"Weak Sauce" Homesteading Hacks - What's Yours?

Leftovers hack:

Don't store leftovers in plastic if you can help it

Glass jars will last much longer and fresher even if they aren't properly water bathed, but I basically do water bath then and put in wide mouth pickle jars then store in fridge

Glass bowls with plastic lids don't last nearly as long

Stubborn pan cleanup hack:

Add clean water and let simmer on low heat

When loosened, either cool off and feed directly into dog, or, treat as broth and make a dogs dinner with it. The pan will be almost clean when finished

For cast iron pans that won't clean up readily using coarse salt and a rag, do the same thing, then wipe out the pan and place in kitchen oven for a while if the kitchen could use the heat

That turkey was a bit tough, not blaming the turkey though! I can over cook in a top rate roasting pan by a few hours.

After picking off the rest of the tender morsels, I simply made dog food broth and fished out the bones, a generous amount of rice and added more water so 60% full, and he is eating half of it now.

Being zero waste, the other half went in a Yupik banana chips ziplock bag in the fridge and he is now helping me clean up my roasting pan before it gets soaked in the dishsoap water before that gets grey watered for the poo loo flush (no heated outdoor compost toilet in winter)

Fridge hack:

Have you or someone ever crammed something in the fridge and inadvertently moved the temperature dial?

I just noticed while placing tomorrow's dog food in the fridge that I have another hack (see picture)
Somehow it has stayed there for over a decade

I'm going to post a couple of mine, and *then* go read the rest of the replies!

1. When I go to the feed store, I've gotten over being too proud to ask for help loading the 50 lb. feed bags into the back of my pickup - the truck is a 3/4 ton 4-W-D (almost thirty years old, long since paid for, runs fine, and I only drive it once or twice a month, so, no, I'm not going to replace it with something smaller and more efficient). The height of the bed makes it hard for this short almost-seventy-year-old lady with a bad back to lift the bags up in there. I have the store employee stand the bags up on their ends in a row - poultry feed, goat feed, and dog food are easily accessible that way without having to shift stacks of bags around after I get home.

2. I have a cap/topper on the back of my truck, so instead of moving feed bags out of the truck to another location, I leave them in there. With them standing on end as mentioned in 1., it's easy to get at the feed I need at chore times. And, honestly, I've lost a lot less feed to pests and mold by keeping the bags in the truck, although I do have issues with mice from time to time.

3. Not sure if this counts as a tweak, but I got really, really tired of my water hoses kinking - wasted a lot of time untangling and straightening hoses, even when I'd bought supposedly 'commercial' grade expensive ones. Two or three years ago, I spent the money to get a couple of metal-wrapped hoses, and have never had a kinked hose again!

Almost forgot. 4. When I'm using my wood stove, I bring firewood to the house in a wagon. I've learned to park it very close to the bottom of my back steps. That way, I can use my backside to hold the storm door open while I pick up an armload of wood out of the wagon, and can pivot and get up the steps and through the open door easily. If I don't do that. I'm standing on the steps and trying to dodge the door while opening it with one hand and holding the heavy wood in the other arm. It's awkward. Someday I'd like to build decks at both the front and back doors, so I don't have to open those doors while I'm on the steps - that was poor design. People who plan to build a house might take note!

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Hrrmm, I think I'm a bit OT with some of my responses. Weak sauce = subtle little hacks.

#4:
- After clearing a vehicle of snow, don't just yoink the door wide open. Crack it first, then open slowly. The last bits of snow sitting on the door seal will fall outside the vehicle instead of swirling all over the seat.

I try to remember to brush the snow off the top of the door before opening it, in cases like this. Too many times that I've had to brush a whole pile of snow off the seat before getting in!

William Bronson wrote:My weak sauce is : tarps are usually better than wheelbarrows.
For moving dirt, compost, leaves, woodchips, and brush over soft ground, a tarp is hard to beat.
If  the material is destined to end up in a raised bed or bin you can load a manageable amount in each load and simply hoist the load , rather than shoveling it bit by bit.
Tarps can ride around in a vehicle or tool bag , out of the way until they are needed.

This will be useful next week when I'm filling a couple of new garden beds!

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:

Louis Laframboise wrote:What do you use as bait?

I have had success squeezing a raisin into the bait holder and this has worked beautifully. Upon simple observation, it looks like it is quite hard for the mice to remove the raisin without tripping the trap.

Good idea!

I use peanut butter for bait. Dear Wife is a PB lover and I take the last traces out of the empty jars. Since I reuse each trap many times it's important to refresh the bait. (Since deer mice can carry disease, I use a dedicated set of needlenose pliers and a flat screwdriver to empty and reset the trap without touching anything.)

I use hardened cooking fat from meat (usually from cooking hamburgers, which we eat almost daily - carnivore diet). It's free, we have plenty of it, and mice seem to love it!

Ra Kenworth wrote:Roasting meat no waste hack:

Hacking on my cold while looking for "hack" in my email to locate this thread easily, I actually do have a hack I hadn't thought was a hack because I have done it for decades

I'll bet we all have more than we think at first pass

Yesterday, not up for elaborate cooking, I stuck a big turkey in the oven, partially defrosted
I know, is t must sit in there too long and get a bit tough

Well the first thing is use a really good covered roasting pot if you can -- it will pay for itself eventually

This monster beast was about 14 lbs

6 hours later...

Well to prepare it so it wouldn't stick and burn,
I halved a bunch of onions and stuck them under the turkey in the bottom of the roasting pan
Lid wouln't close at first but give it an hour or two and it will close up
I found out a few years ago that if you keep the skins on the onions, you can salvage all the onions
(Onions are cheaper than turkey and this way none of the turkey over cooks)
Anyway, after it is cooked I bag up caramelized baked onions in a ziplock and freeze them;

partially defrosted roasted onions are easy to slice
They can them be added to vegetables, spaghetti sauce, stew and soup, so no waste

Lazy hacking cook will settle for turkey sandwiches, remove the best meat, bag and keep cool, add water halfway up the roasting pan and return to oven with bones and tough meat, let it sit for a few hours
The best day, fish out bones etc, cool again, skim off fat, add root vegetables and anything else you need to use up or like in stews and you've got MRE's

My lazy cooking hack is to use my electric cooker (Instantpot style gadget, but Ninja brand) for cooking almost everything. I don't know if it saves electricity, though it may on some things (probably less expensive to heat up a small electric cooker than a large oven, for example). But it save me a lot of time; I don't have to stand in the kitchen watching things cook. Some things do need to be turned once, is all. It also doesn't overheat the house in the summer, which is a huge benefit.

Some of my hacks are:

My toilet bowl brush sits in a container. I add the last bit soap to the container, the last tiny sliver of the bar, shampoo, dish soap,. I add a bit of water if needed. Cleans the toilets just fine.

I premake "convenance" food.

Bread mixes - I make up the dry parts of recipes - biscuits, bread dough, pancake, cornbread etc. I label my jars with type and the needed wet ingredients. (I don't add the yeast to bread dough until I am ready to bake) I add the cooking temp and time to the label.

Rice and grains - I measure out grains with herbs and spices into a half pint jar, the label the jar with the wet ingredients.

Other cooking hacks I use, and probably you already know:
Spray measuring spoons with oil before measuring honey or molasses. The sticky stuff won't stick.
Wash flour off hands, and surfaces with cold water and it won't clump and get sticky.
Wear an apron. Saves clothes and cleaning.
Use a small spatula to get the last bit of yogurt, mustard, mayo etc out of the container.
Freeze butter wrappers and use then to grease cake pans and cookie sheets.
To warm cold eggs in a hurry, to make mayo or meringue, wash or place them in warm water.
Place a warm bowl over a stick of cold butter to soften quickly.

In the garden, I made up this planting tool so I don't have to bend over to plant peas, beans, corn... Works best with large seeds.

I took a PVC pipe and measured it to my height, I am 5.5 ft, so about 4 ft. I added a PVC T extension to the bottom of the pipe, so that the top of the T is in line with the pipe and the seeds can fall straight through. I added a short piece of pipe - maybe less than 2 inches - to the part of the T connector that sticks out from the pipe. To that I added an elbow connector. So now I have a long pipe with a sideways T at the end and the elbow off the T.  To use, I gentlely push the long pipe into the soil of a garden row (I use a hoe to first make the row) then drop the seed through the long pipe. The elbow marks the spacing for the next seed. I place the long pipe in the mark left by the elbow. When I have seeded the row, I use the how to push soil over the seeds and tamp down.

I use pool noodles to keep my tall boots from flopping over.

I use a large fat Webster's dictionary as a knife block.

I put wheels on my old low hutch so I could move it as needed for extra counter space for canning and other kitchen projects.

I hope these help. 😁

I incorporate the manure and bedding from my chicken coop into my garden compost piles, which are in a pair of bins just above the garden, within the chicken run. One item is maybe not a hack but part of initial planning, inspired by permaculture principles: locating the coop above the garden so when I drag a tarp full of chicken bedding, it's a short distance downhill. And these primary piles for my main garden work faster because I have two bins, and after a pile has been turned into the other bin, the next turning is onto the ground. My chickens peck through all of it but the pile on the ground gets further working from them. The hack is to do the turning coincided with cleaning the coop; I turn a layer, then drag a tarpload to the pile and add it, then turn some more on top of that, add another tarpload, and put the last of the old pile onto the top, thus incorporating the manure and bedding into the pile. I also use a mask for this chore as chicken bedding, especially when dry and dusty, does a number on your lungs.
Here's a gardening one: I have a series of permanent, slightly raised beds. The beds are all twelve feet long and 2 1/2 to 4 feet wide. Each year I pick a new bed to put T-posts on the ends of, and run some field fence between them, down the middle of the bed. I plant peas on one side, usually in early March. Then about the time the peas begin producing, I plant pole beans on the other side of the fence. Thus, when I rip out the dying pea plants in early July or so, the beans are coming up and can take over creating this wall of shade. On either side of this fence, I plant things that like some shade: broccoli, celery, spinach & lettuce& radishes, maybe chard.
Another one: if space is at a premium, plant onions or garlic in places where when these come out--about July 1st here--the space can be taken over by growing plants. Examples would be a grid pattern with two rows of the alliums down the middle of the bed and short lines to each side around squares where peppers, tomatoes or sweet potatoes will grow. or planting them throughout a bed except for two large holes toward either end where winter squash will go. By the time the sweet potatoes, squash, peppers or tomatoes are elbowing the alliums, the alliums can come out and mulch can be put in their place around the long-term plants.

William Bronson wrote:Full sized spare: always have a full sized spare stashed somewhere.
It doesn't need to be on the vehicle, in fact, if I kept it in the vehicle we wouldn't be able to get to it when we need it.
Rather than calling for a service truck the person who has a flat calls someone to bring the spare.
The tire is changed and the flat tire goes to be patched, or replaced.
This minimizes downtime for vehicles and occupents

Story to go with this... I took a trip to South Dakota with my young daughter and my mother-in-law during my spring break (we were picking up a puppy - LGD for our farm in MI from brother-in-law's farm in SD).  Got a very flat tire in little town in rural South Dakota on Easter weekend... during a blizzard.  Blizzard was threatening to get worse, could not wait for repair shop (singular) to open after the holiday weekend, needed to be on our way.  Brother-in-law remembers that he has a similar model minivan parked out back... we pulled an entire wheel (tire, rim and all), bolted it on my minvan, and were on our way.  I agree, having a full sized spare would be great in a pinch, especially if you didn't have to remove it from another vehicle before putting it on.

Redd Hudson wrote:I use a large fat Webster's dictionary as a knife block.

Pictures! We want pictures!

Why didn't I think of that when I was a bachelor? Although books were expensive then (not free like now) and I did all my cooking with a Buck knife anyway.

Trickle down animal bedding economics, is my new weak sauce hack.
Our bunnies are pampered, indulged pets.
The receive locally grown no spray hay to eat and hardwood pellets to pee on.

Our chickens are tough old birds that get the bunnies spoiled hay as bedding.
It is much better than the autumn leaves I used to give them, both more absorbent and warmer.

The soiled wood pellets and bunnies berries go directly on the surface of  garden beds, any time of year.

When I clean out the chicken coop in the winter, the bedding goes directly onto garden beds.
During the growing seasons, that bedding goes onto the compost pile, where the chickens process it into oblivion, and the worms turn it into castings.

I've considered building my next coop directly over a worm bin, but I think the moisture that worms would need would not be good for the chickens lungs.

Besides, it's good mulch for garden beds.
I  wish I wasn't paying for hay in the first place but since I am, I might as well get the most out of it.

Mine that I was thinking about earlier today before I saw this thread, have to do with preparing greens.

Our ancestors had abundant greens to harvest and eat, while we...still do, but in the United States more than any other have been taught that you have to open your wallet to eat green vegetables. (shake of the head)

They often boiled greens, which in some ways sounds ridiculous to modern people unaccustomed to cooking with them. But if you have a great big basketful of greens, then how can you stomach them all? They are a good source of protein and other nutrients but, for many greens, including spinach, are only edible in quantity if they are leached of whatever excess toxic or medicinal components exist in them. This can drastically increase the amount of green vegetables you can enjoy (unless they are nettles or similar, in which case nettles are so good that they need no leaching.) It turns an apparently excessive resource of greens into something that is more valuable as nourishment. And of course you are still getting the micronutrients, but you are eating a greater bulk of food along with them.

Another that needs no boiling to be edible in quantity (in my mind) is chard or beet greens. Different people might find different greens to be better or need more cooking for them to be able to eat them and that is entirely normal. I can eat milkweed, though not unprepared as some people can, and others can't tolerate it at all.