Pioneer Handbooks

- Pioneer Handbooks is on-air now.

2012-02-28T16:38:00.000+13:00

Craig Meade of Pioneer Handbooks joins John Milandred of Pioneerliving.net on his radio show "Pioneering Your Way to Freedom", for a 90 minute podcast about how-to, DIY and recipes from the pioneers and settlers of the 1800s.

We talk about where these books come from and how to use them. With a few DIY instructions thrown in based upon pine resin, the pioneer and settler Swiss-army-knife of substances.

I also tell a couple stories about what it was like directing a TV series called Colonial House - which saw a family of five live in the year 1853 for two months.

You can listen with the player below or download the show as a podcast from iTunes with the player's iTunes button.

Listen to internet radio with Preppers Podcast Radio on Blog Talk Radio

Thanks for listening! Please be sure to visit John's website and podcast again. He's always got a great show lined up and is a true living pioneer.

[The podcast server is getting a lot of traffic (50,000+ people) so pls come back later if it's not firing up for you.]

- How to make historic hardtack.

2012-02-25T09:49:00.000+13:00

The new Survival Tomes blog has a great recipe for hardtack.

Hardtack was a common Civil War ration.

It was basically a large cracker, that was variously left to go stale, mildewy, infested with weevils, tainted by gunpowder, turpentine and oil and generally abused before it was finally handed over to the soldier as a main component of his rations.

It was not a popular food by any means and usually needed to be soaked before it could be eaten.

Union Hardtack Recipe (source)

Ingredients:
2 cups of flour
1/2 to 3/4 cup water
1 tablespoon of Crisco or vegetable fat
6 pinches of salt

Directions:
“Mix the ingredients together into a stiff batter, knead several times, and spread the dough out flat to a thickness of 1/2 inch on a non-greased cookie sheet. Bake for one-half an hour at 400 degrees. Remove from oven, cut dough into 3-inch squares, and punch four rows of holes, four holes per row into the dough. Turn dough over, return to the oven and bake another one-half hour. Turn oven off and leave the door closed. Leave the hardtack in the oven until cool. Remove and enjoy!”

Hardtack reappeared as a ration in WW1 and WW2, so it has a long history of feeding soldiers.

What was good about hardtack was that it could take huge amounts of abuse and still be a useable food. It was very very durable.

I think the Survival Tomes blog has great promise. It plans to focus on explaining the basic things a survivalist has to know how to do - like chop a tree down. So it could be worth keeping an eye on.

Thank you for the link Mr. Tome.

[And thank you to the US National Park Service for the hardtack image.]

- How to make a trench fire.

2012-02-23T20:31:00.001+13:00

Campfires are finicky beasts. Imagine having to live by and cook with campfires every night for six months or more as a settler heading west in a covered wagon.

You'd be starting from scratch every single night thinking how is our fuel supply, where is the wind coming from and how strong, how long since it has rained, is it too damp and the fire will struggle, is it too dry and I might risk a prairie fire, are strangers going to see my fire tonight?

There was one type of campfire that the pioneers and settlers knew about that gave them a degree of control over all of these pressing issues.

It was known as a trench fire and with some updating it is one of the most powerful campfire techniques around.

It is also one of the simplest. This entry appears in the Prairie Traveler book of 1861:

"A great saving in fuel may be made by digging a trench about two feet long by eight inches in width and depth; the fires are made in the bottom of the trench, and the cooking utensils placed upon the top, where they receive all the heat. This plan is especially recommended for windy weather, and it is convenient at all times. The wood should be cut short, and split into small pieces."

To really get the most out of a trench fire the description above needs to be improved on.

You should dig the trench so it is parallel with the wind flow.

The downwind half of the trench will be for cooking, the upwind half of the trench will be for feeding fuel and air to the fire .

Dig the trench so the base slopes downwards to the cooking end of the trench, which will draw the prevailing wind down into the fire creating a bellows effect.

Do not block up the end of your trench with your pot, leave a gap so hot air and smoke can escape.

You can line the base of the trench with stones to store heat and protect the fire from any dampness in the soil.

The sides of a trench fire can give way, particularly after the soil has been dried by the heat. So rather than place your cooking pots directly on the trench you should use green logs or even better, some kind of metal cross support.

If digging is not possible, the same effect can be had by building a fire in between two parallel logs.

A trench fire is not only protected from the wind, it takes advantage of it.

The likelihood of embers being blown into nearby brush is much reduced.

It burns much hotter with a smaller amount of fuel.

It saves the heat up so can keep on cooking after most of the fuel has been used.

Wet timber in the mouth of the trench can be baked dry before it gets to the fire.

And it's not particularly visible at night.

This fire can also disappear real fast if you want it to, leaving hardly any trace it ever existed.

Other how-to and DIY from the pioneers and settlers can be found at Pioneer Handbooks. If you are interested in camping like a pioneer, you can download this chapter for free.

Even if you never plan to make your own trench fire, you can still hit the Facebook Like button below and save this how-to from disappearing into history

It's easy enough to do and a good way to keep this knowledge alive.

- "How" the settlers communicated....

2012-02-20T21:37:00.001+13:00

We've all seen it on TV and in films and some of us have even read it in books...

The cowboy and the American Indian ride up to each other and each raises his right hand, palm outwards, and says "How".

It was like a universal greeting that seemed to work all over the west no matter who used it or what tribe was involved.

But was it true? Did that hand sign exist and is that what it meant?

The Prairie Traveler book was written in 1858 as a guide for people heading into the west in covered wagons. It's full of information that prospective settlers in the west needed to know.

One of the things it teaches is sign language for meeting American Indians for the first time.

"On approaching strangers these people put their horses at full speed, and persons not familiar with their peculiarities and habits might interpret this as an act of hostility; but it is their custom with friends as well as enemies, and should not occasion groundless alarm".

This kind of mock challenge during a first meeting is ethnographically common around the world. Particularly in Polynesia, where new visitors are always treated to an invitation to do battle as part of the welcoming ceremony.

For the Great Plains People, a fine charging display of horsemanship probably communicated a lot about their values and interests.

"When a party is discovered approaching thus, and are near enough to distinguish signals, all that is necessary in order to ascertain their disposition is to raise the right hand with the palm in front and gradually push it forward and back several times".

The classic "How" moment just like the TV, books and films depict!

"They all understand this to be a command to halt, and if they are not hostile it will at once be obeyed".

Alas, there is no "How" moment. A right hand raised with palm outwards meant exactly what it means today... Stop. Nothing more, nothing less.

Other hand signs in use included:

Who are you?..

"the right hand is raised again as before, and slowly moved to the right and left"

Are you friends?..

"they may be asked if they are friends by raising both hands grasped in the manner of shaking hands, or by locking the two fore-fingers firmly while the hands are held up"

Anger...

"give the signal of anger by closing the hand, placing it against the forehead, and turning it back and forth while in that position"

The American Indians could also communicate their tribal names in sign language.

Comanche:

"represented by making with the hand a waving motion in imitation of the crawling of a snake"

Cheyenne:

"by drawing the hand across the arm, to imitate cutting it with a knife"

Arapaho:

"by seizing the nose with thumb and fore-finger"

Sioux:

"by drawing the hand across the throat"

Pawnee:

"by placing a hand on each side of the forehead, with two fingers pointing to the front, to represent the narrow, sharp ears of the wolf"

Crow:

"by imitating the flapping of the bird's wings with the palms of the hands"

The U.S. Army officer who wrote the Prairie Traveler had more than ten years of experience working in the western United States in the mid-1800's and he met and worked with many American Indians, so this list of hand signs is probably quite authoritative.

For those who are great fans of the kind of Western story that features cowboys and Indians Howing each other whenever they meet, we can pull one part of that legend out of the fire.

It's the word "How". Or more correctly "Hau". From the Lakota/Dakota Sioux language. It means hello. Just like the stories say it should.

Further information about how the pioneers and settlers lived can be found at the Pioneer Handbooks library.

If you'd like to rescue this story from history, you can use the Facebook Like button below to give it a whole new life.

It's easy enough to do and a great way to keep these stories alive.

- What pioneers smoked.

2012-02-18T17:27:00.000+13:00

For the most part the pioneers and settlers of the 1800s smoked tobacco just like people today.

But tobacco wasn't the only thing they smoked and in times of need they knew about botanic replacements for tobacco that they could turn to.

In 1857 Capt. Randolph B. Marcy was leading a contingent of U.S. Army soldiers that had to cross the Rocky Mountains in winter and without supplies.

He recounts that experience in his book The Prairie Traveler and tells of a tobacco substitute that they used.

"In this destitute condition we found a substitute for tobacco in the bark of the red willow, which grows upon many of the mountain streams in that vicinity. The outer bark is first removed with a knife, after which the inner bark is scraped up into ridges around the sticks, and held in the fire until it is thoroughly roasted, when it is taken off the stick, pulverized in the hand, and is ready for smoking. It has the narcotic properties of the tobacco, and is quite agreeable to the taste and smell."

Red willow, more commonly known as red osier dogwood, can be found growing anywhere from Alaska to Virginia and across to California.

The Native Americans had many uses for red willow and one of them was smoking red willow bark.

Red willow along with a few other herbs is what was smoked in the famous Native American peace pipes.

Collectively these herbs were called Kinnikinnick.

Other plants that were smoked by the Native Americans as well as the pioneers and settlers include: bearberry, silky cornel, bunchberry, evergreen sumac, littleleaf sumac, red sumac, arrowroot, laurel, ironwood, wahoo, squaw huckleberry, Jamestown weed, black birch, cherry bark, corn and mullein.

Capt. Marcy earned considerable recognition for leading his men on his mid-winter unsupplied crossing of the Rockies without losing a single man. It was a great feat of heroism, leadership and perseverance.

During Marcy's career he undoubtedly had to sit down to smoke the peace pipe many times, so he would have had a good working knowledge of red willow and how to smoke it.

In recognition of his great experience on the western frontier, Marcy was selected by the U.S. Army to write The Prairie Traveler. It quickly became an indispensable guidebook for every family heading west on the covered wagon trails.

You can visit the Pioneer Handbooks library for a collection of free downloadable how-to and DIY from the settlers and pioneers.

If you think their ways of doing things are worth remembering, then use the buttons below to like us on Facebook and send this pioneer knowledge on a trip around the globe.

- 1861 Prairie Traveler - Wagon Planning

2012-02-12T10:08:00.000+13:00

A new download is available at Pioneer Handbooks.

1861 Prairie Traveler - Wagon Planning

This chapter from the historic Prairie Traveler book provides planning instructions for westbound settler and pioneer families traveling the major covered wagon train routes and trails of the 1850s. The directions include organization of the wagon train, wagon design, the use of mules and oxen as wagon teams, stores and provisions to take and how to pack them for the trail, substitutes in times of emergency and the clothing, equipment and weapons that would be required.

The great rush west had already begun when this Prairie Traveler book was commissioned by the US Army. It was written to inform and prepare people who would be loading their families into covered wagons and heading west. Too many covered wagons had been found burned to the axles, settler and pioneer families slaughtered on the trail. Too many instances of starvation and deprivation had happened due to lost and ill prepared wagon families. This book was written to make a perilous trail journey safer and to help more pioneer and settler families colonize the west.

Today the Prairie Traveler book is considered to be a masterpiece of exploration literature and one of the most important books written during and about America’s westward expansion. The Prairie Traveler is a handbook about how to travel and explore with a covered wagon train, and a reliable snapshot of life for America’s pioneer and settler families en route to the frontier.

- What pioneers ate.

2012-02-11T15:01:00.001+13:00

What the pioneers and settlers ate while they were conquering the frontier and before they put down roots is a persistent question. The best answer doesn't come from the pioneers and settlers but from the gold rush miners.

The gold miners of the 1800's are often overlooked when we think about pioneers and settlers.

This is because they didn't often hang around long enough in one place to contribute to the fabric of the community and to take a named place in history. They came and then they left.

But the gold miners of the Californian, then Australian, then New Zealand, then South African and then Yukon / Klondike gold rushes were incredible pioneers facing hardships on a scale that few other pioneers or settlers would face.

Why? Because the places they settled weren't selected for habitability. They weren't chosen for favoring crops, livestock or game.

Gold miners had to go where the gold was without regard for how marginal life was going to be when they got there.

They had to carry almost everything they needed in order to be fully self-sufficient on arrival.

The food the miners took with them to the most remote gold fields gives us a great snapshot of what was considered to be the minimum food requirements for a man or woman hacking out an existence on the frontiers of the 1800's.

Nowhere was that more true than on the Klondike.

The food and equipment lists for the Klondike gold rush are the most comprehensive because the Klondike was easily the most remote of the major gold fields and it promised the most treacherous of conditions.

And thanks to an unusual gold rush law that governed the miners we have a very good idea of the kind of foods and the amounts of food that supported them while they worked the gold fields.

The Klondike gold field was at least 500 miles into the Canadian wilderness, depending upon the route of travel. For some it was much much longer.

So regular supplies were not going to be arriving in the Klondike and everybody had to fend for themselves.

A recommended year's supply of food from The Klondike Official Guide of 1898 consisted of:

450 pounds of flour
50 pounds of oatmeal
25 pounds of cornmeal
250 pounds of good fat bacon
50 pounds of hams
25 pounds of dried apples
25 pounds of dried peaches
25 pounds of tea
10 pounds of coffee
100 pounds of sugar
120 pounds of beans
10 pounds of barley
15 pounds of rice
6 pounds extract of beef
12 pounds of baking powder
30 pounds of salt
1 pound of pepper
1 pound of mustard
12 pounds of compressed vegetables
30 pounds of canned fruits
24 pounds of jam
10 pounds of baking soda
35 pounds of dried potato and onion

The Canadian Government had the foresight to require that every miner heading into the Klondike be equipped and provisioned to be self-sufficient for a full year. If a miner wasn't traveling with at least one ton of equipment and food he would be turned around at a checkpoint.

It's attractive to think the miners supplemented this diet with hunting and trapping. But the same book warns that game was so scarce in the Yukon that having fresh meat during the year was unlikely.

The extra nutritional requirements for living at sub-zero temperatures have been accounted for in this list and the volume of food was increased by 50% above what would be needed in a more temperate climate.

Getting this amount of food and equipment to the Klondike gold fields was a monumental task.

Two common routes were over White Horse Pass and the Chilkoot Pass of the Boundary Ranges and then another 500 miles by boat along lakes and rivers.

To get over these passes early miners had to split their one ton load and carry it in 50 to 60 pound packs. They would cache each pack by the side of the track after covering five miles and return for another load.

It's said that they covered 80 miles on foot for every mile that their food and equipment progressed down the trail.

A common estimation is that 100,000 people set out for the Klondike, 40,000 made it there and only 4000 struck gold.

The Klondike gold rush lasted little over a year and then it was over.

The Klondike became known for destitution, failed dreams and misery to such a degree that "Ah, go to the Klondike!" was a popular way to express disgust across the United States and Canada.

Further information about how the pioneers and settlers lived can be found at the Pioneer Handbooks library.

If you'd like to rescue this story of the Klondike gold rush from history, you can use the Facebook Like button below to give it a whole new life.

It's easy enough to do and a great way to keep these stories alive.

- How settlers cured snakebite.

2012-02-05T22:01:00.000+13:00

Snakebite was a significant problem for the pioneers and settlers as they headed into the frontier.

Even today it's estimated that more than a million people a year are killed by snakebite around the globe.

In western countries we have antivenin so it's pretty rare for somebody to die of snakebite. But across Africa and Asia they are still using snakebite cures not that different to the treatments the pioneers and settlers of the 1800s relied on.

The 1861 Prairie Traveler book features a handful of state of the art snakebite treatments that colonial people could use.

It was written by Capt Randolf Marcy of the US Army in 1859 as a handbook of instructions for colonists who were heading west in covered wagons. Today it is considered to be one of the most important books ever written about the the lives of pioneers and settlers.

The book's snakebite treatments range from the obvious to the insane. But in truth, none of them are as crazy as they seem.

Use Alcohol: "It must be taken until the patient becomes very much intoxicated, and this requires a large quantity, as the action of the poison seems to counteract its effects".

In short, get the victim as blazingly drunk as you can.

This is a movie classic of course. But even today alcohol and snakebite go together like rum and coke. A large proportion of the present-day snakebite victims that arrive at US hospitals are drunk. And male. And young. And usually bitten on the hand or fingers while trying to pick up the snake or kill it.

Use Plantain and Tobacco: "placing the wounded finger in her mouth, (she) sucked the poison from the puncture for some minutes, repeatedly spitting out the saliva; after which she chewed and mashed some plantain leaves and applied to the wound. Over this she sprinkled some finely-powdered tobacco, and wrapped the finger up in a rag".

For the Native Americans and settlers plantain had more medicinal functions than can ever be listed. In some Native American languages its name meant "Life Medicine" and it was used for almost everything. Its use in snakebite treatment was so well known to the pioneers and settlers that plantain was commonly known as "snakeweed". These days we know that plantain is full of a chemical called Aucubin, which is a powerful anti-toxin.

Tobacco has been used as a kind of poultice for stings but a more common use is as a coagulant on wounds. It stops bleeding fast and that's probably how it is being used in the plantain/tobacco snakebite treatment.

Use Hartshorn: "Hartshorn applied externally to the wound, and drunk in small quantities diluted with water whenever the patient becomes faint or exhausted from the effects of the poison".

Hartshorn or "hart's horn" are the horns of the male red deer. Shavings of the horns could be made into oil of hartshorn, salt of hartshorn and spirit of hartshorn, all of which feature ammonia as the active ingredient.

True hartshorn was replaced by other compounds of ammonia that didn't require the rare horns of a red deer stag. The pioneers and settlers of the 1800s almost certainly would have been carrying hartshorn salt with them, or baker's ammonia. It was the baking powder of the day and is probably the version of hartshorn being recommended in this snakebite cure. It can still be purchased as a baking ingredient.

Use a Turtle: "The blood of the turtle was much cried up, which, on account of this extraordinary virtue, the inhabitants dry in the form of small scales or membranes, and carry about them when they travel in this country... Whenever any one is wounded by a serpent, he takes a couple of pinches of the dried blood internally, and applies a little of it to the wound".

Not much to be said really. You can buy a bottle of turtle blood at any Walmart store in China. Where 1.3 billion people consider turtle blood to be second only to deer penis for its health giving properties. This particular snakebite cure comes from Africa and it's almost certain that there's somebody in Africa using this remedy as you read this.

Use lots of Chickens: "An incision having been made in the breast of a living fowl, the bitten part is applied to the wound. If the poison be very deadly, the bird soon evinces symptoms of distress, becomes drowsy, droops its head, and dies. It is replaced by a second, a third, and more if requisite. When, however, the bird no longer exhibits any of the signs just mentioned, the patient is considered to be out of danger. A frog similarly applied is supposed to be equally efficacious".

It makes you wonder how many people passed away staring at chicken #3 strapped to their thigh.

What's mind-blowing is that modern science shows that this remedy would appear to work most of the time. Indeed, all of these snakebite remedies would seem to work most of the time.

The people who recommended and used these treatments were not fools. They were as smart as us. And they were as interested in evidence-based outcomes as we are.

What they didn't know is that venomous snakes are careful with their venom. Making venom is too physiologically expensive to squander it in every bite. So snakes use it sparingly.

Most bites from venomous snakes don't involve venom.

When they do use venom, most of the time it's less than a lethal dose.

Most snakebites aren't from venomous snakes.

And a good number of venomous snakes aren't actually deadly.

Which means that most of the snakebite victims who have used the Boer three-chicken-cure for snakebite have probably survived. [Providing they didn't get some kind of sepsis from mating their open wound with a chicken's.]

To the pioneers and settlers, these treatments appeared to work. They were valid and validated.

The point of this blog post isn't to reveal crazy and quaint approaches to snakebite treatment. The point is that even the crazy and quaint actually make some kind of sense in the light of what was known at the time. Context matters.

You can visit the Pioneer Handbooks library for a collection of free downloadable how-to and DIY from the settlers and pioneers.

These snake bite cures and more can be found in the Prairie Traveler chapter on pack mules.

If you think the pioneer and settler ways of doing things are worth remembering, then use the buttons below to like us on Facebook and send these historic snakebite cures on a trip around the globe.

[Safety notes: Leave snakes alone and they'll leave you alone. Don't even bother trying to kill them, just walk away. If you get bitten go to a hospital. If you are serious about the outdoors, learn first aid for your locality as different types of snakebite require different first aid treatments.]

- How the pioneers went west.

2012-02-01T20:44:00.000+13:00

Anybody who is interested in how the pioneers and settlers lived is going to appreciate this map.

Printed in 1861 it shows all the major wagon train routes into the west.

This map comes from The Prairie Traveler book, which was the definitive guide for settlers heading into the western frontier.

The names of some of these routes are still well known...

The Oregon Trail
The Santa Fe Trail
The California Trail.

What has been forgotten is how complex this interlinked network of trails was.

But of course it wasn't the European settlers and pioneers that created this network.

They didn't hack these trails out of the wilderness.

These wagon trails are almost all based on traditional Native American trails and animal migration trails. Often they were one in the same.

A person in the year 1300 could have traveled these routes, just like people did in the 1800's.

I haven't placed this map on top of a modern map, but I would bet that a lot of these routes still exist today with less romantic names like State Highway 101.

The Prairie Traveler is considered to be the most important book in the history of the westward expansion. It provided day by day itineraries for someone traveling any of these trails. It detailed where to find water, where to find grass and wood, where to camp and when to be armed against 'Indians'.

Over the next few weeks we will be making large parts of this historic book available for download at PioneerHandbooks.com.

If you are a descendant of one of these pioneering people, or if you live in the west, this is a map of how you got to where you are.

You can save it from history by hitting the Facebook Like button below and sending it on a digital trip around the globe.

It's easy enough to do and a great way to keep this knowledge alive.

- Make butter like a settler.

2012-01-26T23:41:00.000+13:00

The great Preparedness Advice blog has a post on a time honored way of making butter.

Pour some whipping cream into a jar and shake. Simple as that really.

Many of us have done this as kids.

But if you want to taste the butter that the settlers and pioneers ate you'll need to get out the salt.

The Dairy chapter of the 1881 Iowa Settlers Manual has instructions for making butter.

The only real difference between the two sets of instructions is the salt that the settlers are using to preserve their butter.

Even though we have refrigeration, salted butter still has its place today. Some people like it better. Some recipes require it. And salted butter will last four times longer in a refrigerator than unsalted. Two months versus two weeks.

But the amount of salt being used has changed quite radically since the 1800's.

The Iowa Settlers Manual recommends using one ounce of salt per pound of butter. That's six teaspoons of salt per pound.

Today's salted butter varies in salt content but as a rough guide it usually has between one and two teaspoons of salt per pound.

Does butter made the old way taste salty? Yes, to us it does.

But the way we taste salt works in a strange way. Nutritionists have known for a long time that we build up a taste-tolerance for salt driven by how much we consume on a daily basis. If we regularly eat a lot of salt, we don't really perceive the taste of it until we get close to our taste-tolerance level.

What we do notice immediately is the lack of salt. So we salt our food to the point that we can't sense its unsaltiness, rather than trying to achieve a flavor of saltiness.

Which means that while the settlers and pioneers used what we would consider to be very salty butter, it wouldn't have seemed as salty to them. They probably wouldn't have noticed it.

This is an interesting lesson to anyone trying to experience what life was like for these people. Context matters.

Anybody born within the last 100,000 years was 99.99% physically and mentally identical to us. Yet without having lived a whole life as them, even something as mundane as the taste of butter is not something that we can easily recapture.

But it's these differences that tell us about who we are. Learning about the people of the past gives us a sense of the journey we have taken to be here, the choices we have made, and what makes us special today. It informs our future choices.

Which is why preserving and promoting their knowledge and ways of doing things is as important as preserving their monuments and history.

You can visit the Pioneer Handbooks library for a collection of free downloadable how-to and DIY from the settlers and pioneers.

If you think their ways of doing things are worth preserving, then use the buttons below to like us on Facebook and send this historical how-to on a trip around the globe.

- How to make rushlights.

2012-01-20T20:11:00.000+13:00

Usually when we think of our ancestors in the 18th Century and earlier living in their cabins, cottages and shacks, the memory is lit by candles. It's depicted that way on TV and film too.

But candles were not the only way our ancestors lit their homes at night, and arguably, candles were rare or non-existent in most homes.

Candles were for rich people. While the materials needed to make candles are quite rudimentary, there were many other more important uses for things like tallow and wax. And for most people access to meat and fat was an infrequent experience at best. So making candles was not a high priority.

Particularly when they could make rushlights, which used much less fat.

Rushlights are made from the pithy stems of marsh plants, dipped in melted cooking grease.

These instructions for making rushlights come from an 1833 home how-to book by William Cobbett, as learned from his Grandmother....

"She used to get the meadow-rushes, such as they tie the hop-shoots to the poles with. She cut them when they had attained their full substance, but were still green. The rush at this age, consists of a body of pith with a green skin on it. You cut off both ends of the rush, and leave the prime part, which on an average, may be about a foot and a half long. Then you take off all the green skin, except for about a fifth part of the way round the pith. Thus it is a piece of pith all but a little strip of skin in one part all the way up, which, observe, is necessary to hold the pith together all the way along.

The rushes being thus prepared, the grease is melted, and put in a melted state into something that is as long as the rushes are. The rushes are put into the grease, soaked in it sufficiently; then taken out and laid in a bit of bark taken from a young tree, so as not to be too large."

Marsh rushes are about as common a plant as you can get. They grow close to fresh water in temperate environments right round the globe. In old England, the species juncus effusus was often used to make rushlights but any plant of the Juncus genus will probably work. Cattails have also been used, as has papyrus.

The rush stalks need to be harvested late in summer when they are at their full height. They should then be soaked in water for about a week to make it easier to peel the reed's skin off.

All but a thin strip of the outer reed needs to be stripped off to expose the pith. One small strip running lengthwise should be left to support the pith. The stripped reed is then left to dry.

The rushes then need to be soaked in melted animal fat. Mutton fat was preferred as it sets harder than other fats. Pork fat is a bad idea as it makes a lot of smoke when it is burned.

Traditionally this soaking was done in a long thin dish called a grisset set near the coals of the fireplace to keep the fat in a liquid state. A handful of reeds can be soaked at a time. A soaking of several minutes should do the job. Then they are laid aside to cool down and harden. It's important to keep the reeds separated so they don't harden into a single block of reeds.

It is possible to re-dip the rushes, to make them larger and longer lasting. They were also made as "nightlights" by leaving two strips of skin on the reed instead of one. The resulting rushlight burned slowly and feebly and could last a night.

Rushlights were burned just like a candle is. Special holders were made with metal clips or "nips" to hold the rushlight. Five or six inches of rushlight would burn for 30 to 40 minutes, depending upon how they were made and the fat that was used.

Making rushlights was once an important event in each community. But their use began to dwindle as the industrial revolution delivered simpler and cheaper ways to mass-produce candles.

And then they saw a sudden resurgence across Europe in the 1930s and 40s, when World War Two's electricity blackouts, materiel shortages and rationing left a lot of families in the dark. Rushlights came back to light the way.

Hopefully none of us will ever face a time when electricity is uncertain and candles are considered a luxury we can do without. If we ever do, rushlights will be there waiting for us, as long as this knowledge is preserved, passed down and shared.

You can do your part by liking this post on Facebook, linking to it or just telling your friends. It's easy enough to do and will keep rushlights alive till we need them again.

Lots of free how-to and DIY instructions from the pioneers and settlers can be found at the Pioneer Handbooks website.

Thank you to Bas Kers for the image of marsh rushes.

- How explorers made pemmican.

2012-01-16T11:06:00.000+13:00

Pemmican is the legendary food of explorers. Its use dates back thousands of years and it played a critical role in some of our greatest tales of exploration.

It's also recognized as one of the most energy dense foods ever created.

Pemmican is nothing more than raw dried meat and fat - made into into a super-charged nutrition bar.

When made properly it can be stored for months if not years at room temperature without spoiling.

The really important quality of pemmican is that men and women enduring hard physical labor, day in and day out, could live healthily on pemmican alone. There are historical records of people surviving for years on nothing but pemmican.

A continual diet of 100% meat and fat would normally lead to a vitamin C deficiency and scurvy as well as numerous other problems. But pemmican made in the traditional way carries a lot more nutrition than the meat and fat we usually eat for dinner. So conditions like scurvy never became a problem.

To make pemmican you need tallow and lean raw meat:

Tallow: You can review this post about making tallow. The only caveats are that when making pemmican you need tallow from a grass fed animal. That's where some of the extra nutrients come from. Tallow from grain fed animals won't have everything you need to maintain a balanced diet. To preserve those nutrients you need to render the fat slowly at a low temperature so that you don't denature the Omega 3 fatty acids and amino acids. Keep it below 240 degrees F. For good temperature control you can render the fat in a roasting pan in the oven, which should take about half a day but won't need much monitoring.

Lean Raw Meat: Beef, bison, deer and elk were commonly used. Pork and lamb are not recommended. Once again, grass fed is better than grain fed. You need to slice the meat thinly which is easier to do if you first freeze it till it's firming up and then slice it. Cut it across the grain, as it will dry more quickly that way. The meat can be dried in the oven. You don't want to cook it, just dry it. That's the main difference between pemmican meat and jerky or biltong. They are both cooked during the drying process. If you dry the meat at the lowest oven temperature possible, you'll be on the right track. You'll know it's ready when you bend it over and it snaps in two. It's a tempting idea to marinate the meat first, but don't do that. The sugars and oils in the marinade will shorten the shelf life of the pemmican considerably. Once dried the meat then needs to be ground into powder. Food processors with steel blades are a good way to do that.

You then melt your tallow and mix it with the powdered meat in a 1:1 ratio. While the tallow is still soft the pemmican mix can be poured into a tray to set. Once hard it can be cut into meal portions the size of a large candy bar. It needs to be sealed in something air-tight. You can be traditional and use wax paper for that. A ziploc bag with the air pressed out of it would be fine too.

Flavor has never been one of pemmican's strong points. It was a functional food and not a pleasure food. Its flavor can be enhanced by the addition of up to 20% dried berries or salt and pepper.

Many of the Native American groups in the North East US and Southern Canada made and used pemmican. They called it pimikan and it probably derives from a Cree-Chippewa word for fat. They introduced it to European trappers and it became an important trade item.

Pemmican was a staple for explorers. They would source other foods opportunistically, but they always had pemmican as a fall-back.

It really came into its own and took on international prominence during the race for the South Pole between Amundsen and Scott.

There are many reasons why Amundsen won that race and Scott lost everything including his life. But Amundsen's highly scientific approach to making the pemmican he and his team used certainly played an important part in getting him over the finish line first. And back home alive to tell the story.

For more detailed instructions for making pemmican you can download the Pemmican Manual.

Other how-to and DIY from the pioneers and settlers can be downloaded for free at Pioneer Handbooks.com.

Even if you never expect to make pemmican, you can still hit the Facebook Like button below and save this how-to from disappearing into history

It's easy enough to do and a good way to keep this knowledge alive.

A big thank you to Keith H. Burgess at A Woodsrunners Diary for the explorer image and Cephalapod Productions for the pemmican image.

- How settlers made tallow.

2012-01-13T17:12:00.000+13:00

Tallow is rendered or clarified or purified animal fat.

Like pine pitch, tallow was a wonderful substance that the pioneers and settlers could do so many things with.

Tallow is a precursor to candles, soap, preserved foods like pemmican, it could be used as a polish, it went into chewing gum, it was a lubricant, it could waterproof leather and keep cast iron pots and pans from rusting.

And of course, you can cook with it. Health issues aside, it is fantastic for fried foods.

You can be sure that whenever a farm animal was slaughtered or large game was caught, the tallow made from the animal was as important to the pioneers and settlers as the meat and skin.

If left untreated, animal fat will turn rancid and rot just as fast as meat. But once it has been rendered into tallow it can be stored at room temperature for months.

So how exactly do you render animal fat?

The Canadian Housekeepers' Guide of 1854 shows us one way to do it:

"When suet, or fat of any kind, mutton, beef, or lamb, is to be tried down for tallow, let the vessel it is put into be clean, and a tablespoonful or two of water be put in with the fat; this keeps the fat from burning to the bottom, and goes off in steam, during the trying down. Cut the fat into small pieces, and throw into the pot; a stick should be put in, which enables you to stir it from time to time; the handle of a metal spoon or ladle is apt to get too hot. Let the suet boil on a slow fire till the whole fat is well rendered. Be careful not to let it burn; remember when it ceases to make a noise, and becomes quite still, it is then really boiling hot, and more apt to burn. You had better now remove it, and with a ladle pour it all clean off into a pot or tin dish, through a sieve or colander, over which you have tied a flannel strainer. The last drop of fat, as long as it is not discolored, may be drained out of the scraps, and the refuse may be placed in the receptacle for soap grease - no refuse fat of any kind being allowed, in a Canadian farm-house, to go to waste."

The goal of rendering is to remove the water from the fat by boiling it off and to remove any extra animal tissue from the fat. During the process the tissues will fry up into little balls and settle at the bottom of the pot.

The best fat to use is suet, which is the hard fat deposited around the loins and kidneys of an animal. It's the purest fat. If you are heading in the direction of food like pemmican, then try to get fat from a grass-fed animal. It's significantly different to the fat from grain-fed cattle and carries quite a few more vitamins.

Rendering or trying needs to be done slowly, it is possible to burn the fat. The fat can also be rendered several times over to remove further impurities.

At room temperature your tallow will be solid like wax. While it can be stored without refrigeration for a very long time, it does need to be kept in an airtight container, because it can oxidize.

The Pioneer Handbooks blog will be following up with instructions for some of the things you can do with tallow once you've made it.

Lots of free recipes from the pioneers and settlers can be found at the Pioneer Handbooks website.

Even if you don't ever plan to make tallow, you can still hit the Facebook Like button below and save this knowledge from disappearing into history

It's easy enough to do and a great way to keep this information alive.

- How to cook muskrat.

2012-01-11T20:27:00.001+13:00

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 endangered.

So if you've got a hankerin' for some varmint, these fellas could be a good choice. You'll need several to make a good meal.

Their flavor is considered to be gamey and on a par with rabbit for quality. Indeed, the animal's nickname is marsh rabbit. The meat is fine grained. Some say its flavor is similar to duck. The taste of muskrat is also said to sit at the back of your throat long after you've chewed your last piece.

So how do you cook one?

We have three short recipes from the same pioneer guidebook:

STEAMED MUSKRAT LEGS

Cut off the muskrat's legs and dip in a bowl of flour with salt, pepper and other strong seasoning. Mix with a small amount of water. Put grease into a large frying pan and put in the muskrat legs which have been dipped in the flour mixture. Cover tightly and cook for a long time as they take long to become tender. The strong seasoning takes away the actual taste of the muskrat and turns into gravy as it steams.

STUFFED MUSKRAT

Clean the rats well. Put in a roaster and put bread stuffing on top of it. Roast in an oven until the muskrats are soft.

MUSKRAT TAILS

Cut off the tails and dip them into very hot water. Pull off the fur. One can either cook them on top of the stove, turning them after a few minutes, or boil them. This is the same method as for beaver tails. Both are very sticky to eat.

This is classic pioneer cooking. Three different recipes from just one animal. The legs go in one dish, the bodies in the next and the tails in the last dish.

People with more modern tastes can first soak the carcasses in salty water for three days to remove some of the gamey flavor. Change the water twice daily.
(Thank you Wagon Wheel Restaurant, Smyrna, Delaware for that tip. They serve muskrat.)

These recipes come from the "Pointers from Pioneers" chapter of The Northern Cookbook, edited by Eleanor A. Ellis.

It was first published in 1967 to encourage more settlement of Canada's far north. Which makes it one of the last true pioneer books to be written I suspect.

The same book has a very rare recipe for Inuit Muktuk, courtesy of Rosie Peeloolook.

MUKTUK

After taken from whale, leave two days hanging up to dry. Cut into pieces 6" X 6". Have water ready to boil. Cook until tender with fork. Keep in oil in a 45 gal. drum after cooked, in a cool place, in order to have muktuk all year.

They left out step one, which is "Take one Bowhead Whale...".

That's always the most difficult part of the recipe. Good luck...

Even if you never plan to cook your own muskrat or whale, you can still hit the Facebook Like button below and save these recipes from disappearing into history

It's easy enough to do and a great way to keep this knowledge alive.

[Many thanks to D. Gordon E. Robertson and Gerrit Vyn for the photographs.]

- Introducing... shower curtains!

2012-01-11T15:22:00.001+13:00

The Pioneer Handbooks blog and library are always going to be focused on practical instructions written for late-colonial families that we can still use today.

But as anyone who uses these books knows, they also provide fantastic historical moments.... snapshots of a time and a place and a way of thinking.

One of my favorites is from the Builders' Handbook of 1889.

On page 257 we find Louis Gibson, one of the great architects of the day, explaining the concept of a shower curtain.

Probably never before and certainly never again, will somebody need to use so many words to explain exactly what a shower curtain is and what it does.

But Gibson was writing at a time when indoor plumbing was cutting edge stuff. The concept of a shower had not yet been popularized.

Most everybody at the time was still washing alongside a tub or pump-handle.

His chapter on plumbing, which includes the shower curtain description, could easily be describing a house built today.

Louis Gibson's 1889 handbook was ground-breaking in its modern approach to traditional home building in the pre-electric era. In many ways it set the standard for what a good home required and how it should work.

Chapters from the 1889 Builders' Handbook can be downloaded for free at www.PioneerHandbooks.com.

If you think this information is too important to be forgotten, you can hit the Facebook Like button below and save it from disappearing into history

It's easy enough to do and a good way to keep this knowledge alive.

- Making an electric battery from 1896.

2012-01-11T08:56:00.002+13:00

The DIY instructions from the pioneer and settler handbooks always contain a few surprises.

They also give us first glimpses at emerging know-how that will one day become ubiquitous.

Hidden within the pages of the 1896 Home Mechanic book are some of the world's earliest instructions for making your own galvanic or electric battery.

We don't usually associate the late 1800's with electricity.

But scientists had been working with electricity since the late 1700's and commercial electroplating operations started appearing in the UK in the mid 1850's.

These instructions from the Making chapter of the Home Mechanic book, show how people did their own electroplating at home.

It requires two containers with a semi-permeable membrane between them. In this case they are using porous or unglazed porcelain.

The metal you want to deposit through electroplating has to be contained in a salt solution.

If you use sulphate of copper, then copper will be deposited. If you use potasium gold cyanide, then gold will be deposited.

The point is to take a metal object made of a cheaper and less durable metal like steel, and then give it a thin coating of more a valuable and more durable metal that wouldn't rust for example.

Electricity would not have been foreign to the people of 1896. Edison patented his first light bulbs in 1879 and the first public building to be lit by electricity was the Savoy Theater in Westminster, London in 1881.

More how-to and DIY from the pioneers and settlers can be downloaded for free at Pioneer Handbooks.

Even if you never plan to make your own galvanic battery, you can still hit the Facebook Like button below and save this how-to from disappearing into history

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- Free downloads from the pioneers and settlers.

2011-12-31T21:49:00.000+13:00

The new Pioneer Handbooks website is up and running in test mode.

There are already several free chapters for download of pioneer and settler how-to and DIY from the Iowa settlers manual of 1881.

We want to rescue this vital know-how from the archives before it is forgotten entirely.

So please download these chapters for free and share them.

Even if you don't want to use these historic DIY instructions, you can still help rescue them by using the social network buttons here or on the website.

One click from you and a long lost set of know-how from our ancestors will bounce around the globe.

Available now:

1881 Settlers Manual - Recipes: Traditional recipes and cooking tips. 33 pages.

1881 Settlers Manual - Medicine: Free medicine, remedies and toilet preparations. 19 pages.

1881 Settlers Manual - Dairy: Dairy operations, butter and cheese making. 11 pages.

Over the next few months many more chapters and books will be made available at Pioneer Handbooks.

Subscribe to this blog or at the website for notification when new chapters of colonial how-to and DIY become available.

- Proof of pioneer weatherproofing.

2011-12-26T22:04:00.000+13:00

In an earlier post I revealed instructions from the 1800's for making a waterproof cement.

That 1881 recipe used plaster, sand, resin and linseed oil.

Ten years ago I used a similar recipe from the mid-1850's to seal the roof of a replica V-Hut.

V-Huts were the first homes built by the early New Zealand settlers in the Christchurch area in the 1850's.

The V-Huts were intended as transition homes and were meant to be temporary until the settler family had built a proper house.

They were shipped pre-cut with the settler families from the UK since Christchurch didn't yet have a reliable source of lumber for building.

To seal the roof we used a mixture of boiled linseed oil, ash and sand from a recipe we got from the original settlers' handbook written for the first Christchurch settlers.

After we finished building the hut at the Ferrymead Historical Park in Christchurch, I never laid eyes on it again. I wasn't even sure if it had survived Christchurch's recent earthquakes.

But just a couple days before Christmas 2011 I visited Ferrymead and was delighted to discover the hut is still standing.

When I re-introduced myself to the staff the first thing they said was "That stuff you put on the roof! It's still working! It has lasted ten years with no leaks!".

The exact recipe was simple:

"Equal parts of ash and sand mixed with boiled linseed oil till it forms a thick paste."

It dries like concrete, but I never thought it would weather well. We thatched over a lot of the roof for that reason.

But there was plenty of roof still exposed, and as this macro photo shows, the weatherproofing mixture has stood up to Christchurch's hot summers and winter snows just fine.

Time and the tide of life has washed away most of the evidence of how they lived in the days of the pioneers and settlers - and how they got things done.

So these opportunities to put historic knowledge to the test are rare and valuable reminders that they knew a lot more than we give them credit for, back in the day...

Even if you never expect to use a technique like this, you can still hit the Facebook Like button below and save this how-to from disappearing into history

It's easy enough to do and a good way to keep this knowledge alive.

- How to butcher a chicken.

2011-12-15T19:46:00.000+13:00

The pioneers and settlers grew up butchering chickens. The ins and outs of how to do it and what not to do were well known.

Not so much today. And it is easy to get very wrong.

The best set of instructions on the web for butchering chickens is found at the How to Butcher a Chicken blog.

Who would have thought about blogging that!?

I'm glad they did. It's useful information that is long forgotten.

Nothing about the process has changed since the days of the pioneers and settlers.

Our knives haven't changed and chickens are still chickens.

Even if you never expect to kill and dress your own chicken, please hit the Facebook Like button below and spread this how-to.

It's easy enough to do and a good way to keep this knowledge alive.

- How pioneers made laundry soap.

2011-11-23T19:00:00.001+13:00

Washing clothes in the days of the pioneers and settlers was an elaborate ritual. Multiple tubs of water, scrubbing boards, handmade soaps, blue dyes for the whites, starch - and all done on a Monday.

Monday was always washing day.

Before the pioneers and settlers could wash their clothes they needed laundry washing soap. What was important was that it had to be a liquid soap that would easily mix in with the clothes.

Hard soaps were readily available and reasonably complex to make, so it was always easier to buy hard soap. But liquid soap wasn't so easily transported. It had to be made at home.

The cleaning chapter from the Iowa Settlers Manual of 1881 explains how to make a basic liquid laundry detergent using available materials.

It's a recipe we can still use today and involves three separate steps...

The Compound:
"Take five pounds of sal soda, one pound borax, one pound of fresh unslacked lime; dissolve the soda and borax in one gallon of boiling water, and slack the lime in the same quantity of boiling water. Then pour them both into eight gallons of water; stir a few times and let it stand 'till morning, when the clear fluid should be drawn off and kept ready for use."

The Soft Soap:
"One quart of this compound, with three pounds of good bar soap, cut fine, and two pounds of sal soda boiled in three gallons of water for ten minutes, will give four gallons of splendid soft soap."

The Washing Detergent:
"Add half a pint of compound, half a pint of soft soap to four gallons of hot water."

Sal soda is used to soften the water, as the settlers often would be using well water. Sal soda is also known as washing soda, soda crystals or sodium carbonate. It can be bought from a swimming pool supply store.

Borax is still common and is also known as sodium borate. You can get it from the pool supply shop too.

Unslacked lime is also known as quicklime, burned lime and calcium oxide. You can get it from a large garden center, where it is sold as a fertilizer for lawns and gardens.

All three of these powders are reasonably safe to work with, but do avoid breathing them and getting them on your skin or in your eyes.

You can use any bar soap you choose, but it's best to get the simplest and cheapest you can and use a fine cheese grater on it.

The settlers also used bluing to brighten their whites in a final rinse. If you want to get the real deal, you can get Prussian blue from an art supply store. It can come in a few forms - you want the stuff that looks like a block of blue chalk.

To use it you should tie the block up in a muslin bag, to protect the clothes from direct contact with the blue dye. It will stain them. Then place the block in the rinse water while you rinse the clothes.

Or you can buy a bottle of Mrs. Stewart's Bluing. This brand has been around for more than 100 years and is as close to an original pioneer product as you can get.

To brighten your colored clothes, use everyday salt. Just a couple of pinches to the first wash. It needs to be dissolved, so it's easier to add it to a glass of warm water, dissolve it and then pour that into the wash.

In a future post we will dig into starching. The reasons we use starch in our clothes today have almost nothing to do with why the settlers and pioneers originally used it.

Other how-to and DIY from the pioneers and settlers can be found at Pioneer Handbooks. If you are interested in soap making, you can download this chapter for free.

Even if you never plan to make your own laundry soap, you can still hit the Facebook Like button below and save this how-to from disappearing into history

It's easy enough to do and a good way to keep this knowledge alive.

- How settlers killed rats.

2011-11-20T08:03:00.001+13:00

If the pioneer and settler handbooks of the 1800's are any indication, our frontier ancestors had a significant problem with rats.

In part it was driven by the sheer amount of food the settlers had stored in their homes. They had to keep many months of food on hand to feed them across the seasons, which gave rats plenty of opportunity to eat and multiply.

Food spoilage by rats was a big issue for pioneer families that didn't have access to money and stores so they could resupply.

And with the last great plague pandemic sweeping the globe in the late 1800's and early 1900's, the settlers had a further strong reason to get rid of rats around their home and farm.

Just like today, they had a lot of rat poisons that could also kill children, pets and livestock.

So just like today, they wanted safer ways to get rid of rats.

One technique comes straight from their knowledge and experience with hunting, trapping and fishing. They frequently used attractants as a way of luring game.

Oil of rhodium was highly regarded as an attractant for game. These days it is more commonly used as a fish attractant. The pioneers used it to attract everything from beaver to bears to bobcats.

And it could also be used to draw rats to a trap.

Oil of rhodium comes from the rosewood tree of South America. It's a slow-growing hardwood tree and its oils can only be extracted from mature 40+ year old specimens.

Today the rosewood tree is classified as endangered and the international trade in rosewood is prohibited by CITES. But its by-products are not prohibited and that includes oil of rhodium. You can still buy it.

But there is a more ecologically friendly solution.

Oil of rhodium is 90% linalool.

Linalool is an aromatic turpentine produced by a number of different plant types. It's a major component of perfume, shampoo, soap and aromatherapy treatments.

There are two types of linalool - (S) linalool and (R) linalool. Oil of rhodium is composed of (R) linalool. Other sources of (R) linalool include lavender, laurel and sweet basil, so they may work equally well as attractants for fishing, trapping and vermin.

Another environmentally friendly technique for killing rats is the time-honored plaster of paris recipe.

The idea is that plaster of paris is mixed with something that rats like to eat such as sugar, peanut butter or flour.

A dish of water is placed nearby for the rats to drink from.

"whereupon the plaster, brought into contact with the water, will become solid, and like a stone in their stomachs, which will cause their death."

Unfortunately, this technique may be as Looney-Tunes as it sounds.

In 1990 an E.P.A. scientist named W. D. Fitzwater fed rats a 50/50 mix of plaster of paris and dry feed for 14 days. No rats died during or after the test, though it was reported that the rats had sore rectums as a result of passing the plaster.

So if you want to kill rats don't waste your time with plaster of paris.

But if you're looking for a scientifically proven way to become a real pain in the butt, plaster of paris may suit you just fine.

Other vermin killing recipes from the pioneers and settlers can be found at Pioneer Handbooks.

Even if you would never kill a rat, you can still hit the Facebook Like button below and save this how-to from disappearing into history

It's easy enough to do and a great way to keep this knowledge alive.

- How to make a three cent ink.

2011-11-19T16:09:00.001+13:00

Back in the 1800's ink was a major commodity. Every paper transaction relied on ink and there were dozens and dozens of types of ink that could be purchased.

Everybody who was schooled had their own favorites. Each ink was slightly different; in how well it flowed, in the color it was, in how well it held its color and in how expensive it was.

Good inks were compared and savored like wine is today.

For people outside the cities, who were settling the country's frontiers, it made more sense to make their own ink.

The settler and pioneer guides of the period feature many pages of recipes for different types of ink.

One of the simplest is this recipe for blue to black ink. It was cheap to make then and it still is today.

"Take 1/2 an ounce of extract of logwood and 10 grains of bi-chromate of potash, and dissolve them in a quart of hot rain water. When cold, pour it into a glass bottle, and leave it uncorked for a week or two. Exposure to the air is indispensable... The ink is at first an intense steel blue, but becomes quite black."

The two ingredients can still be had today.

Extract of logwood comes from the red heartwood of a Central American tree - Haematoxylum campechianum - which was first reported as a source of good dye in 1500 by Portuguese traders. It is still used today for dying cloth. It can by purchased online. US$7.75 for two ounces of extract.

Bi-chromate of potash is also known as potassium dichromate. It's a red powder that is often used for aging and dyeing wood. You can buy 8 ounces for US$10.60 online. You'll only need 10 grains of potassium dichromate and there are about 440 grains in an ounce.

So while this ink cost about three cents to make in the late 1800's, today it will cost you closer to US$1.96. It's still cheap by anyone's standards.

Potassium dichromate needs to be handled with caution. Don't breathe it and keep it off your skin. You can neutralize it with vinegar if you have a spill.

This recipe for ink comes from the Home Mechanic book of 1896 and can be downloaded for free at PioneerHandbooks.com.

Even if you never expect to make your own ink, you can still hit the Facebook Like button below and save this how-to from disappearing into history

It's easy enough to do and a great way to keep this knowledge alive.

- Making colonial chewing gum.

2011-11-09T21:46:00.001+13:00

I don't know why but I'm always surprised to find recipes for chewing gum in the candy sections of settlers' how-to books from the 1800's.

Somehow I can't connect the gum of today with anything that far back in time. But the gum of today has little in common with traditional chewing gum.

Chewing gum has a very long history.

A pre-loved piece of birch gum was found in Finland with tooth marks still in it dating back 5000 years.

Archaeologists are still arguing over whether it had originally been stuck to the underside of a neolithic table or a park bench.

Prior to the mid-1800's chewing gum was always some kind of tree gum. In the US it was spruce gum.

The Native Americans taught the colonists how to find and process it, so chewing gum is as American as corn, squash and turkey.

If you are going to make your own spruce gum, it takes some special handling:

Try to collect it in the spring, before the tree's natural pesticides have started to be made. Look for wounds on the tree where sap or resin has collected. Scrape off whatever you can and don't worry too much about the bark that's mixed in with it. A couple hands full of spruce resin will be a good start.

At home the gum needs to be cooked out of the resin. Do it outside. A covered BBQ is ideal. Put the resin in a metal strainer over a metal pot and bake it for a while, check and stir the resin from time to time. Keep the pot at medium to low heat and avoid getting it close to direct flame.

After a while the gum will begin to cook out of the resin, pass through the strainer and gather in the pot below. That's why you don't have to worry about the bark and other stuff stuck to the resin.

When you think you've gotten all the gum your are going to get from the resin, you can take your pot of gum into the kitchen. The gum will have the consistency and color of maple syrup. Pour it into a pan or tray of some type. You can break it into smaller pieces when it has cooled. Some people then roll it in icing sugar.

Be very careful of getting the hot gum on your skin, you'll get a nasty burn from it.

Spruce gum tastes like spruce, not a hugely helpful description, but you get the picture. It tastes like tree.

The best measure of its taste is that when paraffin chewing gum hit the market in the 1850's, spruce gum went into steep decline. A gum that tasted like nothing was better than a gum that tasted like tree.

It was soon discovered that paraffin gum could be flavored like a candy.

From the 1896 Home Mechanic book:

"Take one pound of refined paraffin, mix with half a pound of white sugar. Melt it together and pour into a candy pan and divide it into squares when it has cooled".

Almost instant chewing gum.

Paraffin is quite flammable and you'd think that putting something flammable in your mouth and chewing it would be unsafe. But it's a very common food additive and is so nonreactive that it will pass through your system unchanged.

Just the same, you should listen to your Mom - don't swallow your chewing gum.

Lots of free recipes from the pioneers and settlers can be found at the Pioneer Handbooks website.

Even if you never expect to make your own chewing gum, you can still hit the Facebook Like button below and save these how-to's from disappearing into history

It's easy enough to do and a great way to keep this knowledge alive.

- How pioneers made sealing wax.

2011-11-08T20:42:00.000+13:00

Sealing wax is something we've all seen, but very few of us have made it or put it to use.

It was common till the turn of last century as a way to seal documents and bottles. We still see it on certain bottles of wine, but increasingly it has been replaced by metal seals, not to mention plastic corks.

Sealing wax's number one purpose was security. It was the 128 bit key of the day. Once the seal was broken open the information in a document would never be considered private and secure.

It served the same purpose on wines, which foiled attempts to pour out half the good stuff and water it down until the bottle was full again.

[Note the word "foiled". Another historic solution to the same problem of bottle security.]

But wax seals also preserved a wine or beer's freshness, flavor and fragrance by protecting the cork from direct moisture but still letting it breathe.

Sealing wax is not the same as candle wax. Candle wax easily breaks and crumbles, whereas sealing wax has some plasticity to it. It will bend and tear before it breaks.

The Iowa Settlers Manual of 1881 explains how to make sealing wax in its chapter on making common household items, and it's very simple.

To make black bottle sealing wax:

Take "common resin, twenty pounds; tallow, five pounds; lamp-black, four pounds. Mix with heat."

Simple as that.

Lamp-black is still in common use, but it would be better to get bone-char AKA ivory-black or bone-black from your local art supply shop. It has fewer health and safety implications and will do the same job.

You can also buy it from aquarium shops, where it is used in the tank filters.

The volumes of the materials in this recipe can be reduced to suit your needs. A pound of wax will be enough for sealing 65 bottles.

Other variations of sealing wax can be made.

Common Sealing Wax is the classic red wax used on important documents. Its ingredients can also be sourced from an art shop.

The Soft Sealing Wax calls for Venice Turpentine. You won't get that from an art store, but any place that has horse-care products should have it. It comes from the Western Larch tree.

Big chapters of colonial how-to and DIY can be downloaded for free at Pioneer Handbooks.

Even if you never expect to make or use sealing wax, you can still hit the Facebook Like button below and save this how-to from disappearing into history

It's easy enough to do and a good way to keep this knowledge alive.

- How to field dress a squirrel.

2011-11-06T16:50:00.000+13:00

The recipe for squirrel on this blog from a few weeks ago is one of the most visited of all the posts.

But how do you hunt and prepare a squirrel for cooking?

From the Preparedness Advice blog, great instructions for field dressing and quartering a squirrel:

Field dressing and quartering a squirrel.

Take some time to look around this great blog, it has a lot to offer if you are interested in standing on your own two feet and being self-sufficient.

Thank you Howard for letting me pass this on. Your blog is fantastic.

Recipes from the pioneers and settlers can be found at Pioneer Handbooks.

Even if you never plan to skin a squirrel, you can still hit the Facebook Like button below and save this how-to from disappearing into history

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- How settlers made fire starters.

2011-11-04T20:21:00.000+13:00

Lighting a fire isn't always simple, and when you want a fire, you want it now. That's true of the barbeque as much as the home hearth.

We use fire starters these days, but they're nothing new. In the days of the pioneers and settlers they were called kindlers.

You easily can make your own, in the time honored way.

These instructions are from the Home Mechanic book of 1896.

All you need is tar, resin, sawdust and charcoal.

We don't use tar and resin much anymore but they are readily available.

Tar is also known as pine tar and you can get it from sporting goods shops, veterinarians and hardware stores. Use the hardware stores since they sell it in larger volumes at cheaper prices. It's commonly used as a treatment for wooden patio furniture.

Resin you can buy online, or just collect yourself. It's the sap of pine trees, also known as pitch.

If you are going to collect pine resin look for the white sap that pines use to heal their own wounds. Looking around the areas where the tree has been injured in the past is a good place to start. When fresh it is white and creamy. As it ages its surface can turn black and it hardens, but if you break it open you'll see it's still white on the inside.

To make your kindlers:

"Take a quart of tar and 3 pounds of resin, melt them, bring to a cooling temperature, mix with as much sawdust, with a little charcoal added, as can be worked in; spread out while hot upon a board, when cold break up into lumps of the size of a large hickory nut, and you have, at a small expense, kindling material enough for a household for one year."

Be careful when you are heating the resin and tar, they can ignite. So do it slowly and gently and try to keep flying embers out of the mix.

You'll improve on this recipe if you make balls of the kindlers when they are still warm to the touch and soft enough to shape. Then roll them in sawdust. They are cleaner to handle that way.

After all this you'll need to get the resin off your hands. It sticks like nobody's business.

An old wives trick comes to the rescue. You can rub pine resin off your skin using butter or margarine.

The old wife in question was my Grandmother. She brought up five kids in Washington State and had more grandchildren than I can count on three hands, so she knew something about cleaning up sticky pine-pitch fingers.

Other how-to and DIY from the pioneers and settlers can be found at Pioneer Handbooks.

Even if you aren't the type to make your own fire starters, you can still hit the Facebook Like button below and save this how-to from disappearing into history

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- How to make tomato wine.

2011-11-03T20:21:00.000+13:00

One of the fun things about the instructions in the pioneer and settler handbooks of the 1800's is they knew a lot of ways to make a drink. Alcohol that is. Texas Tea.

With water quality a questionable thing in those days; wine, beer and whiskey were sometimes necessary.

These books have instructions for turning pretty much every grain and fruit on the farm into something that will make you tipsy.

Currant wine, ginger wine, berry wine, sarsparilla mead...

One alcoholic drink that caught me by surprise was tomato wine, from the 1896 Home Mechanic Book.

People that still make tomato wine say it's nothing like what you'd think. It's not red and it's not ketchupy.

To make tomato wine:

"Take ripe, fresh tomatoes, mash very fine, strain through a fine sieve, sweeten with good sugar to suit the taste, set it away in an earthen or glass vessel, nearly full, cover tight, the with the exception of a small hole for the refuse to work off through during its fermentation. When it is done fermenting, it will become pure and clear."

This recipe is relying on local airborne yeast, but it's possible to add your own to ensure good fermentation. Talk to a local brew shop so you get the right yeast.

The pay off is a wine that tastes and looks just like white table wine. You can make it more or less dry by adjusting the amount of sugar you use.

The big chapter of colonial how-to and DIY these instructions come from can be downloaded for free at the Pioneer Handbooks website.

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9AWR8NYNGPSV

- Making a bacon candle.

2011-11-02T19:34:00.000+13:00

From the great TEOTWAWKI Blog comes a how-to for making bacon fat candles.

All it takes is the fat or drippings from 3/4's of a pack of bacon, a wick, a paperclip to hold the wick and a can to hold it all.

It couldn't be simpler and it will burn for something like three hours.

It's a great lesson that was probably long forgotten till it was resurrected by a resourceful person.

Thanks for the tip and thanks for letting me pass it on.

You can find more uses for bacon fat and free downloadable chapters of pioneer and settler how-to and DIY at Pioneer Handbooks .

Even if you aren't likely to make your candles from bacon fat, you can still hit the Facebook Like button below and save this how-to from disappearing into history

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- How pioneers stayed dry in the rain: part two.

2011-11-01T20:35:00.000+13:00

A blog post a few weeks ago with some 1896 DIY instructions explaining how pioneers stayed dry in the rain, got a lot of interest. The instructions in the Home Mechanic's book were for waterproofing boots and shoes, and could have been applied to clothes as well.

But as I worked my way though this great book, posting its chapters online, I came across further instructions explaining how the French Army waterproofed their tunics during the Crimean War.

It shows that the pioneers, settlers and soldiers of the 1800's were concerned with the same issue that we are today.... finding a way to make clothing that is waterproof, but also breathable. Get in line Gore-tex, these guys did it first.

Unfortunately the solution to their problem might have been as dangerous as the Tzar's bullets.

But the same instructions do offer a safer alternative.

The directions are as follow:

"Take 21/4 pounds of alum and dissolve this in 10 gallons of boiling water; then in a separate vessel dissolve the same quantity of sugar of lead in 10 gallons of water, and mix the two solutions. The cloth is now well handled in this liquid, until every part of it is penetrated; then it is squeezed and dried in the air...then washed in cold water and dried again, when it is fit for use. If necessary, the cloth may be dipped in the liquid and dried twice before being washed."

The instruction go on to add that this mixture also renders the cloth partially non-flammable.

Sugar of lead, or lead acetate, is historically infamous. The Romans and Egyptians used it to sweeten their wine and it was a common food sweetener till last century. But as we all know, lead is quite toxic if it's ingested.

In this context it's probably not so dangerous to have lead acetate soaked into your clothing. It's a major component of Grecian Formula after all.

But once the sugar of lead has mixed with the alum in this brew it forms lead sulphate, the white powder on the terminals of your car battery. This stuff is about as toxic as lead can get.and you definitely don't want it against your skin.

Luckily the same instructions tell us that using the alum alone will also work, but not as well. Alum is quite safe. It's even used today to purify drinking water. But alum is water soluble so it will probably have to be reapplied to clothing more often. Better than being caught in the rain...

The big chapter of colonial how-to and DIY these instructions come from can be downloaded for free at Pioneer Handbooks.

Even if you never expect to have to waterproof your clothing, you can still hit the Facebook Like button below and save this how-to from disappearing into history

It's easy enough to do and a good way to keep this knowledge alive.

Update: The chemistry in this mixture was a little bit beyond me so I sought some advice. This is from my friendly local Phd Chemist. These instructions aren't as dangerous as they seem.

"Looks like it’s probably aluminum acetate that does the waterproofing

Lead sulphate is pretty well insoluble in water, so what will happen is you take lead acetate (water soluble) and aluminum sulphate (alum, water soluble) and it will form a pretty well instant precipitate of lead sulphate (insoluble) leaving just aluminum acetate in solution. So you decant the aluminum acetate solution off leaving horribly toxic lead sulphate behind as a solid."

You then use the aluminum acetate for the waterproofing dip. It's reasonably safe and is used as an antiseptic. But be aware that the precursors to actually making the aluminum acetate - lead and more lead - are definitely not safe and need to be handled with care, or not at all.

- How to cook squirrel.

2011-10-30T08:42:00.000+13:00

The Canadian Housekeeper's Guide of 1854 is full of recipes using the foods that settlers and pioneers would find in the northern forests. One game meat they recommend is black squirrel.

The Housekeepers Guide is fairly unique in that is was written specifically for women who were emigrating from Great Britain to start a new life in Canada.

It's apparent from the text of the book they were traveling as single women who hoped to acquire a job as a housekeeper or a husband when they arrived in Canada.

The author makes it clear she's not going to tell the reader how to cook, but will tell them what to cook.

In this case, it's the black squirrel. Red squirrel, musk-rat, porcupine, beaver, wood-chuck, ground-hog and bear are also recommended.

The black squirrel is a variant of the Eastern Grey Squirrel and is found throughout Ontario, the mid-west and eastern seaboard of the US as far south as Kentucky. They are native to the Central Northern US and Canada but have been introduced and thrived in the southern states.

The Housekeeper's Guide suggests they be cooked like rabbit - roasted, fried, fricasseed or made into stew and pies.

One good recipe is as follows:

3 squirrels, quartered
5 medium potatoes cut into bite-sized chucks
1 onion cut into bite-sized chunks
2 cups of baby carrots
5 stalks of celery sliced into 1/4″ pieces
4 teaspoons of chicken stock powder
Salt & Pepper to taste
1 tablespoon steak seasoning
1/2 teaspoon minced garlic
2 tablespoons of flour
Water

Place potatoes, onion, celery, and baby carrots into a crockpot. Add squirrel pieces on top of the vegetables. Add chicken stock, mixing with warm water as directed on the label. Add enough water to mostly cover the contents and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Add steak seasoning. Cover and cook on high for 5 hours. Add flour and cook covered for another hour. Serve with rice.

The final meal is very, very tender and the meat easily falls off of the bones.

Note: Squirrels have many small bones so you’ll need to take care when eating the meal. You could probably reduce the number of small bones by not including the rib cage when cooking.

This recipe comes courtesy of the Prepping to Survive blog. Thank you guys.

If you happen to live in New Zealand with its large population of feral Australian possums, you could use this recipe for those animals too.

Other recipes from the pioneers and settlers can be found at Pioneer Handbooks.

Even if you never expect to be cooking up squirrel, you can still hit the Facebook Like button below and save this how-to from disappearing into history

It's easy enough to do and a great way to keep this knowledge alive.

- Preparing & using pine pitch.

2011-10-28T18:45:00.000+13:00

A few of my blog entries have called for the use of resin and pitch.

From the great blog A Woodsrunner's Diary is a link to instructions on how to get pitch and use it....

Preparing & Using Pine Pitch from Buzzard Bushcraft via A Woodsrunner's Diary.

Buzzard Bushcraft and The Woodsrunner's Diary blog are all about the practical application of some of the things I write about here. I'm writing about it and Le Loup and his friends are doing it. I'm a librarian and they are craftsmen.

If you have a mind to pick up and run with any of the pioneer and settler DIY's I present in this blog, Le Loup's A Woodsrunner's Diary blog and Buzzard Bushcraft would be a great next step for you.

Other free DIY and how-to's from the colonial past can be found at www.PioneerHandbooks.com.

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- Making a pyrotechnic signal light and an everlasting pill.

2011-10-26T22:09:00.000+13:00

The 1896 Home Mechanic book has instructions explaining how to make a pyrotechnic signal light.

These lights were known as Bengal Lights and were famous for burning very bright, very fast and very blue. They were in common use by armies and navies from the 1700's onwards.

The ingredients are saltpeter, sublimed sulfur and antimony.

Saltpeter is potassium nitrate - the stuff in our bacon and other preserved meats. It can be made with cow dung, cow urine, potato leaves and a few other household items. Your search engine will lead the way to a recipe. Your local black-powder shooter may know where to get some ready-made. Your local drug store may have it already.

Sublimed Sulfur is still used as a medical treatment for various skin complaints related to scabies and other parasites. It is sometimes known as milk of sulfur or flower of sulfur. Again, try your local drug store.

Antimony is going to be a bit more difficult to get hold of but it's in common use. Often as a flame retardant funny enough. It not safe to mess with so use it with extreme caution and do your research.

To make a Bengal Light:

"Take of nitrate of potassa ( saltpetre ), 8 parts; sublimed sulphur 4 parts, and antimony 1 part, and let them be well mixed in powder and beat firmly into a stout iron cup, and set on fire; and if a little camphor be added it is still more brilliant."

Don't take the word beat literally, what they mean is compress. Some forms of antimony have an explosive reaction to beating. You are unlikely to get your hands on those forms, but just the same... don't beat this stuff.

Powdered antimony, which this recipe calls for, is very bad for your health. Beating and pounding it is the perfect way to wind up breathing it. That would not be a good thing. Do your research.

Antimony was very common in the 1800's as an antimony pill, which was better known as the Everlasting Pill.

It was a pill of pure metallic antimony that was taken to relieve constipation and other bowel problems. Once it had gone through the digestive system it was retrieved and used again. And again. Entire families would share the same pill and they lasted for forever. They were often handed down as family heirlooms. So these everlasting antimony pills passed ( pardon the pun ) through many generations.

Going by period accounts, they worked too. Though it was speculated at the time that their success might have more to do with a lump of metal working through the intestines rather than any special properties of antimony. Luckily for the settlers, solid antimony is relatively safe.

But as with many of the how-to and DIY instructions from the period, this set of instructions for making a Bengal Light are quite dangerous. There are many reasons why people died young back then, and this is one of them. If you can't find an expert to help you do it safely, then just don't do it.

If you would like to find more benign projects based upon the how-to and DIY instructions of the 1800's, you can download the chapter this recipe comes from for free.

It has 98 pages of digitized do-it-yourself from one of the classic DIY books of the late 19th Century. It covers everything from medicine, to cosmetics, soaps, candy, herbal treatments, poisons for vermin, inks and about 300 other subjects.

If you find a DIY instruction that interests you let us know. Give it a try. Share it with us here at this blog. Anything that preserves this hard-earned knowledge is good for all of us.

Other chapters of historic DIY can be found at www.PioneerHandbooks.com.

Even if you're not the type to make your own signal light, you can still hit the Facebook Like button below and save this how-to from disappearing into history

It's easy enough to do and a great way to keep this knowledge alive.

[Update: Anonymous has left a comment that these lights don't burn with a blue color, but burn white instead.]

- How pioneers stayed dry in the rain.

2011-10-17T20:16:00.000+13:00

From the Home Mechanic book of 1896, a recipe showing how the settlers and pioneers waterproofed their clothing, shoes and boots.

The Home Mechanic book is about as hard-core a DIY book as I've ever seen. There's no messing around in this big book.

The candy recipes all start off with a pound of this and a gallon of that and the baking instructions include directions for making your own industrial size brick oven.

The books covers carpentry, painting - from houses to frescoes to carriages, furniture finishing, horse shoeing, soap making, candy making, baking, taxidermy, tanning, etc, etc. And it's no light dip into the subject, every one of these chapters is close to 100 pages long.

It doesn't out and out say this anywhere, but I get the feeling the book is largely for people starting out a home business and are ready to take an industrial approach to things.

But is also has a lot of general DIY, how-to and recipes for everyday people with everyday needs.

From the chapter called "Receipts for Manufacturers" is a recipe for waterproofing shoes and boots. It would work on clothes too if the cloth had a nice tight weave.

To make this waterproof mix:

"Melt 3 ounces of bees-wax, and the same of resin; then add one pint of boiled oil. Stir well together. Let it boil up; remove from the fire, and add three ounces of the oil of turpentine."

The instructions don't go any further, how you apply the mix is not explained, but a smart guess would say you paint the stuff on when it's good and hot.

The things that go unsaid in these texts are one of the great challenges of using them. The writers didn't bother adding the stuff that any fool would know, not realizing that 115 years later we would have an over-supply of fools. Me included.

If you are wondering about the use of the word "receipts" in the title of the chapter, it was in common usage and meant the same thing as recipes do today.

Up until the 1920's and 1930's, everybody of English heritage would have used the word receipts to describe a list of instructions for making something.

At some point the French version of the word, recipe, came into vogue (as did the word vogue) and receipt was relegated almost entirely to the checkout line.

It does survive in one overlooked place. The iconic Rx from a doctor's script or prescription. It originally stood for receipt and instead of a brand of medicine, the doctor would have written out instructions for making your medicine, that you or a pharmacist could follow.

It really was a DIY and how-to world.

For more free DIY and how-to from the settlers and pioneers of the 1800's visit www.PioneerHandbooks.com.

Even if you never expect to be waterproofing your own boots, you can still hit the Facebook Like button below and save this how-to from disappearing into history

It's easy enough to do and a great way to keep this knowledge alive.

- DIY waterproof cement from 1881.

2011-10-03T22:51:00.000+13:00

I was helping a Civil War re-enactor figure out how to seal his 1870's-style wooden water canteen so it was watertight and found this cement recipe in the 1881 Iowa Settlers Manual.

It's described as a cement for aquariums [Who knew settlers and pioneers had fishtanks?] and is waterproof and will harden even when immersed. It was just a couple days later when I thought, "hang on.... I've used that stuff before!"

And then I felt a moment of sorrow. You'll understand why in a moment.

To make this waterproof cement:

"Mix 10 parts litharge, 10 parts plaster of Paris, 10 parts dry white sand, 1 part finely powdered resin and add boiled linseed oil, mixing till it forms a stiff putty."

If you don't need to apply this cement underwater skip the litharge that is mentioned in the recipe. It's also known as red lead and is not good for your health. It's only there to help the cement cure when immersed. If you do use litharge, once it's mixed into the paste it should be fine. But be careful, you don't want to breathe, swallow or get red lead in your eyes.

The resin that's called for is dried pitch from a conifer - pine or fir. You can collect that yourself.

When this cement sets it's exactly like sandstone.

Possible uses: anything that needs to be sealed or made watertight, or needs a coating to protect it from the weather. For anybody that doesn't want the expense or fumes of the complex plastic or rubber chemical solutions we use today.

If don't use the red lead, this cement is all natural and chemical free.

Ten years ago I used something similar to seal the roof of a replica settlers' cabin, modeled on the New Zealand Emigrants' V-Huts of the 1850s.

To be historically accurate we should have used tar. But natural tar is impossible to get. The stuff they use on the roads these days is not tar, but a type of plastic. And when tar is hot enough that it can be painted on a roof, it is also hot enough that if it hits your skin, it will burn right down to the bone. So we nixed the tar idea.

It was replaced by a recipe very similar to the one above, without the red lead.

And it worked really well. Imagine a sandstone, water-repellent roof.

We thatched over it with native cabbage-tree leaves to protect the cement from the sun. Part of the motivation was also to hide the fact that we hadn't been true history nerds and used tar.

With a few touch ups here and there the cement kept the roof from leaking for another few years at least. And then it was probably gone.

The V-Hut I helped build was in Christchurch, New Zealand and I don't believe it survived the big earthquakes there last year. That part of town was hit really hard. History has probably had her way...

These instructions can be found in the making chapter of the 1881 Iowa Settlers Manual.

For more free how-to and DIY from the settlers and pioneers of the 1800's visit www.PioneerHandbooks.com.

Even if you never expect to make your own waterproof cement, you can still hit the Facebook Like button below and save this how-to from disappearing into history

It's easy enough to do and a good way to keep this knowledge alive.

[Update: The V-Hut survived the earthquakes! See this post for photos and an update on the hut as well as an update on how its weatherproofing survived.]

- How to make a poultice.

2011-09-15T21:08:00.000+12:00

We've all heard the word. But what is a poultice, what do you do with it and how do you make one?

Poultices were homemade creams or pastes that were applied directly to the skin, usually under a bandage, to treat anything from blisters to boils to burns to bedwetting (don't ask, it's not pretty).

They could soothe inflammation, soften skin or even burn with the classic mustard poultice.

Up until modern times poultices were commonly prescribed by doctors, but they were also something that every housewife, soldier and settler knew how to make and use. They are still occasionally used on horses today.

The pioneer and medical handbooks of the 1800's are full of recipes for poultices. Some should really be left in the past; a concoction of poppy seeds and opium to soothe a burn for example. It would certainly work, but I'm not sure that scoring down in crack-alley just to take the sting out of your sunburn is the best solution to the problem. Unless you were headed that way anyway I guess.

The Linseed Meal or Greasy Poultice from an 1880 medical textbook would still have some use though. Particularly for softening the skin over boils or splinters or as a warm compress on an aching joint.

Put some linseed powder in a bowl, pour in some boiling water, add more powder until it is a thick paste the consistency of pancake. While it is still hot, spread it quarter of an inch thick on a soft linen bandage. Put a bit of hog's lard in the center. When the lard begins to melt, use a knife to spread the fat over the linseed paste. Then place the poultice against the wound and bandage it down.

Linseed powder is still available but is now known as flax powder or flax seed powder.

To quote the eminent London surgeon who wrote this recipe:

"When made in this way, oh! it is beautifully smooth : it is delightfully soft; it is warm and comfortable to the feelings of the patient."

Not to mention that lovely smell of pork chop.

For more free and downloadable how-to and DIY from the settlers and pioneers of the 1800's visit www.PioneerHandbooks.com.

Even if you never expect to make your own poultice, you can still hit the Facebook Like button below and save this how-to from disappearing into history

It's easy enough to do and a good way to keep this knowledge alive.

- How to cook pigeon.

2011-09-05T23:13:00.000+12:00

[This one's for you Mark Zuckerberg - for when that whole hunting thing becomes too much of a hassle.]

In the days of the settlers and pioneers, early autumn was pigeon season.

Pigeons could be eaten any time of the year, but just after harvest when the birds had fattened on grain, they were a prized food.

Pigeons were so popular that there was an entire pigeon canning industry built up around them.

But the settlers and pioneers out on the prairies had to hunt their own.

From the 1854 Canadian Housekeeper's Guide written by Mrs C. P. Traill, we bring you a recipe for pigeon pie.

"Season your pigeons well with pepper and salt; as many as will lie in your pie dish; dust a little flour on, thin; add a cup of hot water; cover your pie and bake an hour."

As simple as that!

It's gotta be good. Her chicken pie recipe includes all kinds of spices - but pigeons are served au naturel.

Minus the feathers of course. She has plucked them and dressed them first.

I've never been anywhere that didn't have hoards of pigeons, so this is a meal that's within reach of all of us. Literally.

There is a small sting in the tail to this recipe. Mrs Traill was almost certainly cooking Passenger Pigeons.

They were once the most numerous bird in North America.

One sighting in 1866 in southern Ontario was described as being 1 mile wide, 300 miles long, and taking 14 hours to pass a single point with number estimates in excess of 3.5 billion birds in the flock.

Selling in the cities for 1 cent a bird, they were the basic food of millions of poor people and slaves.

One of the last large roosts of Passenger Pigeons was in Petoskey, Michigan, in 1878. 50,000 birds a day were killed and the hunt continued for nearly five months.

By 1890 they were all but gone. Martha, thought to be the world's last Passenger Pigeon, died on September 1, 1914, at the Cincinnati Zoo.

So if you're planning on cooking up pigeon for your dinner, make sure it's a common Central Park kind of pigeon.

Fattened on popcorn, Cheezits and Doritos, they've probably got their own unique taste, well suited to the times.

For more information and free downloads about living the life of a settler or pioneer visit www.PioneerHandbooks.com.

Even if you never expect to be eating pigeon, you can still hit the Facebook Like button below and save this how-to from disappearing into history

It's easy enough to do and a good way to keep this knowledge alive.

- How pioneers washed dishes.

2011-08-26T19:24:00.000+12:00

The rare 1881 Iowa settlers manual has a tip for washing dishes when you've run out of soap. It's in the cleaning chapter of the book and was written for some of the first people moving into Iowa to homestead in the 1880's.

"To wash dishes without soap, have your dishwater hot and add a very little milk, as this softens the water, gives the dishes a nice gloss and preserves the hands. It removes the grease, even that from beef, and yet no grease is ever found floating on the water as when soap is used."

I haven't tried it but it sounds like a reasonable approach. The chemistry is correct - and if dirty dishes are anything like dirty hands, most of the bacteria removal takes place during the vigorous drying, rather than during the actual washing.

The chapter on cleaning also contains instructions on housekeeping, dyeing and soap making.

This chapter and more can be downloaded for free at www.PioneerHandbooks.com.

Even if you're not the type to run out of dish washing detergent, you can still hit the Facebook Like button below and save this how-to from disappearing into history

It's easy enough to do and a good way to keep this knowledge alive.

- An old settler trick for felling a tree.

2011-08-25T22:31:00.000+12:00

The historic 1875 Settlers Guide for the Pacific Slope was written for some of the first settlers heading into the Pacific North-West.

The "How to Make a Farm" chapter covered selecting your land, clearing it, putting the first crops in and how to use livestock to improve the soil.

The first and biggest job a 19th Century pioneer or settler had was clearing his land. Without that he couldn't build the family's cabin, start to grow crops and turn out the livestock.

It was a big job - usually just a man and his family and some axes. They had to do it quickly because the longer it took them to get crops in the longer they would be waiting and going hungry the next year.

A fantastic technique they used is given away in the 1875 settlers manual.

"Take a long shanked auger, bore two holes, one above the other, at an angle so they will meet some distance inside; after which some pitch fagots are lit and introduced into the upper hole, the flame causing a suction of air from the lower hole, acting something like a blow pipe. The portion of the tree inside of the sap being more or less of a pitchy nature, burns with great rapidity and in a short time appears and roars like a huge furnace."

The chapter goes on to explain that this technique largely keeps the fire within the tree, lessening the chance of what we call today an uncontrolled burn.

It's quite ingenious - creating a self-sustaining bellows out of just two holes and a source of ignition.

If you've ever used this technique, or are willing to give it a test, send us a report and in recognition of your efforts you'll get a one week free pass to all the Pioneer Handbooks downloads.

Please just make sure it's a tree that needs to be dropped, and isn't being felled for the sake of the experiment.

This chapter and more can be downloaded for free at www.PioneerHandbooks.com.

Even if you never expect to fell a tree, you can still hit the Facebook Like button below and save this how-to from disappearing into history

It's easy enough to do and a great way to keep this knowledge alive.

- What the heck is Phllicome?!

2011-08-20T22:09:00.000+12:00

The Iowa settlers manual of 1881 was written for people who would be a long way from stores, doctors and civilization. They had to make a lot of what they needed.

One of the instructions in the medical chapter is for making phllicome.

But what is it?

The instructions are found in the medical chapter in the section on toilet preparations. Along with instructions for making Cuttle Fish Powder, A Superior Mouth Wash, Violet Mouth Wash and Essence or Spirit of Mustard.

If you Google phllicome you'll find only two hits, both from transcriptions of 19th Century newspaper ads. One from Australia and one from Califonia. So the stuff was widely known.

The instructions are as follow: Take of white wax five ounces, almond oil two pounds, oil of bergamont one ounce, oil of lemon one-half ounce, oil of lavender two drachms, oil of cloves one drachm. Melt the wax and oil, stir as the mixture cools, and add the perfume [a drachm is 1/16 of an ounce].

It's the brylcreem of the day!

No doubt used for Church days and when courting.

It would be great to know how to pronounce phllicome, but anybody who knew is probably long gone. Maybe it was pronounced flick'um, but we'll never know.

We're looking for somebody to make some phllicome and tell us what it's like. The ingredients are all still available today.

Let us know if you become the one and only maker and user of phllicome on the planet! In recognition of your efforts you'll get a one week free pass to all the Pioneer Handbooks downloads.

The medical chapter of the 1881 Iowa settlers manual has more than 100 instructions for medicine, remedies and cosmetics .The pioneers and settlers of the 1800's relied upon the handbooks and manuals they took with them. They were the DIY and how-to books of the day.

They can be downloaded for free at www.PioneerHandbooks.com.

Even if you never expect to make or use phllicome, you can still hit the Facebook Like button below and save this how-to from disappearing into history

It's easy enough to do and a good way to keep this knowledge alive.

[A smart reader has pointed out that it's not called Phllicome at all. That's a typo. The correct spelling is Philicome or Philocome. Thank you for that correction Unliteral.]