Part 1: Making Money with 1 Acre

I remember reading a article, It was 2 acres though.
The guy was growing tomatoes, he grew them like you do grape vines.
It said he made 100,000 his first year.

Can't remember where I seen it , maybe someone can dig it up.

I'm afraid that so much depends on situation and circumstances to be of much real help. Are you in an urban area? Or agricultural? What kind of soil do you have? What do your neighbors sell/grow? Is there a Farmer's market near? A larger city? If I lived closer to Chicago, I could sell those $8/dzn eggs. But here, I can't get $1.50 (the lady down the road sells them for $1.25). And I'm afraid to say that most of the books, tell give you the $8 egg figure more often than you'll find in reality.

I'd go to a Farmer's Market in your area and see what the prices are like. What are they growing? What sells well- what doesn't? What are the laws in your state? Can you sell baked goods or value-added products? Do you have to have an inspected kitchen? Can you raise bees where you live? Not all urban areas allow it. What's the competition? Do you want to be yet another person to raise cucumbers or can you fill a niche with herbs? What about small berries like raspberries? How much time are you willing to commit? There's just a ton of questions that need to be answered.

To give you something, though...we put in a 1/2 acre raspberry/blackberry Upick for our son to run as he gets older. The plan was to enlarge it to 1 acre if it goes well. The paper says he should see from $5-10K from that 1/2 acre. Drought hit and he didn't see squat last year. Maybe this year it will turn around. We put it in with those numbers in mind.

OK, I'll not bother commenting on anything I have no personal, real life experience with. Such notions as ostrich farms, chinchilla ranch, and so on. However, I do know what I do.
First, I had to clear a couple of fair sized spots from the woods, one for the orchard, one for the garden. A chainsaw will cut down and work up the trees. Digging stumps up by hand is really a lot of work, it was good to have a tractor. Some I had to dig around and build a fire in the pit to burn out the main part of the stump. And some I left, and kept stripped of branches until they rotted of their own accord after a few years. Other than a few hundred dollars for a good chain saw, and the convenience(but not necessity) of the tractor, there was no cost, other than labor. It's real work, though, no fooling about that.

My orchard is 50 ft wide and 90 ft long. I've cleared and fenced an additional 60 ft(also by 50 ft wide) for future use. So, 50x90 in use, 4500 square ft. 1/10 of an acre. Inside my 1/10 acre orchard, I have 11 apple trees, 3 pear trees, 5 plum trees, 4 japanese persimmon trees, 3 cherry trees, 5 peach trees, 2 nectarine trees, 2 pawpaw trees, 2 fig bushes, 5 grape vines, hundreds of thornless blackberry canes, and hundreds of strawberry plants. Also a pomegranate tree that has not yet fruited. 3 or 4 blueberry bushes that never do very much either. So, 37 fruit trees, a bunch of grape vines, thornless blackberry plants, strawberries, and some disappointing fruit such as the blueberries and pomegranate. Also, the cherry trees are a waste, birds get every one. I also lost a pear tree this year to fire blight.

Probably this spring, I'll plant a few more fig bushes and maybe 2 more of the Korean pear trees.

All the fruit except the ones specifically mentioned are in production. 8 of the apple trees are fairly young, but still put out pretty good. Some better than others, of course. In 4 or 5 more years though, they'll be in full production.

Many of the trees I went up in the mountains of Virginia to buy from Edible Landscaping. The reason was that I could get the varieties that I wanted. I put a lot of thought into the orchard and wanted the maximum time span of production. As a result, I have fresh strawberries starting in April, Plums begin to turn in June, the earliest apple(William's Pride) starts ripening in late June. The latest apples I grow, Arkansas Black need a couple frosts to ripen them, and even at that are better after a few weeks in the refrigerator. Japanese persimmons ripen around the time of frost, with some ripening here and there as early as September. I did pay more for some of the varieties, But, if you look around and order online from various suppliers, you'll end up getting prices similar to those at Lowes or Home Depot, Walmart, or whatever big box store is near you. More or less $20 per tree, 10 for figs, grapes, blackberries, etc. Strawberry plants shouldn't be much over 3 bucks and will spread like kudzu.

So, if I were to do it today, and set the big box price as my maximum, I'd be spending 740 for trees, 50 for the grapevines, 10 bucks or less for strawberries, seriously, they'll set runners left and right, dig them up and transplant them!! Same with the blackberry canes, maybe $50 for 5 of them. They root from the tip, and can be transplanted. I started with a few, now have them trained on the fence all the way around the orchard, probably 200 or more. All together, $850. One time expense.

I've never done much in the line of fertilizer and lime, but there are some vicious bugs down here, and some serious fungi, too. I've spent around $100 per year on various products for pest control.

It's pretty easy to learn about blackberry tip layering and strawberry runners. A little more and you'll know about stem cutting propagation. Just a tiny bit more and you'll learn to graft onto dwarf(or any other) root stock. You can sell clones of your fruit trees to people who want that particular variety.

My garden is 50ft by 65 ft. Less than a tenth of an acre. If you consider that the spacing for, say, tomatoes, is 4 sq ft to 16 sq ft, depending on who you listen to, that would be enough garden for 200 to 800 tomato plants. A lot of garden. I usually grow around 40-50 tomato plants, and that's a gracious plenty for us, our relatives, canning, and so on. I put whatever I want in the rest of the garden. I also cleared an additional 15 ft(by 50) for future use, which means this year.

I plowed and cultivated a couple years to get the soil right, and root remnants up. Then tilled with a tiller another couple years. At this point, there's really no need any more, the walking rows are like swales now. I'll try to fill them in with rotten wood from down in the woods this spring.

The seeds are free, since I save them. I also take advantage of Martin's gracious offers too!!! I do use some chicken manure, and maybe 25 pounds of fertilizer a year. A tandem load(20 yards. packed) of mulch goes in there every other year. To hold in moisture and help control weeds. I like to put the chickens in chicken tractors and move them around in the garden, and orchard too. The lower area of the garden is where asparagus, onions, and garlic overwinter.

That's about it. Not to say that what works in my climate will work in everybody's. I did a lot of research, a lot of trial and error. I will tell you one thing above all. There is a lot of work involved. One thing, you just absolutely cannot let the weeds get ahead of you. Neither can you afford to get behind on watering, especially when there is a spell of 100+ degree days in a row. HOWEVER, you can do your work early to control weeds. And figure ways to hold moisture in your soil, even make automatic watering systems. Thinking is easier than working, but there will still be a lot of work.

As to farmer's markets. I assumed that anything new and different would be a big seller. Watch people leaving a farmers market, though. They'll have tomatoes, corn, beans, squash. One in a hundred will have some oddball stuff. People want what they're accustomed to. I've had beautiful purple hull pole beans, and set up beside a guy with regular green beans. He sold all his, I didn't sell any of mine. Nobody wanted purple green beans! Why?? Because they were different. People will not buy as much unusual stuff as you'd think.

All this is from my personal, real life experience. No speculation whatsoever. Take it or leave it, but it's all real. In the spring, I'd be glad to give anybody a tour of the place. In the past I've even made video tours and sent them to folks. I suppose maybe I could do one this year too. My gray water automatic watering system is a marvel. And a lot of people get a kick out of the double rows of tomatoes on field fence, too.

So much of this depends on what the needs of your area are... Are you near a huge lake? Can you make money selling live bait?

Are you in a rich area that likes expensive hand made soaps or cheeses?

I'd think that you'd want to get a small ecosystem built up that feeds itself and produces a little extra... Like growing all kinds of worms for feed, fish for fertilizer, garden for a filter and food.. veggies to feed smaller animals if you can sell rabbits heavily or similar.. ..

I think if a person worked at it as a full time thing, they could make it happen... It would take a few years or more..

Best money I've ever seen a person get from an acre of land, it started with him planting a row of large pines and fir trees all around the front and sides of the lot.. it was to hide the parking lot for his adult theater and night club.... He made a fortune...

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Never let your fear decide your fate!
Kein Mitleid für die Mehrheit

Howdy Zong
I would love to see one of your video tours.
Have you saved any of them?
How do you clean your gray water?
Right now I am just running the laundry water outside but I do want to make some kind of filter and start saving it.

Zong, make some youtubes for us!

Zong I would like to see a mapped layout of your orchard.

If it were me:
Biodynamic gardening is the way to go. I grow more with less space than I ever did row gardening. Growing for our family is the biggest money maker, growing to feed the rabbits and chickens is the next and then you could grow herbs to sell at the market for a little extra pocket change.
Next money maker on our list is our chickens. All they get is kitchen scraps and what they can find for themselves. Extras from the garden are fed to the chickens, scraps from canning are fed to the chickens, meat trimmings or leftovers off the children's plates are fed to the chickens. I have had chickens for the past 10 years and never bought food for them. If I wanted to push them to lay in the winter then I would probably buy higher protein feed, but I don't. Then during the spring and summer I sell our extra eggs. I usually have about 3 dozen a week to sell , not much, but considering I have nothing in them then that little bit adds up over the months.
The rabbits are next on our list. We do buy grain and hay for them but they don't need much and then they are supplemented also from the garden and the yard. For the winter, I dehydrate extra greens, carrot tops, etc. so that they have some of that for food in the winter when there isn't much else growing. They provide us with a steady supply of meat, along with supplying meat to feed the dogs which cuts down on that cost.
We have found that the more that we can do for ourselves around here the more we "make". So our goal has always been to do more to provide for more of our own needs, because in the long run that is more beneficial to us money wise than doing something to bring in cash. Blessings, Kat

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We are just starting up on eight acres. Hopefully the garden going in this year will meet most of our needs through the summer and onward. We keep a few meat animals too, but they do take space and don't factor into the one acre idea, except for supplying compost. I wonder if anyone here does off-farm sales, like a booth at the end of the drive? That is how I hope to deal with any overabundance of veggies and eggs. We have good traffic on the road out front. Any pointers on managing that type of sales? If I have good response or expand the garden a little more, I might start into Farmers Markets, but I like to start small, meeting our own needs first.

I don't know how to make a decent map. I copied a picture of a grid, and tried to do it with the "Paint" program, and it looked like a 3 year old did it. So, I gave up on that, but will look later on to see if there is a different free program somewhere I can download.

I use water from the washing machine, bath tub, and kitchen sink for my gray water. Run it into a drum and sometimes throw in some chicken manure or something. In the morning, before the sun gets going good, I determine how much more water I need, and start filling. Since I know how much water my spigot puts out per minute, I set the timer for X minutes, and open the valve at the bottom of the drum of water. Which feeds a 1 inch well pump line that runs through the garden with poke holes spaced appropriately. For instance, since I plant tomatoes 2 ft apart, I would have the holes in the water line 2 ft apart, and plant the tomatoes, line up the water line, set the stake(wherever I use them), pull up my mulch, and so on. Doing it all as I go, so when I get through planting, I'm more or less through with the work.

Probably not really clear, but if I need 55 gallons to water with, and get 30 from gray water, then I'll run in 25 more as I'm watering.

I get everything going around here so I'm ready by April 15. I promise I'll make some videos and post them. Here's one from last year.



This is one from 4 or 5 years ago. I deleted it after 200,000 or so views because the comments got stupid. 2 other people posted it, and I asked them to delete it, and they did. Yet, here it is again. Just goes to show that if you make a video about potatoes, it lives on forever. This was made when I was fat, too. LOL. 88 pounds ago.

Around here quite a few people have booths at the end of their driveway. They put out their surplus goods and prices with a donation box, everyone is on honor system when it comes to paying

Worms can do well on an acre for sale (bait is always in demand and worm dirt is a very profitable side effect of worm cultivation!)... and if you farm worms for income then you magically have free food for your chickens, amazing compost for your home garden and a lot of space left over for whatever other ventures you decide to venture into.

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They shall all sit under their own vines and their own fig trees, and they shall live in peace and unafraid. Mica 4:4

There is a small farm around here that was going under and turned itself into a petting zoo. They stay pretty busy through the summer months. They take in animals ppl no longer want even the exotic ones ppl could no longer take care of. They sell admission as well as sliced bread and I've cream cones filled with grain to feed to the goats. The goats are real friendly and just come up to you when your bro using around the other animal pens. They even have a giraffe now. There is place outside Chicago only open in fall. They have a petting zoo and sell pumpkins give hey rides have a barn full of loose hey to play in ( city people don't know how itchy it is.) a hay bail maze. They order in a bunch of chicks and have a place where kids can hold them. Try to have piglets born during it too. Lots of goats. Pony rides. Once the chicks get to the ugly stage they just get new and give away the older ones. People from the city eat it up, they get to take their kids for a little taste of the country. I heard they make half their yearly income from just those two months. They sell fresh baked pies too and ppl just assume they r home made. Thousands of people through there each weekend. They even have bonfire parties every night for birthdays parties or girlscouts. The chick station has little signs everywhere that say please dont squeeze the chicks! Cause then they poop lol. They just rent the other
animals from local farmers for the event. It's called johansen farms

my oldest at the chicks.

---I will not eat store bought meat again unless I absolutely have to--tastes and smells rotten to me.[/QUOTE]

I agree. No more store bought meat for me. I don't care if I do lose a little money, but I havn't yet as I raise enough to sell so mine doesn't usually cost me much if any.

Some ideas keeping in mind your 1 acre limitation. Raising pet birds. Worm farming. A kennel. Bantam chickens. Coppicing willows or raising other basketry material and making baskets. Raising exotic plants in a greenhouse.

I agree. No more store bought meat for me. I don't care if I do lose a little money, but I havn't yet as I raise enough to sell so mine doesn't usually cost me much if any.[/QUOTE]

This thread is about economics. That is what I commented on was the economics of raising your own meat. I am in complete agreement that home raised is better quality.

I've know a few people that keep rabbits. They keep meat breeders and then what I call "ornamental" rabbits. The offspring from the meat breeders and "ornamentals" pays for the feed/supplies. They don't keep ALOT of rabbits, just enough to keep some extra meat on the table

I'd probably grow and sell edible mushrooms. They are housed in a building, so not at risk to adverse weather. I'd be able to grow them year round in my basement. A retired teacher in the school district that I attended did exactly that and he makes really good money. Some mushroom varieties are pricier than others.

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~TheMartianChick~

My latest novels:
Bystander: A Tale of the End of the World as SHE Knew It!

Christmas in Bystander & Other Village Tales

Coming Soon: A Slice of Heaven

Some states it is now legal. In Alaska I believe it was legal to grow enough just for personal use. That was back in the 80's and I was military at the time so I don't have any personal experience. However in those places that it is legal, I would grow it. I would imagine it's a nice money-maker. I currently brew my own beer, grandfather made moonshine, I might have a different take on this than others.

Growing for my own consmption without a doubt. You learn, you grow, if you make mistakes (and you will) then you eat less. You don't have to worry about a customer base, marketing, laws.

Maybe I wouldn't make anything but i would SAVE about $3,000 per year just in vegetables that we grow for ourselves. Other benefits include the lack of pesticides, being outdoors, meeting new people, not dealing with grocery stores, no taxation, I get to experiment with new food and more.

Several - I would get awfully sick of eating only one vegetable.

Garden first, eventually some chickens for eggs and meat. I'm getting more concerned about all the chinese chicken scares that are already beginning. No large livestock.

Yes, eventually. I try to only start one new experiment at a time.

Do what works for YOU. Currently I Square foot due to size. I have 3 sq ft gardens in varying sizes but if I wanted 50 tomato plants instead of my current 15 I might do a few rows.