For those choosing the homesteading lifestyle, establishing at least one stream of farming income goes a long way to making your homestead not just pay for itself, but truly generate real profits.
Here are some of the most tried and true ways that homesteaders around the country are making income from home, even from very small pieces of land. Most of these businesses require very little for start-up costs, and none of them require a large acreage.
1. Hatch and Sell Day-Old Poultry
If your flock includes a rooster (or drake, in the case of ducks), incubating those fertile eggs and selling the chicks can be one of the best income streams for a small homestead. It's easy to get started quickly, and start-up costs are low. Plus, you get to snuggle adorable baby chicks and ducklings!
Learn more about getting started hatching and selling day-old poultry here.
2. Start a Soap Making Business
This is another great homestead side-hustle that really doesn't take much money to get going. It's also extremely easy to market. As any soap maker knows well, people just beg to buy homemade soap once they know you make it!
Health food stores, farmer's markets, local boutiques, and even farm stands, are all be great places to market your soap.
This article walks you through what you need to get started soap making, and it's not as much as you probably think!
3. Grow and Sell Flowers
Cut flowers easily rival market vegetables, when it comes to making a profit from a tiny acreage. It's hard to beat Lynn Byczynski's book, The Flower Farmer, for an excellent how-to on the subject.
And Erin over at Floret Farm offers a gold mine of information on her blog, for anyone interested in getting a start with flower farming. Her resource page is a great place to start.
4. Start a Small Scale Nursery
Another great homestead enterprise can be a small scale nursery, where you grow and sell baby trees and other perennials. Because so little space is needed per tree, you can start thousands of trees and perennials in less than an acre.
This interview with Akiva Silver of Twisted Tree Nursery is enough to make even those with just a postage stamp of a lawn want to get started!
5. Blog About Your Homesteading Journey
In this digital age, there are nearly infinite ways to make a living writing about what you know and love. While the homesteading niche has become a bit more saturated over the last few years, it's still true that even new bloggers can create a space for themselves, and make a good income blogging about homestead life.
If video is more your style, consider starting a YouTube channel, where you can earn money creating videos about your homesteading journey, and encourage new homesteaders along the way!
6. Raise Pastured Chicken
Raising pastured chicken is another solid income stream for many homesteaders. Joel Salatin's Pastured Poulty Profits is a good manual for getting started with raising broiler chickens.
Wondering exactly how much it costs to raise a broiler on pasture? This article itemizes every nitty-gritty expense of raising Cornish Cross broilers organically on pasture, and details the cost benefit of raising them.
7. Grow and Sell Strawberries
It's amazing how many pounds of strawberries you can harvest from even a very small amount of land, if you grow strategically using intensive methods.
This article walks you through how to start in the fall with strawberry plugs, so you'll have a bumper crop the following summer. For many tiny farms, raising and selling strawberries this way provides their primary source of income every year.
8. Start a Bug Farm
You may think I'm joking with this one, but I'm not. While there will always be a market for crickets and mealworms at your local petstore, there's also a rapidly growing restaurant market for the little critters. And talk about a side business that doesn't require a lot of space! Even a closet is enough room to get off to a good start.
This page is a great place to start reading, if you're intrigued by this idea.
9. Build Coops, Cages, and Grow-Out Runs
If you have homestead critters, it's a good chance you've become adept at working with wood and wire to build small pens, cages, nesting boxes, and the like.
There is continually a market for high-quality animal enclosures in the homesteading community, and ready made coops and hutches sell quickly.
Don't forget to adequately value your time, along with your materials, when setting your prices. It also helps to have excellent photos of your work, so consider bartering with a local photographer for catalog-worthy images of your previous projects.
10. Wreath Making
If you have a good free supply of evergreens or grapevines, and love making your own wreaths, this one might be a good fit. Selling wreaths through Etsy, at craft fairs, and directly marketing to local businesses, can all be good ways to create momentum for a fledgling wreath business.
And while Christmas might be the busiest season for wreaths, don't write off other seasonal options as well. There will always be a market for wreaths that celebrate everything from Halloween, to Easter, to baby showers. Let your imagination be the limit!
11. Selling Fertile Hatching Eggs
Selling fertilized hatching eggs can be just as steady an income stream, as hatching and selling chicks. The price they command varies greatly, depending on whether your chickens are good old barnyard mix layers, or a rare breed, or show stock.
If you do have a rare breed that's highly in demand, you may find that being willing to ship can dramatically increase your customer base.
12. Teach Classes on Valuable Homesteading Skills
If you have homesteading know-how, and like working with people, why not do a little teaching? Say you have fruit trees, for example. You need to prune them anyway. Try offering an afternoon pruning workshop, right in your yard or orchard.
Other types of classes that always fill quickly are basket making, dyeing with plants, spinning or carding wool, felting, grafting, and soap making.
No matter how small your homestead, there's always a way to leverage your skills and interests to create a strong side hustle. Have a homesteading income stream you think should be included in this list? Start the conversation in the comments, and encourage aspiring homesteaders with the wide array of income possibilities that can help make their homestead dreams a reality!
There Are So Many Ways To Make a Living Homesteading
Especially if you have some land, the opportunities for creating a solid homestead side hustle are just about endless.
This list has many ideas for ways to make income doing things you love, while living the country life.
Anna Chesley is a freelance writer living a homestead lifestyle, with a special love for family travel, old books, vintage skills, and seaside living. In addition to founding Salt In My Coffee, she runs the website, New England Family Life, as well as The 1800's Housewife, a website devoted to re-creating authentic 1800's recipes.
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