I love the ingenuity and creativity shown by my farming neighbours down at the end of the road. Check out what they are busy doing with old soup cans!
Recycling at its best!
Functional shingles that look great, too! What’s your favourite repurposing of something that’s usually tossed away? My favourite raw materials are pallets and binder twine, which can be rearranged into rudimentary animal shelters, sorting chutes and pens, gates, compost bins, ramps, and more. Actually, if I’m right, I believe this shed uses pallets for framing… I’ll have to go back down and have another look.
darkcreekfarmdotcom 
I love this! Makes me wonder how long it would take to collect the cans to put shingles on my chicken coop! I like using pallets when I can get them. I’ve ended up with a decent amount of old cinder blocks and re-purpose them all of the time. Here, in the southern Mojave, we have a LOT of clay on parts of our property. I’m learning how to work with adobe.
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Oh, yes – cinder blocks! Very handy for foundations, steps, retaining walls… Do you have the curvy ones or the rectangular-shaped? We’ve used both around here… If we did down far enough, we have clay as well. On the list of future projects are several cob/earth crete structures that we hope will make good use of raw materials we have here on site. One of the things the hogs have been busy doing is rooting out rocks, which they bring to the surface and push to one side. They have uncovered enough stones to build all kinds of things! We are working on a rockery out behind the house, which is the first destination for the treasures they have found for us…
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Oh yes! I reuse baling wire when I happen to get it.
Our cinder blocks are the rectangular ones. I have a small handful of the little square ones too. And some broken ones. Those are still useful.
Oddly, on this property there are not very many good sized rocks. Many places in this desert have so many rocks. Where I used to live, I could build with the rocks. I must be in part of an ancient lakebed or flood plain now. If I hike around here for a small distance, I can find rocks. If the land is uninhabited, I may put a few in my backpack and take them home. That may not be legal. I’m not sure. But I haven’t called the county/state to ask yet…
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On a much smaller note, the wren house on the corner of our deck showed signs of a leaky roof. I took a plastic bread bag and fashioned a new cover with a few staples. Now those little babies are kept dry in the summer.
I grew up on a farm and know about using what is at hand. You mentioned binder twine. In my day, it was wire around those bales. Millions of uses for it.
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Lucky wrens! It has become way too easy to just run out to Walmart to buy a new whatever… I just love to see people reusing perfectly good stuff even when it’s for something other than the originally intended purpose.
I bet that baling wire was handy! Though, it must have been a nightmare to keep it coiled so it didn’t become a giant tangled web of stabbing wire ends! The binder twine is bad enough to wrangle without creating a rat’s nest!
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You’re right. Everyone carried a pair of pliers to cut the 2 wires. Then, you folded them a few times over so they were about 18″ and gave a quick twist to keep them from opening back up. They could then be hung on long nails or pegs for later uses.
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Some of the poultry wire and garden (“rabbit”) fencing I buy is still wrapped with baling wire, although it seems more and more manufacturers are using plastic these days to bind up the rolls. Ugh.I like that method of storing it, Jim.
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Plastics are ubiquitous. I avoid them when I can.
Thanks for the visit and like on my about page.
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I am currently collecting can lids to hammer out and use as knot hole covers on our old home in the mountain. The sides are all old “board and batten” and over the years the wood has shrunk and expanded enough that most of the knot holes have fallen out. I will be hammering the lids flat, sanding, and then painting them with an appropriate base cote before applying them to the outside of the house. Then, when I am also done sealing all the cracks too, I will paint the outside all one color. 😉
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omigosh this is so beautiful and brilliant
thank you so
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Wow, what a clever way to make a tin roof. I love it.
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Our woodshed is built of pallets. We also have a video case from pallet wood. Sometimes pallets are made of oak and you can make really good stuff from them.
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Very cool tin roof… I’m impressed because I would never have thought of this, until now!
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Yeah this shed does use pallets to form it’s foundation walls (with a little help of some stronger beams). The cans were easy to accumulate as we recycled them from a pizza parlor (they go through a lot of them). Just a tip…we used the large restaurant cans…not the smaller ones! Going to finish it all today!! Thanks Dark Creek Farm for posting this!
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Brilliant!!! Love the innovation.
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Very cool repurposing! Offhand, I can’t think of any large-scale repurposing I’ve done, but I have remade a cake icing tub into a pencil/pen holder, put “old” dish sponges to work pre-scrubbing dirty dishes for the washer, etc.
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