This year’s big work about the house was to build a woodshed as last winter saw us woefully unprepared. We had the wood but because there was nowhere to cut, chop and stack it, my sons and I had had to go out in literal blizzards to chainsaw metre-long logs, then chop them on an […]

I finally realized another of my life’s ambitions whilst on one of our evening walks outside the village. My wife and I spotted a small herd of Red deer hinds and fawns on one of the hillsides and they bolted into the forest. Thinking they’d picked up our scent we carried on walking. 20 minutes […]

On an extremely spontaneous impulse we decided to stay the weekend at the house for the first time since leaving it on New Year’s Day. It’s been a long, harsh winter this year and having a couple of days of heat and blue sky was too irresistible. Unfortunately, the interior of the house is still […]

It’s been quite a while since I last updated my blog, since well before Christmas in fact. It’s been a strange period with several ups and downs and much reflection. We stayed at the house in Eastern Slovakia over the Christmas and New Year period, which was both hard and amazing at the same time. […]

A few weeks back I got really sick of hearing people tell me that, because of global warming, we’d have a warm winter this year. The start of November was incredibly warm – I was doing our evening walks wearing a t-shirt. However, you could smell the oncoming cold in the air, and then it […]

Most of the following will undoubtedly be in the wrong order. This Autumn has been hectic to say the least and saw a big upheaval in our family when my eldest boy, Brano, went to Uni. I haven’t kept up with my blog because things keep changing daily – as did Autumn itself, transforming from […]

If it walks, crawls, flies or slithers then chances are I’ve got one somewhere on my property. The old log cabin (budka) at the end of my garden is home to quite a few bats. This one is roosting from one of the multiple wasp nests we have about the place. There’s an immense wasp […]

This evening I’m a happy man as I finally managed to photograph the annoyingly elusive black woodpecker (Dryocopus martius). These birds, along with the golden oriole I photographed earlier this year, have been tauting me for decades. Similarly, neither species of bird seems to sit still long enough  to be photographed. They’re crap photos I […]

Today I went to check on the house and got to drive through some pretty thick snow. Vlochka, my Discovery, really has her use sometimes. On the way home I spotted a Ural owl just sitting on a branch about twenty feet from the road. For once, the sky was vaguely blue and the bright […]

This issue features one of my true horror stories from the forest – White Out – plus my photo of wolf tracks in the snow is on the cover. Order yourself a copy or sign up for a subscription here – The Bushcraft Magazine. Bushcraft Magazine is suited for both beginners and experts and covers […]