We spend our time just off of Lopez Island in the Salish Sea. The tools and implements for fishing are illustrated in the local oral histories of this mystical body of water. The ancestors of these waters lived a marine culture here for thousands of years before us. We spend our fishing seasons following the patterns of fishing and crabbing then drying, canning, or freezing our catch to preserve it. Over the years we have learned how to respect nature and go with the flow by using tools that work with us, and not against us. Our lives on the water require a sharp knife for cutting rope or lines and an oyster shucker or a crab cracker to eat...
A skilled home or commercial butcher can make use of an entire animal. They may prepare cuts of meat and poultry with cooking, storing, and charcuterie in mind. Butchering requires skill, coordination, concentration, and the proper tools. Separating the edible parts of an animal from the rest without the two comminglings can only be done with a sharp, reliable, and perfectly balanced knife. Tools for cutting through bone and ligaments and not damaging edible meat make butchering possible. We have learned over the years what to do in the field and what comes home, which parts will be hung for months and sometimes years and what we will cook up that evening over a fire. A butcher understands that meat...
Hunting or raising livestock for food gets you one step closer to relying on natural resources to provide for our basic needs. We believe in being in touch with where our food comes from. We see deer all year through their life cycles, and we recognize that they are living breathing beings whose life is precious. We raise goats that help us clear the brambles that then go into the freezer at the end of the season. We raise pigs who eat all the leftovers. Our chickens provide eggs until they become stew or crab bait. When the season arrives, we are ready to take them humanely and traditionally. Many of the methods of killing an animal, bleeding it out,...
Living in Nature in a balanced state with the environment requires tools. Choosing to live in a way that a credit card and a shopping cart are the primary tools is unsustainable. Putting food on the table the old fashioned way means fishing, hunting, chopping, and cutting. With the proper tools, a free, independent, healthy, wild, empowered life in nature is possible.
A man once said he spent the first half of his life trying to move out of the backwoods and the next half trying to move as far back into the wild as he could. We have chosen a lifestyle with fewer conveniences, choices, and distractions from the basics. Living simply and intentionally allows us to connect with the environment. We take our role as stewards of God’s creation seriously and believe that a relationship to our food, and environment is necessary to live genuinely. Our handmade tools are there for our daily interactions with people, livestock, the sea, and the land.
