If you're living a homestead lifestyle, chances are, bringing in an extra $1,000 a month from home would go a long way to bringing more stability and freedom to the simple country life. It might make the difference between your homestead costing you money, or making you money.
Here are some of the most sure-fire ways to make a significant profit, directly from a homestead.
1. Start a Backyard Nursery
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!
Even with less than an acre, it's possible to make a real profit growing and selling baby trees and perennials. Because so little space is needed per tree, you can start thousands of saplings in less than an acre.
2. Grow and Sell Flowers
Cut flowers can easily net make more per-acre than veggies, when it comes to making a profit.
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.
3. Start a Small Scale Hatchery
Incubating fertile eggs from your flock, and selling the chicks, can be one of the best and most profitable income streams for a small homestead. It's easy to get started quickly, and start-up costs are low.
Learn more about getting started hatching and selling day-old poultry here.
4. Start a Cottage Soap Business
This is another enterprise that requires very little startup cost. 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!
This article walks you through what you need to get started soap making, and it's not as much as you probably think!
5. Run a Homesteading Blog or YouTube Channel
While the online 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 achieve real financial freedom, by blogging about homestead life.
Starting a YouTube channel is also a viable alternative, where you can earn money creating videos about your homesteading journey.
6. Sell Baked Goods and Treats at Farmers' Markets
Ashley, from Practical Self Reliance, does a great job of detailing in this post exactly how possible it is to make $1,000 a month or more, selling home-baked goods from a farmer's market booth.
Want those delicious homemade Maple Caramel-Dipped Apples in the picture? You can grab the recipe here.
7. Grow Medicinal Herbs
There is a quickly-growing market for locally-grown medicinal herbs. Use them to craft homemade salves, tinctures, rubs, and sprays, and it's even more profitable.
The Organic Medicinal Herb Farmer is a good read, for those looking to get started.
8. Raise Livestock Guardian Dogs
No, the dog in the photo is a pretty average golden retriever, though she takes her role as homestead dog pretty seriously. Actual Livestock Guardian Dogs are both bred and trained specially to live with livestock, and keep them safe from predators.
Well-trained pups from excellent stock fetch premium prices, and raising them can be a profitable enterprise.
9. Sell Hatching Eggs
You don't need to actually hatch the eggs from your poultry, to make a significant profit on them. There's excellent income to be made simply by selling the fertile eggs for customers to hatch themselves.
Depending on the breed, and quality of your birds, it's not unusual for in-demand eggs to fetch $60-80 a dozen, or even more.
Whatever side hustle you choose to focus on, it helps to know that there are thousands of other homesteaders out there, creatively making a living while embracing the simple, country life.
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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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