When you think about survival gear, you might think about gear that will help you survive should you be forced to abandon your home and belongings for any reason. I’ve come to realize, however, that those are not the only types of survival situations you could encounter. The CRKT ExiTool is one tool for those survival situations that are less likely to cross your mind. The ExiTool is a great emergency tool to keep in your car—it slides on to your seat belt and stays pretty inconspicuous until you need it. The multi-tool has a seatbelt cutter, LED light, and … Continue reading →

Before we start talking about how to cook muskrat, let’s first talk about what a muskrat is. A muskrat not a rat.  It is a rodent, but that’s all it has in common with rats. At the risk of offending a lot of experts, muskrats are pretty much like small beavers, but with a tail that’s flattened vertically instead of horizontally.  That’s the simple description. They have been a valuable source of food and fur in the US and Canada since well before the Europeans came. Muskrats live everywhere from northern Canada to Mexico and they are not threatened or … Continue reading →

The Foragers Digest blog has a fantastic springtime post about wild edible plants. These days their culinary uses are almost forgotten and we classify them as weeds. But a lot of those “weeds” were carried into the west by pioneer and settler families to be cultivated for food. Lamb’s Quarter is a great example of a long forgotten salad green that is often growing right under our noses. I weeded Lamb’s Quarter out of my garden hundreds of times before I realized what it was.

For pioneers and settlers on the frontier, doctors and medicine were often too expensive, too far away, and probably not that reliable anyway. Medicine was usually a home-grown affair built up of knowledge that was tried, tested and handed down over generations. A common feature of 19th Century medicine was the use of poultices. Just like recipes for meals, there was hundreds if not thousands of poultice recipes. Some were freely shared and some were closely guarded. Poultices are usually some kind of warm compress used to treat skin sores, boils and splinters as well as muscle and joint aches … Continue reading →