Primitive Living

[Niels]

So no metal axes, no saws, no metal cooking pots, no knives? Is that right?

Englishmen with no cooking pots? How would you make tea?!

Seriously, this an Interesting thread to read. I don't think completely abondoning modern life would be any fun though. It might be for a few weeks, although very difficult, but think about it. Your hobby would turn from wanting to do something into having to do something, 24/7, while giving up all your modern day hobbies and interests.

That's just my opinion though

 

[Niels]

Wasn't there a TV experiment that did that?

You mean ''I, caveman''? I presume it can be found on youtube.

 

[Llwyd]

Personally I would not try to recreate any form of living that did not involve a beer hall.

 

[THOaken]

So no metal axes, no saws, no metal cooking pots, no knives? Is that right?

I, in fact, meant Iron-Age. I was thinking of the Four Seasons Prehistoric Projects when I wrote that sentence. It'll be an Iron-Age settlement, British Red. I haven't quite revealed which of the three ages it'll be on my website, but I can tell you know that it's most likely Iron. There's still quite a bit of research to be done on this subject alone. Years of research, in fact. I'm lucky I know a few knowledgeable people, such as Francis.

 

[Llwyd]

So what is buddy using for a roof on his Canadian roundhouse?

 

[boatman]

Beer hall? No problem, friend of mine was part of an excavation of a brewing pit in Wales and there are many experiments using heated stones in the water. Drink without brewing is easy enough if you can accept a rough fruit wine. I do wonder though if the hunter-gatherers didn't use natural narcotics rather than alcohol. Caffeine in holly, magic mushrooms etc.

 

[Llwyd]

I am sort of a 1516 purity law sort of drinker

 

[Silverhill]

I am sort of a 1516 purity law sort of drinker

Definitely. No isinglass allowed.

 

[boatman]

Can we deal with the industrial quantities of firewood allegedly required? Just re-reading Smoke in the Lanes by Dominic Reeve and he and his Gypsy companions seemed to live with a fire wherever they stopped with the wood being mostly sticks pulled from hedges and deadfalls from tresspassed woods. Doubt if he used an axe or a splitter in his life.

If living in a roundhouse then a stick fire will do all you want in terms of heating and cooking. English peasants rarely burnt roundwood but relied on brushwood faggots and sticks. Of course easily accessible wood will used up but I presume you are allowed to wander a bit afield and bear fardels home.

 

[THOaken]

I've been thinking of adding a forum to Oakenwise.com. Since we're obviously quite capable of generating good conversation on this subject, I think it'd be a good idea. Some of you seem to have real experience in this, so why not share your knowledge and experience for everyone else who stumbles upon my site? Do you think I should add a forum? Would you folks register?

Edit: I'd also like to add that Francis is writing an article on ancient music which should be uploaded to the site in the next couple of days.

 

[British Red]

I, in fact, meant Iron-Age. I was thinking of the Four Seasons Prehistoric Projects when I wrote that sentence. It'll be an Iron-Age settlement, British Red. I haven't quite revealed which of the three ages it'll be on my website, but I can tell you know that it's most likely Iron. There's still quite a bit of research to be done on this subject alone. Years of research, in fact. I'm lucky I know a few knowledgeable people, such as Francis.

Ahh so you in fact will be starting a farm? What do you plan to use as plough beasts? Oxen? Will you be forging and mining your own iron? I guess that will be viable for a year...although five years is probably a more viable trial!

 

[boatman]

I've been thinking of adding a forum to Oakenwise.com. Since we're obviously quite capable of generating good conversation on this subject, I think it'd be a good idea. Some of you seem to have real experience in this, so why not share your knowledge and experience for everyone else who stumbles upon my site? Do you think I should add a forum? Would you folks register?

Edit: I'd also like to add that Francis is writing an article on ancient music which should be uploaded to the site in the next couple of days.

I would, should be fun.

 

[Silverhill]

I personally think the area which you would need to cover for collecting such firewood would become very considerable over a period of time. I'd suggest that coppicing would probably be more viable in terms of firewood/cordwood production and would almost certainly provide returns within a few years on short rotation.

 

[THOaken]

Ahh so you in fact will be starting a farm? What do you plan to use as plough beasts? Oxen? Will you be forging and mining your own iron? I guess that will be viable for a year...although five years is probably a more viable trial!

Look, it must be said that there has to be some exceptions to the rules. We cannot live entirely like our Iron Age ancestors as soon as the project is functioning, let's be clear. I imagine that once I've gathered my team, we'll spend a year building the settlement and sorting everything out, and then we'll gradually become less dependent on things. Yes, very similar to the Living in the Past documentary. I want to model my project from this documentary and other projects like it. Again and again I must stress that years will have gone by before I'm reading to do this properly. I might not even be in contact with any of you on this forum by the time it happens. Who knows? I just know I don't want to rush any of this. I barely have any real life experience in the modern world, let alone the primitive and natural.

 

[THOaken]

I would, should be fun.

Good. I'd appreciate your involvement. It'd help generate traffic, too.

I'll start looking into a forum now.

 

[Llwyd]

Firewood requirements for cooking and heating our old house was 12 cords per year. -40c temperatures are common here. If a roundhouse were to be lived in year round here you would need someone on 24 hour fire watch and you may only get the temperature up a little above freezing inside.

 

[THOaken]

I personally think the area which you would need to cover for collecting such firewood would become very considerable over a period of time. I'd suggest that coppicing would probably be more viable in terms of firewood/cordwood production and would almost certainly provide returns within a few years on short rotation.

This reminds me that I need to start documenting each and every response I receive. Remember, I said I wanted to start the conceptual phase early because I wanted to generate discussion and learn early in the process. It's considerations like this that will be crucial to the project and so I must make note of every little detail, however trivial.

If we carry this discussion over to the Oakenwise.com forum, in time I'll have a database of collective knowledge I can use to aid our efforts in the project.

 

[rg598]

Can we deal with the industrial quantities of firewood allegedly required? Just re-reading Smoke in the Lanes by Dominic Reeve and he and his Gypsy companions seemed to live with a fire wherever they stopped with the wood being mostly sticks pulled from hedges and deadfalls from tresspassed woods. Doubt if he used an axe or a splitter in his life.

If living in a roundhouse then a stick fire will do all you want in terms of heating and cooking. English peasants rarely burnt roundwood but relied on brushwood faggots and sticks. Of course easily accessible wood will used up but I presume you are allowed to wander a bit afield and bear fardels home.

You will need an insane amount of brush wood in order to keep just from literally freezing during winter (assuming you stay right next to the fire). Trying to heat a room with brush wood would require a person to constantly tend to the fire, and then ten more people whose full time job is to gather brush wood. If you are just walking around is summer, then you don't need much wood as the fire is not all that necessary. I get the feeling many accounts are very non-specific about temperatures, wind conditions, etc.

You know, with all this going back to nature stuff and living off the land or primitively, we don't have to speculate or rely on books or guess work. We all have the means to ascertain with great certainty how well such a project will work. I'm sure that we all have vacation days. For anyone curious, take a week to ten days off sometime in February or March, take the tools you think you will need for fire, shelter making, hunting, etc, and go into your local woods. Go back home ten days later and record how things went. How much game were you able to hunt? How warm were you? How much wood did you find you needed? We can get fairly good data, certainly much better than extrapolating from a weekend trip we did in the summer, or from some book that some guy wrote about some other people.

 

[British Red]

I barely have any real life experience in the modern world, let alone the primitive and natural.

Nothing wrong with that - get out there and grab those experiences with both hands! Silverhill offered you a chance to do just that

 

[British Red]

Firewood requirements for cooking and heating our old house was 12 cords per year. -40c temperatures are common here. If a roundhouse were to be lived in year round here you would need someone on 24 hour fire watch and you may only get the temperature up a little above freezing inside.

Less than that in our 1700s cottage.....5 cords is ample - but we have a very efficient woodstove, small rooms and temperatures rarely below -10C

In these areas with an open fire you could at least triple that, with a roundhouse? 30 cords would still only keep you alive, not comofortable I suspect