I have had many discussion with other who dream of getting out of the 9-5 rat race but think it is impossible to make a living on the farm. I wanted to share some of what we do with you. I hope this helps others get started. We can never have too many farmers and some day there will not be enough food to go around. So I will get right to it.
My goal was to be able to provide enough income off of our homestead that I could quit my job away from the farm and be here full time. Well, the time has come and as I am writing this book I have just accomplished my goal. My income at work was $17,000 a year. That may not sound like much but it is enough of a security blanket that it is hard to leave. It was there just in case things didn’t go as expected here at home. This upcoming season we will significantly increase my income without me needing to work off of the farm. My husband does work full time off the farm. One thing to remember, a dollar saved is a dollar earned. If you don’t have to spend money on something, it is as good as making money.
When I use the word farm, it is interchangeable with homestead. We do not have a barn at all. We do have small shelters that we have built ourselves. Our property does not look like it comes out of a magazine. We live amongst a working, living, giving farm. Chickens have 36 acres to wander, they will never go far. But really, do they need to come up onto my deck everyday to bathe in the sun? Visitors arrive and say, oh my goodness that is amazing, they are so beautiful. They always ask if they ever run away or go on the road. Yes they do go on the road from time to time but no, they have no reason to run away. They are happy birds. They know where they are fed, they have a warm place to sleep and they are talked to everyday just like every other animal here is. Would you run away? Instead they give up their beautiful eggs every morning.
That is our first source of revenue. Selling eggs from the farm gate or at a farmers market and to family members will earn you some extra money. Do not offer cheap eggs. This was our biggest mistake. It costs you money for feed and the feed is what gives you those eggs. Look at the regular price of eggs at the supermarket. $3.50 is pretty average for cheap eggs. Get Omega 3, Free Run, Free Range or Organic and you will pay up to $6.00. We farm organically and therefore our feed is twice the cost of conventional feed. Our eggs are $4.50 a dozen and that is a bargain. A girlfriend of mine sells her Certified Organic Eggs at the Organic Market for $6.00 a dozen. Another friend sells her organic eggs for $5.00 to co-workers of her husband. When I see road signs for Farm Fresh Eggs at $2.00 a dozen, I just cringe. You have to tend to those animals every day. I do it twice a day, 365 days a year. They eat everyday, and I can tell you for a fact you are not covering your costs. Do not devalue your products. Society has been taught that food is cheep. Crappy food is cheap, food that is produced commercially and animals raised in an inhumane manner is cheap. When you raise or grow your own food you will realize the true value of your food.
We have discussed gardening. Selling your extra produce is one way to earn money. A little stand at the end of your driveway and a sign will do the trick. You don’t even have to be there. Set it up, note the prices and leave a container for the money. If you have one or two people take things with out paying, you will still be ahead. I check the money container and empty it a few times a day. Otherwise I just carry on with whatever I have to do. You can also make a fair amount of money from selling started seedlings. Seeds are very cheap to purchase. Start seeds indoors and have them ready to sell in or around May long weekend. Flower seedlings sell for more than twice what vegetable seedlings do.
Prepared frozen meals are a great seller. If you love to cook, every time you make a shepard's pie or lasagna, tourtiere or rice pilaf make at least a double batch. Freeze it in the appropriate size containers do this a few times and you will have a great selection. Send out a flyer at Christmas and Thanksgiving offering these things. Offer baking at both Christmas and Easter. I sell homemade frozen (uncooked) tourtieres, sweets trays, and savory trays that include crackers, pate and cream cheese. I also sell homemade cranberry sauce and chutneys at that time of year. Offer it on your face book page, send it out to your email list, and tell co workers and relatives. Soon you will have more orders than you can handle.
Selling Preserves is a huge money maker at our local market. People want to know that they are eating foods that are not full of preservatives and chemicals. Offering your homemade preserves is something you can consider. Do more than the usual dill pickles and jam. Go that extra mile. We do Garlic Jelly, Roasted Red Pepper Jelly, Roasted Red Pepper and Fig Jelly, Roasted Peach Jam, Peach and Lavender Jam, and Rhubarb and Ginger Chutney, Roasted Pear Butter and so on. Just walk into any of those fancy food shops. Have a note pad and start taking down the names of some of the things that appeal to you. Remember in our Home Cooking section, if you can buy it, you can make it. Go home with your list and start looking up those recipes online.
If you have chickens and incubate your eggs, why not sell some of the day old chicks? It won’t make you a killing, but it will pay for the hydro it cost to run the incubator, so yours are free. If you would like to make a little more, sell them at 20 weeks of age as ready to lay hens. The going rate is $14 per bird. I can tell you right now, it does not cost half of that to raise a chicken to 20 weeks of age. Furthermore, if you have to go out and tend your own chickens, it is not any more work to tend to a few extra at the same time.
If you raise meat chickens for yourself, always raise extras. If you sell the extras you will be eating yours free. It depends upon your methods of raising them but generally if you can sell two, you just put one in your freezer for free. That is much better than finding other ways to make that money so you can pay for the feed for your chickens.
We also raise pork and grass fed beef. Pork is the most costly to raise and it is the most energy intense. Pigs have to be fed two times a day. They grow fast and because of that they eat a lot. There are ways to reduce your feeding costs like vegetable scraps from other farmers or grocery stores. You can give them all the whey and milk you can get your hands on as well. Do you have any fruit orchards around? Ask for their fruit that is not sellable. Don’t ask for windfalls, they are for pie making and are expensive. If anything call them deer apples. We go around and collect all of the wild apples we can find. Put the pigs in an area with a lot of vegetation and they will covert the grass and other growth to feed. They will also make you a beautiful area for your garden next year. Beef is not as costly, we strictly grass feed for the health benefits to both the animals and to ourselves. So there is not a cost for grain. They do need hay during the winter months. The difference being pork takes about 4 months to raise to market weight (you buy them as weaners). Grass Fed beef takes two years to raise to a full grown size. You can raise extra to sell by the side or by the cut. Ask people to preorder and request a deposit. This ensures they will pickup their meat when it is ready. It also allows you to put that money towards the feed that they will need.
Purchase two weaned calves from a local farmer or the sale barn. Put them out on pasture. You will be keeping one for yourself. The other one, you have two choices. Raise it until fall and sell it at the sale barn as a stocker. You will get back at least double what you paid for it, and that means you now have yours for free. Or keep it until the following fall and either sell the beef to customers or ship it to the sale barn as a finished beef cow. That will pay for all of the butchering costs of your own cow and still leave money in your pocket.
If you are growing a large garden, think about offering a CSA to a few customers. This stands for Community Supported Agriculture. I am not going to get into details about it, you can google it. We offer a 30 member CSA program. If you would like to see examples of how it is designed, have a look at our website. www.heritageharvestfarms.com . We charge on average $25-$28 a week for the baskets. You now have a list of people that will want to buy your beef, pork, chicken and eggs. I’m sure you see where I am going with this.
We tap about 80 maple trees on our property. It does not give us a huge amount of syrup. But it does give us more than we can use. So at a price of $6 for 250 ml it is a worth while profit. If nothing else, it paid for all of our spiels and buckets the first year. Therefore it did not cost us anything to produce the 10 gallons of syrup we ended up with. We have even designed our own sap evaporator for free to get started.
What do you love to do? It is most likely a saleable skill. Knitting, quilting, sewing, iron work, wood working, antique collecting, post card collecting, baking? These are all things you can sell products of. There are so many different things you can do today. Turn what you love into a money maker. That is what I am doing right now. All I am doing is sharing with you my passion for what it is we do. I want to help you to do the same thing. I just hope you realize you can do it faster than I did. I did not have the luxury of having all of this information in one spot.
Teach classes. All you have to do is teach a class on whatever it is you love to do. Carving, leather work, scrapbooking, card making, genealogy, cooking. At the end of this month, I have a two day artisan bread baking workshop. It is a skill I think everyone should have. It is a method that can be done without kneading. Lots of people don’t make bread as they think it takes too long. It takes me five minutes a day and I have a fresh baked loaf of bread seven days a week. How about handmade soaps and other beauty products? Do you make homemade cleaning products? Artisanal Cheese Making is also hot right now.
If you have a beautiful herb garden, why not offer different herbal tea blends, or even just dried herbs and different seasonings you have mixed together. Make a steak or chicken rub with your own dried herbs. What about some different dip mixes?
We touched on classes for homemade soap, but what about just selling your soap? There are so many online recipes that anyone could get started with it tomorrow. It is a simple process. Just be sure to follow all safety precautions and do not take any short cuts. Garden soap, special soaps for kids and sensitive skin soaps are some to consider. What about soap with grit in it for use after a job like fixing the car? The sky is the limit. As well as the soap, sell homemade bath bombs.
If you buy firewood or if you cut wood off of your own land, get twice as much as you need and sell half. If you buy wood, the sale of the extra half will in turn pay for your entire winter worth of heat. Rent a wood splitter over the weekend and split it all at once. Your profit will pay for it easily.
This is a very limited list, but I hope it inspires to do something on your homestead that will help to pay the bills. Even if you don’t end up with extra money in your pocket, you can end up eating for free and making your own things at little to no cost. Always keep in mind, make or raise one then sell one of the same. Yours will always be free.
What do you do to make money on the farm?
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