Yes you can make money farming. Easy, not usually. Market gardeners, like most entrepreneurs and farmers, put in many hours of work each day. In fact it’s common for small business owners to work more hours in their business than they ever did working for others.

When you’re doing work you love, it doesn’t feel like work. The other advantage is that if you’re growing food to sell, then you’re also feeding your family as well as your pocket.

Entrepreneurship is on the Rise

Entrepreneurship… owning your own business, is on the rise.^[1]https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/8346-entrepreneurial-optimism-growing.html People are starting their own businesses in all areas of interest, today more than ever before.

We’re seeing a keen interest in how to make money farming specialty crops and backyard gardening, as well as related kinds of small business endeavors. Folks of all ages and walks of life are becoming increasingly interested in growing their own food. Some are taking it further by going off the grid toward energy independence.

In Search of Freedom and Independence

People from all walks of life and professions are seeking how to leave their “9-5 job” in order to work from work for themselves and be their own boss. And today, there’s more opportunity to do just that than ever before in history.

We’ve all heard the terms “homesteaders”, “preppers”, “survivalists”, and “doomsdayers”, and many people are interested in these concepts. But there are also lots of folks just striving towards greater self-sufficiency.

People want greater independence and less reliance on the whims of the market and high prices for less nutritious, contaminant laden foods. They want to have ready access to healthier organic food for less. You know… normal stuff…. stuff our grandparents and great grandparents took for granted.

Millennials, Boomers and Seniors

Millennial families and baby boomers alike are interested in homesteading and learning how to make money farming. From small family farms to urban farming, from artists and crafters, soap and candle makers, people are seeking to make money creating and growing in their own gardens, yards and homes.

In fact, we’ll created a Planting for Retirement Facebook group and website (very much a work-in-progress) specific to the interests of supplementing and earning retirement income through growing plants.

The are many reasons people are choosing to work for themselves. Most choose entrepreneurship for the freedom to do work they enjoy.

Creating your own successful business is no walk in the park and can be incredibly stressful because there’s no steady paycheck with benefits. However, for anyone who’s ever been laid off knows, jobs are not guaranteed.

Working hard doing work you love is putting your future and fate into your own hands. Even when it’s tough and not yet paying enough of the bills to quit your full time job, you’re building job security and retirement income into your future.

For many baby boomers and seniors, it’s about supplemental income and creating their own retirement. They get to cut way down on food bills, while staying healthier, both from the exercise of gardening and farming as well as the best nutrition of home grown foods.

To make money farming provides for your family while doing work your love.

The New Family Farm

Many parents of young and growing families, it’s about being able to be home for the kids while also earning a living. Some start with one parent at home, while the other continues to bring in a paycheck at a job and works to make money farming on weekends and evenings. Once the family business is sustainable, both parents can work from home.

Children Included

It’s not unusual for families working from home to choose homeschooling and education through their family business endeavors. Children can typically become viable contributing members of the family business, which is an awesome way for kids to develop self esteem.

Families working together provides opportunities for bonding while incorporating valuable life and business education skills for the kids and parents alike. You know… practical life skills they probably wouldn’t learn in school.

Many discover they do not need to go on to college. Instead, they enter adulthood as entrepreneurs and either continue in the family business or create their own. Those who decide to take jobs working for others enter the job market with viable, hands-on skills that out-perform a degree without practical experience.

Families that work together tend to stay together.

A Return to the Family Farm Roots

The family farm is not obsolete. Today there’s a resurgence of the family farm, where the entire family pitches in to make it work. There’s a rise today in young people—millennials—choosing to go into urban farming with aspirations of raising their family closer to nature and “back to the earth” living.

In 2014, 89.7% of farms were small family farms, according to the USDA.^[2]https://blogs.usda.gov/tag/small-farms/

Family Farm – Family Unity

Families that work together around a common goal, tend to thrive in family unity. They develop a “team” mentality that’s often lost when everyone in the family goes their separate ways to their separate interests day after day.

When the family culture is an environment of learning and growing together, children—and parents—thrive.

Family Legacy – Lasting Bonds

Families who work together in this way form lasting bonds that can serve for generations and build more than a family business: They can build a family legacy.

Children are learning in real time in real situations how to work through problems together. In this environment, the burden is not all on dad’s shoulders, and home responsibilities are not all on mom. You know… the way it used to be but with a new consciousness of learning together and the value of each member’s contributions.

The family farm, with everyone pulling together and all contribute.

Hands on Education for Children

Children naturally grow in responsibility and self esteem through their contribution to the big picture of the family unit, pulling together as a whole. Working together can be so healthy for the entire family that to write about it could be a book unto itself.

Here’s an article on kids gardening that you may enjoy.

So for now, back on topic toward crops you can grow, but first, the most important bit of advice.

Don’t Quit Your Job (Yet)!

So how can you get started? First, our best recommendation is don’t quit your job…yet. Whether it’s farming or any other business venture you wish to start, if you’re still working for others and earning that steady paycheck, keep it up for now.

Since growing things and learning anything new does take time, even if you hate your job, look on it as a means to a better end goal. Be grateful that you have an income you can count on, and that can finance your start-up costs while you study, plan and prepare your new business endeavor. Devote evenings and weekends to building your family entrepreneurial enterprise, and if you have a family, make it a family affair so that you’re not divided between learning how to do this to support your family over spending time with them.

Building your business should be an exciting process you look forward to.

The Questions to ask Yourself

If you’re taking on this new venture as though it’s a chore, then likely this is not for you. So ask yourself, if you love it.

Are you always thinking about the new endeavor? Do you enjoy brainstorm and planning around it. Does working on it energize and excite you? If you answered a resounding ‘YES!’ to these questions, then you’re probably right on the right track.

If You Already Left Your Job

Perhaps you lost your job or quit already. In that case, you’ll be able to dive in full time. Hopefully you have some money in savings that you can fall back on, because it does take money to make money. If not, you’ll have to sit down and seriously put pencil to paper on your bills versus your income in your new venture.

The next thing to do is to consider all the options that interest you, and of those, which ones could produce the most profit in the least amount of time. Then focus on that. Y

You can—and probably should—branch out later, but the survival of your business and your family depends on generating revenue. You’ll need enough to pay the bills while also pouring money into growing the business. Choosing the options that will bring money in sooner, will help your business survive long enough to expand and thrive.

What kills a new venture faster than running out of money is the stress of running out of it.

You Don’t Need a Lot of Land to Make Money Farming

If you don’t have much land, that’s okay, you can still make money farming and we touch on that next.

Today, even folks who live in average suburban and urban neighborhoods are finding ways to grow enough food for their family, with enough leftover to sell. Some are inspired to give food away to friends, neighbors and community programs.

We know of a few in the GardensAll community who are doing this. But if you need additional income, and most of us do, you can plan for surplus by growing with the intention to sell.

Money is not evil. Money is simply more freedom.

Little or no Land?

If you don’t have much of your own land but have more time, you could look at land sharing. There are a number of ways this could happen. Some people who have land can’t—or don’t want to—farm or garden.

You could approach them about allowing you to garden a portion of their land for free. In exchange, you would share the produce with them. You could plant enough for you and them plus enough to sell.

That sounds simple, but of course you’d need to approach it carefully. You don’t want to invest money in seeds and plants and infrastructure, only to have a disagreement cause the deal to fall through and leave you with nothing. So be careful, but get creative in thinking out of the box.

A member of the GardensAll and Planting for Retirement communities, Shannon Schofield, was gifted an acre of land. Her neighbor had unused land adjacent to her current home and when she approached him about wanting land to grow on he just gave it to her!!

Never Give up on Your Dreams

We all want to live the life we dream of and to be able to care for our family’s needs while planning and investing for our old age. By now we should all know that the social security system is broken. So every effort we can make to create our own income will bring us closer to independence and self-sufficiency.

Even when it seems that we’re taking two steps back for every step forward, as is often the case in any new business, we’re still making progress. Any time we’re learning valuable lessons in the School of Life, we’re learning and growing, and that’s progress.

If your dream is to make money farming, you have your end goal… you know where you want to go. To get there you need to make a list of everything that comes to mind that will need to be done to bring that dream to life.

If that dream feels too big to get to from where you are now, consider where you want to be by year’s end. Make that list of what’s needed and organize that list into quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily goals. Every journey begins with a single step… and then another. If you keep on heading in the direction of your dreams daily, you will arrive.

Daily steps in the direction of your dreams is a proven path to success.
~LeAura Alderson, cofounder – iCreateDaily.com®

Growing Big in Small Spaces

If you do have land, even if it’s just a little, there’s a lot you can do. You can certainly grow enough to feed your family on 1/4 acre, as Brett L. Markham writes about in his book Mini Farming, Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 A

If you plan it right, you could grow enough to make a decent supplemental income, especially focusing on top-revenue generating crops. Our favorite garden planner could be an essential tool to make money farming by helping you plan your garden by crops, seasons, rotations and companion planting as well as providing cool visual representations of the space you’ll need.

Now that we’ve set the scaffolding of context, it’s time to explore some of the many ideas to consider for your for-profit growing venture. Toward that, here are our top recommended books to help you on your journey.

Beyond Feeding Family

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, more people than ever, are seeking to start their own businesses. Many in the GardensAll community are interested in how they can earn from growing, farming and other home and family businesses.

Gardeners are looking at not only how to feed their family with what they grow, but also how to turn that into extra revenue to pay bills or save up for dreams beyond self-sufficiency.

Next we get into more ideas for the backyard gardener to the family farm and everything in between.

Where to Sell Your Produce and Goods?

In order to make money farming, you’ll need good places to sell what you make and grow. For starters, farmer’s markets are one of the most popular places to sell what you grow.

In our area of North Carolina, the rates are reasonable at $20-$35 per day for a “booth” or space as of this writing. That’s not bad for a day’s access to ready traffic with customers there to buy.

Check with the Farmer’s Market in your area first. Beyond that, many grocery stores today have “buy local” programs you can apply to. Another resource mentioned earlier, but worth repeating, is your local extension service. They track and study trends and generally know which are your state’s most profitable crops as well as most of what you’ll need to get going with it.^[3]https://nifa.usda.gov/extension

Online Sales

For selling non-produce items online, Amazon is the top marketplace for traffic, but it isn’t something to go into blindly. In order to make profit, you’ll need to learn their system and study resources on how to become a profitable seller on Amazon or Etsy (or both).

Those are links to how-to books on Amazon. Before you buy any books, you can search and study all what’s available for free first, beginning with Amazon’s own site and tutorials. After that, branch into blogs online, where you may learn things Amazon doesn’t tell you, such as you’re not likely to make money on Amazon if you don’t plan on investing in advertising.

There are a number of good resources with free information. Just be wary of upsells to expensive courses when there are books you can buy for so much less.

Benefits to Creating Your Own Business

The benefits of running your own business are numerous, but here are a few:

• Provides organic produce for your family, free or for less
• Supply your family and sell the surplus
• Excess not sold, can be turned into value added products such as tomatoes into salsa; fruit into jam.
• Doing work you enjoy while being our own boss
• Deduct expenses: create a business structure, and your expenses are tax deductible.^[4]https://www.irs.gov/uac/Newsroom/10-Things-to-Know-about-Farm-Income-and-Deductions
• For farming, you can earn real estate tax credits

Valuable Resources for Free

One of your first free resources to put to good use is your local extension service. These government agencies run off our tax dollars and the more they can help us the more they can validate the importance of their jobs and services they can provide.

Extension agents are also usually deeply knowledgeable and love to teach on their area of expertise, so start there. Most can make site visits to help you identify problems and opportunities and give advice.^[5]https://nifa.usda.gov/extension

Numerous online blogs and websites such as this one with lots of information for free. These sites such as GardensAll.com, are able to bring you free information because we get paid from advertisers and affiliations such as Amazon, at no charge to you.

So start with these free resources first to save money. Learn for free first, then books, before buying courses, but remember, the greatest lessons are in the doing.

It is in the journey that the way becomes more clear.
~LeAura Alderson, cofounder – iCreateDaily.com®

How to Make Money Farming from Your Home Garden

Okay! Now that we’ve covered the overall picture, let’s hone in on some specifics. Next up, are some top ways you can make money from your yard.

By Jill Winger of ThePrairieHomestead.com

Although we raise a lot of food on our property, are obsessive DIYers, and try to be as self-sufficient as possible, my husband has always had a “job in town”.

Thankfully, the ways of making money while homesteading are endless. Here is a list to jump-start your entrepreneur juices—>

For more, visit Jill’s awesome blog.^[6]https://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2015/01/make-money-homesteading.html

SELL EGGS

ThePennyHoarder.com has a great point when she says, “While produce comes in and out of season, eggs are always ‘in’. That’s right, for those with the inclination, egg farming can be an eggs-cellent opportunity to eggs-ponentially increase your side income. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.:-)”^[7]https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/egg-farming/

However, our research indicates that it takes a lot of chickens and eggs to make a profit.^[8]https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/323148/how-do-you-make-a-profit-selling-eating-eggs That said, if you and your family consume a lot of eggs, raising chickens for eggs can replace what you spend at the store, and could be worth it to you.

IF you enjoy animals and chickens, and don’t mind creating a protected area for them to graze. Not only will you save in not buying eggs from the store, but each egg you consume will be significantly more nutritious.

Mother Earth News reports: Eggs from hens raised on pasture are far more nutritious than eggs from confined hens in factory farms.

LATEST RESULTS: New test results show that pastured egg producers are kicking the commercial industry’s derriere when it comes to vitamin D! Eggs from hens raised on pasture show 4 to 6 times as much vitamin D as typical supermarket eggs. Eggciting News!!!

Our testing has found that, compared to official U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) nutrient data for commercial eggs, eggs from hens raised on pasture may contain:

Eggs from Free Range Hens are Healthier

• 1⁄3 less cholesterol
• 1⁄4 less saturated fat
• 2⁄3 more vitamin A
• 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids
• 3 times more vitamin E
• 7 times more beta carotene

SOURCE: Mother Earth News^[9]https://www.motherearthnews.com/relish/pastured-eggs-vitamin-d-content.aspx?blogid=1508

WOW! That’s significant!

Raising chickens for eggs may only neutralize the amount you spend on eggs each year. However, having that as a tax deductible business means that you will save money in groceries and taxes, while having ready access to eggs with a higher nutritional value. That means you may also save on supplements illness and medicines!

So… what’s the actual profit? Hard to say.

Best to study up on this, enjoy the learning process. Start with a list of pros and cons. Check with your local extension service to learn about chicken farming and egg sales, etc. in your area so you can make an informed decision based on fact and figures.

SELL PRODUCE

Excerpts continued from article by Jill Winger of ThePrairieHomestead.com^[10]https://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2015/01/make-money-homesteading.html

Grow extra vegetables and herbs to sell at your local farmer’s market. If you have an orchard, berry bushes, or fruit trees, sell fresh fruit.

Make homemade baked goods and sell them at your local farmers market. Homemade french bread,^[11]https://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2013/04/easy-homemade-french-bread.htmlbuns,^[12]https://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2014/03/whole-wheat-bun-recipe.html or cinnamon rolls are always a hit! Make and sell homemade jams, jellies, and preserves.

By purchasing the ingredients for the baked goods in larger quantities through your business, you also reduce your family grocery budget through bulk buying. Plus you will also be able to deduce some of the expenses for the products and recipe testing you need to do for this aspect of your business.

Now this is not tax advice so check with your CPA to confirm what you can and cannot deduct.

BEEKEEPING

Excerpts continued from article by Jill Winger of ThePrairieHomestead.com^[13]https://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2015/01/make-money-homesteading.html

Keep bees and sell local honey and beeswax. You can later expand on this by making your own products out of beeswax, such as candles, lip balms and soaps.

To boost your honey and products over others, plant specialty crops near your bees for "gourmet honeys" such as lavender, echinacea or calendula. Chances are your honey will end up with additional nutritional value for you and your family as well as your customers, giving you an edge over the competition.

Again, you'll want to check with the extension service or your local beekeepers association to discover what's required to be able to legitimately claim a special kind of honey. If you cannot claim a monoculture produced honey, you can at least mention that your bees have ready access to those special plants.

For a more earthy approach, the next option may intrigue you.

MUSHROOM FARMING

Excerpts continued from article by Jill Winger of ThePrairieHomestead.com^[14]https://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2015/01/make-money-homesteading.html

Delight the ‘shroom lovers in your area, selling at Farmer's Market and local restaurants.^[15]https://www.organicgardening.com/learn-and-grow/how-to-grow-shiitake-mushrooms You can read more about growing mushrooms cheaply at home in this article on GardensAll.^[16]https://gardensall.com/grow-mushrooms-in-a-laundry-basket/

This 3-minute video will give you a good intro into how to grow mushrooms within a couple months.

https://youtu.be/HaVR4Z7mffU

Animal Husbandry

Excerpts continued from article by Jill Winger of ThePrairieHomestead.com^[17]https://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2015/01/make-money-homesteading.html

BABY CHICKS

Incubate eggs and sell day-old chicks to other homesteaders. Now this might be more profitable than selling the eggs, so if it's of interest, check with your local extension service.

DOGS!

If you love dogs, here are some options to consider:

Doggie Day Care

if you have some space, you could create a sectioned dog pen. Your requirement could be well socialized dogs who need a family environment while owners are at work and or vacation.

Dog Walking

many folks leave their dogs at home during work for hours. If you need exercise or just love to be outside walking, love dogs, and are looking for supplemental income, you could create a dog-walking service in your neighborhood or one nearby.

In-Home Dog Care

Many folks also need someone to come in and care for their animals while they're away. Look for people who travel regularly and sign them up for you to be there for their pets once a day for whenever they're away. More people would have pets if they had someone to rely on to care for their pets when they're away.

RAISE WORMS - VERMICULTURE

Called vermiculture, you could raise worms either for fishing or gardening purposes. You can raise them to sell plus for your own use for the healthiest soil and crops.

There are many advantages to raising vermiculture. One being that you can actually leave for the farm without having someone come in to feed the animals!

Vermi-composting is also a thing. If you decided to make money farming worms and vermicompost, your costs, work and maintenance would be lower.

By now your head should be buzzing with so many ideas of things you could do. So let's end this article with just a few more items before you head off to start researching and planning what you're going to do.

What to Do First

There are so many possibilities, and in order to profit from any of them, you'll need to do your homework. It's more than we can cover in this overview article, so dive deep and take a sharp pencil to the bottom line of profitability versus time spent. Many DIYers forget to value their time overall, so consider that as a part of the equation.

In closing, here's a list of a few more options.  Just research the profitability aspects as best you can. Consider carefully on how much of your time, energy, money and other resources the options you're interested in will take. The answers to that will help you decide which way to go first.

The goal is to get you self-sustaining as soon as possible so that you and your family are taken care of. From there you can grow and branch out.

Choose your favorite idea that can be done in the least amount of time for the least amount of money and effort.

More Ideas to Make Money Farming, Crafting and More

Keep fiber animals and sell wool: this is labor intensive and expensive, so only do this if you love animals like alpaca, lamas and sheep, and have the land and budget to invest in these animals. Research it deeply first.

Homemade Cosmetics and Lotion Bars^[18]https://gardensall.com/how-to-make-lotion-bars/

Make and sell homemade candles^[19]https://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2014/01/tallow-emergency-candles.html

Knitting, Crocheting, Sewing to create homemade hats, gloves, scarves, blankets, and more. These are hard to profit on versus your time, but if you love it, it's something you can do during relaxing time with family that can bring in extra income. To earn more, create and sell your own how-to course.

Woodcrafting: create rustic handmade furniture or other wooden items out of "found wood"

Compost: Become a compost-master and sell the best garden fertilizer for miles around.^[20]https://gardensall.com/pile-on-the-compost/

Sell Seedlings: Use your greenhouse to grow and sell bedding plants and seedlings. What we love about this idea is how plants can propagate virtually endlessly for free.

Create an Experience: Create a U-Pick Farm and allow others to harvest their own fruit, veggies, or berries for a fee.^[21]https://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2014/08/u-pick-farm-recipes.html

Bed & Breakfast: Turn your house into a bed and breakfast and give your guests a first-hand taste of homestead life.

Grow a pumpkin patch, and create the ultimate fall farm experience in October.

Rent Your Land: If you live in an especially picturesque location, rent out your pasture, barn, or land for weddings, parties, photo shoots, or other events.

Teach Others: Teach classes — Cheesemaking, fiber arts, meat processing, soap making, candle making, beekeeping… If you have mastered an aspect of homesteading, there’s a good chance others will pay to learn from you!

Write and publish a book: Self-publishing makes becoming an author easier than ever.
Editor's Note: Just be careful with this. It's the rare author who really makes money directly from book sales so go in informed and aware, eyes wide open.

For more, visit ideas visit ThePrairieHomestead.com.^[22]https://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2014/08/u-pick-farm-recipes.html

Let us know what you decide to start, or what you're already doing. We love to hear from you and will share your story if you're interested.

And... some wisdom from the GardensAll Facebook community... John Keytack:

"When we lived in Ohio, there was a small, but significant, Asian population. We began growing some specialty vegetables, not so much for money, but as a service. It went over great! I also did the same thing with okra, which was not commercially available in stores. Lots of displaced Southerners appreciated a "taste" of home. This same principle may be applied to many ethnic groups or nationalities. The seeds for their specialty vegetables are readily available. This way you can make a little extra money, but also provide a genuine service to others! :-)

"We would give them to individuals, but we had so much surplus we began taking them to Asian food stores. We thought we would just give them away, but they always bought everything we had. I can't tell you what it means to see someone happy when they find a vegetable you've grown that they haven't seen since they left their homeland. :-)"

You can see that conversation here:

GREAT IDEAS!!

Wishing you green gardens and the freedom to live your dreams.

We invite you to join our Facebook group: Planting for Retirement.