Today is Throwback Thursday where we take a look at primitive skills or materials each week.
I cannot begin to tell you enough how important cattails are to any outdoorsman. I often refer to them as “Nature’s little Big Box store”, simply because you can make tools from them, eat them, use them for camo and much more. In this video, I wanted to point out for you how useful they can be for making mats for bedding, or working, and even for walls of primitive structures.
We had a NRS community member who was asking about harvesting them. He had seen a number of baskets that had been made using cattails and wanted to know where he could harvest them this time of year. A simple mistake that is often made if you are new to using them. When you see the finished products on line you are seeing it after it has been completed for some time after they have dried. If you go and harvest the leaves now, you will find yourself with only brittle materials.
Wait a couple of more months if not longer until you see a bunch of green leaves. It is those green leaves that you will want to harvest. That is why we are putting this out there now. You need to be scoping out a place now that you can get some.
We had more fun than needed when we made this video..my wonderful and beautiful videographer (my wife) was giving me a hard time as we started this stay..some of that made it to the video
This video is associated with a blog piece with more and varied information that you can access here: Please consider subscribing to our youtube channel for quick updates. If you are interested in online and offline (hands on workshops) classes then checkout: http://www.naturereliance.org/
