Hides, coast, and seed bombs

I recently got to go to the coast. I love the opportunities to travel and become a vessel to transport the bounty from one area to the next, like an anadromous fish coming to spawn. While there, I picked a lot of yaupon, a caffeinated native plant that grows on the maritime strand. It is the North American cousin to yerba mate and contains lots of antioxidants. I was out there right after Irene and the mosquitoes were vicious. I ended up wearing long pants tucked into socks, long sleeve shirt and a bandana over my face, I’m usually not effected terribly by mosquitoes but these were out for blood. If you are interested in giving it a try, contact me.  I also got to pick some heirloom corn at Black River Organic Farm. Some of this corn is going to be used for crafting and what is left will become tortillas!

Me and Julia smoked a handfull of hides: three raccoons and a red fox, all were roadkill.

Here are a couple pictures of some pouches I made out of one of the raccoon pelts. If you’re interested in learning how to honor the lives of our brothers and sisters of the animal clan by preserving their pelts, get in touch.

Brain-tanned raccoon, bark tanned salmon, and a black walnut button.

Here is a squirrel hide I just stretched. It’s sitting on top of the buffalo hide we just finished and shows the wide range hide sizes I work with.

Stretching the buffalo.

The buffalo hide came from a local farm that has 1000 acres for grass fed buffalo.

These seed balls ended up coming with me to Hoppin Johns where I had a table set up. Hopefully they’re being thrown far and wide. 5 parts clay from the land we live on, 3 parts compost we made, 1 part seed we saved from our garden, and you have a time released bio-bomb that can be thrown into the unsuspecting biologically barren plot of your liking.

Here is a deer hide I recently softened. Softening is one of the last steps in the buckskin tanning process. Using smoke, wood ash, brains, and hand tools we can turn the abundance of deer hides into a local, sustainable cloth. Deer season is upon us, if you are a hunter and you would like to see your deerhide be put to good use rather than compost, we’ll take it off your hands. I can also do a one on one hide tanning workshop.


-Knoll