Living off the land

whatever percentage that you can live off your land is good because that is the percentage you can retain from your earnings. If you work full time and you can produce for 40% of your needs then that is 40% from your salary that you can save.

We are starting market gardens, but instead of taking produce to markets we will be delivering weekly boxes of fruit, veges, herbs, eggs and milk to people who want homegrown food. You could even add a loaf of bread if laws allow. The returns work out pretty good, perhaps you could get someone to drive your deliveries for you in exchange for some food and gas money? You just have to make sure you plant enough to crop weekly, plus lots of store veg like potatoes and pumpkins.
2 dairy goats (one in milk) supplies our milk, cheese plus a little to sell sometimes. And if you dont eat meat you can sell the kids each year too as meat or future milkers.
We will also be raising kunekune piglets to sell as weaners for a little extra cash - we raise the pigs on pasture, kitchen/garden scraps and surplus milk/cheese whey, so feed costs us nothing. I can get old fabric dirt cheap, so do quilting in winter when its horrible outside. I will knock out a couple of cot-sized large-square patchwork quilts and some apron skirts for women who have kids and never enough hands free - I'm hoping to sell those online.
Another thing we did when starting out was sell all the 'stuff' we had cluttering the house on Trademe which is like your ebay. Clothes, books, appliances, spare furniture and knick-knacks. That got us nearly $600 cash which took care of land tax for most of this year, and as a bonus the house is not full of crap anymore!
And just to make sure the mortgage is paid I will be working 2 days a week as a teacher aide hopefully, and DH does casual farm laboour for neighbours for a little money now and again.
Thinking about making it easier on yourself as you grow older, look at coppicing instead of felling your trees for firewood, then it's lighter work to cut your supply in years ahead.
Those are just some ideas based on our place. I wish you the very best and think it is possible to make a living if you are creative, dont mind hard work and doing without the things that dont really matter anyways. I dont dare to work out my hourly rate of pay, but I prefer to think of it as doing what I love, so I am better off than slaving at an office desk all day!

Faith, I am sorry to hear about your husband passing, that must have been very hard. But good for you for keeping on going.

If you like to garden, you might want to do what a friend of mine does who lives close enough to Ottawa to have people with money nearby, and that's to contract garden for them. Ornamental gardening. You open up their garden for them in the spring, plant whatever they want, do a visit once or twice a week to weed and water, then put the gardens to bed for the winter in late fall. A lot of my friend's clients are elderly people who always gardened themselves, but can't keep it up anymore, but who also have enough money to be able to afford the help.

You can get decent money doing this, and it does get you out of the house and seeing people. I know you like to stay at home (I am the same), but it's good to be about among people some of the time.

Something else to think about besides market gardening, anyway.

Good luck, hope you figure things out.

__________________
-Northern NYS

I agree with cutting back, saving money is easier than earning it and it takes less money to keep up less. We use very little sugar, instead we use fruit juices and blackberries for jelly and syrups because they need no sugar or pectin. I use blackberries in my yogurt, cereal, on pancakes, in muffins and all number of things. Goats will produce more milk if milked twice a day. This saves us a lot as we make all our own dairy products. We have 3-6 chickens for our eggs and let several set to produce meat. We have rabbits and pigeons for meat as well. We can some but dehydrate a lot because the sun is free (no electricity needed) and takes no supplies. Or to run a large freezer. We butcher as needed for fresh meat. Gleann the woods and meadows for fruits, nuts and mushrooms. Snacks are dehydrated fruits, chesse curds, nuts and popcorn....James

Faith. Sorry to hear about your DH. You should contact your township offices and ask exactly what is allowable with your zoning. We are in the process of offering on a property in Ontario and under the zoning we wiuld have we have a lot of things we can do including a farm stand selling products produced on our property. In Ontario you do need a permit to keep bees. Www.ontariobee.com is a good start. I plan on raising bees to cut oir need for sugar and found the permit need when I did a Web search

We hope to be as self sufficient as possible amd diversifying is a good way to do so. If you can sell eggs and veggies that is a source of income spring and summer we hope to raise rabbits for our own meat needs and make fur products from the skins. My mum is a knitter and years ago knew a person who would knit rabbit fur mittens, sweater etc she would cut the pelt in one long continuous strip amd knit it! She hopes we can figure out the way it was done so we cqn make knitted pelt products. I plan on making all sorts of specialized crafts to sell as well as selling excess hay. We plan on putting in a fruit orchard and berry bushes and sell the excess. In a fee years we hope to have pigs,sell some,grow some, eat some and sell breeding stock. No animal will be on our small holding unless we can mke some money off them or their offspring.

DH and my brother hope to set up a woodworking shop amd DH wants to learn bow tuning and gun smithing. You cAn see how diversifying can help bring in money you need to figure out your skills and market them. See if you have a neighbour that wants company on car errands. You might be able to work together this is what my Mum and I plan on doing to help each other out

Please do not try the forgiveness route the laws might not be too forgiving and you might lose what you cannot afford! If you bake then find out what the local food laws are like if you need a licensed kitchen ask locally to see if any churches have one. Too bad you are in the Niagara region! We plan on being below Ottawa and it sure would have been nice to know a neighbour!

__________________
Do not Lead for I will Not Follow
Do not Follow for I shall Not Lead
I am but a Simple Drummer

Faith, I wish you the best in being self sufficient. It seems to me that earning $500 a month from selling vegetables from home would be difficult. Have you done any analysis to practically determine what you would have to sell to accomplish this? Such as if you are selling tomatoes at $2.00 a pound, you would need to sell 250 pounds of tomatoes. Computing cost vs. sales price for baked goods? Gardening at a level to support sales would seem to me to be labor intensive and time consuming, as would maintaining a roadside stand. I urge you to be realistic in your plans as it seems your home is at risk.