Bright Ideas

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These are not comprehensive how-to guides. Rather, they are tips you may find helpful on your journey of self-reliance and self-sufficiency. 

This is a work-in-progress and will be updated as tips are compiled. Check back often.

If you have a tip or comment, please share with our private discussion group. 

• Remember the old saying, "Measure twice, cut once."
• To drive nails or screws into hard wood, add soap to the tips to reduce resistance
• To loosen a screw with a stripped head, place a wide rubber band across the screw head and press the screwdriver firmly into the rubber band and screw head.  Slowly loosen.
• If you turn the nail upside down on a hard surface and strike the tip with a hammer, slightly dulling the tip, it is less likely to split the wood. 
• How do you seal the tips of opened tubes of caulk? Drill a 5/16" hole, one inch deep into a wine bottle cork and slip it onto the opened tip of the tube.  
• If you’re cursed with large stones on your homestead, they can safely be broken up for removal. Use a hammer drill with a masonry bit, drill a series of holes in the stone and fill them with an expansive grout, such as Dexpan. Within 3-4 days the stone will have broken into manageable pieces. 

• Wood gasification is an old, DIY technique of producing fuel, suitable to operate an internal combustion engine.
• The available BTU from wood burned in a wood stove is approximately 25 million BTU per cord of oak wood. Hickory yields slightly more at 26 million BTU per cord. Pine yields about 17 million per cord.
• If you're heating with wood or any other open flame, please remember open flames consume oxygen from the space. Insure you have a fresh air source especially if your space is super insulated.

• A solar cooker can create internal food temperatures up to 225 degrees F.
• Using very little fuel relative to the food cooked, a rocket stove is among the most efficient ways to cook food.
• When a stick of butter is used up, place the wrapper, flat with buttery side down, in the bottom of a cast iron pan. Protects from humidity, other pans stacked within it, and becomes a handy way to grease the pan when preparing to use it later. 
• Gravy can be prepared at your convenience and still be served hot, if stored out of your way in a thermos. 
• Keep an airtight container in your freezer to collect  trimmings from onions, celery  and carrots. When sufficiently collected, use them to make vegetable broth.
• Learning where the hot and cool spots are on your wood stove is necessary to successfully cook food. Hotter spots are generally closer to the flue, but for beginners, the use of an infrared temperature gun to measure surface temperatures will shorten the learning curve. 

• Soil quality being the most important aspect of gardening, the Ruth Stout Method is an ideal gardening method where natural soil is depleted or the gardener has physical limitations. 
• Onions and potatoes grow more prolifically in a Hugelkultur style garden bed. 
•  The False-Seed Weed Control Method. 2-4 weeks before planting garden seeds, prepare bed. Allow and encourage weed growth. Hoe off at the 2-4 leaf stage.  This will reduce the available weed seed bank in the soil and ease the weed control task following garden seed germination. 
• To harden seedlings started indoors, place a fan nearby to create a gentle breeze on them. 
• The most effective control of squash bugs is daily inspection of the underside of the leaves, and removal of the egg colonies away from the plants. Lightly dabbing the colonies with a piece of duct tape will remove them with minimal leaf damage. Or use a shallow pan beneath leaf and flick eggs into it with fingers.
• Properly spacing tiny seeds in a garden row is challenging. Mix flour and water to the smooth consistency of Elmers Glue. Take a manageable 2'-4' length of toilet paper and dab small dots of the glue  along the left or right side, spaced as you want the plants to be. Drop as few seeds as possible on each glue dot and brush away excess seed that don't stick. Then fold the other edge of the toilet paper over the seed row and lightly press. Make as many lengths as you need. When dry, gently roll up until planting time. Unroll the "seed tape" and place in seed bed at suggested depth. Cover and water.

• Pekin ducks are easy to raise and are a great source of meat and eggs.
• Rabbits are a wonderful meat source, cheap to feed and reproduce rapidly
• Chickens do not require store-bought feed. They will forage insects and can be fed compost, garden scraps and many weeds.
• Chickens' water freezing? To reduce frozen water problem, place a black, plastic watering pan in the sun with 3-4 ping pong balls, or a bottle of salt water floating in it.
• Common Duckweed will mitigate some contaminants in water, reproductively doubles every 2-3 days, contains 30%+ protein and is a viable feed source for chickens, ducks, geese, rabbits and tilapia. 

• Salt curing and cold smoking is a dependable and old method of preserving food.
• A buried or partially buried cellar is the ideal way to store root crops after harvesting.
• If fermenting homegrown vegetables, do not use starters or anti-bacterial washes. Your brine solution will kill harmful bacteria while promoting growth of the bacteria beneficial to fermentation. 
• Uncut celery will stay fresh longer when wrapped tightly in foil, rather than when stored in a plastic bag. Celery produces ethylene gas which, when trapped in plastic, accelerates spoilage. 

• Collecting rain water is a dependable and inexpensive source of water. 1 inch of rain yields 600 gallons of water if collected from a 1000 sq. ft surface.
• Unscented bleach is an inexpensive means of disinfecting water. 1/3 cup per 100 gallons of water. For drinking purposes, the bleach-disinfected water should stand 24 hours, or be filtered through a charcoal or ceramic filter. 
• Collecting and storing grey water beyond a day is not recommended. Directly routing to the base of trees or other plants is preferred. But, if that is not practical, consider digging a shallow basin and filling it with mulch to receive grey water. 
•  If your well water is plagued by the rotten egg smell, have it tested to determine how many parts-per-million the hydrogen sulfide content is. If collecting in a bulk tank, for every 1 part-per-million of hydrogen sulfide, add 1 1/8 oz of unscented bleach to each 100 gallons of water. If using an automated chlorinator, a setting of 2.2 ppm of chlorine for each 1 ppm of hydrogen sulfide will also remove the hydrogen sulfide. 

• The "saw dust toilet" is a modern, but simple application that mimics nature's method of disposing of animal waste.
•  On average, a flush toilet accounts for approximately 1/3 of total water usage of a household. The average person flushes a toilet 5 times per day, which at 1.6 gallons per flush, equals 8 gallons of water per day, per person.  
• To reduce solid waste buildup in your traditional septic tank (not aerobic systems), add 4 oz of regular bakers yeast every 3-4 months.  
• Composting toilets' bacterial action slows in cold weather. The addition of a handful of pine shavings per week will reduce the buildup of moisture and odor during the cold months when composting slows.