Desert Survival Soap: Yucca Root And Creosote -Junkyard Fox

hey what's up everyone James from junkyard Fox thank you so much for joining me and today we're gonna be talking about desert hygiene now if you've seen this plant in our past videos before plenty of times this is called a yucca plant this one in particularly its particulars called the soap tree yucca now you've seen us make food out of the flowers and the fruits they're a food source that can be baked or roasted you've seen us make cordage out of these spines right here and longtime viewers will know that we've also made soap from its roots now that was on a SOG a SOG folding shovel review now for those that weren't interested in looking at a folding shovel review they've you know this information might have gone past them so I wanted to come back and revisit it and elaborate on a little bit more guys especially now that it's summer it's 102 degrees out here so if you're gonna be out here in the desert for hiking or camping or you know living off-grid purposes for whatever case may be you're gonna need hygiene specially right now that you're sweating you know there's a lot more insects around so you know the the chances of bacteria spreading and diseases a lot more prevalent so we're gonna come back and elaborate on the roots on it how to make soap out of them and then we'll talk about another plant as well called a creosote so thank you for joining me let's get started [Music] okay guys so we're just gonna go for this little one you know of course whenever you uproot the plant you're gonna kill it so I'd rather just leave the larger ones alone the ones that are already fruiting out and I'm just gonna go for this little one and of course you can always use the other resources these little spines can make some via some cordage as well so I'm just gonna cheat a little bit and use my shovel and take off that roof [Music] there yeah tough plant very fibrous but this is what we're after the root it doesn't look very special now but once you rinse it off you'll see that it's very bright white underneath and you can already feel the moisture so we're just going to take this and break it down so we can use that [Music] [Music] okay guys so this is the yucca root now what we're gonna do now is scrape off all this hard outer bark to get to the soft white innards and the innards have a chemical called SAP intense and that's what the negatives in this region we're using to wash themselves as shampoo to wash their clothing so we're gonna get to it we just moved to a shadier area because once again it's 102 degrees out here and man we are just blistering out here so let's get to it let's get our knife and scrape that off the outer bark is pretty tough and it's trying to protect itself not only that but it's trying to preserve as much moisture as it can because it gets so dry out here [Music] and we're not gonna use this entire route I think we're just gonna probably just use this segment right here I'll solve the rest off just to save for a future reference and just for the sake of this video we'll talk about you know we'll demonstrate on this side right here alright guys well this is good enough as you can see it's white on the inside now we're just gonna start pounding this down to just get those habitants out of there so from here we're just gonna start beating this up now you could just as long as you have this white stuff you're gonna be fine so you could just cut off a chunk like this mix it with some water and you'll start seeing some suds but you know if you want to be a little bit more efficient with it get your money's worth start pounding it it is pretty hard it's pretty fibrous [Music] I don't if you can catch that but you can already start seeing some suds there so I mean even if you don't have water available for you right now there's no water source nearby you could just use this as is it's not gonna be as effective like like regular soap it's not going to be as effective as when you actually mix it with water but in a pinch it'll do [Music] [Music] [Music] check that out alright so now this will do just fine now in case you have more time on your hands you're gonna be here a lot longer you can actually just pulverize this down to a powder we're not gonna do that but just so you can see it working now if you have a water source so I'm not gonna use all my water of course I need that to stay cool out here you can mix this can check that out so there you have it guys the yucca root and you know how I was how I was saying earlier to pound it down to just release a lot more of the chemical the SAP in in check this out you just squeeze it and it's just coming out so I can reuse this several times so I could use it now I could just let it dry out and then use it later or as I said you could just pound this down into a powder and then use it as that way as well but really good stuff really clean smells good and I'm gonna get some of this dust and some of the sweat off that feels good [Music] let clean my knife as well - so there you go yucca root soap [Music] [Music] okay guys so let's talk about another plant out here and this is a very abundant plant called creosote this one right here and it is just absolutely everywhere I mean it not just here in front of me there's actually a larger one behind me and smaller ones over here and they're everywhere now this plant there's a lot of confusion there's a lot of folklore that gets confused throughout time now a lot of the native tribes use this for as a cure-all from everything from tuberculosis to venereal diseases to Maine's menstrual cramps unfortunately we don't have a lot of modern-day scientific data to back it up ah on exactly how it works we do know for a fact that it does have some antimicrobial properties to it but some people have actually gotten sick from ingesting this so modern people trying to look for some kind of cure all have tried this ingesting it as tea and stuff like that and they've actually ended up with kidney or liver damage in small amounts I don't think it hurts I have tried it in my younger foolish years experimenting as a tea it tastes absolutely atrocious like chemical so my best suggestion now is do not ingest it but you can use it on the outside you know as a scrub because once again we do know that there is some antimicrobial properties also this plant is famous because it smells beautiful when it rains there's a certain desert rain smell that people you know it's pervasive out here in the in the American Southwest and they think it's the dirt you know the water mixing with the dirt it's actually not it's the waxes from this plant then it has waxes to try to preserve its moisture so it's not losing it in the daytime heat but those waxes mixed with water and it makes a very strong pungent smell that is just absolutely beautiful a lot of people love that smell so what we're gonna do is once again we're just gonna use it as a scrub mix it with water and it smells very good so let's get a piece we don't need a large piece let's get this one right here there we go let's go ahead and mix it with some water okay so we're back over here I already went ahead and rinsed out that water threw it out dried it out from the yucca root now we're gonna mix it get some more water not not too much it doesn't need a lot and then we're gonna get this and throw it in here now reason why I say that it's it makes a great little scrub to scrub yourself like this is not only does it smell good and can help you you know get clean but also this is one of the very few plants out here in the desert that doesn't have some kind of thorn or spine you know out to get you so it's not the softest of plants I will not lie to you but at the same time it's not exactly uncomfortable either it's not gonna hurt you you're not gonna get cut from it so really good plant and though it doesn't have a strong suds as the other one as the yucca root sometimes if you notice you'll see a couple of suds in there as well so another good little plant in fact I would use them you know in combination I would get some of the yucca root put it in there and then I would use this as a scrub in case you don't have a towel or a bandana but it works very well this plant is just so so abundant out here in the American Southwest the Spanish called it Laguna Dora which is the governess because it just goes everywhere and it actually impedes the growth of other plants through its root system so it's a little greedy for water like that and once again it gives this very beautiful desert rain smell in fact I have a little bit of a confession guys I don't have a sense of smell so I'm completely noseblind I don't know whether it's faulty genetics or some kind of childhood injury I long forgot about so I cannot smell anything at all so I've been trying to work on this video for a long time but I needed a lot of volunteers and you know what do you think about that how do you smell that you know and through that through those experiments I've come to realize that ladies love this smell I mean it is just a crowd pleaser with the girls so they love the smell of desert rain and I actually started taking this home now and I'll actually like wet wet it a little bit and have it in my house so it starts giving this pleasant smell I'll do it in my truck I even have this in the tub my bathtub at home so I'll just give it a little after rinse when I'm done showering so big fan of this plant a second use for this plant guys is it's a natural repellent for insects I don't know if you noticed earlier there's just bugs all around us guys but bugs hate it this is the wax that these believes are coated in when you burn it it just makes this oily greasy fire and they just they cannot stand it in fact it's also known as grease wood because of that so just to demonstrate let's light that up let's to put this baby right here check that out well guys that's about the conclusion of this video we're about to run out of sunlight so I'm just gonna make this brief I really wanted to come back and talk about the yucca root once again we talked about it about two years ago in that SOG folding shovel review but a lot of people that weren't interested in watching a review of a shovel it kind of went past them so I wanted to just come back and elaborate it a little bit more there's a couple of videos also with about Bob Hazzard talking about it and his daughter Bree outdoors as well so in case you still have any questions check them out as well and then I wanted to talk about the creosote plant because I absolutely adore this plant it's actually used almost daily for me I want to do I still want to talk about a lot more of desert hygiene guys because hygiene is extremely important and something that's extremely overlooked it's easy for us to get excited about you know knives and hunting and stuff like that making fire but hygiene is extremely important you're more likely to die from some bacteria or some disease than you are from like a rattlesnake out here realistically so I'm still gonna try to talk about this more as I go you know once again I can't smell so it takes me a little longer to do that research but if you like this video go ahead and give us a thumbs up comment below if you have any questions and I'll see you guys next week with another video now go outside and get your boots dirty [Music] [Music]

Channel: Junkyard Fox

Views: 36,712

Rating: 4.9576817 out of 5

Keywords: Bushcraft, Survival, Self, Reliance, James, Harris, Yucca root, Yucca root soap, creosote, greasewood, hygiene, survival soap, soap, shampoo, survival, bushcraft, el paso, texas, prepping, soaptree yucca, yucca elata, larrea tridentata, Desert Survival: Cactus Water Container, Desert Survival Food: Watercress, Desert Survival Food: Prickly Pear Cactus (Nopales)

Id: P8QU8-_3uIM

Length: 14min 9sec (849 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 13 2018