If you are a faithful reader of Our Simple Homestead, you know I am pretty good about opening up our financial situation for all to see. Lately, I have been getting some questions about how we make ends meet on the homestead, so I am going to lay it all on the line so I can answer those questions.
I know when we first started dreaming about homesteading our plan was to own a few acres in the country and find ways to earn a living from the land.
What it has turned into is striving to be as self-sufficient as possible and finding ways to generate income from all of our hard work. (Read how we are trying to Live Without Walmart.)
I am going to be completely honest… We couldn’t do it without my husband working full-time away from the farm. Even though there are hundreds of ways to make a living from homesteading we are not to that point yet. The challenge for us is finding an array of products and services we can offer that can generate income.
We currently grow and raise most of our own food, cut firewood to heat our home in the winter, repair and maintain all of our home and farm equipment. But we could not do that without a steady outside income.
We are a one-income family, but the Internet has made it possible for me to work from home. Each week I work on a variety of projects. Writing for this blog, taking care of the farm, developing and maintaining websites for small business owners and selling some of the products we create on our farm.
Here are the different income streams we are working on to generate income on our homestead:
- Husbands steady job.
- Website/Blog design and maintenance from home. (Working from home allows me to take care of the farm while hubby works a 60 hour work week.)
- Small affiliate and ad revenue from the blog.
- Alpaca fiber for yarn sales.
- Bee hives for health and beauty supplies and raw honey sales.
- Re-purposing feed sacks for tote bag sales.
- Produce sales.
- Egg sales.
- Baking sales.
- We are working on adding meat sales to our list, but we need to work through the paperwork first. Eventually we will be selling pasture raised meat from our farm.
We know that we should not put all of our eggs in one basket so we are protecting ourselves in case one market or crop fails it is balanced out by another’s success.
How are you generating income from your homestead?
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Sounds like you have a lot of income potential! Congrats on making it work for your family!
Thanks Daisy…it really is a dream come true! I love seeing it all come together.
We hope to sell our goat kids, raise chicks and guineas to sell, raise pigs to sell, or at least that’s the plan for next couple of years. We’re hoping to make the animals pay for themselves.
We try real hard to make sure everything that comes on the farm pays for itself or earns its keep! Best wishes to you!
Tracy,
So wise to have multiple sources of income. This is inspiring me since I’m on the same journey. I really liked your Live Without Walmart post too. I’ll be visiting again soon.
http://estleschippfarm.blogspot.com/2014/12/4-bee-products-with-health-benefits.html
Isn’t the journey wonderful! Thanks for stopping by and sharing your link with us!
I really enjoy your site and all the information you share. I hope at some point you are able to expand and offer products (?) that can be ordered and shipped since I don’t live close to you. I am rooting for you and think the two of you are on the correct path. Congrats!
Thank for the Kudos JD…and just so you know one of my goals for next year is to get some of my products that we use here on our farm online to sell.
I think making money from the home is one of the hardest and “iffyist” way to make an income. Being self-employed is being at the mercy of economic forces, weather and the price of gas we have no control over. I’ve been self-employed from home all of my life and now at 64 I have retired. This way of life began when my children were small because I wanted to be home to raise them vs. putting them in day care. I had a small flea market re-sale business where I could take them with me. This when they entered Elementary School I wrote feature articles from home and sold them to newspapers. That business I turned into a public relations, marketing and advertising firm that I ran for 19 years. Then at age 45 we moved to the country to homestead and I built a art gallery and studio and worked at that for 8 years until I realized I was working 70 hours a week and making just enough to pay my bills and I was exhausted. I never made money in any of these business because the cost of running a business, paying to buy and maintain equipment and paying taxes is high, at least in Michigan. I don’t say this to discourage anyone as a home-based business can certainly help supplement an income for those with health issues, young children or the handicap. But to expect to live off of it and/or to make a solid retirement, it was just not my experience. (Just as you get your ESTY business off the ground the government decides to tax on-line business revenue to get their share and now your prices point is now off.)
I agree working from home is not always easy and I believe you need many different income sources when you work from home.
Tracy, I can definitely relate to you in so many ways! My husband works full time outside of the home, typically 50-60 hours and more in the winter when snow plowing is needed. I stay at home with the kids and am always looking for ways to generate income. I do cleaning jobs for multiple people- some steady, others only in the summer months. I have been scrapbooking for years and work for a couple of different companies. I also run an Etsy shop. Always keeping an eye out for more and more ways to keep me at home so that I can care for the kids as well as the homestead.
Thanks so much for sharing with us! I enjoy your blog very much 🙂
Erin
http://www.yellowbirchhobbyfarm.com
Erin it sounds like you keep busy. It looks like you have multiple streams of income and that is what we try to do.
You have such great plans and that is exciting, even if they all don’t happen. My husband needs to work off the farm but because of what we do here he works about 4 days, sometimes more depending on where is he working. His summer work is the slowest due to bush fires and he does a fair bit of welding. I think it is great that you can sell meat, there is no way we can do that here without it being illegal, we can’t even sell milk legally. We have plans this year to sell produce (vegetables) from our farm gate and hopefully our aquaponics will help that go all year. Eventually I want my daughter and I to have a stall here selling our home made jams, clothing, woven rugs etc. As I said plans are exciting and I look forward to hearing how yours develop. Blessings
Also thanks for linking up at Good Morning Mondays.
Terri your place to sell your jams and jellies sounds great. I have wanted how to make woven rugs…is it difficult?
My husband bought me a Dryad floor loom for my birthday last year. It was quite cheap although it was a bit of a drive to pick it up. It is quite big but looks great in the corner of our lounge room. The threading up of the loom is the most time consuming task as you need to cut 50 lengths and I had bought the wrong stuff the first time and as I was weaving the string was breaking, but now I have the right cord I just have to re-thred it. That’s on my January to do list as I want to weave a rug for a wedding in April. The weaving itself is very easy and looks really great. I have been spinning black and white fleeces to weave with. Quite thick and rough so there is some texture. Blessings
Terri I would love to see a picture of it! A loom is on my dream list!
Thanks for sharing your ideas and goals Tracy! It is always inspiring. Our extra income is we farm our fields and sell our extra hay (we only need 1/10 of it). My husband also does cutting, raking, baling and wrapping for some of the local dairy men. Our daughter raises chickens and sells eggs. We also started raising Merino sheep and have just sold some wool (we will also use this as a meat source). We grow and preserve most of our produce but don’t have prolific fruit trees yet. Our goats give us milk but we may begin selling the offspring as it has grown too much 🙂 We also raise our own meat and don’t buy “extras” at the grocery store. It has been a challenge but it is certainly worth it.
Thank you for sharing at the Art of Home-Making Mondays in 2014. We look forward to learning more about your homesteading and homemaking idea and lifestyle in 2015 🙂
Have a blessed new year!
Jes is sounds like you have it all covered. We are always on the look out for extra ways to make money from the homestead.
Hi Tracy, No we don’t have it all covered! 🙂 I wish though 🙂 I just shared what is covered to give others ideas as you did. You always inspire us with your homesteading ideas so please keep up the great work!
Hi, great post! Very informative and eye opening for someone like me who is just starting the process of developing a homestead from scratch.
Im curious why it is with that many streams of revenue, with everything paying for itself why it is your husband still needs to work full time.
What are your expenses like? Do you have a large mortgage?
Thank you for your time and help. These are all things I need to learn about 🙂
Joby we still do have a mortgage and even though we have many steams of income it still does not cover the mortgage and health insurance. Thanks for stopping by!
Health insurance…grrrr… they really screwed us over with that one didnt they?
This was a really encouraging post to read Tracy, just seeing all the various ways you make some income. We have a very small ‘homestead’, but are doing renovations so that we can offer self-catering accommodation. My son has been making and selling bread, and once our newly-hatched chicks are big enough, we will sell our excess eggs. I am open to other ideas about how we can earn in other ways, and I like your reminder not to ‘put all our eggs in one basket’ in that regard.Thank you for the encouragement!
I have been wanting to start a blog to help supplement our income on our homestead but don’t know where to start. Do you have any suggestions?
I enjoy your blog so much!
Summer there are a couple different places you might want to start.
http://bloggingconcentrated.com/
https://eliteblogacademy.com/
Both of these sites helped me understand blogging and what it took to make sure you started off right.
I hope this points you in the right direction…and good luck to you!
Thanks. I look forward to starting this adventure!