Making a living at home

[Tuckahoe]

My wife and I have a ten acre mini farm (all cleared flat land)
We are looking for ideas of making a living here at home. We are not interested in the real estate market and all the get rich quick junk you see on tv. I currently have a job working in the county jail but the pay is low but it does have good health insurance.
Here are some of the things I have come up with.
Country Store and grill (high start uo)
Grape vinyard (couple of years work before any income)
I am also exploring growing worms (bait and compost)

Have any of you started a home business? I need to kow what to look out for and what to move on.

[machinemaker]

Over the years I have had several home based businesses. My advice is to start reading everything you can about starting a business, in my opinion most business that fail do so for lack of up front planning and lack of knowledge. So what are your skills, your strengths, your resources, hobbies? What is needed in your area or are you going to provide a product or service out side your area? Either plan to work both your current job and your start up until you can't afford to keep your current job or have a couple of years worth of savings to live on until your start up is on its feet. Most startups that fail either fail at the very beginning or in year three. Talk to others in your area that you know that have been successful in starting a business, get their advice, but weigh what they advise. Talk to your bank, an accountant, maybe a lawyer. Write a detailed business plan that looks at all possible events. Do your homework to make the business plan real.

I don't want to sound negitive with the above. I think that having your own business is the best thing in the world. there are great tax benifits to be had, flexible hours, better income and the feeling of doing it for yourself. One other thing to think about is this something you want to do for years or are you going to build this up to sell after 5 years? there are a lot more people who buy business than start them
kent