It was a beautiful day! With scores of volunteers, vendors, staff, and exhibitors, the 2015 Families Learning Together (FLT) was a great fund raising event for Turtle Island Preserve (TIP). This year, nearby Samaritans Purse hosted the parking area where nearly 400 attendees were shuttled to the event.

Some of the activities included blacksmithing, buggy rides, chicken processing, fire by friction, knife sharpening, spoon carving, salt making, shingle riving, all of which comprised only a fraction of the educational classes offered.

As usual, I provided demonstrations of primitive and survival skills. Many of these demos centered around the use of available resources that can turn typical “trash” into survival tools. I turned a coffee can into a suspended cooking pot, a soda bottle cap into a whistle, a soda can into a hobo fishing rig, a broken headlight into a fire starter, a hacksaw blade into a flint & steel striker, and bottle bottoms into a cutting blade and an arrowhead. I also demonstrated the traditional bow & spindle fire by friction method and shadow-stick directional navigation.

Turtle Island Preserve is a great environment to experience heritage skills and self-sustainable living skills. You can learn more about TIP at their website and keep up with their activities on their FaceBook page.