Tuesday afternoon, I played hooky and went to the Scott County Lavender Farm with my mom and some friends.  The farm seems like a great ecotourism business on the surface --- attract folks to the beauty and scent of lavender, then sell them all kinds of related products.  Unfortunately, the farm was closed and going to weeds.

Our visit just confirmed a feeling I've had for quite a while --- the best homestead businesses aren't physically farm-related.  We've given various options a shot, from a little CSA to selling native wildflowers.  But when I do the math, I always discover that on a small, homestead microbusiness scale, these ventures barely pay minimum wage.

Even before our current recession, people in our area complained about the lack of good jobs, a constant problem in rural areas.  But I feel strongly that in our current world, anyone with imagination and gumption can make a living through learning a useful skill and taking advantage of the internet.  Then you can save your farming for yourself, putting all of that love and time into your vegetables so that it flows right back into yourself.

Several people have asked for advice on starting a homestead microbusiness, and I've been starting to compile a lot of pointers about what we've learned with Mark's chicken waterer invention.  Assuming I don't play hooky too many more times, I hope to have an ebook out for folks to read in a couple of months.  Stay tuned!

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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