I’ve been working on the plans for building our duck house and run for quite a while now, and I’m challenging myself to see how much of the materials I can get for free. Not just free, but from discarded wood scraps and other things destined for a landfill. I’ve been using our local freecycle list, and also good old word-of-mouth. Today I went to a lovely woman’s farm and picked up a variety of wood scraps – some small, some big – to build the house with. I have no idea where these scraps would have ended up, but they were just gathering dust in her barn.

After that, I headed over to my neighbor’s house and picked up more good lumber, this time scraps from a kitchen re-do that were destined for a garbage dump. I’m talking nice, long, perfectly sound 2X4s and some plywood that would have ended up in a landfill. But now they are destined to shelter my ducks and thereby make food for my family. Cool.

Here’s where I admit my first motivation – money. We don’t have a lot of it, and I’m trying to make this duck project as cost-effective as possible. So this certainly started out as a money-saving measure. After all, it does take a bit more effort to drive around picking up materials here and then, and then patching them together, than it does to make one trip to Home Depot. But here is what I didn’t expect – it makes me feel so good to do it, and not because of the money. I can see my neighbor’s big pile of junk from my kitchen window, and it makes me feel good that somewhat less is going to the dump.

I’m looking forward to seeing how great a percentage of the finished product is re-used materials. My brother-in-law has already agreed to contribute roofing shingles (not re-used, but extra from a roofing project nevertheless). I’m in the market for more plywood, hardware cloth, and chicken wire. We’ll see how far I can go.