If You Can't beat It, Eat It

                      

                      
If You Can't beat It, Eat it

Japanese Knotweed 
An invasive plant 
A pesky weed
A native species’ ultimate foe
It’s not enough to uproot this shoot
By tugging it to and fro

You’ll need
Herbicide
Pesticide
Rubber gloves and loppers
To waste away the underground rhizomes
That mysteriously beat the choppers

Cover your arms
Cover your legs
And cover your animals too
Cause while it’s fighting a battle underground
It’ll be poisoning you
Wash your clothes
Don’t touch your kids
And throw away your gloves
To protect yourself from these potent chemicals
That ultimately destroys the shrubs

You may pollute the waters
You may infect the ground
But at least your lawn will look beautiful
To everyone around

Or you could just eat it.

Scraping

The scraping continues. I’m about 1/3 of the way done. It is arduous, yet rewarding work. The hide is very thin and I accidentally scraped too hard and ended up poking a hole.  I am using a pizza wheel, that is bolted to keep its round blade in place. Traditionally a sharp stone would have been used, but my flint-napping skills are lacking.You can see the difference in color from the section I have worked to that which still needs to be manicured. The exposed material is soft and slightly oily to the touch.  It’s baffling that this traditional art came to be, given the highly sophisticated process.

 

Hide Tanning: Sunburned Skin

My hide has been racked and waiting for me to make a move for the past three months while I moved out of one house and into another and got settled. I went down to the garage last night and got the pizza wheel scraper that Slack fashioned for me. The flesh side was not surrendering to the blade so I flipped the rack over and started working on the hair side. Much to my surprise the skin was peeling off fairly easily like sunburned skin. I felt like blurting out, "that's a keepa" as I peeled away a 6" section which revealed soft, white, suede like material.

So to date the hide has been “fleshed”, “wet-scraped”, “de-haired” and “racked”. Once I finish “dry-scraping” the hair side, I will “egg-tan”, “stretch” and “smoke” the hide, but these steps will be discussed in detail as I perform them.