Making Extra Money

I collect and sell pop cans, walnuts, scrap metal, extra garden vegetables, extra chickens, eggs, along with a continuous summer yardsale where we sell clothes and tools we don't need around the place.

Do I make enough to live on from these sales? No! But any extra money in my pocket helps out in many ways. The other day I sold 3 big bags of crushed cans, and one bag of soup cans. Got a total of $29.26 . Not a whole lot, but it bought us all our lunch when we went clothes shopping for the kids. I had picked up all the cans over the summer months while on my daily walk. I have to walk anyway, so might as well pick up cans and earn a little bit of extra money. Last fall I picked up a ton of walnuts. Didn't do it to make a living but since I needed to get them out of my yard, might as well sell them and make some extra money.

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r.h. in oklahoma

Raised a country boy, and will die a country boy.

Aluminum cans sell for .25 a pound here. That price doesn't seem to change much. I haul my plastics and such to the recycling place every few months and it is usually the same. Will have to check out the city when we are there.

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“If I rest, I rust”

My dad died three years ago fathers day..
he picked cans as he walked...
he paid his best buddies (Jonsey)'s property taxes with the cans.
after her died...i was sitting (crying) at the viewing,,,,one of the cosmotology teachers came to speak to me (my dad was a janitor at the tech school at the end)
she told me her neice was in a terrible accident, and needed a special wheelchair. at his funeral, she held both my hands, and told me my dad collected cans for awhole year, and got her the chair she needed.
I feel like a million dollars each time I look at a can.
humble is what humble does...

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I'd rather have one Chewbacca than an entire clone army.

big rock another idea is to save money. money saved is money made....stop spending -buying so much....cut out everything you don't have to have.......
pick up the cans for fun and stockpile till the price goes way up.....pick up the walnuts and crack out for gifts. make wise decisions with your money....get a part time job. advertise you will house sit or dog sit.
i feel that you may have got into debt...........get wife a parttime job at a beer factory.
times are tuff,,here in wv a huge carlot just when belly up,35 people lost their jobs...the health department shut down a grocery and twenty some are out of work. they say people are flocking to disability because they can't find work..............

:::sigh::: I miss the good ol' days of being able to throw a BYOB house party after the bars closed on a Friday night, and having enough cans by Saturday night to pay for all my own beer for the weekend.

Growing up is tough. Now me and the ol' man do good to get through a six-pack a week. It takes a lot of empty six packs before you get one free!

I've done really well the last few years picking up extra work at fairs and festivals, sitting at friend's booths and such. I also used to sell a lot of stuff on Craigslist when I lived downtown and was accessible. Would pick up curb finds, extra stuff friends needed to get rid of, etc and "flip" it. Now I have a couple of house cleaning gigs I do once a week, I sometimes still write a bit, etc. Have a litter of bunnies that will be ready to sell in a couple of weeks. Hoping they will pay for another couple of meat rabbit does so I can ramp up production to meet minimums so I can take 'em to the processor and sell to restaurants that want them. Rabbit poo can be sold for a little bit per bag. It's getting to be berry season, if I had time I could go make a killing picking blueberries and raspberries. We made a small chicken coop out of some pallets we found one time and sold that for a couple hundred pure profit. That was a pretty good deal.

Pretty much everything gets sold on Craigslist. It would be tougher without that being so popular here to market things quickly and for free.

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Rachel Haiku Heritage City Farm

I have chickens and I buy local fresh eggs. I should eat my chickens as I can buy local eggs for $1 a dozen. The first months with layers puts you so far behind you never break even with eggs unless you have a market where you can get $3 plus per dozen.

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"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self confidence"
Robert Frost

Beeman,

You are right about the first months. However, this year I bought 1 yr old Golden Comets from an old farmer who only keeps his for a year. I wormed them, and now the eggs are JUMBO. I'm not having any problem selling eggs. I would buy more, but will be moving farther out in the boonies, and it's not as easy to sell eggs there.

You would be amazed at the difference worming makes on poultry.

We eat a few eggs, but most of them get "value added" and sold for $5 each as chicks. We've got five hens, two table top incubators and last year those hens netted us $600 over the year's time. That was after we paid for chicken feed. They mostly forage in the back yard so they don't eat much feed. We also have a freezer full of free roosters, too. The chicks are sold straight run with a "rooster return policy" and when the folks bring me a nice fat tender rooster I refund their money and they are thrilled. Generally I don't tell them the rooster is going straight to freezer camp, but they are just glad to get rid of the noisy thing so they can sleep in.

Judy, off topic but would you post or pm me how you worm your chickens?

It IS difficult to find ways to make money off small acreage these days. I've been working on hubby to take in all the metal around our place, and we've made a few dollars from it. Still another load to go with doors from the firestation. Sold all our unneeded farm equipment, with a few rabbit hutches and some poultry waterers/feeders, dog crates and the like still to go yet. If we end up staying here, we've got to figure out some crop or something that will help utilize the ground and make a few dollars. Hopeing to sell tho and find a smaller place, but this isn't the time to sell. Wish there were nut trees here, I'd be picking them up for our own use if nothing else! Keep those ideas coming, you never know when they will help someone else. Jan in CO

Big Rockpile:

I you haven't requested a copy of my e-Book: How to Earn Extra Money in the Country, please do so at scharabo@aol.com. Not only is it a free download, it has a money back guaranteed if not satisfied. It certainly isn't 'great' literature, but the price is right.

$35 for a load of wood? Here it is $60 if you go and pick it up.
Try selling plant slips. A greenhouse is easy and cheap to build. You can cut wallyworlds price by half and still make money.

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A socialist will trample over 100 poor people just for the chance to throw a rock at a rich man.

Judy, please post about how you worm your chickens. It's sure something I never heard of!
Thanks!