It’s been snowy here for three weeks now and we’re making sure there is always a stock of seeds & nuts available for our local wildlife population. We know that it can be dangerous feeding wildlife too regularly – they become reliant on you and “forget” to find their own food supply, which is a problem if you move away/go away – but for the time being, while their food supply is under a chilly blanket, we’re helping out.

I bought a bird feeder a couple of year ago – a simple wood/metal grill thing – and it was fine in our old house. Here though, the squirrels gnawed the wood and ripped a whole in the metal on Day 1, so I clearly need to make something sturdier. (I don’t mind feeding the squirrels, especially at the moment, but would rather they didn’t break stuff.)

We’ve got some offcuts of wood – small flat pieces of pine, salvaged from a joiner – which I could yoink from the stove’s wood pile and use to make a little box/tray with a roof (probably a hanging one, rather than a table because of the cats). There is always the simple milk bottle option or juice bottles too. Coming at it from another angle, coconut shells or hard gourd skins can be used for homemade fat feeders, and those that plan ahead purposely grow sunflowers during the summer to feed their feather friends during the winter.

Speaking of the actual food, don’t just resort to shop-bought seed mixes – Mrs Green from My Zero Waste has pulled together a great list of waste foods that can help the local wildlife.

How else can you make bird feeders reusing and recycling random stuff?

And what do you feed the birds once you’ve got your feeder in place?

Our woodburning stove – one of the things we’d been obsessing about since we saw the house for the first time in March – was finally fitted last week and boy, it’s nice. It’s a small one – for heating a single room rather than the whole house – but we spend most of our evenings in that single room so it’s fine, in fact it’s better than wastefully heating the whole house (either with a bigger stove or with central heating, as we used to do). The stove is also certified for use in a smoke controlled zone – we got a certified one not to blindly follow the rules but because it means they burn more efficiently with less emissions.

John’s dad is one of those people who knows whenever a tree is being cut down within a 10 mile radius so we’ve already got a big stack of logs – some seasoned and ready to burn, others fresh cut so will have to left to dry. They’re currently stacked on an old pallet (to lift them off the ground) and covered in a tarp but with all the wind and rain we’ve been having lately, that doesn’t seem to be enough, and anyway it’s not exactly convenient where it is at the moment so we’re thinking we’ll build a better wood store nearer the house.

I’ve not had to build one before but I imagine there are two ways of doing it – a top opening trunk or more of a workbench, with a solid top and either doors or a flexible plastic cover to the open front.

For making the former, I’m think we’d probably be best off making a frame out of timber then covering the side/making the hinged lid out of any flat pieces of wood to hand (for example, John’s dad has some salvaged old fence panels to hand and also some old school table tops), while for the latter, I’d probably look out for an old kitchen counter top for the surface — it would make a nice potting bench too. Any other suggestions or advice?

What about repurposing existing items of furniture? I guess a standalone wardrobe would work or a dresser – although they’d have to be painted/treated to protect them from the elements. Any other ideas?

We’ve had an email from Ben, asking what he can do with some old chipboard/particleboard furniture:

The shelves have sagged in the middle so I doubt anyone else would want it.

Most people probably wouldn’t want a saggy bookshelf as a feature in their living room but don’t write it off just yet — it might be fine for shelving in a store room or a garage, particularly if a baton or two can be fitted underneath the warped shelves for extra strength. Offer it on Freecycle/Freegle, describing the condition and see if there are any takers.

Aside from that or if some of the shelves are too far gone, it could possibly be stripped for parts – the uprights could be used for shelves elsewhere – just make sure to use plenty of support so they aren’t as likely to sag.

At the end of its life as furniture/shelving, chipboard can be composted but as it’s held together with synthetic resin, often including formaldehyde, organic gardeners might want to avoid adding it to compost piles destined for veg plots.

For the same reason, chipboard shouldn’t be used on a woodburner or, topically, a bonfire – the formaldehyde and other chemicals used in its production can release toxic gases on burning.

Any other suggestions on things that could be done with old chipboard shelving or bigger pieces of the same? Any more pointers on things not to do with it?

(Picture by Rotor DB)

We’ve already covered cotton bobbins – they were one of the first things we featured on the site – but how about ones that are quite a bit bigger?

John threw this one-piece plastic reel at me the other day after he finished wiring up some speakers. I’ve also ones with a little metal (aluminium?) core and cardboard flanges (if that’s the right word, I mean the sticky out bits at the top and the bottom), and really giant ones made from wood.

So any suggestions?

We’ve had an email from Jo:

Work was clearing out a stockroom the other day and unearthed a giant box of 10000 toothpicks which must have been there for years. My boss was going to throw them away but I jumped in to save them. Please tell me there is something I can do with them!

Like used matchsticks, they’d be great to use as spacers while tiling or you could use them to make modern, spiky ornaments.

Any other suggestions?

(Update 9:13pm: apologies for the unexpected downtime we’ve had this afternoon – our hosting provider had a server crash.)