Easy ways to make money for kids

Dan, as of yesterday unless the sky opens up and the temp’s stay down the haying is finished for the year. Equipment’s put up (but not washed) and the hay is in the barn.

I re-read most all of this thread including your location which sounds about perfect for a market garden. Have you checked yet to see if there are available spaces at the farmers market where your wanting to sell your produce? I know the area we moved from last year had a waiting list as space was limited.

A great book for the market gardener is ‘On Good Land’, by Michael Abrams. Not so much for the advise given but to inspire you.

I think with the land you have I would concentrate on produce. Have you made any trips to the farmers market and got any ideas on what’s selling good and what’s not? I’d really start there. No gurantee someone else is not gonna do the same thing and have a supply of it the next year. I’d not concentrate on one single item and attempt to keep a wide assortment of things.

Do you have a truck and trailer to get your stuff to market yet if you decide that’s the route your gonna take? Sounds like you have all the other equipment you will need for a market garden.

I have a VERY limited ammount of experience on gardening so it’s tough for me to tell you what you need to grow and how much space will be needed for each crop. Sounds like you have plenty of help at home which is nice.

I think your just gonna have to experemient and do some trial and error stuff before you can find your nich’ and really get things going.

Heck, a 1-5 acre garden depending on the crop can keep one busy all day almost every day.

I’d go ahead and stay away from livestock except for what you want for your freezer. You don’t have enough land to really make a good go of it but you do have enough land to raise your family’s and at least one other’s plenty of meat including beef, pork, and chicken. Start on some fencing for the cattle, coop’s or tractors for the hens, and whatever one has for pigs. My chicken tractors I used to use were of the same size as my raised beds. It looked like I had a bunch of people burried in my garden to folks not familiar with raised bed as there were 13 4×12 raised beds.

One nice thing about a small ammount of livestock will also be if you want to start your kids in 4-H. Great fun come fair time plus the kids make some good money off the sale of their livestock. It’s not as big a thing here as where we moved from as there all the kids 4-H animals sold GREAT at the fair and the whole community came out for it. Here it’s kinda on the lame side but hopefully it will pick up. Great learning experience for the kids plus they meet others that also have intrests like theirs. FWIW, pigs were the easiest keeping money makers for the 4-H kids but we had great extension agents there that really worked with the kids and helped them pick out whatever they were gonna raise.

I guess in short my advise would be for you to head to the farmers market. Check out the availability to make sure they have room for you, and if they do sign up for next year and if not get put on the waiting list. Make a plan for next years garden. Line out your garden area. Begin amending the soil by making each bed or area specific for what your wanting to grow in it. Get fencing and irrigation in place. Then see what happens! Worse case looking at what you have is you won’t have much of a need for a grocery store especially if your wife and kids can some of the veggies.

There are so many ideas out there floating around that one can make money on it makes your head spin. Heck I’ve got neighbors that raise native grass and wildflowers. Some of thier seed goes for over $600 a pound! I also remember a story of a guy that went around collecting pollen. He collected it from tree’s and then sold it to a pharmacetucial company and they used it to make allergy medications. He was only one of a very few in the US that did it and had more work than he could handle. He would of course do most of his work in the spring and simply ask folks with lots of tree’s if he could collect some pollen and very rarely did anyone object as it don’t hurt the tree. There’s more stories out there but you’ll just need to find out what will work out best for you and your family.

Good luck, Jamie