homestead income

[Toad_Sticker]

http://www.helium.com/items/1185877-homestead-income

I wrote this.
Any comments?
suggestions?
TS

[ryanmercer]

Nice article

[bookwormom]

well written.

comments?
well, yeah, about using your own wool. it takes me three hrs to knit one sock. I sometimes give a pair away, but I would not consider it as a money making endeavor. I would have to ask 50 dollars for a pair of socks. More if I did the spinning, too.
i

[MYellowRose]

Yep, short, sweet, and to the point. Very well written.

[Padre]

Very good article. Thanks for sharing.

[tomato204]

That is a nice article with a lot of good points. Staggering the jobs(like the sorghum and maple syrup mentioned) is real smart. You can easily get too much going at the same time. pace yourself.

[bassntrout]

Good article-- the name of the game with multi[le streams of income is starting small and not getting discouraged. A dose of creativity helps too.

[Toad_Sticker]

well written.

comments?
well, yeah, *about using your own wool. it takes me three hrs to knit one sock. *I sometimes give a pair away, but I would not consider it as a money making endeavor. *I would have to ask 50 dollars for a pair of socks. *More if I did the spinning, too.
i
I will say you are correct if you are trying to make wages on your homestead.
But part of the lifestyle is to get paid for the living.
If you are going to make them anyway why do you have to make wages instead of just some income?
On the other hand you may enjoy giving them away and that adds to the enjoyment of the lifestyle.
The article was intended to get people thinking.
TS

[Drawbar]

It's a good article, the only thing I would add is that you can easily get overwhelmed by having too many things going on at once. I was always told to keep it limited to three things. For me that is:

Logging:
Tillable Crops:
Sheep:

All are related because they take the same type of equipment to farm, but the markets are totally different. For instance the tillable crops are low pay (33 dollars per acre) but are consistent year after year. Wood prices fluctuate, but it takes a lot of work to harvest wood and those trees grow slow. Sheep have the highest pay off per acre, but its work twice a day 365 days a year.

Together they keep me as a viable"agricultural producer", but I still work off-farm for weekly pay.

[walls0stone]

Yea draw...
here it's

Beefcattle,
Crops,
lease the extra land.

One thing about being a producer, is that you can make more of a day, with the uptodate equipment, allowing you to have more stock or rent more ground to farm crops BUT, then you start to bleed over to the factory farm life style. So it's easyer for us to farm twice a day...do our crops...and have a real job to.

the way the markeets are, it's just less risk when you have some outside income.

[9er]

Awesome!

I'm currently unemployed and out in the country. I'm trying to find a way to use my 1.5 acres for not only myself and the wife, but to generate a bit of money. Thanks for the ideas!!!!