What do you do with all your shavings?

[Jeff Grantham]

I have way more shavings than I possible know what to do with piling up. I can use some for the rabbit cage (when they're the right kind of wood), and I imagine they'll be great for starting fires this winter as well. Other than that, what do y'all do with all those shavings?

[Eric Gourieux]

Mine go to the burn pile

[Peter Dougenik]

Best fire pit kindling ever...other than that they go in my brush pile to return to the earth

[Joe Bradshaw]

I dump mine out back of my shop. When the pile gets to high, I pull it down with my FEL.
Joe

[Brian Myers]

yard waste dump with the grass clippings, leaves, branches etc.

[Randy Red Bemont]

Compost pile.

Red

[Stan Calow]

Mulch around trees. Mix in leftover paint cans to harden and dispose of them. Clean up oil or other liquid spills.

[Steve Schlumpf]

Compost, fire starters and also to line our garden pathways. Neighbors also use my shavings for the same reasons.

[Trevor Mills]

A local horse stable happily takes my maple shavings to use as bedding.

[david privett]

instead of using natural bailing twine or pine straw the neighbor uses the non toxic shavings for his bee smoker said the work very well.

[Scott Hackler]

A bunch of mine (as long as there is no black walnut) gets placed around the trees on my 6 acre place. A bucket or so of them gets used in my beekeeping smoker.

[Hayes Rutherford]

Summer time they get mixed with manure and grass cuttings to make soil, in winter as they dry on the shop floor, get fed into an outdoor wood boiler along with other wood and in turn, heat the shop floor. This is third year and the system is working well.

[Wayne Kuhn]

You have radiant floor heat in your shop? Sweet.

[Wayne Kuhn]

Compost pile

[Ben Pierce]

Someone recommended to me, for the holidays, adding perfumed oil and some kind of colored beads, perhaps mixing colors like cherry, walnut, and white ash, and selling in cellophane as potpourri. I don't plan to try it but it's a nice Martha Stewart-type idea.

I do think shavings would work splendidly in a meat smoker. Soak the shavings and throw them on charcoal- oak, pecan, cherry, etc. Mmmmm.

Otherwise, on my compost mountain at the back of the property. Good exercise wheeling the 55 gal. drum out there.

[Jeramie Johnson]

Bedding for the chicken and duck houses, vegetable garden paths, flower and herb garden paths. Have never had extra to waste burning. ;)

[Jim Sevey]

Compost, meat smoker where appropriate, fireplace, packing material for shipped projects.

[Hilel Salomon]

Whatever you do with them do not use uncured shavings as regular mulch for flowers and ornamental plants. No amount of curing will make walnut shavings less toxic to other plants, but even other wood shavings are unsuitable until such time as they are cured and nitrogen is added. They are ok around mature trees and some of the other uses suggested above. They can, however, also attract termites and other insects. I throw them around areas far from my house or shop where they will decay slowly and safely.

[Gary Baler]

I offered my shavings and scraps on Craigslist 3 or 4 years ago. A lady responded who was building a green house and burned firewood. That lasted for a couple of years ... and she had more than she could use. Craigslist again and a fellow responded who would take both scraps and shavings. He also has a stash of wood that would cover a football field. He bring me wood and picks up my by-products which includes about 1,500 gallons of shavings and a 14 foot trailer load of scraps a month. I picked up about half a pick up load of cottonwood (yes I use cottonwood) yesterday at his place ... and he'll pick up 15 bags and a pickup load of scraps Wednesday. Works for both of us.

[Clark Miles]

My chickens seem to like them for bedding.

[Rick Gibson]

Most go to municipal compost about 1/2 mile from here. Cherry and other suitable wood gets saved for smoking in the bbq as well as suitable cutoffs and scraps.

[Wes Ramsey]

I dump most of mine on a trail in the woods behind my shop to keep weeds down...and make it a quieter walk so I don't spook the deer :D

[Ralph Lindberg]

I give them away, when I can.
During last springs production run I took 15 @55 gal bags to one friend for mulching, have 5 to another for a pit-firing and burned another 10 or so that were not safe (walnut, yew, exotic, etc) as mulch.
I'll need to find more people that did chips as I filled two bags yesterday alone.

There are times I understand how people like Glen Lucas can sell chips by the semi-load

[Russell Neyman]

Two clever uses:

•> Stuff some into ziplock bags for use as cushioning material for fragile items being shipped.

•> Not an everyday thing, but I've used it in my cat's litter box when I ran out of the regular stuff.

[Curt Harms]

I give mine to a wildlife rescue organization a few miles away. They use 'em for bedding. I keep unsuitable chips separate (pressure treated, walnut, exotics etc.). Those go in the trash but most of mine are pine and oak.

[Jeff Grantham]

Never imagined there would be such a bevy of responses and different ideas. There's some really creative stuff in here :-) My favorites for creative uses so far...



Using as packing material - especially with Christmas coming up.
Mulch / woods path overlay
Use as potpourri (my wife may like this for xmas gifts!)
Firestarter/smoker
Trading for logs... cause who doesn't like free wood for blanks?!?!


Of course I can always bring them to the dump as yard waste, but that just feels like, well, a waste.

Thanks for all the great ideas!!!