Wannabefree said:
I make about that doing scrap metal. It's not full time.
I also have found if you get pure bred chickens, that are popular, and hatch and sell hatching eggs and chicks, you can make a decent ammount of cash from that. Turkeys and ducks are even better. Ducks because they feed themselves in the summer, and part of the winter so overhead is low, and trkeys because it is difficult to raise them if you can't devote time, and they sell higher. Guineas are another popular bird, and they lay like mad and hatch easily, even with poor hatch rates of other species, they always do well.
Sell excess produce from the garden for extra cash.
Fish sell pretty well if you have a pond on the property and can get it established.
Honestly, I believe the TRUE KEY to making a farm work for you income wise, is diversification. Don't try to make all the money you need on any one thing, but rather on multiple things. Just my opinion, and has been my personal experience, but that is the only way we have made anything here.
That's what my feelings are. I try to dabble into several things, if my time and resources allow....hopefully one thing will assist me with something else, like all my weeds, grass gets sent into the coop from the garden, etc....Poop from the roost gets sent back to the compost, then the garden. Sell of eggs, honey, meat birds, chicks, goslings, duckings, keets and preserves.
Now my parents just began dividing up their property and I already officially have part of their estate, but will soon be getting an orange orchard. I tried to market the oranges last fall. I couldn't. We have too much competition here. If I didn't have a job, I could have harvested a ton or so, put it in crates, truck and trailer them and head up north, where oranges don't grow as well. But you talking about a job......which I already have. I sold what I could, gave away some, bartered some and juiced all I could fit in the freezer. Too much of anything, will be a waste. And the deer and coons feasted on the fruit at night time. I figured the orchard could provide extra meat for the family, but DH didn't go in the deer stand.
It won't break my heart if we have a hard freeze and I lose half the orchard. On one hand it will be sad to have lost anything, but if a good amount of that land is cleared, I can plow and plant something I know we can use, market, barter, etc....like potatoes, corn, greenbeans and such. 20 orange trees would be plenty enough for our family and small sales. 200 trees......that's another story. What would be great is if I could figure how to concentrate the juice......at least there I can turn on the family to help me and we could make a big mess all at once and put all our juice to freeze, with less water bulk and weight.
Anyway, I say diversification is the ticket too. I know you'd have to wait it out until some of the ventures start paying out though.
