Birch Bark and What You Need

This module reconstructs North House Folk School’s three-day Birch Bark Field Pouch and two-day Lidded Woven Birch Bark Basket, both taught by Beth Homa Kraus, and the Finnish American Folk School’s Intro to Bias Woven Birch Bark Basketry with Karen Tembreull. The field pouch spends day one on birch ecology, sustainable harvesting, and processing bark, day two weaving “diagonally up and down the basket,” and day three on a leather flap and handle ¹. The lidded basket starts with a horizontal base, has students “split, snip, and grade raw bark,” and finishes about 6 by 4 by 4 inches ². The bias weave makes “four layers which are strong, useful, flexible and repairable” ³. The class plans aren’t published; this follows the sources cited.

Bark in the North

In Finland, Karelia, and Scandinavia, bark woven on the diagonal made salt bottles, backpacks, and shoes. A salt bottle from Repola in East Karelia, plaited from 2.2 cm strips with each side made from two strips, is 18 cm tall ⁴. A backpack (tuohikontti) at the Finnish Forest Museum is about 50 cm tall, of 3 cm strips in a diagonal double plain weave ⁵. In diagonal work the walls rise entirely from the base strips, all the same width ⁶.

Getting bark

Bark peels best from mid-June to early July; Minnesota Extension advises a small test cut at the base first. Take only the outer bark, usually 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick, never the inner bark beneath it, which is two to three times thicker ⁷. Norwegian practice takes bark in the four or five weeks around midsummer from trees 8 to 30 cm across, cutting without touching the inner bark ⁸.

Peeling a live tree harms it: the bulletin warns that up to 20 percent of trees peeled may die, and advises taking bark first from trees due to be cut ⁷. In Finland even a small wound usually leaves the trunk bare and brown ⁶. So look first for felled, storm-downed, or firewood trees. Dead and downed bark is more fragile but usable ⁷.

Press fresh sheets flat under weight or roll them, and store them white sides together ^{7 6}.

The rules in Wisconsin

• DNR land: no one may remove “any natural growth” from DNR properties except the listed items, such as edible fruits, nuts, and mushrooms; bark isn’t on the list ⁹. That covers state parks and forests.
• Private land: removing raw forest products without the owner’s consent carries a forfeiture of $100 to $10,000 ¹⁰. Get permission in writing.
• National forests and state land elsewhere: permits are required ⁷.

Tools

The classes need little: scissors and clothespins, with a sloyd knife, thimble, and pliers optional ¹; Tembreull asks for small toothless alligator clips, a pocket knife, scissors, and an old towel ³.

Try it

Ask a tree service or a neighbor with a firewood pile for a freshly cut birch log in late June. A log 6 inches across gives a sheet about three times as wide as the tree ⁷, enough for a small basket.