Our Junior Forest Warden adventure for the weekend was to teach the kids how to make a quinzee. A quinzee is a snow shelter built out of a pile of snow, snowdrift or snowbank.  If you don't have a natural snow pile of some sort to work with, you need to make one first and let it sit for at least 2 hours before digging it out. One of our Forest Warden families has a farm and offered to make us a few snow piles in one of their fields.  This dad also has quinzee making experience so he helped lead this activity.  He made the piles the day before.  We were a little bit worried about the weather and how it might affect the building of our quinzees.   It was above zero the day before and the day of our building.  Quinzees work best with fresh snow and below freezing temperatures.  We were worried that the snow wouldn't hold together and be too wet or would be a solid block of ice on the inside of the pile.  It turned out very well though and we weren't worried about how l

For this past Christmas,  Russ and I decided, instead of gifts for each other, we would save up and purchase DIY winter moccasin kits from Lure of the North.  We saved up and with all of our Christmas money we were able to order our kits just after Christmas.  Thank you family! The kits came the day after we got back from Frostbite.   We started working on them right away and were able to finish them in a week.  And that was just working on them almost every evening and over the weekend.  We even stayed up until 3am one night, working on them.  The next morning after that, I woke up and realized I had done the last part I worked on wrong.  The kit that Lure of the North has put together is easy to follow,  staying up all night to work on them probably isn't recommended.  If you don't understand the booklet provided, you can watch the YouTube video for clarification.   We used both as it was nice to have the visual.  The foot part of our moccasins are bison and the upper

Day 2 of Frostbite brought colder temperatures.  The first session that my husband, another JFW mom and I attended was about winter sleep systems and clothing.  Dave MacDonald from Survival by Training demoed and passed around all the gear to keep warm and sleep in temperatures down to -40. The main thing I took away from this session was the sleep system.  First you lay down a tarp, then a wool blanket.  Then you get into your sleeping bag liner, then you get into your two sleeping bags (or one super duper good one), then into a bivy bag.  Next you lay down on the wool blanket and wrap it over you so the open side is facing away from the fire.  Lastly, you can wrap the tarp over you also.  It looked very cozy, but you sure wouldn't want to have to get up in the night. After attending that, I don't think my family, as a whole, will be going winter camping anytime soon.  I think we may have enough gear to make it work for my husband and I, in temperatures down to about -20

The first weekend of the year started off on the right foot.  My husband and I attended Frostbite! A winter camping symposium.  There were many lessons to learn and I hope that I can apply what I came away with to my family's life and adventures. Over the past two years I have been learning about wild edibles and herbal medicines.  I was super excited about my first session of the weekend as it was about tinctures, acetums and glycerites.   Brenda Holder went over the basics of each method and why each method is used in each case. One of the acetums we made was Firecider.  It's a mixture of distilled vinegar, onions and garlic (with their skins on), rosemary, jalapeños, lemons and ginger.  It needs to sit for two weeks before I strain it and add some apple cider vinegar.  Then it will be ready for use as a cold and flu preventive.  You can also take it to help you get over a cold or flu.  You can take it by the spoonful or use the vinegar in your cooking.  It smells amazi

Welcome to my blog!  I plan on making this the written record of my family's trials and adventures in bushcraft, wilderness survival and herbal medicines.  Come follow along and join in our journey! When people ask me where I am from, I tell them, "a small town in BC.  I grew up in a forest, on a mountain, by a lake."  I miss that.  Living in the city, I feel my kids are missing out on that too.  To be able to go out side and have a never ending backyard were they can let their imaginations run wild, building and playing in nature. The past couple of years we have been trying to make a point of getting outdoors more.  Whether it's bribing the kids with slurpees if we go for a walk in a park to drink them or finding a new activity for the family to try.  We also joined Junior Forest Wardens five years ago.  That has made a big impact on our knowledge and activities outdoors.  My kids have been given opportunities that we wouldn't have seen otherwise.  The fir