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Tree-ditions is commissioned to work with local authorities in providing personal development courses for young people. One of these courses includes participants working towards John Muir Awards and Heritage Hero Awards. As part of the course content participants are encouraged to share their experiences, this fantastic group of girls have chosen to use a blog to be hosted here. This group finished in October 2018. This is their experience in their own words.

Introduction
As part of the Bridges and East Lothian Works project, we went to the woods 2 days a week for 10 weeks to achieve the Heritage Heroes Award and John Muir Award with Tree-ditions. During these 10 weeks we looked at different types of trees, how to identify them and what they were good for. We learned survival skills such as fire lighting, putting up a shelter, outdoor cooking, foraging and tracking and traditional green wood working skills. Below is a more in depth look at what we have achieved.

Fire Lighting
How to Start a Fire

Gather your materials (different size, dry sticks)
Make a bird nest out of dry tinder
Add the ember extender to the nest
Use a source of ignition to create sparks
Close the birds nest into a tight bundle and blow
Keep blowing until there’s fire
Put the tinder pile onto the fire pit and add the small sticks on top of the flame, blow again if necessary
Then add the medium size sticks on top to add height to the fire
Put the biggest sticks on the top and make a pyramid shape
Place kindling around the fire to dry them out and make them ready to use as fuel

4 Things a Fire Needs

Oxygen
Fuel
Heat/ignition source
Height

Feather Sticks

Get a sharp knife and a piece of wood
Slice the corners of the wood and stop just before the bottom
Keep doing this until there is a big bundle of it at the bottom

Animal Tracking
Identifying Footprints

Looking at wet mud for any prints
Flattening the mud to make prints clearer

Identifying Poop
Identifying Feathers
Badger Sett
Foraging
Who Made What Hole?
Who Ate That?

Stool Making

Chop a log into 3 or 4 pieces
Use the axe to shape the legs to your design
Use the shave horse to remove tool marks
Use the drill to cut a tennon
Use the saw to make space for a wedge
Chop up wood for wedges and shape them
Saw a plank of wood to your preferred size
Mark out where you want your legs to go
Use an auger to create holes for your legs
Insert your legs into the holes and fit position them how you want them
Put the wedges into the slit in the legs and hammer in until they don’t go in any further
Use a flat saw to remove excess leg and wedges
Use a rasp to get rid of any tool marks
Shape the seat to how you’d like
Use sandpaper over the stool to make it smooth
Use oil on the stool

Spoon Making

Harvest some sycamore wood
Remove any side branches with a sharp knife
Choose what part of the wood you’d like as your spoon
Split the wood down the middle
Remove the pith with a knife
Draw a spoon onto the wood
Put stop cuts under the bowl of the spoon and start shaping the handle
Use a spoon knife to carve out the bowl of the spoon
Use sandpaper to finish
If you want to use the spoon for food, use a food grade oil such as walnut oil (if you’re not allergic to nuts), olive oil etc.
If you’re keeping the spoon as an ornament use regular oil

Bark Weaving

We harvested a very large piece of lime tree
We then sawed it into lengths without knots
We used a knife and a stick to cut through the bark
Then we peeled the bark off the wood, soaked it in a bucket of water and cleaned all the sap off
After all the sap was cleaned off, we measured it and cut it into strips. With each strip we peeled it apart to form two pieces.
We lay the strips in a line wove over and under to create a basket

Tree Felling

Find a good tree
Step cuts – To prevent tearing to stop the tree getting a disease
Lots of sawing
This is done in a sustainable way to encourage regrowth

We learned to identify trees through looking at the buds and leaves. We learned what properties the different types of wood has e.g. Ash trees are strong so it can be used for handles, legs etc. and lime gave us bark for weaving baskets and cordage.

Roots

Locate a good pine tree and dig
Dig along to expose as much of the root as possible
This can be harvested to use for sewing and binding

We used long, thin roots which will not cause the tree any harm. These are easily manipulated after soaking and scraping.

Outdoor Cooking

Lentil Soup
Pizza
Fried Onions and Potatoes
Rice and Curry
Pasta
Barbecue

We learned to lay fires e.g. criss cross fires to create large embers for cooking on

Sawing

Fire wood
Stools
Spoons
Branches

Sawing is more difficult than it looks and you need a whole load of patience for it.

Pole Lathe

To make round items e.g. handles, spindles

This involved using sharp hand tools, such as gouges and chisels.
The pole lathe is a human powered green wood turning tool.

Axes

Chopping fire wood
Shaping the stool legs
Splitting
Throwing

Axes are very versatile and an important tool for working in the woods, but you must learn to use them safely

Woodland Management

We extended a dead hedge upwards to try and prevent deer jumping into the coppice and eating the young trees.
We scythed lang grass to stop it swamping young trees/

Putting Up a Shelter
Knots

Round turn and two half hitches
Clove Hitch
Kleim Heist

This shelter would keep the rain off while we worked outdoors

Conclusion
In conclusion, we learned how to use traditional tools, how to survive in the wilderness, the need to look after wild places to increase biodiversity, how to harvest wood from a tree without harming it, the need to look after the number of living organisms in this wilderness. The woodland we found was surrounded by arable farm land, crops with little biodiversity. This showed us the importance of helping to conserve these wild places to increase biodiversity.
Using the traditional tools and making things with them helped us connect with our past. As our ancestors would have did the same things in times gone by.

Yeah Boii...!!!!!!!!.

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