Green Willow Weaving With Nick Neddo- WildLife Series - Episode 0 

Glad you enjoyed it! Have fun weaving!

Glad you enjoyed it!

Thanks!

From our research people in New England at least used a lot of black ash, birch, and elm for different types and styles of baskets. The stake and strand style in this video is more of a European style.

pine needles, rushes, cedar bark out west

The Abenaki used pounded Ash to make baskets.

The Yurok in Oregon area used spruce roots. Just as styles may emerge peoples used their creativity to use what naturally available.

Thank you so much!

Best when the leaves are down!

I think a lot of people are making that choice. It is not without its own downsides, but now more than ever I am happy to be living close the land.

Thanks for watching! We did put in a lot to the film making, if you enjoyed there are some pretty cool episodes about our friend in St Croix.

i love basketry thanks for sharing your talents me too love to do it its my favorite...

Thanks for watching!

Awesome way to get a start!

We and Nick have never tried that before but once you know the basics of tension you can go way off the map!

I love you for doing all you do for that bunny. We honor the earth thru our actions. Righting the imbalance.

Vladdy The Greenhorn I agree! This is very professional, could be a program on tv or made into a feature film documentary

We do both. We are always looking for pots with willow and harvesting them so that they grow back like this and also often planting it.

Its one of the easiest to cultivate, just get some fresh cuttings and stick them in the ground where its a little damp. They love to grow and come with their own rooting hormone in each shoot.

More on the way!

Anything flexible, durable, and non toxic. Then each material lends itself to a certain kind of basket.

He just weaves it as tight as he can and knows that it will loosen a little. The baskets are still very strong and durable, they just have a little flex.

They could grow but the need to have wet feet to thrive. Thanks for watching.

Good call!

Glad you enjoyed it!

More to come! Thanks!

Thanks for watching! For me the first one I make is the worst one!

Thanks for watching!

Yes, that is how Nick does a lot of his basketry and has been starting to do living willow weaving.

@@ROOTSSchoolVT Awesome! Thanks for answering....Gorgeous baskets 😘

So true. It’s just like pets! Who’s really in charge. Lol.

Thanks for watching!

Not from Nick that I know of.

Sell what? I think he mainly uses his baskets or gives them to folks.

Thanks! Hope your both well!

Cutting the next one right now...

Thank you! Will do!

Its a theme for the show by our friend Reuben Blanchard. I am glad you like it!

Welcome!!

Although they can interbreed and are considered the same species, there are still useful variations within that species that effect the characteristics of color, length of the rods, growing attributes and more.

@@ROOTSSchoolVT I totally agree. Environmental conditions have a huge effect. If there was enough time it would be interesting to transplant a species to a HUGELY different location to see what happened.

Thanks so much!

Glad you enjoyed it

Наше удовольствие

There are some okay cherts in New England, Hudson Valley NY has normanskill, st albans has hathaway chert, there are quartz crystals and some workable quartzite... Also, ballast flint from the English merchants dumped near or at all of the major shipping harbours from Labrador to the Caribbean.

Ok thanks Roots School

Glass works VERY well for knapping! Try the bottom of beer bottles. RU-vid can show you how to do it!

Thank you very much!

Thanks for watching!

Yeah, he does mostly "green" willow weaving. There are upsides and downsides to doing it this way.

Weave it up!

@@ROOTSSchoolVT You are very good and fast! I am going to watch your videos a couple more times then I will have the confidence to do it. When is the best time to cut my branches? Can I do it now? Im in wa state.💜

Best time is when the leaves are down, but you can always give it a shot with smaller ones.

Thanks for watching!

Thanks a ton!

@@ROOTSSchoolVT Thank you for this free video!

I am not sure what this means but thanks for watching!

Glad it was helpful!

I get it. I am into history too. It certainly is from a colonial perspective, but unfortunately that is who we are descended from, and it's the perspective we get to share. The reality is that it is super complex navigating working and teaching these skills in the reality we find ourselves in. I appreciate your perspective though, this was our first attempt at creating something to try and share the skills with people without naked people and drama. I hope you got something out of it.

@@ROOTSSchoolVT Thanks for the reply. Try to consider indigenous space and efforts to decolonize permaculture and other aspects of our lives. It's too easy to just say, 'It is what it is" when we can recognize not just what we've taken from those whose land we call ours now, but what indigenous experience and craft has given us based upon their histories. Much of what we hold dear in terms of technique, style, design is owed directly to indigenous peoples that helped our ancestors, those first settlers who arrived. Taking ownership of 'primitive skills' needs to acknowledge from whom we learned this and where we tread now over their lands. Believe it or not, but discussions on settler colonialism (it's an ongoing system of oppression and not an event) and acts of decolonizing are important aspects of permaculture, especially when talking about traditional (not primitive) skills. ;)

Hey again. I hear you. We do our best to take those things into consideration, although I see it doesn't come through in this episode. You can see Matt engaging with it in the next episode, I am sure there is someone who will disagree with or find fault in it, although he does his best... We also engage with indigenous communities directly and hear their perspectives and educate ourselves with outside sources... By saying it is complex, I am not trying to say it is what it is, and should be ignored, just that it is complex knowing how to navigate what we find and how to share about it. Especially in the realm of the internet. There are a lot of ways to be misunderstood and offend people, and the range of indigenous opinions we have engaged with is wide. How much of that I feel able to communicate in a youtube comment is much less than what I feel like I can communicate person to person. It is a complex and nuanced topic though, as a lot of the skills we teach are ubiquitous to humans and not associated or solely practiced by North American indigenous peoples. The stake and stand basketry style that Nick is enamored with is most commonly associated with European peoples for example, although people have been making many types of willow baskets where ever it grew for as long as we can find records of it. Flint knapping is 3.5 million years old, and originated with pre homo sapiens in Africa, bows, pottery, cordage, hide tanning etc were certainly a part of European, Asian, African, North, South and Central American, Australian(not bows) tribal life, and on and on. We don't teach cultural traditions such as ceremony etc. at all. We dont teach skills that we know are specific to a community without express permission from someone in that community, although again, opinions in that community can be widely distributed. "Primitive skills" is a frustrating term in it of itself, we have tried to take it out of our literature as it is a relic from the community of teachers and practitioners we learned from. Primitive has negative connotations of being simple or backwards to some, but as we study them we find them to be nuanced and deeply complex in application. We try and go for other terms as much as that one keeps popping up. I understand that the oppression continues from the outside perspective I have as well as I can, I see it in the news, I read about it, I talk to my indigenous friends who are still dealing with racism and colonialist oppression right now in their communities. I appreciate your awareness of it and you mentioning it though, as there is a lot of work to be done here by us, as much as internet commentary is hard place for me to want to make it happen given its limitations. Sorry for the book!