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Why The Green Lever? Leaving Town for a simpler, better life in the Country.

“Give me a lever long enough…and I will move the World” was Archimedes’ claim. He was writing of mechanics but in this blog I will be pursuing the reality of moving or changing two worlds, our own individual milieu and by knock-on effect, that of the Planet. Perhaps the thing people fear the most is change but we have arrived at a point of mass consumerism that makes change inevitable and so we either take control now and direct it, or just let it happen and become a victim. Green Lever is also a play on words because it explains what we did with our own lives. Simply put, we left and became more green. Yes, we were low consumers of the Earth’s resources and we were eating organic food but we never felt we were doing enough to help the Planet. Green Lever too because it was a new adventure and we didn’t quite know how well it would work out.

Going backwards to go forwards and not being ground down

The overall effect of  taking control of your consumption of resources such as energy water and food and then going even further and starting to provide them for yourself, is to free yourself from the consequences of inevitable incremental or catastrophic collapse. That was our thinking. Some friends and relatives put it another way, they believed we were mad, leaving jobs, wasting the years we spent in education to go playing peasants in a derelict 18th Century longère in a country, where only one of us spoke the language.

Over the past ten years, living in a rural backwater with a 1000 m² of garden we have had both opportunity and time to experiment with reducing our consumption. Concurrently we have expanded our knowledge of and practical skills in, smallholding, growing and storing food, alternative medicines, animal husbandry and ecological building materials and techniques. I have used my knowledge of engineering in a practical way and have gained another language. In fact neither of us have ever used our education and skills to such an extent as in these past few years.

Living off the Land – Waste not want not

The best 1000 Euros we ever spent!

The amazing paradox of present-day society is, that without the legacy of decades of mass consumption, we recyclers, upcyclers and back-to-the-land homesteaders  would not have the basic materials with which we work. Wherever you live you will have access to resources, these may be local, natural building materials such as earth, clay, stone and straw or man-made detritus such as tyres, pallets, discarded windows and doors. When thinking about energy, you should look at the best use of available resources. We chose to heat with wood originally because there was plenty of wood available. Over the years we stopped buying wood, firstly because we didn’t like killing trees and secondly because we found a major source of free wood, which was either being burned in bonfires or going into landfill. Over these next weeks I want to visit and film some of my friends homes where they have chosen different forms of energy production, these will include, heat exchangers, solar, wind, vegetable oil generators, geothermal and woodchip.

However, let’s start with just one of  them. We heat our home and water with it, cook with it and use it to build a myriad of things for our home and garden.

The Ubiquitous Pallet 



A film showing how to dismantle a pallet to maximize the recuperation of usable construction wood. Including the tools you will need and three separate pallet 'scenarios'.  

Thanks for dropping by and feel free to share this article, comment, ask questions and relate your own experiences. Hope to see you next time.



Cheers, Andy



© Andy Colley 2014

RETURN TO GREEN LEVER CONTENTS PAGE FOR MORE ARTICLES 

Moving off the Grid Part One - Choosing and Using Woodburning Cookers

This will be an on-going series to explore how and why people choose their source of energy.

Why we chose wood

Simple primitive living, when we started our new life in France

Christmas 1999 with our plum pudding cooking on the Godin.

Winter is rapidly approaching and inevitably folks are thinking about heating their homes. When we first arrived here the Spartan heating was a massive granite fireplace, the chimney of which, 1.70m by 0.70m, was blanked off  and a crudely made open-fronted firebox. This had a swan's nest grate sitting in the centre of the hearth, with its flue passing through a hole in the blanking-off plate. There was plenty of wood-fuel left by the previous owner in the outbuildings, so for the first few visits here, this crude open fire became our sole  source of heating and cooking. After all, you can’t carry kitchen appliances on a motorbike. 

When we began to live here permanently and renovate our house, we bought  an insert, a made-for-store Godin from a DIY Superstore and fitted it into the fireplace using blocks, which we then covered with decorative tiling. This looked like a Swedish ceramic stove but the output fuel-to-heat was poor and we were still reluctantly using an electric hot plate and mini cooker. After having returned the malfunctioning hotplate to the store for the 9th time, we decided enough was enough. We therefore, began to research woodburning cookers as a possible heat and cooking source. By now we had fully insulated the bare stone of our kitchen with hemp and lime and were not really wanting to break through this to install water pipes, so we went for a cooker without the advantage of a wraparound boiler. We also wanted something with glass windows so we could check on the cooking and ;have the cheering effect of the flames. Firewood is plentiful here, although year by year the price rises significantly. However, we are neither of us happy with burning magnificent oaks and beeches and we realised we could easily collect a supply of pallet wood to keep us going throughout the year. To this end our heating bill for the past three years has been zero.

Using the top of the cooker to heat water, combining this with a solar shower bag in summer and the creation of our own bicycle-powered washing machine, means we are now consuming 85 kWh of electricity every month at a cost of around 7 Euros. We have therefore, reached the point where we should quit the Grid but our house is on the market and unfortunately this has to be a consideration.

So what does our wood burning cooker do for us?

Heats all our hot water,

Cooks all our food

Dries fruit, flowers, vegetables and herbs

Dries clothes

Heats an iron

What electrical appliances did we get rid of?

Hot plate

Mini oven

Toaster

Kettle

Bathroom heater

200 litre immersion heater

hair dryer

iron

Our woodburner is not recommended by the manufacturer as a pallet-burner but some makers do promote this viz., Esse. The only problem we have found is that the flueways within the cooker need clearing of soot twice a year instead of annually when the chimney liner is swept. We also now have the little Godin stove (seen in the above photo) in our sitting room and this also heats the bedroom above it.

How to chose a Wood-burner

Our woodburning cooker with the now rarely-used insert.

We chose a Lincar, which was made by a company which had started up in business as a manufacturer of wood-burning cookers and then gone into the manufacture of wood-stoves. Most firms we looked at had started with stoves and then gone into wood-cookers, we also found that often they did not manufacture the cookers they sold. It is very important to check the labels on the back of wood-cookers so as to ascertain who makes them and where. This way you can check the full specs, designs and prices at source. The firm, we chose had an extra commendation for us, in that it also made cookers for the Catering Industry. We bought it over the internet, which was worrying, as we had no prior experience in this. It was also impossible to find a showroom nearer than the Italian border where we could actually see the cooker. Another problem was, that in 2008, when we bought the cooker there were very limited reviews of wood-cookers on the internet. However, the company we bought ours through was a small family concern and the person we dealt with had excellent technical knowledge and we had managed to build up quite a rapport with her before we finally bought it. She was also able to provide good quality stove piping direct from the factory and free delivery of the cooker from Italy to France. Hey, we even got a free oven mitt!

Combined with buying our wood-stove the most important thing we did was to fully insulate the house. How we did this with ecological materials is the next chapter of this blog. I will also be writing a piece on how we sourced and made our bicycle washing machine.

What happens in Summer?

 In the hotter months we still use the wood-cooker but only at meal times. Having espoused a French way of life we have a main cooked meal at lunch-time and a cooked meal in the evening, we also have a cooked breakfast. To provide hot water throughout the day I constructed a pallet wood hay box which keeps the water hot for the hours between lighting the cooker. To heat up a kettle we also use a home-made rocket stove. I found the information how to make one of these on Youtube but I have since found that the wood-gas burner, which you can make from similar recycled materials is more efficient but I have yet to make one and verify this.



This image shows our hay box in construction, I completed it with a pallet wood finish to hold in the hay and an insulated lid. Within the box water will keep hot for 4 hours and stay warm for up to 8 hours. This box can also be found as a Victorian cooking technique in Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management published in 1875. 

Below are two of our more recent designs for a hay box. The first, a simple cheap and cheerful cardboard one (pictured below) and the second a more sophisticated pallet wood one. There is also a film of our trip to the beach in Winter, where we test both designs!

Factors to consider before you decide what energy requirements you need;

1. Be brutal. Start by cutting consumption, this is easier than creating energy.



2. What are your strengths. i.e., what energy sources are plentiful?



3. What are your needs – heating, cooking, hot water, drying, lighting ……

4. Budget and capital expenditure, including maintenance costs.

5. Personal strengths/skills

Wood is cheaper in large volumes but these will need sawing, carrying and storing. Solar, wind, geothermal and wood are cheaper if you can install your own systems.

6. Continuing education

Ask around, look what other people are installing, also visit Fairs and Salons/Exhibitions on Organic and Alternative Living. There are now more opportunities than ever for residential and day courses on alternative energy

A taste of something better - Guichen (Brittany) Salon Bio 2011 - Organic and Green Living Fair. These types of fairs are held yearly all over Europe.

All the best and thanks for dropping by. If you enjoyed this article feel free to share it, comment and/or ask questions.

Cheers, Andy

© Andy Colley 2014

RETURN TO GREEN LEVER CONTENTS PAGE FOR MORE ARTICLES 

Moving off the Grid - Part Two - Heat Pumps

This will be part of an on-going series  on how and why people choose their source of energy.

Heat Pumps

Heat pumps move ‘heat’ from one point to another. Refrigerators are the most common example of a heat pump system. In our context we are looking at a system that takes heat  energy from a lower temperature body and by mechanical means extracts the heat energy which is then released at a higher temperature. The power  necessary to  enable this is usually electrical and one would normally expect to use 1kW of electrical power to produce 3kW of heat energy. Mostly the source for the heat pump is either the ground or the air but if available in sufficient quantity, water.

  

Practical and beautiful - one of the two lakes on the property.

 The Lady of the Lake – 35 years of heat pumps

Some necessary maintenance - cleaning the exchanger.

Anne-Marie and Jean-Louis have always used heat pumps as their principal source of energy. Their first system was installed when they lived in a riverside property, where they had the right of use not only of the section of river which fronted their property but also an ancient lavoir (communal laundry). This latter gave them ample place in which to accommodate the exchanger. Thirty-five years ago this type of system was so new here in France that the technician who installed the pump didn’t actually have either the belief in, nor knowledge of, the system, just the technical competence to do the work. Anne-Marie and Jean-Louis were so pleased with the system that when they moved, some twenty years ago, to their present home they decided to go with the system again, this time with Jean-Louis building the exchanger himself. Their present system was built from scratch, as they had managed to find a beautiful piece of land with two lakes and a small dwelling, thus giving them scope to build their new home around its heating system. This is perhaps one of the drawbacks with this form of heating in that it is best installed in a newbuild as it requires pipes to be laid within the flooring. However, it is possible to retrofit the system, if one can break through the flooring or use a system of wall-mounted radiators. For Anne-Marie and Jean-Louis, who mostly worked from or at home it has been the perfect solution. The house is kept at a constant  ambient 19°C, except in the bathrooms where additional piping adds to the heating capacity and give a temperature of 23°C.

The constant temperature allows Anne-Marie to grow a whole range of orchids and succulents. A great and avid gardener she uses the heating system to its full advantage when growing some of the many difficult members of these plant families.

This brings us to another consideration with heat pumps, in that they require volumetric calculations for the designs and costings of the whole installation. This could add to the costs of start up, in that you may need to engage a professional to undertake such a study. However, some of the companies selling and installing heat pumps also include a feasibility study within the package – it pays to shop around. All in all this sort of system requires a physical mass, whether a body of water or area of land in which to install the exchanger and a significant initial outlay in time, money and possibly inconvenience for start-up. Anne-Marie and Jean-Louis found and then preserved a beautiful natural environment, which is home to a wide variety of rare and beautiful wildlife. The little grebe, frogs and moorhen paddle about the water lily pads oblivious to the system beneath.

It is also to be considered that the system they have heats a very large volume of living space. Anne-Marie’s original intent was to run a Bed and Breakfast, so their heat pump actually provides a constant 19°C and 23°C in six bedrooms and bathrooms respectively, as the system was also installed in the floorspaces on the upper floors. According to Jean-Louis many people opt for a system which heats just the lower floor and uses radiators above.

The Layout

The lake is some 50m from the house, the feed and return pipes to the exchanger were buried in a trench. Jean-Louis made the 3m x 1m exchanger himself, the tubes arranged in two layers to give a total exchanger area of 6m².



From left to right;-  150l hot water tank, heat pump for heating and hot water and heat pump for heating only.

 











There are two heat pumps in their system the first solely for heating the second for heating and hot water. Recirculating pumps deliver the anti-freeze laden water from the heat exchanger in the lake to the heat pump where some of its heat energy is absorbed prior to returning to the exchanger. The heat from the heat pump is then used to warm the water in the hot water tank, the system from then on being similar to any conventional wet  central heating system. Central heating pumps move the heated water around the matrix of underfloor pipes throughout the house. In the bathrooms the pipes are laid closer together to provide the elevated temperatures required (9cm apart as opposed to 14cm for the rest of the house). The floors act as massive heat sinks, if there is no heating supplied to the system for a 24 hr period, the temperature of the floor drops by only 1°C. The heat pump system is programmed to only run from midnight to 7a.m. thus taking advantage of the lower rate tariff. The financial implication of this is that their total energy bill for this whole house (floor area of 200m²) amounts to 1 350 Euros per annum.

The circulation pumps supplying the water from the exchanger in the lake. A well spaced out system like this is essential for ease of access in case of maintenance.

 

Upstairs feed manifold supplies heating water to the bedrooms and bathrooms. A similar arrangement exists for the ground floor.

Advantages

Reliable heating system furnishing comfortable temperatures throughout a large house.

Low maintenance costs.

No fuel storage necessary.

High level of reliability – few moving parts, no exposure to weather.

Long life expectancy

No pollution provided the integrity of the source loop (heat exchanger in lake) is not compromised.

Disadvantages

Initial capital costs high.

Underfloor installation work is messy in a retro-fit operation.

Electricity supply needed to make system work. Hence you have to have a backup source if there is a possibility of outages and you are still on the grid.

For example, in 1999 the hurricane we had here took down pylons with a resulting 7 day power outage.

Any leak in the heat exchanger will lead to system failure but also to contamination of the water source or land, although use of ecological anti-freeze reduces risk.

Repairs to heat pump requires specialist know-how.

Care has to be taken to ensure no corrosion to pipes and fittings arises from the water in the heating side of  the system.  Jean-Louis has had to change the fittings in the hot water feed manifold to stainless steel due to the acidity of the potable water. He also cites chemical attack from the concrete has caused further deterioration in some fittings.

Jean-Louis and Anne-Marie are so sure that this system is the right one for them that having put their house on the market they have already chosen their new house with a heat pump system as the prime consideration.



 

A heating system which takes full advantage of the landscape  but which has no visible presence within it.    



All the best and thanks for dropping by. Please feel free to share this article, comment and/or ask questions.



Cheers, Andy



© Andy Colley 2014

RETURN TO GREEN LEVER CONTENTS PAGE FOR MORE ARTICLES 

 

       

A Few Guidelines for Collecting Pallets

After reading some of the comments on my videos and Flickr, I thought it might be helpful if I shared my five rules to make it easier for you to obtain the basic materials for these or any other projects you may have in hand.

Five Simple Rules

  

My first big pallet project was also a gift - a Birthday Present!

Firstly, and most importantly, I only ever take pallets which are of untreated wood - any signs of discolouration due to paint or chemical treatment render them unsuitable.



Secondly, I always ask if I may have the pallets - this obviously is when the pallet is on the premises of an enterprise or site.



Thirdly, if you do take pallets from a site - leave the area better than you found it. Apart from being courteous, you may want to come back for more and should leave the impression that recyclers  ought to be welcomed. More often than not, after your first couple of visits, the proprietor or foreman will tell you to take the pallets without needing to ask. In my experience, from then on the company will often start saving and putting out pallets specifically for you.



Fourthly, safety - wear thick gloves, as pallet wood is sawn and splinters are a pain. Often pallets are discarded because they are broken (by mishandling with forktruck forks or rough handling) this may expose nail points and sharp pieces of broken timber to unprotected pinkies. Also watch out for mis-nailed pieces, where the staples or nails have not been driven straight into the wood and the points stick out from the pallet sides. Building and construction sites are often great for heavy duty untreated pallet wood, it may be well worth investing a couple of euros/dollars/pounds etc., to get yourself equipped with a hard hat, often required for access to a site.



Fifthly, transport - it goes without saying that to bring your booty home ensure that your pallets are properly loaded into or onto your car or trailer and that the properly secured load can not affect you or other road users.

Recycled window and pallet wood window box.

Remember, you are often doing these businesses a favour in taking away rubbish from their forecourt or carparks. Many realise this is so and welcome your visit. With the recuperated windows and doors used in our house and in the construction of the large Greenhouse, the source was a joinery firm - now specialising in replacement double glazing. The Enlightened Proprietor welcomed us with opened arms, as people willing to give a second life to perfectly sound single and double glazed units, which would otherwise have been burned!

Our Poultry are obsessed with DIY and FOOD!

Here is an example of a reasonably easy but professional looking project for reusing pallet wood.

There are also further details on this design and more information within this blog: http://thegreenlever.blogspot.fr/2011/11/is-for-apple-house-diy-green-gifts.html



All the best and thanks for dropping by.



Cheers, Andy



© Andy Colley 2014

RETURN TO GREEN LEVER CONTENTS PAGE FOR MORE ARTICLES 

Where & How to Collect Pallets - Identifying untreated wood, safety and good housekeeping

Pallets - The Low-down - Where, What and How?

So you've been round to your local big chain supermarket and they've told you all their pallets are reused. Well this maybe true for them but not for all pallets. In Europe consigned/reusable pallets are painted a specific colour, which designates the company who owns them. Funnily enough sometimes bits of these blue and red pallets actually turn up on building sites in scrap wood but they are the least useful of all the pallets and I would never use them. What you are looking for are the unpainted untreated pallets.

The pallet shown above is a very unusual one in that it is an 'in-house' pallet made of untreated wood for the specific purpose of transporting a display stand for an exhibition. It was put out for me after use.

BE PREPARED Any time we are out in our car I carry what I call my pallet finder's kit:

ropes



quality work gloves

 

wrecking bar

wood saw



steel toe capped work boots



a hard hat (for entering building sites)



and a red flag!

That way I'm ready for a maximum pallet haul!

For a specific job you may also require thicker or longer timber so you should have a whole range of pallet providers in your recuperating itinerary. Pallet collecting is logical. Firms which transport/manufacture/sell large and heavy items have substantial pallets. So a few of the companies I collect from, for example, are swimming pool manufacturers, exhibition stand makers and a double glazing and joinery firm. All these are small family type businesses. I know the people who own them and/or the foreman. I didn't start out knowing them I just saw the pallets and went in and asked.

The upright from a plant transporter pallet.

Using five of these uprights I created the sides of the greenhouse frame below.

This is one of my first major pallet wood projects and you can find the link to the written article and film: The Five Euro Greenhouse, which shows the detailed construction at end of this post.



After I had made the above greenhouse, I then went on to design and make another but this time combining recuperated glass windows with the pallet wood frame, again there is a link at the end of this post.

Let Companies Know What You Are Doing With Their Pallets

I always make a point of telling the providers why I want the pallets and I ask for their e-mail addresses to send pictures of the finished item. I also give out  links to my youtube site so they can see the films. That way my pallet donors get feedback on the transformation of an eyesore and nuisance which was hanging around their parking lot. There is another side to this too, many of these businesses are only too glad to find I am recycling this resource. As intelligent, thinking people, they are only too aware that their waste is ending up in landfill and/or is being burnt in open fields and they are, to say the least, not very comfortable with this idea. So in repurposing and reusing pallets you are, helping yourself, helping others and helping in the long-term to conserve the planet. Often company personnel will see you entering their premises and bring out pallets fresh from the warehouse, on rainy days this can be very welcome!

Cracking the pallet codes

Understanding pallet 'seals' is an important factor and something you need to mug-up on before you set out on your first collecting trip. There are many sites including Wikipedia, which will explain these but I'm posting this here to give you an example of what you are looking for.

This 'seal' will be located on one of the pallet blocks:

The 'wheat stamp' denotes IPPC compliance, confirming the pallet to be made of de-barked wood. Useful if you were unsure whether the wood was real!

DK -  the country code i.e. in this case Denmark.

8C - the pallet manufacturer.



S5 - the treatment company.



HT - Heat Treated = Gravy!

All wooden crates and pallets in 74 countries of the world have an International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) seal on them. These denote several things but the most important are the bottom two letters - you are looking for pallets with no chemical treatment. In the US fumigation with methyl bromide, coded MB, is more common than in Europe, where heat treatment (HT) is the norm. However, treated pallets do occur in Europe even though you will find several sites informing you they don't! In the case of chemical treatment you will also see the resultant discolouration. Many garden centre suppliers, for example, dip items or conveyor spray them and their carrier pallets simultaneously and you will see immediate evidence of this in the blue-green 'dye' infusing the whole pallet.

Here's something we haven't seen before on pallets but is very welcome. It's the eco label for managed and sustainable forestry. Read all about it here: http://www.sacert.org/woodmark/pefc

Happy Hunting!



All the best and thanks for dropping by and if you enjoyed this post, please feel free to share, ask questions or comment.

Cheers, Andy



© Andy Colley 2014

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RETURN TO GREEN LEVER CONTENTS PAGE FOR MORE ARTICLES 

 

Home-made Wild Bird Feeder from Repurposed Materials - A is for Apple House

Our handsome Polish crested cockerel Ruffles showing far too much interest in this easy to make pallet wood food dispenser, for use with fruit or fat balls.



This is something to make for your own garden but also we have made and given away many as presents. They make ideal gifts to take round to a house warming or Birthday party. We also have on this blog the 'how-tos' for various design bird boxes and an insect hotel all of which have film follow-ups. Many of our projects take less than an hour to assemble, even including the preparation. They also use a minimum of tools and purchased extras and they have scope for personalised, individual decoration and imagination. If you are really inventive you could even recuperate all your nails and tacks and take the price of your presents down to zero. The wood used in all the projects is untreated pallet wood so if you follow these links you will be able to pick up two articles with information on finding and using pallets:

http://thegreenlever.blogspot.com/2011/11/how-to-collect-pallets.html

and http://thegreenlever.blogspot.com/2011/11/few-guidelines-for-collecting-pallets.html





An Aid to Orchard management

We first came across the idea for an apple house in a garden centre in Holland it consisted of a piece of wood with the outline of an apple cut out of it. There was a wire to hold the fruit in place and a couple of strips on top to make a protective roof and give it the appearance of a house.

Apple picking with the Quality Control Inspectorate

Let them eat grapes. Omnivores also means fruitivores

We liked the idea for an apple house for our garden because we have a lot of apple trees and windfalls but the wild birds don't really get a look in with all the competition. I also think that wild birds feel more vulnerable eating on the ground, so the Apple House provides them with a safer and more natural position in which to enjoy the fruit.



















Testing, testing, one, two three and four!

















There is another more practical consideration for us as well and why this will be a much appreciated gift for anyone who has late apples, such as Jonagold. These fruit start to ripen  as the garden is beginning to prepare for Winter and the wild birds start to feel the urgency to store up some extra vitamins and minerals. So as Autumn begins to bite, so do they and finding the fruit not quite ripe, they move on, hopping and hoping for the next and the next apple to be ready.

Some thoughts about tools

The Apple House as designed for our video uses a minimum of simple hand tools and this bird feeder can with help and supervision easily be made part of a holiday project to get children interested in self-sufficiency and recycling.  Furthermore it can also be used as a way of introducing children to the practical use of hand tools, something which could be of immeasurable use in the not too distant future. As for financial concerns,  buying  power tools has never been cheaper, over the past couple of decades these latter have become a drug on the market and  you can pick up a handy and good quality cordless screwdriver, for example, for around 10 euros/dollars/pounds. Good hand tools however, are another story, 1930s novels are full of old men complaining about the quality of steel, they didn't know when they were well off.

You are often better buying old tools at a car boot or yard sale, they are usually of excellent quality and because of this can be sharpened and/or reset. Be aware of brand name old tools, over the past few years these have become collectors items and can now command very high prices. However, good tools are an investment and the more you become acquainted with them the more you will be competent to build up a fine collection.

                                                We are somewhere in the middle.

For the Apple House the tools you will need are as follows: a saw, tri-square, hammer and a tape measure.

 

You will also need the following materials and fixings, a pallet wood plank and block, some slats from a fruit crate, a few nails and tacks and some string. In addition you will need some interesting looking twigs and a pair of scissors or secateurs.

Handy hint for all projects - No tri-square? Use a CD box.

I get my fruit crates from my local organic shop, where we do our food shopping. They also give me the occasional pallet. In this way I know these crates come from organic growers and will not have contained potentially hazardous chemically treated fruit and veg.

The Apple House itself can be recycled in the Spring to become a nest box for a small bird, such as a wren, blue tit or robin. All it needs is the addition of a tacked on front and back made of fruit crate slats. Remove the twigs and in the Autumn transform it back to an Apple House.

With the addition of a piece of wood laid across the twigs the Apple House can be transformed into a table for small birds after the apples have all gone. Use string to attach rinds and nuts to the twigs for additional avian gourmet treats.

Now sit back, relax and watch Andy make the 'Apple House':

Hope you get to make one.



If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to share it, comment and/or ask questions.



Cheers, Andy



© Andy Colley 2014

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