004.

Our vegetable patch is more and more looking like a marigold (Tagetes patula) plantation, although it looks very nice and colourful, some of them are getting a bit out of hand. Half a meter wide and about the same height. There won’t be any roundworm alive in the earth after this attack!

Serious, the reason for the Marigolds in the garden is roundworms. Roundworm, nematodes for scientists, are little worms that live everywhere. Soil, water, roots, animals and humans; they are all over the place. You can’t see them with your own eyes but under a microscope you will find up to 50 in a cubic centimetre of soil. In a square meter of soil there are up to 10 million of them.

According to wikipedia there are 80.000 known species of roundworms and there are and estimated 500.000 different species. One group of this half a million, targets the roots of plants, specially perennials but also potatoes, eggplants and tomatoes. Against these roundworms you can use the marigolds, it is not that the worms are scared away by them. Although everything looks peaceful there is an underground war going on.

Some science for the other geeks: the inner skin of the roots (endodermis) of the Marigolds contains chemicals called thiophenes. When a roundworm enters the cells of  this inner skin, it forms peroxidase. The combination of this peroxidase and the thiophenes create O3 (ozone), this aggressive form of oxygen burns the roundworm. So far for the peaceful vegetable patch.

The bee doesn’t care about any of this and comes for very different reasons to the Marigolds.

Yesterday I biked the 6000th kilometer going up and down to work, 42 km a day. According to some calculations I avoided the creation 1223 kg of CO2, I burned 407 mj of energy (that is 11 kilos of fat or 24 kilos of carbohydrates). I didn’t use 465 liters of car fuel, for the economists among us that is €651.

Except for the obvious health and environmental considerations I bike because it is good fun and it makes me feel closer to nature, the seasons and unwillingly: the road. I bike all year round summer, winter, -16ºC and snow, I know for sure that my wife thinks I’m crazy, but I have the sneaky suspicion that our dog thinks so too.

These are some spoons that I recently carved. Most of them are carved out of alder, one out of birch. They are finished with linseedoil org tungoil. These ones ar for eating and carved in Swedish style with a curved handle so they are very comfortable to eat. The bowl is carved 1 mm thin so it has a good “mouthfeel”, the bowls are so thin that the light shines trough them.

I first hew them out of wood with an axe and then I smooth them out with a knife and a crook-knife (also called spoon knife). I finish them with scraping steel and sometimes sandingpaper. Then drying, oiling, more drying…  and they are ready to use….

This is a picture of a small eatingspoon with my carving knife.

This is a spatula, coffeescoop and a stirringspoon. The coffeescoop is made out of hazelnut, sourced in my own backyard.