Many people these days spend there free time out in the countryside, be it hiking, kayaking, cycling or bushcraft, the trouble is how many of those guy's and girl's are actually prepared for what mother nature can throw at them?
Picture the scene, you're driving through the countryside a fair few mile's from civilisation and your car start's to misbehave, but you push on (because were all stupid) a couple of mile's further and the engine dies!
You have a quick look under the hood/bonnet but it's definitely something you can't fix at the road side, but hey it doesn't matter you just reach for your mobile/cell to arrange for a recovery truck, hmm no signal, but that's still OK because you saw a phone booth a couple of mile's back, so you reach into the car and grab your jacket, as it only about 10 - 12 degree's Celsius and it's looking very overcast, so you'll have to be quick or your going to get soaked!
So you start the couple of miles to the phone booth, a couple of mile's quickly turn's to four mile's and all the while it's getting colder, you contemplate turning back, but hey you've come this far!
You eventually find the phone booth, but your heart sinks as you realise it's been vandalised, you check your mobile/cell for the hundredth time, and yep you've guessed it still no signal, so you turn it of to save the batteries.
By now the weather has really closed in, it's damn cold, it's spitting with rain and the wind's picked up too, and to add to your woe's you've only got maybe got a hour or two of usable light left!
So decision time, make a bid to get back to the car, all the while getting ever more wet and cold, and running the risk of hyperthermia, or try and find some sort of shelter in the woodland either side of the road?
So you stop and think briefly, it's absolutly freezing, your starting to shiver quite badly, can you make it to the car, no if you did you would'nt survive the night in the car wet and chilled to the bone as you were.
So the wood's it is then, but what have you got to survive with apart from the clothes your stood up in?
There's the ferrocium rod on your key's, but even better than that, you've got your Victorinox Farmer!
Part 2
So you've got maybe an hour to rig some sort of shelter and get a fire to both warm you and dry your wet clothes, so you cast you eye looking for some low fallen tree to serve as the top off your shelter, and sure enough you spot a fallen wild cheery tree, and as you make your way to it you spot a some sort of fir tree, PERFECT!, but how to get the boughs?
You pull the Victorinox Farmer out of you pocket, and with numbing finger's, open the saw blade and cut the boughs to roughly the right size for your low profile lean too shelter, you marvel at the way the little 76mm saw blade just glides through the wood, and in short order you've got the side's to your shelter!
Next priority now the shelter's up is fire, your really starting to feel the effect's of the cold now so you've probably only got one shot at making a fire, so you'd better get it right first time!
But all the wood's wet, but you don't let that crush your dwindling spirit's, you've still got your Farmer!
So again you fold out the saw blade and find a couple of 50mm thick deadwood branches, and you cut halfway down the length of the wood till you meet roughly halfway through, you find a fallen tree and you smack the log's against the tree until, hey presto split wood with nice dry heart wood!
So out comes the Farmer again, and you pull out the main blade and you make some feather stick's, probably more than you need, but your starting to have problem's concentrating, and several time's you nearly cut yourself on the wickedly sharp blade, but thanks to the very good ergonomics of the Farmer you keep the blade under positive control the whole time.
OK so the feather sticks are made and you've got a nice wood pile collected, but you still need tinder but everythings wet! Fortunately your a daddy so you've got a little pack of tissue's in your jacket pocket! So you wrap a tissue around the saw blade all the while hunched over your feather sticks to keep them dry, and you fish around in your pocket's to find the ferro rod on your keyring, two swipes of the sharp spine of your saw blade and you've got FIRE!
So you have fire and shelter, and if your not exactly comfortable your happy and safe from the element's and ready to face tomorrow in good health and far better spirit's!
A Farmer in my opinion is the finest woodsman's knife out there, it is a true survival knife as it's small enough and light enough and in most place's legal to have on you at all time's, and it's by far and away the cheapest life insurance money can buy!
Can you afford to be with out one?