The dream of making real money from the homestead is a common thread amongst us homesteaders. With the ideas of side hustles, making money from home and frugal living tips filling top Pinterest feeds, I know I’m not the only one that works towards making this dream a reality.
There are others that dream of being a stay at home mom, living a simplier life and raising happy healthy farm kids . If you are reading this in hopes of finding a way to make money from your homestead….you’re not alone.
I’ve compiled a list of ways to make money from our homestead over our beginning years to share with you. Some of these things I’ve learned from either experience, others I’ve heard from fellow neighbours and through other homesteaders online.
Every year we take the time to reflect and set goals for the year to bring in more of an income from our home using our Homestead Business Planning Workbook. Access yours below.
My advice I suggest to you is to dabble in things you enjoy, find things that speak to your soul, find your passion and do it well.
I love hearing stories of farmers finding their ideal niche. Ours has been in our garden, chickens and the cows.
Here are many ways to make money from your homestead, my hope is that you find a few from this list that inspire you.
47 Ways to Make Money From the Homestead
Make money from the garden
Make money from the garden by starting with a plan. One simple way to make money from seedlings in the early spring is to plant extra seeds and sell excess. Options to sell are endless, try hosting a plant sale or simply posting online.
They supplied their heirloom vegetable starters and dahlias to most of the neighbourhood from their very small backyard greenhouse. Now I start most of my plants by seed and save a ton of money with my vegetable garden.
Host a Plant Sale.
With the extra seedlings I have I plan on hosting a plant sale like the couple up the road I mentioned above. Stephanie Rose from Garden Therapy write s a simple how to get started guide for hosting a plant sale.
A huge cash crop- We just planted 50 bulbs of garlic this fall. I know we will have excess to sell and seed garlic to plant a larger crop next year.
Sell heirloom seeds.
Save your seeds at the end of the growing season. Use them for the next year and market them to sell at farmers markets or on Etsy. Lindsay from PNW Heirloom Seed runs a profitable business this way, and her instagram photos are drool worthy to say the least. Postage is cheap on tiny little seeds.
Grow a Herb Garden.
Medicinal and culinary herbs are easy to grow as they are perennials and quite profitable. For examples, we have an endless supply of lemon balm behind our chicken coop. There is a market for perrennial herbs as they are used to make herbal remedies, infuse oil, honey and soaps. That’s why I’m highly considering taking The Herbal Academy of New England has great online courses for herbal entrepreneurs. The Academy offers courses designed for students with little or no herbal experience along with botany and wildcrafting courses.
It’s possible to make ALOT of money from a market garden. Grow and sell vegetables at your local farmers market or sell produce boxes. The Market Garden Book is widely popular right now as many people want to learn how the author managed to make $100,000 for 1.5 acres.
Rustic farm weddings are all the rage right now. One idea for making money is to supply flowers for events such as weddings. Another idea is to offer bouquet subscriptions or sell the flowers at farmers markets. Theres a big market for flowers right now. The Cut Flower Garden by Floret Farm’s is a huge best seller at the moment for a good reason!
Make money with Poultry
Chickens are a great first farm animal to raise. There are a ton of ways you can do so for cheap. Sell the eggs. People pay for farm fresh, free range, organic eggs. We sell ours at $5.00/doz. I know other farmers that will sell them for more. It’s a great way to start building customers, when you get started.
Make money from your coop by selling fertilized chicken, duck, turkey, guinea fowl, pea fowl eggs for hatching. We offer a barnyard mix with a variety of breeds with one rooster. Heritage and rare chicken breeds can go for a lot of money. It’s not unheard of to make $1000 a month hatching and selling day old chicks.
Day old chicks.
Incubate any of the above eggs yourself to sell as day olds. Or use a broody hen to hatch the eggs for you or even a teacher to hatch with their class. I’ve written a beginners incubation guide to hatch your own eggs to help you improve your hatch rates and make money from the chicks.
I sell my day old chicks as straight-run, which means they aren’t sexed. Some will be roosters and some are hens. Mixed breed chicks go for $5 each, where as pure heritage breed chicks will go for much more. Anna has a great guide on hatching chicks for a profit.
Point a Lay Hens.
Raise chicks until they are at the point of laying eggs. There is a popular market for hens that just started laying eggs. This is a longer investment, and costs more to raise the chicks to the point of laying and requires more space than just selling chicks.
Raise Animals for Meat Sales
Raise and sell Broilers.
Raising chickens for meat is one way to make money from your homestead. Raising meat birds can be a lot of work to get started, but its a quick and profitable return. We raise broilers every summer and every year our system becomes more efficient. We raise and sell enough to have enough chicken to last the year.
Raise Meat Rabbits.
Meat rabbits is a great option for making money raising small livestock if you space is limited. Tiffany shares 5 ways to make money raising meat rabbits.
Raise a herd of beef cattle to sell. Depending on the size of property you have, you might raise a few steers for butcher or have a herd of cows and a bull.
If you raise beef, consider selling beef calves once weaned from their mothers and sell them as steers or a pregnant cow.
Lamb is a specialty meat that most people like to purchase straight from the farmer. You can easily get a lamb for $150 to keep the grass down on your field and at the end of the season send them in to butcher. We had success selling lamb our first year on the homestead.
I recommend raising turkeys for fall celebrations. Whites are a high yield bird and most people want a farm fresh pasture raised organic turkey to feed their family for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Learn more about raising farm animals for cash profits on our blog post, Raising farm animals for profit.
Sell what you have excess off
Sell Manure to gardeners. We are able to sell horse manure, cow manure and chicken manure. Urban gardeners are happy to know where their manure source comes.
Compost is a great way to help gardeners fill their raised garden beds quickly and is more cost effective than buying bags of compost and soil from the store.
Run a Haying Business.
Use your own hay equipment to cut and sell hay. We’ve found many neighbours that will exchange the hay for your services. It’s a great way to save on hay for your own animals if not get enough for free. We started our own hay cutting business. We bought old used equipment and with a little elbow grease we got it up and working in time for haying season and it paid it self off with the first few cuts of the season.
Sell your hay.
Selling your hay off the field may be an option if you have lots of unused fields. Cut hay with your own equipment or pay a farmer to cut it for you and sell it off the field for 2x as much as you paid the farmer to cut it.
Offer a weekly seasonal farm box.
I’ve seen other homesteaders in my area offer a weekly seasonal farm box for sale on facebook, community groups and postings for approx. $20. Set a price and fill boxes with seasonal produce, eggs, honey, whatever farm products you currently have excess of. Offer a pick up time at the farm or do deliveries. It’s a great way to start building customers.
Sell Goat or Cows Milk.
If you raise goats or cows, consider selling their milk. I suggest checking your local regulations for fresh milk products before diving into the business of selling unpasteurized milk products.
Run a you pick fruit patch.
Choose a high valued fruit crop that grows well in your area, and a “you pick” that isn’t for miles and the customers will pour in. Hopefully this year we will have enough blueberries that we will have to start a new tradition for our family.
Sell Fruit from the Orchard .
Selling fruit from your orchard may be one way to make some extra cash. Mark up the fruit higher if you picked it yourself and sold it as a roadside stand, at your local farmers market or to a local grocery store.
Make Money from the homestead this winter.
Sell Maple Syrup.
As a Canadian Homesteader I should already be doing this! There’s a huge market for this liquid gold, maple syrup. Selling maple syrup is a great niche if you already have maple, birch and walnut trees on your property. Trees are tapped and maple syrup is made during the off season of farming and gardening. Ashley from Practical Self Reliance lays out the ground work for starting your own small maple syrup operation. I also recommend getting started with this guide.
Blogging and Freelance Writing.
In searching for ways to make money from home and from our homestead I often found that most homesteaders are writing about their experiences as bloggers.
Blogging is a great way to network with other Homesteaders. Learn how to make money FAST when you start your own homesteading blog. Check out my list of resources for homestead bloggers to get started today!
With a bountiful garden and orchard, it’s easy to preserve food for your family and sell the excess. If you love canning, you could also offer your services to others that might like their fruit turned into yummy jams or jellies etc. Apples are a great fruit to preserve. Check out our recipes and labels to help get you started.
Start a Christmas Tree Farm.
I have a friend that grew up on a Christmas tree farm. I remember going to a Christmas Tree farm, cutting down the tree, having a cup of hot chocolate and a cookie and really enjoying the experience. If you love the magic of Christmas this might be an option for you, and shockingly enough it doesn’t take up a ton of space! Read more about starting a Christmas Tree Farm here.
What homestead handiwork are you exceptional at? Wether it’s knitting, crocheting, sewing or needlework there’s always a market for homemade crafts. Create an online marketplace on Etsy, sell through instagram and facebook. This is a great option for keeping busy during the winter and selling at holiday markets.
Make and Sell Soap.
This seems to be the number one selling item at farmers markets. If you have livestock and a herb garden you can easily make soap using your own ingredients. You can sell soap on facebook, farmers markets and on Etsy. I’ll be learning from this book.
Beekeeping is an art form and with its success comes liquid gold. I suggest you do your research first and take a course from a local beekeeper. I also recommend the book, Beekeeping: Everything you need to know to start your first beehive. Crystal and Karl have a great article on how to package, store and sell honey.
Tan and Sell Hides.
If you raise livestock, it’s a good idea to use as much of the animal as possible. My husband is currently working away at the essential homesteading skill of tanning hides. He hopes to tan our Scottish Highland hides. These go for thousands of dollars to the right buyers. I suggest starting with smaller animals like rabbits.
Be a Hostess
Rent out your Space.
Rent a field for grazing or a stall for animal boarding. Wether you rent a room with Airbnb or your house and live in the trailer for the summer.
If you have a paddock, a stall, hay storage or just a field you can earn a minimum of $100 and up a month per horse.We offer self horse boarding on our property, read more about boarding horses as an income source here.
Read more about how to get started with Horse Boarding plus a great freebie!
Host an event and sell your farm products.
The farmers market in our area is not as exciting as it used to be. We love purchasing from other farmers to just get a sneak peak at what they are up to on their properties. It’s part of the experience. Hosting a spring plant sale, harvest festival or holiday craft fair is one way to bring customers to your products.
Offer a class to homeschool families.
By offering a tour of your homestead and farm, children learn valuable lessons. They learn animal husbandry, they learn about where their food comes from and they get excited about being outdoors. It’s a win win for your community. Have the children help with farm chores by feeding scratch to the chickens, collecting eggs, planting out seeds in the garden etc. As a teacher, I often bring my class to see where our class compost ends up, where the chicks we hatch live etc. The students love it.
Host a Wedding/Family Event.
Like I said above, rustic farm weddings are all the rage right now. There are many young couples looking for a farm to host their wedding at. People will pay at least a $2000 to rent a field My advice is to make sure you have proper event insurance.
Campsites seem to over flow these days. Open a field as a designated campsite in the summer seasons. Just make sure to check with your bylaws first. I know a family that is able to live the homestead dream with a campsite on their property and a small farm market that sells seasonal produce, local meats, baking and of course ICE CREAM! Not wanting to create a whole campsite on your property? Rent out a corner of your land for campers to pitch a tent and use Hip Camp to do so! It’s not until I was writing this article that I found this awesome site. I’m hoping to implement this as a 2019 or 2020 homestead income source.
Offer open air storage or unused equipment sheds to rent storage space for RV’s and boats. Renting storage is an easy way for passive income. Research costs in your area for storage.
High Profit Crops
Graft fruit trees.
I just bought a grafted Gravestine apple tree from an apple farm and signed up for her summer grafting course. I’ve been reading what others have to say when it comes to grafting fruit trees! Check it out.
Mushrooms are a specialty crop that be grown on a small property. Oyster and Shiitake mushrooms are a booming market. Foraging wild mushrooms such as Chanterelles are a great option for urban homesteaders. The Mushroom People have a great guide online to check out.
Who doesn’t love the smell and sense of calm brought on by lavender? Lavender is a specialty cash crop. It is a great option for small growers. Options for selling lavender include fresh bundles, dried lavender sachets and aromatherapy oils.
Grow Fruit Trees from Seed.
It’s easy to grow fruit trees from seed for profit with a little know how. Citrus trees like lemon and orange trees can be started and grown indoors. Read this guide here for details
Grow a Pumpkin Patch.
This is our favourite fall harvest activity to attend in October. A local farmer hosts a pumpkin festival with all things pumpkins including a large variety of heirloom pumpkins for purchase. They sell pumpkin pie, pumpkin lattes in the barn. You can bowl with pumpkins or purchase a pumpkin to catapolt into an empty field. There is a corn maze, a small children’s hay maze. A photographer comes and takes festive photos.
Start a corn maze.
There is a local farm in our area that has a fun corn maze as the draw to a harvest festival. Here’s this article on how to do it and do it well.
Start Your Homestead Business Now
There are endless ways to make money from home. No matter the space you have, the ideas and options are endless.
Take a moment to access the ideas above. What strikes you as a possibility?
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This list of course is just a start on the endless ideas out there but one I hope you’ll refer to later as you discover ways to add to your homestead income. I’d love to hear what you think and how you make money from your homestead, please comment below!