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Episode 9: Does Your Homestead Need to Make Money?
208 Plays1 year ago
Does the Homestead need to be a source of income? This is a conversation we believe is probably more important than many realize. We hope you find encouragement and support in the discussion as you further explore the development of your homestead.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Little Way Farm and Homestead Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Little Way Farm and Homestead Podcast. Little Way Farm and Homestead is a regenerative and educational farm in southeastern Indiana. Motivated by the Catholic faith, we strive to inspire, encourage, and support the development of homesteads and small-scale farms in faith and virtue. I'm Matthew. And I'm Carissa. We're excited for you to join us on the podcast.
Should a Homestead Be a Source of Income?
00:00:23
Speaker
Welcome to another episode of the Little Way Farm and Homestead Podcast. I think this is going to be an interesting episode. Hopefully it is a little bit sobering for quite a few people who may feel as if their homesteads needs to be something that it doesn't need to be. And what we're referring to is really the question of, does your homestead need to be a business or does your homestead need to be a source of income or revenue for you and your family? So maybe we could start off very simply and answer the question. Carissa, does a homestead have to make money?
00:00:52
Speaker
The answer is no, you don't have to make money on your homestead. You can, and there might be reasons why you want to or need to make money off of the homestead, but it is perfectly fine to choose to homestead and choose to raise food for your family just because you want to be able to support your family in that way.
00:01:14
Speaker
entirely. I think it seems to me that often people get into this mindset, whether it's driven by social media or expectations that have kind of been set inside them by a friend that they know or a family member that they know who Holmes says and does so from more of a farming perspective.
00:01:29
Speaker
But I ultimately I don't think that people need to feel compelled to make money off their homestead and that sometimes that can actually be a threat to Kind of the piece inside the homestead itself if you purchase land or move out to a homestead and decide that you want to monetize the entire thing or parts of it it could threaten the piece inside of it if it's not done in the proper way or at least with the right expectations and
00:01:54
Speaker
Well, I think that there's actually a couple reasons that probably lead a lot of people to thinking that they need to be making money off the homestead. And first of all, there is this trend in our culture to make everything into a side gig or to have like an extra income from anything that you're interested in or anything that you can put extra time and effort into.
Modern vs Historical Perspectives on Family Business
00:02:20
Speaker
And so I think that it's pretty easy to be like, oh wow, we're producing something. Maybe we could produce enough to have this extra income coming in and like maybe we could even replace our income and just be able to work fully from home, which is, I do see a lot of times there is this desire for that from a lot of people, even outside of homesteading. And it's so interesting to me because when you look back in history,
00:02:48
Speaker
careers a lot of times were family centered and the the father or the mother and father had a business that they would run out of the home and it was the family business and then as time went on and things have evolved and industrialization happened a lot of jobs went outside of the home and where we're at today in a lot of homes both parents are working outside of the home and they they're missing all this time with their family so i understand how that
00:03:17
Speaker
concept and how that desire can come up in a lot of homes because of all of that. Right. I think the consideration then would be, to answer the question very plainly, do you have to make money off your homestead? The answer is no, you don't have to and you really don't even need feel compelled to do so. At the same time, the idea of a family business is incredibly interesting and something which would probably promote a better worldview for many people.
00:03:42
Speaker
and one that would ultimately be able to be maybe better incorporated with the Catholic faith as well, where you're able to support your family from that family business and create generational wealth ultimately that can create an environment where things like where food's going to come from and where the next paycheck's going to come from aren't really as much tied to your time invested at a labor off the farm as much as it could be something that's produced from within the homestead in that manner.
00:04:09
Speaker
But even that doesn't suggest that the homestead itself has to make money. And we see this oftentimes as you mentioned, where people want to commoditize everything and make a side gig out of everything. And that can lead to this temptation of having to effectively turn your homestead into a farm.
00:04:28
Speaker
And there's again, there's nothing wrong with it. It's simply a matter of outlook and perspective.
Challenges of Turning Homesteads into Businesses
00:04:33
Speaker
And what we find becomes a little bit troublesome for a lot of people is that they get into the home setting lifestyle and they take on all these chores and these animal enterprises and the gardens and everything else. And they find that somewhere along the way, they took on more than they wish they would have and that they're losing more time with their family than they are actually working with their family.
00:04:53
Speaker
And a lot of it is done with the idea that they're going to make money off of these enterprises that they first wanted to get into because they wanted to provide for themselves and their family. And then afterwards, maybe notice that there are ways to monetize them or to turn them into more of a farm enterprise as opposed to a homesteading activity.
00:05:12
Speaker
And if you don't do that with the same mentality that you would any other business, whether a local family business off the homestead or an entrepreneurial venture elsewhere, then you're likely going to run into an issue where you're going to question, is this worth it? Because you're not properly set up for things like marketing and advertising spend and creating relationships with people who you can bring in better inputs at better costs and market at certain scales, et cetera.
00:05:42
Speaker
And that can become a avenue which can ultimately be discouraging because you find that you may not be as successful at the business enterprise only because you haven't set it up as a business enterprise. And now it's actually costing you more to do the homesteading activities, which is what you really just wanted to do to begin
Sustainable Practices in Homesteading
00:06:02
Speaker
with.
00:06:02
Speaker
Before we move into maybe ways that you can make money off of the homestead if you want to, I do want to draw attention to I think that there's another another trap that people get into in feeling like they need to make money off of the homestead and I think that usually comes from
00:06:21
Speaker
bringing exports into the homestead to run it. And that can end up being very costly and expensive. And if you're already living off of the income that you're bringing in from whatever job you're working off the homestead, and now you're trying to add in all this extra expense to feed animals and to build structures and infrastructures, I think that that is something that can influence people to feeling like they need to make money.
00:06:51
Speaker
And the solution to that I think really comes back to creating a lower input homestead and realizing that we don't need to be buying everything to support our homestead, but you can start working towards being able to feed your homestead off of what you can create and provide.
00:07:09
Speaker
And sometimes that means that you don't do all the enterprises that you would like to do. You don't raise all the animals that you would like to because you might need to see like what can our land support? What can our time support? And so that it just takes a lot of planning and trial and error, but
00:07:27
Speaker
trying to refine what homesteading looks like for your family and on your land and for the time and season of life that you're in and trying to make it as low import as possible.
00:07:40
Speaker
Just to explain that a little bit more clearly and maybe make sure that we're all on the same page, there's really two considerations here. The first is making sure that your homestead isn't costing you more money or that at least it's moving towards a position where it's becoming less expensive over time. And the second is reducing the amount of things that you need to bring into the homestead in order to make it function.
00:08:03
Speaker
And so for the first point, when you begin your homesteading lifestyle or homesteading journey, there's going to be a lot of things that you have to purchase. And this can scale up to, you know, you want the whole thing right away or you're okay and comfortable with it taking time to get to that point where it's more self-sufficient or you have more of the resources available. So what I mean by that is maybe in the very beginning, you don't need to put in all of the animal enterprises you want.
00:08:31
Speaker
I struggled with this in the very beginning. I wanted all the pigs and the chickens and the cows. I want it all right away. And what we found very quickly is that that's really not the best strategy if you don't have an enormous amount of time to dedicate to building up the infrastructure for those animals first. And then also being able to ensure that you have the resources to feed those animals, whether they're things you're buying in for them or you're able to harvest them from the property itself.
00:08:58
Speaker
So the first thing then is to make sure that your homestead is not becoming more expensive over time but is becoming less expensive over time. The second portion of that is making sure that you are attentive and intentional about what you have to bring into the homestead to make it function as opposed to what you can draw from the homestead to make it function.
Building Self-Reliant Homestead Communities
00:09:18
Speaker
Again, for example, maybe in the winter time you have ruminant animals like cows or sheep that you need to feed forage to during the normal times of the year. And in the winter, do you have enough forage left to feed them or do you need to bring in hay? If you need to bring in hay, does that hay need to come from someone else off of your farm or off of your homestead? Or can it come from your own homestead land itself? Is there an area where you can dedicate to just harvesting hay?
00:09:47
Speaker
And if you can create an environment where you're able to support your animal enterprises, your compost needs for gardening, your seed through seed saving and all kinds of other things like that over time, then your input, your homestead costs also decreases. So that goes back to point number one, but also you're simply reducing your dependency on imports. And then when we say imports in this conversation, we really mean to understand that your homestead is in itself almost a society.
00:10:17
Speaker
like the Family Society, and how does your homestead relate to its need for dependency on externals like hay from another farm if you don't have your own area to create hay for your animals in the wintertime?
00:10:33
Speaker
And it opens up the opportunity to question things like, is hay the only practice that I can do in order to get my ruminant animals through the winter? Or are there other homesteading practices or agricultural practices that we could engage with to create better forage during the wintertime so that we can decrease the need for hay to begin with in and of itself?
00:10:53
Speaker
So that's really the two considerations that have to be considered. And it's really important to think about those because what happens is people have a tendency to want all of it right away and they want it to look really pleasing and be very welcoming and inviting.
00:11:10
Speaker
They want the house to be amazing. They want the lawn, the yard, the gardens, the animals, everything to be clean, organized, set up. And there's just this temptation to rush time when you do that and invest so much money into it that you find yourself in a financial situation that's discouraging as well.
00:11:29
Speaker
So I guess just to recap, one, over time, your homestead needs to become less expensive, or we would encourage you to make your homestead less expensive over time, which requires planning and intentionality. And two, working towards a less, lesser dependency on bringing things in to make the homestead run.
Aligning Homesteading with Personal and Faith Goals
00:11:49
Speaker
yeah truly this part of the conversation could be in a whole episode on its own because there there is so much to be said about all of this there like you can talk about investigating different breeds of animals so you can understand like well we have the forage to support this breed better than this breed or
00:12:12
Speaker
like if we bring in this type of pig we're gonna have to be bringing in so much extra feed versus this type of pig lives well off of forage and grass but so like there's there's so much to it that we could go more in depth on
00:12:28
Speaker
but i think when it when we're talking about making money off of the homestead and trying to understand if that's something that you really need or you really desire for your family i think that it goes back to something that we've discussed a lot previously and that's really understanding
00:12:45
Speaker
the why? Why are we homesteading and understanding your family's charism and call? What is God asking of you? And is he asking you to use homesteading in order to serve his kingdom and serve your community around you? Or is it something, is it just something to support your
00:13:05
Speaker
family, but you also have something outside of the homestead that you should be doing for what God is asking of you. And being able to discern that early on, but it's also a continual discernment. It's something that I think you and I continue to pray about and discuss, and God continues to lead us into better understanding of what exactly He is calling us to and asking of us.
00:13:31
Speaker
So that's something that should continue to be an important part of your conversation in your family and in your household. But also challenging yourself to be creative and to ask questions and to not just do everything that you find on the internet, like this is how you homestead. There's a lot that comes from looking to people who have gone before you and figured these things out and being able to
00:13:59
Speaker
learn from people. But that never means that that's the only way or that that's the best way for you to do it.
00:14:06
Speaker
it's something that you and I have really challenged ourselves in with like raising chicks. They say that you have to keep them at this temperature and you have to lower the temperature every so many days, this many degrees, and then you introduce this and that. And like there's this, this timeframe that they say you have to do everything this way. But then we let a hen hatch her own chick this year and we watched her and we watched that chick while there was two,
00:14:34
Speaker
We watched her raise them and it was so different than like they're in this temperature regulated room where we're changing the temperature every so many days and feeding them mashed up everything. Like being able to watch and observe the animals naturally how they do things.
00:14:53
Speaker
there is give and take because we are able to control a lot more in the way that people say you're supposed to do it whereas that mama was not able to control everything and she did lose a lot of babies and we might have been able to raise them and have better success keeping more alive but her babies were extremely healthy and they grew much quicker they seemed hardier and
00:15:17
Speaker
the one that is still with us just seems like a very healthy, strong chicken. Yeah.
Adapting Homesteading to Local Conditions
00:15:24
Speaker
It really just comes back to that idea of what is the homestead and what is your homestead look like? Because I think that there is a, there's just so much temptation out there, just like in anything else to model the way that someone else has done something and try to recreate just that because you were inspired by it to begin with.
00:15:42
Speaker
It's a little bit different when it comes to the homestead portion, or maybe I shouldn't say different, but there is a unique characteristic of homesteading in that it is tied often to a geographic area. And that geographic area has a certain climate or ecosystem. And so what you see online is not necessarily what is even really able to be efficiently recreated for where you live.
00:16:05
Speaker
This was something I realized this at one point in the way that we used chicken tractors to move chickens across the lawn or the farm area. And at some point it just kind of dawned on me that the person that I modeled one of our tractors off of lives in a completely different climate and ecosystem than we do.
00:16:25
Speaker
And I'm not sure why that really never hit me before, but it did. And I realized that. And then my mentality and my focus has now switched to when I see someone else doing something successfully on a farm or on a homestead. Uh, I don't, I do look at what it is that they're doing, but I also look at really the way they came to understand that or how they put things together. And I am starting to more so think about, well, how can I engineer something similar, but more so inclined to work for where I am.
00:16:55
Speaker
Because I think what's happened often is there are people who are hyper successful in business or in promoting the homestead lifestyle or in farming and they have found a way to do things on the property that they own in the climate that they're at and the geography where they live or where they work at.
00:17:14
Speaker
And it has become so ubiquitous across the home setting world that people think that's the only way to do that thing. When really, there are probably many, many better ways to do things where you live today or where you work. It's just that we don't always take the time to think, well, how could we improve this for where we live or for our family?
00:17:36
Speaker
So I would just say that if you've never considered that and you've looked around at your home set and thought, well, everything that we have done here is the is under the inspiration of someone else who is already home setting in another climate or geography.
00:17:52
Speaker
I would simply question you or encourage you to question, is that anymore the best way to do it where we live? And maybe not.
Profitability vs Self-Sufficiency in Homesteading
00:18:01
Speaker
And this is kind of an interesting conversation and it moves all far away from that question of does the homestead need to make money? But the reason that it is moving away from that question is because these are all related topics that come back to the question of does this homestead have to make money?
00:18:19
Speaker
And some of the reasons that people I think often feel compelled to have to have their homesteads make money is because they see someone else making money off of their homestead or they see someone else who's actually engaging in more
00:18:35
Speaker
lifestyle businesses or social media based businesses or farming related activities that incorporate similar elements of homesteading and there can be a misunderstanding of the distinction between what it takes to run a business and what it is to run a homestead.
00:18:53
Speaker
And in a business, there's probably going to be a continual feed of inputs and then working with those inputs to turn those inputs into something different or of greater value and then selling that at a profit.
00:19:07
Speaker
On the homestead, you don't really have to monetize the homestead. And ultimately, if the homestead is paying for everything in the sense that you don't have to go to the grocery store anymore because most of your food comes from the homestead, then you're reducing your need to depend on anyone else's inputs. That's not a comment to say that you should do that or have to do that.
00:19:32
Speaker
But it is a nice balancing act to at least consider that. And when you set up your homestead, I would simply encourage you to go back to those first two points and consider how can I reduce how expensive this is over time or how much it costs me to do the homestead lifestyle? And how can we reduce our dependency on imports or bringing things into the homestead to run it?
00:19:53
Speaker
And, as you mentioned, that may mean that your homestead looks a little bit different than other people. You may not be able to have the same pigs that someone else does, and that may be because you're not feeding your pigs in the same way or at the same intensity that someone else is because your pigs are able to live off the land or whatever you have on your land a little bit better. And there's a lot of considerations for this. But ultimately, that question of does the homestead then have to make money, I think it's just a glaring no, it doesn't.
00:20:23
Speaker
Again, though, that doesn't mean that you can't or you really shouldn't. And the idea of developing a family business, which might come from the homestead, now that I think is a really interesting conversation and one that's also worth exploring.
00:20:38
Speaker
Yeah, I totally agree.
Generating Income from Homesteads
00:20:40
Speaker
So if somebody, if a family decides that they either want to make money off of the homestead or that they need to, like they don't have the means to support homesteading without having an extra income to do so. Where would you tell them to get started in order to be able to successfully make money off of the homestead?
00:21:03
Speaker
So I think in a question like this, I would suggest that this is not farming, which would be like an intentional business structure based on some agricultural practice, which essentially models the same as any other business principle where you've got a certain degree of input and you're creating something and selling it at a profit, hopefully.
00:21:22
Speaker
So if you're looking around your homestead saying, we have to find some extra money as a family and we need to make extra money as a family, I would encourage you to do things that come from the homestead that are already there where you either don't have to invest a lot of money or no money at all. So some examples, and these are probably not going to be the quickest ways to money or the least manual ways to money.
00:21:50
Speaker
One way that I find in a rural environment that's very helpful to people, which is often still in demand, is firewood. And if you have woods, you likely have trees on there which you probably didn't plant unless they're in your family for a long time.
00:22:05
Speaker
That is not necessarily beyond the ability for most people to actually harvest You don't even need a chainsaw if you don't want one To get the trees down although I would say that it's probably gonna be rather impractical from a time standpoint to harvest timber if you don't at least have a have a chainsaw in a good mall or a good axe and
00:22:29
Speaker
Other things that I think are probably helpful are simple crafts from nature around the homestead. So using flowers for printing on canvas or on sheets. Artwork from the homestead would be incredibly easy and a good way of monetizing things. Hopefully it could be less expensive to get started with. Selling extra produce would be much easier than beginning an animal enterprise off the farm.
00:22:56
Speaker
So, for example, let's say that you want to sell pumpkins, which many people like to buy in the autumn time, either for food or decoration. If you needed to begin by buying a seed pack of pumpkins, it probably cost you three to maybe a maximum of $5 for about 25 pumpkin seeds.
00:23:14
Speaker
Well, if you plant those 25 seeds and each one of those seeds yields three pumpkins and you sell each of those pumpkins for five to ten dollars each, well, you obviously made your money back and you made a little bit of extra money. The problem becomes in how much money do you really want to make off your homestead? Because one thing that is not always easily understood when it comes to the agrarian lifestyle, that would be homestead style,
00:23:42
Speaker
Is that your time involvement in making money is going to be drastically more depending on the enterprise, but likely is going to be way more than what it would be in just a conventional job. And that's because either it takes time for these things to mature, like it takes time for me to buy the seeds.
00:24:01
Speaker
open the seeds, plant the seeds, tend to the plants, do the weeding, harvest the pumpkins, let them cure for a certain amount of time, then put them out, put signage out to let people know that I'm even selling the pumpkins, and then work with customers. If you add up all the time, it's certainly going to pay off the original pack of pumpkin seeds, but it would probably be an alarming hourly rate if that's how you consider your time.
00:24:28
Speaker
And there's probably something there to explore about what that looks like to make money on a farm or on a homestead style business where that time aspect is going to be drastically different than what it looks like to get paid by the hour or even a salary pay in the United States. But those are some things I would think of right away.
Differences Between Homesteading and Farming as Business
00:24:47
Speaker
I would think what are some things that my neighbors either don't do or don't want to do, but they also still need.
00:24:52
Speaker
or that if I live close enough to maybe a population of people who like aspects of homesteading but don't actively homestead, what would they want to buy? And that's where I would start. Okay, and then if somebody wants to scale it in order to be able to make a living wage off of, what would the steps look like to starting something like that?
00:25:20
Speaker
I would distinguish that from homesteading because I think it's important to do so. I would make sure that the idea of homesteading is really around supporting the family and building out an environment of the family that not only helps to support intentional food decisions and food growth, but also defense and promotion of the faith within the family and the raising of the family society so that it is able to
00:25:44
Speaker
you know, make virtuous decisions as individuals and ultimately move onwards towards heaven. So I say that as a caveat that I think there is a distinction between home setting and farming. Farming, I think, is a style of business which operates just like any other style of business, meaning you need to understand your expenses and your potential revenues.
00:26:05
Speaker
It has become my understanding, since we do farm, that there is an actual opportunity in farming for people to make a full-time income. In some instances, a more than reasonable or higher than expected income as well.
00:26:23
Speaker
The challenge though becomes how do you do that? What do you specialize in? What are you passionate about enough to scale? Meaning you're able to do it at a large enough level that you are able to reduce the expenses because you're able to buy the things that would be expenses like animal feed as an example in bulk. What are those things that you can do and that you actually want to do?
00:26:46
Speaker
There is a huge difference between raising 25 meat chickens and then selling five of them to help pay for a little bit of it versus trying to buy 150 chickens, 200 chickens, 300 chickens at a time. And you really want to make sure that you at least are prepared and committed to seeing those enterprises all the way through.
00:27:09
Speaker
I am a huge supporter, as you are, of small scale farming. And we really consider that to be distinct from homesteading. And that's why our farm name, our business name, is Little Way Farm and Homestead. And we may not be the best example of folks who are not monetizing or seeking to develop an income stream off of the farm, because in fact, we've developed or we're working on developing multiples of them.
00:27:35
Speaker
Some are oriented from the promotion of the homestead lifestyle and supporting others in it and helping others. Some of them are from actual farming business. Our farm business is multifaceted. It's a mix of agritourism, produce, wholesale produce, direct-to-consumer produce, as well as direct-to-consumer pasture-raised meat.
00:27:56
Speaker
And we took on those enterprises with the understanding that we were bringing in expenses and that we were hoping to sell those at a profit. And the distinguishing characteristic there, and what I would encourage anyone is, is you really just need to do the numbers. And you need to make sure that your revenue is going to be more than your expense. And you also need to make sure that you want to actually see those things through.
Developing a Business from Your Homestead
00:28:23
Speaker
It's a little bit different than just trying to sell a little bit extra here, a little bit here, or I have a little bit extra of something, so I'm just going to sell it. Your taxes are going to look different. Your bank accounts are going to look different. The way that you go to market will look different, meaning do you have a website? Do you promote? Do you market? Do you go actively seek out customers? Do you cold call businesses and try to turn up business? Or is that not something that you want to do?
00:28:51
Speaker
And really that would be advice I would give to anyone and it hasn't really has very little to do with farming. It's more so about do you want to run a business or not and engage in entrepreneurial activity. We do. It's not easy. I think a lot of people want to and I think a lot of people just need a little guidance and they would be very successful in doing so.
00:29:10
Speaker
And ultimately, I think that that would be a good start to creating those family businesses, which would be very good, whether they are associated or not associated with the homestead. So making money off of the homestead really comes down to having a clear understanding of why you are homesteading and what your goals are with the homestead. And then just being really intentional about planning out how to reach those goals.
00:29:39
Speaker
Right. I hope no one hears this and thinks that I'm discouraging from creating a business that's associated with your homestead. It's more so that it's just a matter of fact that you don't have to. And that if you want to, then so be it. And I hope it's successful and that you do so in a way that supports the development of a family business, if that's what you feel called to do.
Cultivating Personal Talents in Homesteading
00:30:02
Speaker
But I do—I am concerned that many people see someone homesteading, and they become discouraged because they try to model exactly what those other people do, and that it becomes a place of just something not resembling what it could because they're more so focused on trying to replicate the talents of someone else instead of replicating—I'm sorry, not replicating—instead of cultivating the talents that God has given them directly.
00:30:31
Speaker
And that's something that I've struggled with a lot in what our homestead looks like. And after over a year of doing this now, I'm becoming more and more comfortable with the idea of what our homestead looks like because we have certain charisms and certain talents and gifts that God has given to us.
00:30:50
Speaker
And I'm really excited to settle in this winter and consider exactly maybe a little more deeply what those are and what the future of Little Way Farm and Homestead looks like as we continue to build out our farm business and more importantly, our own family homestead.
00:31:07
Speaker
Well, I think that this has been a really interesting conversation.
Future Topics: Small-Scale Farming and Cost Reduction
00:31:12
Speaker
I think it's opened the doors for a lot of further conversation about when you do have the goal of making money on the homestead or even taking on small scale farming.
00:31:23
Speaker
what does that look like? And I think that we could get a lot more in depth about what it looks like to make a business out of farming, small scale farming, homestead lifestyle, and then also just more conversations about being intentional about how to lower your inputs and how to lower your costs for running your homestead. And I really look forward to having those conversations in the future on the podcast.
00:31:50
Speaker
I agree. This may be a good point also as we close out, just to encourage anyone, we do have a public email address you can access or see on our website. But if you've ever wondered, you know, can you reach out to us or contact us and ask additional questions about some of the topics that we address here, you're more than welcome to email us. Our email is hello at littlewayhomestead.com. And with that, we thank you again for joining us and we look forward to seeing you on the next episode.