No Melt Suet Balls

Suet balls for the birds.

I read a wonderful blog by Linda aka Crafty Gardener. She has great ideas for cooking, crafts, gardening, and birding. Recently she wrote about making suet bird feeders out of half coconut shells. In the post she linked to a recipe for all season no melt suet for birds. I decided to give it a try. Here's her recipe:

NO MELT ALL SEASON SUET FOR BIRDS

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup crunchy peanut butter
2 cups quick cook oatmeal
2 cups corn meal
1 cup lard (no substitutes allowed)
1 cup white flour
1/3 cup of sugar

DIRECTIONS:

Melt the lard and peanut butter and then stir in the other ingredients. When it is all mixed you can put it into containers that you purchase bird suet in, or you can roll it into balls for putting into mesh bags. Extras can be frozen until needed.

Making mesh hanging bags.

I'm not very good about following recipes, even for human meals. Here are the changes I made and it worked out okay.

• I cut the corn meal amount to 1 cup and substituted 1 cup of birdseed. 

• I cut the oatmeal amount to 1 cup and substituted 1 cup of sunflower seeds.

A completed bird seed feeder.

It made six balls I could use as both bird feeders and Christmas decorations around the cabin. I used bags I'd saved from my onion sets. They were a perfect size. I used a short dowel at the bottom of each bag to make a built-in perch for birds to use as a part of their dining experience.

Hanging suet feeder on our bridge to shore.

Now all I need is some better weather to see if any birds are left in the vicinity to enjoy their special treats.

Hanging feeders on our birdhouse tree.

Thanks Linda for all the great ideas you share! -- Margy