Hi All –

I’ve been a lurker here for a while and thoroughly enjoy reading your thoughts, stories and helpful ideas/suggestions. Now, I think it’s time for me to dive in with a question or two of my own.

My husband, 3 kids and I are country folk who want to do more of the homesteading life. Yes, we live in the country on farm ground and we raise a few animals, but we want to dive into it further. Actually, we would like to make it our livelihood. We currently do the 8-5 routine with the kids in daycare and school. There must be something more to life than this! Neither my husband or myself are totally wrapped up in our jobs, but they do bring home a steady paycheck. So, I’ve been doing some thinking (my husband says that's dangerous to my health ;-)) into making our farm life profitable.

What if we were to make our garden larger and sell the produce at the local farmer’s market? Our oldest daughter loves wildflowers, so we thought about having a small area for her to grow flowers and sell them as well. We have enough land to grow our own hay, but we don’t have the equipment. If we did, it could bring in good income. Chickens for eggs, turkeys to raise and sell for Thanksgiving, cows and pigs to take to the market and a milk cow for the family. Of course the homestead wouldn’t be complete until we had some geese and ducks!

So, we get our little homestead completely set-up and my husband and I say so-long to our 8-5 jobs, kids at home before/after school and no more daycare expenses. My husband could easily do free-lance work from home on the computer, plus he’s an excellent artist who could spend more time doing what he enjoys, etching and painting. He once did the art shows, and I would think he could start that once again after he quits the 8-5 routine.

On to another idea. I thought to myself, there are people out in this world that would love to visit/vacation at a farm. Provide an individual or family with a small bunk house on the property and let them partake in many of the daily chores. Teach them how to milk the family cow, or how to ride a horse. Let them pick veggies out of the garden and take some flowers with them when they leave.

So, are my ideas a little too far fetched? Am I dreaming too big a dream? Would love to get some feed back from you, plus some ideas of your own.

Thanks much and sorry about the long post!

-- Joy in Eastern WA (jparkes@spfarm.com), April 01, 2002

Answers

One of your biggest problems will be finding affordable healcare coverage, so look into that early.

-- GT (nospam@nospam.com), April 01, 2002.

Joy, your plan sounds idylic and you can be sure that there are many other readers here who would love to do the same thing, myself included! Most of us just haven't figured out a way to earn enough money to relace the income from our jobs.

I think the first step would be to figure out how much money you actually need in order to live. Be sure to include the cost of any benefits now provided by your employers that you would have to replace at your own expense (medical/dental; retirement contributions; life insurance, etc).

Once you know what your financial needs are, sit down and figure out how much money you can earn from each of the activities you just described. Then, figure out what your investment would have to be to start up these activities (seeds, water, fertilizer, tools for the garden, livestock, feed, fencing, eggs for hatching, day old chicks, etc). Do the math, then see what is left as profit after expenses.

One excellent book to read is Dan Haakenson's "The Small Commercial Garden- How To Make $10,000 a Year in Your Backyard". This is an excellent reference because the author gives really detailed info on things like how much water is needed for a garden, how much produce can be grown in an area from how many seeds, etc. He also describes the system which he developed for handling the produce, from harvest to packaging, to truck loading, transporting, and displaying- a neat and very efficient system. Good reading.

Another great book is Joel Salatin's "Pastured Poultry Profits", though I question how applicable his methods are for other growers. I thought for a time that I might be able to implement his system myself and earn a good chunk of my income from poultry. Well, I ran the numbers backwards and forwards several times and realized that, all factors being equal (feed costs, etc) I would have to raise, butcher, and sell 10,000 birds per year. That works out to roughly 384.615 birds per week during a six month growing season. Frankly, I don't think I could sell that many birds at a price which would yield the profits that Joel describes. Know what? He hasn't done it either. At the time the book was published, I think the most he had sold in a year was under 4000 birds. And, that was with help from his wife, 2 kids, and his mother. So, not quite as rosy a picture as he describes in his book. Still, it could be one element of a diversified family farm.

Oh, another great book is Booker T. Whatley's "How To Make $100,000 Farming 25 Acres". Well, nobody has succeeded at that following his plan, either, but it looks great on paper! And, he gives one of the best pieces of advice I have heard- "Sell something every day". He also has some other good ideas which may help you get started.

I decided that there is no way that I can even hope to earn a living at home until I get my mortgage paid off. I have no other debt, so after that I will just need to pay for basic living expenses, insurance, retirement, maintenance and repair of home and vehicles, taxes, and whatever else I feel that I want beyond that.

My plan (and some of these areas I have been dabbling in already on a part time basis, to see if there is a demand for them and to see if I want to do them and if I can do so profitably) is to do a little of each of the following-

Board dogs

Raise bees for honey, beeswax, sales of package bees, and maybe raise and sell queens. I also sell beekeeping equipment and books.

Raise worms for composting and bait. I also sell worm bins and hope to expand that as time permits.

Start a nursery, raise and sell native plants, citrus trees, and potted herbs.

Cut your own flowers- a lot of growers are doing this in the Northeast and the Northwest, but no one near me has tried it yet. I think it has potential.

Possibly a market garden or a CSA if I could round up enough help. So far I have not found anyone who wants to work so hard for so little financial return.

Raise poultry for eggs, meat, chick sales.

Raise rabbits for meat, though I don't yet know if a market exists for it here.

Even with all of that, I am not sure that I won't have to slip off and do the occassional freelance job in order to make enough money, but I am pretty optimistic. I think that with careful planning, lots of hard work, and conservative spending, it can be done, IF you start off with no debt and enough cash reserves to carry you until your cash flow from sales becomes established. Good luck and please keep us posted as to your progress. I am sure you have some great ideas that might work for some of us.

-- Elizabeth (ekfla@aol.com), April 01, 2002.

The hours will be long, the work hard, but satisfying. Day care would not be required as the kids can be balanced in with the work time if its a family operation. Don't expect the income potentials or benifits of the normal society job (you may find yourself making less than minimum wages at times). Consider a mix of agronomic and internet based incomes. Devise unique sales stategies. Two informative books on the topic are "Cash from Square Foot Gardening", by Mel Bartholomew and the E- Book by Ken S. on this forum. Both books have good informative text. Good points of homestead based : flexibility, security (no layoffs), tax advantages, work pleasure. Bad points: self responsibility of decisions, lack of "concrete" work structure, Not a 9 to 5, lack of benifits,low pay, no fringe benifit package and no automatic raises.

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), April 01, 2002.

A guy I work with once read that to successfully live off of the homestead you needed 9 different ways to generate money. That way, you have money coming in at different times of the year and also if one way has a bad year, hopefully the others will pick up. We are working on getting our nine ways established so we can quit working anywhere but home.

-- Joanie (ber-gust@prodigy.net), April 01, 2002.

Hello Joy,

You should go ahead and grow your hay and work out some kind of a deal with someone with the correct equipment to cut and bale it for you in exchange for part of the harvest. That would bring in at least some of the hay that you need for you livestock for free.

Growing gourds, and flowers are pretty profitable as many people buy them for decorations. Recent issues of CountrySide Magazine and Mother Earth News have articles about how to make a profit with them.

Don't waste your time trying to make a living with chickens or hogs. The best you can do with the chickens is to sell the eggs. At least that will pay for you feeds. Hogs around here are usually raised by the pair. One is sold for butchering the other. This will give you about a years worth of pork for free.

Around here logging is profitable. Especially cedar logs. If you cut them down yourself you can usually haul them yourself in you pick up to the mill and they will buy them according to the size and length that they need.

We do woodworking and sell it on Ebay. It will do pretty good if you have the right things to sell and they are not to expensive to ship. I make doll size furniture and that sells during the holiday season. Yard sales and flea markets are a good place to sell stuff that you have on your farm such as eggs, honey, produce and such. Grow things that are not commonly grown and put your truck along the road wheere the tourist drive by and they will stop and usually buy something as they fancy that kind of stuff.

I hire myself out as a handyman and that brings in money and stuff that I can use around my place in the form of bartering. I have found that bartering my services usually makes me more in the long run as the materials that I get for my services are more expensive than what I could have purchased witht the money that I would have gotten for the same work.

Writing about things that you know how to do and selling the articles to popular magazines will not make you rich but, it will give you a little bit of money just the same. It is one of those things that I and others do as well.

My wife does day care....it does not generate much money but, $10 a day per child does add up. She works with a program that is set up by Social Services for mothers that are returning to work and working their way away from welfare. The Social Services cuts her a check each month.

I knew a family that would let tours of homeschool kids come out to their farm and ride the donkey, pick veggies, and just have a good old time on their farm. They would charge a small fee to the folks that brought their children out to the farm.

The same family had a contract with HOliday Inn for making oil paintings for their new hotels. He would take a canvas and glue natural things to it. spray paint it, add so texturing with oil paint and sell them. They were abstract and really easy to make. He was making two hundred of them when I last saw him.....at $50.00 a piece!

I hope some of this information is useful you to you. It is all practical and not to difficult to do!

Sincerely,

Ernest

-- http://communities.msn.com/livingoffthelandintheozarks (espresso42@hotmail.com), April 01, 2002.

Hi Joy, put a pencil to paper and really look at your incomes. Are you really contributing money to the home? Subtract day care, clothes for daycare, a second nice vehicle which could be replaced with something paid for, less insurance for this vehicle, clothes for your work (Unless you are the professional and make more money than husband) makeup, jewlery, lunch money, gas money, parties with the girls in the office, shower gifts, home interior and all that goes with working :) Now, look at your taxes and if you subtracted your income I would bet you also would get money back at the end of the year unless you husband is self employed. So.....long way around my opinion, perhaps you taking the homesteading plunge would be the way to go, replacing your income from the home. For me, course I am 44 their wasn't enough money out there to let someone else raise my children. I opted homesteading instead of having to work outside my home, now I work in my home :) Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (Nubians) (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), April 01, 2002.

First, I would see how well it works with you staying at home. You could try the chickens, flowers, etc. Just YOU being able to be at home with your kids and enjoying your land together would go a long way, in my opinion. :) During this time you could try out the market in your area for homegrown things. Some areas are easy, some areas have to many people all ready that do it themselves. I hope it goes well for you!

-- Sariah (joelsariah@hotmail.com), April 01, 2002.

No one says you both need to quit the 9-5. How about 1 of you try the home thing, the other keeps the job? That keeps your family in health care, keeps the retirement funds alive, and lets you see if the home work can pay it's way.

The bunkhouse is interesting, but I would go slow on that. You get into some weird laws on being a hotel; you get some liablity issues on insurance that cost you; and it becomes very seasonal, with 20 people wanting to come one weekend, no one for the next 2 months... Not saying it's a bad idea, but issues to consider, along with your location.

I would say if you own the place, you should be able to forgo the 9-5 pretty easily, both of you soon if you want. If you are still making payments on it all, then you might plan on keeping one of the 9-5's until the property is payed up. It's fairly easy to pay for the basics on a shoestring, variable income. But difficult to make ends meet when a monthly morgage pament is part of the deal. As others said, figure out healthcare BEFORE you both give up the job, that's a bear! And when self employed, you are paying 15% social security, not the 7.5% you do now. Little 'gotchas'....

Just some thoughts, don't know if they mean anything to your situation.

--->Paul

-- paul (ramblerplm@hotmail.com), April 01, 2002.

all right, here goes, sit down and look at your incomes, seriously, you both work , so i assume 2 cars right, and the daycare costs, and the clothing and food costs, and figure out how much the lower paying job is really "earning", when hubby and i first met, we did this, and it was still profitable, but then when we had our daughter and i was thinking of going back to work , we ran the numbers again , even making 30,00 a year, i would be taking home less than 5000, we decided that all those added expenses could be cut, and we stopped consuming so much .... you know it sounds so simple, but when youre at the gas station, soda or coffee is cheap , and heck a candy bar is only 50cents.... etc etc... and so on...... it all totals up..... now we live on one semi full time job , and the rest is living off the farm , we sell animals , and work a huge garden , and just try to live as sufficently as possible, even though its not always easy to resist that neat new thing, it has to prove its worth , or else its a goner ......

chickens yes, new slick metal laying box for them no, home made one from good scrap wood, yes.....

the farm weekend is a great idea, for around 200.00 you could do it, if you can find the clientel, just go to a big city office building , and advertise it as a romantic rustic retreat, and dont expect a lick of work from the guests, provide farm cooked breakfast, and thats it, offer a supper meal for an extra 20.00 a weekend, if your within an hour drive from a large metro area, it just might work ,......but heres the hook, can you keep your farm looking idyllic?, white picket fence, mom in an apron , and kids in overalls, good weed free garden that can handle the unknowing visitor... no manure odor.... no unsightly buildings or old dead cars..... unless covered in flowers or grape vines and looing "picturesque"..... if you can , then it might work...... i wish you luck!

-- Beth Van Stiphout (willosnake@hotmail.com), April 01, 2002.

I agree with Paul, the farm weekend can be a nightmare if the county finds out you are actually a hotel and starts charging you room tax, occupation tax--you get the picture.

Also, your neighbors might object to anything that brings traffic to the area--you might be able to get this through if you consult with them first, and maybe give out some freebie once a year (say a septic pumping, or free once-a-week meals somewhere nice) to keep the peace. As a bona fide business you could negotiate deals on these things.

If you try to do this without talking to your neighbors first, chances are the county will prosecute (unless you're bringing in some huge amount to the tax coffers) and you will be subject to all sorts of lawsuits from your unhappy neighbors, which, even if you prevail (and there is no guarantee you would) would still cost $$$ to defend yourself against.

Your husband doing freelance work wouldn't even by noticed by the neighbors, on the other hand.

-- GT (nospam@nospam.com), April 01, 2002.

I have a friend who wants to start a B&B in British Columbia which is a whole 'nother set of rules and regs, but, while visiting me in Fla last Spring she did some research about B&B's in my area. It isn't such a big deal here, and I bet it is less so in many other areas, especially if you are in a somewhat rural area. The main thing is to check with your town, city, and/or county to see what rules govern B&B's (I think you would be considered a B&B rather than a hotel, etc). I bet you'll find that it isn't such a big deal. Several people here have them in residential neighborhoods. Years ago while I was touring with bands I looked into several places to stay on farms, thinking that while I had several days off in an area I could just as easily stay on a farm and have some fun. I never actually did it because all the ones I found were too remote to get to easily in the amount of time I had available. I think I found several in the classified ads in Vegetarian Times, oddly enough. You could advertise in Countryside and I bet you'd get some business from other wannabe homesteaders who want to see what country living is all about. Also, if you decide to do this, get registered with your community's Chamber of Commerce; Visitor's Buruea; State Board of Tourism; have your local paper do a story; register with as amany B7B registries as you can; etc. I think with the right set up you could do really well.

-- Elizabeth (ekfla@aol.com), April 01, 2002.

Joy, Everyone has great ideas, just to add my two cents. Keep your job and pay off the mortgage. Unless you have little ones, and doing day care might be an option, so you are home with them. I know that fresh flowers always sell, and that could be a nice side job. I read a book titled: "How to make a living without a job" The main point to this person's idea was that it was easier to make $1000 from one source then $10,000. So have 10 different ways to make that $1,000. It makes sense. The best to you and your family.

-- Esther (realestatez@hotmail.com), April 01, 2002.

At least one of you needs to stay with those kids instead of putting them in daycare!

Try to have several different ways of making money on the homestead: My husband has a handyman business; I write for two newspapers (from a home office, going on 23 years now!; we sell a few eggs each week; and we have a big garden primarily for us.

I raise Angora rabbits and I'm considering selling rabbit compost by the bag.

I use to teach piano and keyboard lessons when my kids were younger too. Best of luck! suzy

-- Suzy in Bama (slgt@yahoo.com), April 01, 2002.

I have a furnished house on my ranch that I rent out summers to canoe vacationers and I have no hassles with the county or anyone else. Just keep a low profile.

You might want to consider starting an asparagus patch. My 1/2 acre of asparagus brought in $3000 last year and I expect it to make around $5000 this year. Have 125+ customers in a town of 2800. Low startup costs, quick return on investment, and it keeps coming back year after year. And you don't have to train your customers to like it -- most already do. An acre of established asparagus can easily bring in $10,000-$15,000 a year selling retail. And you don't have to butcher it!

-- bruce (niobrara55@hotmail.com), April 01, 2002.

Hi Joy. I am a newcomer myself. your ideas are great. My advice (free so take it or leave it) try several things on a small scale first. Plan ahead as if they will be huge sucesses and need expansion, but start out small enough that the cost won't be too much. After you review your finances, you may be able to start some things rolling without changing your life overmuch. Also, I don't know about WA schools, but in Texas the kids need insect and flower collections. Helping out with this could bring in a little extra. One of my daughters sold her collection to a teacher's son for $50. Something like, " We have bugs (or wildflowers) Call to make an appointment." Keep the dreams alive. If one fails, have another one to start on. Good luck and may God bless you.

-- Robin Downing (Southpawrobin1@aol.com), April 02, 2002.

Wow, what an awesome group! I never thought that I would be welcomed with such great responses! Thank you all so much!!!

Great ideas to ponder. Much needs to be put on paper and thought out thoroughly before we take the plunge and leave our corporate lives behind. With Gods help and hard work, I believe my family's dream will come to pass. It will be a long, slow journey, but one worth taking.

-- Joy in Eastern WA (jparkes@spfarm.com), April 02, 2002.