The Thrifty Thread!

[Mini Horses]

yep -- no food scraps here! Dogs, cats, chickens, pigs, goats, horses.......someone will eat it! Of course, chickens are best fly control out there...run them thru the manure piles. I swear, city folk would never eat eggs if they knew what a chicken eats!

Old straw/hay bales -- if you get any with a lot of seed in them -- throw in chicken pens, dampen or do it before a rain. They sprout for you. I've even had this in cooler weather as the heat from decomposing straw keeps it warm enough. My chickens free range but, seasonally they sure need a little help to find anything "green". They also pick it apart, eventually, with all the scratching to find more.

bale twine makes a great scrubbie (wad it up) for water tubs, a quick fix on a loose fence (always happens when you have no hammer) at a post. Saves time & $$$ if you want a temp fence panel up -- easy to cut & move later. I always have several in my truck, never know when you need a strong tie down.

 

[Poka_Doodle]

Okay, after seeing a post about bailing twine I might as well say that we use some of it for butchering our meat chickens. On the lighter note it is a great cat toy.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

I haven't seen this tip yet but I'll bet a lot of you do it already. We don't have a lot of trash around here with recycling and like others have said - no food waste. But, we haven't bought a trash bag in years! We use old feed sacks for all trash that goes to the curb. And, I have changed to a feed mill that uses all paper sacks - I like them sooo much better than the synthetic ones that degrade after 5 minutes in the sun. Made a mistake of using those in the garden one year. I'm still finding little bits and pieces of them that I have to pick up constantly....ugh.

 

[animalmom]

Yes, we use feed sacks for the burnable trash. When one gets filled up it is taken out and burned. We don't trash our feed sacks, and fortunately all our feed comes in paper so we don't have the mess of the plastic ones like @frustratedearthmother mentioned... although the plastic chicken scratch bags do make up cute totes with some sewing.

 

[goatgurl]

I'm like baymule, no food of any kind goes to waste at my house. something here eats every scrap. i still have to yell at DD for scraping plates into the trash. she is such a town kid, lol and no she wasn't raised like that, how quickly they forget. i also use plastic bottles for feed scoops, , DS#5 saves me the heavier ones like detergent, i like that they are tough enough to last. i save my grocery sacks for a friend who crochets blankets for the homeless out of them. its amazing how warm and strong they are when finished, glad to have a use for walmart bags. and i think its pretty much a sin to throw out baling twine or baling wire. couldn't live without baling twine, duck tape and zip ties.

 

[greybeard]

I don't buy any more than I plan to cook, don't cook any more than I can put on my plate and I eat everything on my plate.

 

[sadieml]

@norseofcourse - Something else for your log carrier. Run a piece of old garden hose on the baling twine and it won't cut into your hand, or you could just use the plastic grip they put on those buckets in the first place. Of course you can reuse them forever.

 

[Southern by choice]

After reading the above posts... somehow we need someone to raise a pig close by so we can give our "waste" food to them.
I am so ashamed.

We don't give our dogs or chickens any of the waste food.
Goats can't get it and we do have waste- sadly.

 

[Hens and Roos]

we had a compost pile going until we decided to add goats....will have to find a new spot this spring.

 

[norseofcourse]

@norseofcourse - Something else for your log carrier. Run a piece of old garden hose on the baling twine and it won't cut into your hand, or you could just use the plastic grip they put on those buckets in the first place. Of course you can reuse them forever.

I was showing a picture of the log carrier to a friend, and she suggested using a section of garden hose for a more comfortable handle, too! Or a section from a washer intake hose. And I tossed three of those a couple years ago - they came as 'extras' when I bought a used washer, but they all leaked.