Homestead Hustle

I love when a new year rolls around. The holidays have come to an end, we are able to get back to our normal routines and regular budget, and the air is buzzing with motivation to be better than we were before. While statistics may show that New Year’s resolutions have very low success rates and most people fizzle out of motivation within the first few months, it never stops me from pushing myself to be one of the few that succeed. Sure, I may not succeed in all my goals each year, but as long as I accomplish the majority, I still consider it a huge win!

2025 will be our first full year on our homestead. This winter is our first and it will also be our first spring in a couple of months. With that, we are still learning what each season brings and how to best maneuver through it. While we are fully aware that we will have surprise expenses as we enter new seasons, we are also ready to begin learning how to offset some of our homestead expenses. Below is the list of ideas that I will be (or have already begun) implementing in order to cover my costs of homesteading and, hopefully, turn a profit in 2025…

FARMSTAND

In September of 2024, my husband built a small, roadside farmstand for me. It’s super cute and I love it. While acquiring chickens and ducks, we did not consider the number of eggs we would collect daily versus how many eggs per day we would be consuming. Because of this, we found ourselves VERY abundant egg-wise… While we certainly could eat eggs for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and spend far less on groceries, we definitely prefer to have a little more of a variety in our diets. Being that we haven’t bought eggs since April 2024, they are definitely a part of our cost offset.

The abundance of eggs daily is what led us to creating the farmstand. Our farmstand is an honor system. “Take what you need, leave what you can”. While we aren’t making millions (far from it), we are able to ensure that none of the eggs that our girls work so hard to make go to waste. We are able to help our community, especially when stores are experiencing egg shortages or high inflation rates and feel a great sense of satisfaction knowing that we may be helping feed a family in need.

We only open our farmstand on Sundays due to our work schedules and each Sunday varies greatly on how much we make. We’ve had days where we only made a few bucks and days when we’ve made almost $200. Overall, the farmstand does average pretty close to enough income to cover our feed costs for the flock and livestock. It’s a great start and we are extremely grateful for that little bit of added income.

In addition to eggs, we will also place extra produce from our gardens (home grown produce = more cost offset!), crocheted items that my daughter makes, plants that have been propagated from our house plants, and baby aloes as they pop up from our main ones. If I’m canning and make far too much for our family to use up in a realistic time frame, I will place some of those out there too.

However, as any homesteader knows, there is a lot more cost involved with homesteading than just animal feed. Other expenses that we are having to cover are round bales of hay, fencing, garden soil, structure materials, equipment, and an increased water bill just to name a few. All of these added costs have led to us developing more ideas of how we can increase our income. At some point, I would like to expand our farmstand and have either myself or one of my teens operate it daily, but that is not something I am focusing on at this time.

RECYCLE CANS

This is another small thing that again, is not going to make us millionaires overnight. HOWEVER, the way my husband drinks beer, I might as well do something to get some of our money back. When it comes to his beer cans, I am like the aluminum police. If he tries to throw a beer can in the trash, I come out of nowhere like a wild animal to make him recycle it! And then of course I have to hear him say “it’s only five cents!” or whatever bougee comment he makes that time, but still. It’s going to add up! Money is money and I don’t care if then one cent or ten dollars - it’s money!

While we have been recycling cans since we moved out here in June, or rather I have been making my husband crush and recycle them, we now have a huge bin full to the brim of crushed cans and I am ready to cash in! I have no idea what the rates are right now, but something is going to be way better than nothing! I think I’ll take them to the recycling center today!

SELLING OUR KIDS

Not the human ones, but the goat ones. A few days before Christmas, we had our first livestock birth on the homestead! Our beloved goat, Phoebe, gave birth to the cutest little triplets I’ve ever seen. I love those little babies so much and my heart swells with how adorable they are! The sad, emotional truth though is that I want our homestead to be a working homestead, not an expensive hobby farm. With that, I have every intention of advertising the kids for sale on March 1st after they are weaned. Easier said than done I’m sure, but I am going to remain strong here. Or, at the very least, try to.

One bonus of the goat breeding specifically is that, once again, I will be offsetting my costs with the goat milk that I will be receiving once she is done nursing. Goat milk will be a huge win for us because milk is one thing that my human kids go through at a ridiculous rate! Not to mention, it’s healthier than cow milk and we can learn how to make our own cheese too and save even more at the grocery store!

In addition to kids, I also plan to sell lambs once ours start reproducing. I plan to sell the female lambs and castrate the males so we can raise them to be harvested. The more food we can produce ourselves, the more we’ll save on grocery expenses. Being that we have to eat, this is going to be a crucial area to focus on if we want to lower our expenses and offset some of our homestead costs.

While we have pigs also, I am unsure if I want to breed them for selling or just raise a few at a time for harvesting. At this time, I have a lot on my plate and am still adjusting to the homestead lifestyle so it’s not a priority at this time. I am also still trying to determine if I want to allow my hens to nest and have chicks or ducklings to sell or just stick with eggs that will end up making me more in the long run. Now that I write that, I think I just decided to stick with the eggs, lol. Less work, more money. I think that’s going to be the key here when it comes to profiting from our homestead.

SELL 1 DECLUTTERED ITEM PER DAY

This is the one I’m most excited about. While I may cry when I go to sell a cute baby farm animal, I won’t be crying if I sell an old lamp, a kitchen appliance, or whatever else I come across that I don’t want, need, or use. I HATE CLUTTER! Not only will this clear out a lovely amount of excess from our home, but I will also make a little bit of money back.

My plan here is to find something each day that is no longer of use to us and list it for sale on Marketplace. Even if it doesn’t sell that day, I’ll leave it up and keep on trucking with the next item the next day. I will be tracking all of my expenses and income the entire year down to the penny, but I want to track this list separately as well just to see how many items I can sell and how much I can make. See how exciting decluttering can be?!

END OF THE YEAR YARD SALE

Depending on how well my daily declutter item sales go, I may have a yard sale at the end of the year if I start to get backed up on items not selling or if I have one of them days where I just declutter the whole house because I can’t take it anymore. I did have a couple yard sales last year, one before we moved to reduce the amount to pack and one a few months after we moved of things that we didn’t need or have room for in the new house. Each sale made me several hundred dollars, so it was WELL worth it. This will likely happen due to the frequent declutter rages I go through every few months.

WRITING

One thing that I love doing and do every single morning at the minimum, is writing. I am a quieter person by nature and don’t truly enjoy small talk. I also hate gossip and have no desire to take part in it. These two things together drastically reduce my social life. I guess you could say I live a rather isolated life, but it’s actually something I enjoy because it brings me peace and calm.

Being that I enjoy blogging regularly, I would love to learn more about how to bring in an income from blogging. Even if it is only a smaller amount, every little bit helps, and it would be awesome to make money doing something I love!

In addition to blogging, one of my 2024 goals was to finish the book I was writing. I accomplished that goal the morning of Christmas Eve and it is one of my greatest accomplishments thus far. For 2025, my goal is to finish editing it by January 31st (which I am in progress of) and start submitting it to publishers in March. I expect February to be busy with work and travel, so this gives me a little bit of wiggle room to prevent me from becoming too overwhelmed.

My ultimate goal for 2025? Become a PUBLISHED AUTHOR!!! It is going to happen for several reasons: 1) I have put in and am continuing to put in the hard work to make it happen. 2) It is a book that the world needs right now! 3) I am manifesting the crap out of it! And 4) I won’t stop until it’s published - even if I have to self-publish it on Amazon on December 31st! I WILL MAKE IT HAPPEN!!!

HANDCRAFTED GOODS

This one I’ve listed last because I haven’t fully planned out my strategy for approaching this. One of my skills is crocheting, my husband is a good welder, and both of us are skilled woodworkers. These skills can easily make us a good chunk of extra money. I think my plan for this is to perhaps come up with a few items to create from each skill, choose a debt to focus on (such as a credit card balance), and then determine how much I need to create and sell to pay the debt in full.

If I go with this approach, I will be able to formulate concrete numbers to work with and have a specific goal to work towards. I can then determine if I want to sell them on Marketplace or attend a market in town regularly to sell items. A market could be fun because then I could also sell my fresh eggs, extra produce, etc. at the same time and spread the word about my farmstand… So many possibilities…

Overall, I have multiple ways to increase our income planned for us, in addition to our regular incomes from employment. Having these multiple options will be beneficial in ensuring that, if one area doesn’t work out, another area will. I don’t want to put all of my eggs in one basket so to speak… Either way, by sticking to our hustles and keeping focused on our financial goals, 2025 just may be our most profitable year yet! Not to mention how much more we are going to learn and experience along the way! If you have any “homestead hustle” ideas, I’d love to hear them! Getting inspired is one of life’s greatest joys!

Cheers to homesteading and a life of fulfillment!