This strategy really hit home for my dinkly little router. I don't have the disk or CPU resources to compile these patches. Is there no other way to get the updates other than wait for the next release?

You can run -current snapshots. Caveat: the system changes, packages change, things are not always in sync. You might have to upgrade to a newer snapshot if you want to add binary packages after a while. This doesn't affect you if you only use software from base, or only use packages that can be installed around the time you install the system.

Alternatively, you can get binary patches from M:Tier:

https://stable.mtier.org/

Thanks for the link!

the binary patches are very useful for security patches, like the mentioned Heartbleed problem.

Get someone you trust to build it for you is my current solution[1]. I'm not really up on the plans for binary patches other than they are signing stuff now.

Also, BinpatchNG was mentioned at one time.

1) http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq5.html#Release

Looks like a weekend project to setup a VM to build just got bumped to the top. Thanks for the inspiration!