Homesteading Today - When & how did Ken Scharabok pass away???

Wow.
This was my last correspondence, with his book attached...

From: Scharabo@xxxxxxxx
Sent: 4/17/2011 8:22:21 A.M. Central Daylight Time
Subj: E-Book: How to Earn Extra Money in the Country

The attached file is in Microsoft Word for Windows (.doc) format. It is a very large file so allow time for it to download.

To make this book easier to read on your PC I recommend highlighting the entire document and then changing it from two columns to one. That way you don't have to keep going from the bottom of a page to the top again.

If you want to print it out, adding page numbers is recommended in case your printer has any problems. It is over 200 pages. Should your printer not be able to handle it, I recommend downloading it to a disk or diskette and then having it printed out at a commercial printing or copying service.

Please bear in mind I started gathering material for this book about 1994 – going on 13 years ago now. Thus, references, addresses, phone numbers, web sites, etc. may either be out of date or no longer valid. I have no way to update them. However, much information can be obtained on a particular subject by just doing a Google search.

Along that line, the business world has changed since 1994 for the small-scale seller. In particular, access to the Internet. Sales from the home of specialty goods, such as hand-spun wool products and supplies, are now feasible through a web-site or on-line auctions, such as eBay. Small-scale mail order has moved to the Internet. Even what are referred to as ‘bricks and mortar’ businesses (meaning they have an actual business place) sell over the Internet. For example, I use to have a small salvage grocery outlet. I received items from my wholesaler which didn’t have much of a market locally. I offered these over eBay at basically the same price I would have offer them in the store – and found buyers for most – who sometimes paid close to typical retail when shipping is included. Say you have a used bookstore. Sites such as www.half.com allow you to offer your books over the Internet as well. A third example: You need a metal band saw blade, shop eBay and find no one if offering them. Research indicates you can buy the blade in rolls and a machine to join the ends together. You might start selling them on eBay for close to normal retail when S&H are considered.

This book is copyrighted. It may not be further disseminated, such as placing it on a web site, without my specific permission.

Comments on the book (e.g., that is really a dumb suggestion) and pointing out spelling errors and typos are always welcome. I’d also love to hear success stories.

I received the following from someone in Canada who had requested a copy. With their permission, I would like to pass it along:

“Hi, Ken,

I wanted to thank you for making your book available. However, based on what my wife and I have experienced over the last year or so, I think I would give people two basic principles to start with. (1) Don't move to the country until you have money coming in -- from that actual location. (2) Be realistic in your choice of venture.

Principle #1 is based on the fact that we moved here thinking we had several easy sources of money. We only wanted part-time jobs, because the rest of our time would be for raising food and other forms of partial self-sufficiency. My wife
was going to get a part-time job in a bank. I was going to get a part-time
teaching job, and in the winters I was going to write books about our great
outdoors adventures. We both have plenty of experience at those types of jobs.
The bank jobs are there, but only if you wait a hundred years -- people just
don't quit such jobs. The same is true of teaching. As for writing, just after
we bought this place my publisher casually mentioned that they weren't going to
be publishing any more outdoor books (and the writing world is so competitive
that to lose an established publishing relationship is disastrous). So now we're
scrambling madly to find some other income. It looks as though we have a good
chance of starting a market garden, since there's no source of fresh vegetables
for miles around here. But it's a gamble -- backbreaking work, plus big bucks for
equipment. We certainly haven't found the quiet contemplative life we fantasized
about.

Principle #2 is based on the fact that most of the imagined money-making ideas
don't fit the reality of the commercial world. I think one of the dumbest ideas I
ever heard of was somebody who claimed he had a good income from making baskets. Since I've made baskets myself, I'd say his income must be about five cents an hour. We've just had to spend many thousands on a new car, and the one before that cost us over $2,000 the last time we brought it in for a "minor" checkup. So let me see, how many baskets is that??? We bought this place cheap, but by the time we've made it livable the cost will have doubled. An income must be one that can be measured in the thousands of dollars, not a penny here and a penny there, no matter how frugally one hopes to live.

I'm typing with a broken finger, and my tendons are giving off what feels like
electric sparks because I can never give them time to heal. I've lost more weight
than I really wanted to. I'm not improving my health as I expected, it would be
more accurate to say that I'm ruining it. At night I have bad dreams that don't
require a genius to translate. I keep telling myself that if we keep working hard
we'll get over the hump. But I certainly wish we'd done a bit more planning. My
wife and I are real survivors, and we've won some major battles in the past, so
I'm still fairly confident that the financial problems will be solved, but it
will take some time, that's for sure.”

This illustrates the wisdom not moving to someplace purely on the promise or likelihood of a job. I suspect very few people can homestead, or otherwise live in the country, without a steady source of outside income. For many it will be essential primarily for the health benefits provided.

In addition, a good recommendation is not to purchase property in an area until you have lived there at least one year. This allows time to see how it fares during the four seasons, what the people are like, what the community is like and plenty of time to look at the job market and properties of interest.

The following is from another correspondent and included with their permission. I think it graphically displays how even high grossing opportunities can be unattractive when all aspects are considered. Remember it is the net, not the gross, which counts.

“The last 2 falls I have been trying to build my custom deer processing business into a big business. But after this last fall I've decided to call it quits also. I have made a profit both years but after this last round we decided it just isn't worth it. Our customers doubled from last year and there is a promise to double again next year. Our problem is that we would receive so many deer during the rifle seasons that we would have to work 18 hours per day to keep up with the demand. By the time we would take out the high cost of electricity to operate the coolers and freezers, pay our hired help, chase hot check writers down, and people not coming back to pick up there processed deer, it all ate into our profits bad enough to where it seemed we was only getting paid about $10 per day (that’s my wife and my daily salary). Add all this to the fact that we have 3 little children of our own that we would have to take care of after school hours and on weekends. We would start processing on the 1st day of October and work right on through Thanksgiving holiday, take one day off for Christmas, and finally finish processing about the middle of January. No time to enjoy fall or holidays at all.

When you add all the potential gross profits up for the amount of deer we processed it looked like we had the most lucrative business in the world. But what it really amounted to was we worked our butts off for very little pay. So next year I am only going to process 1 or 2 deer a day out of my garage/shop and do it myself only and for cash only to be paid at time of drop off.”

Further correspondence with them indicates they likely set their initial processing fee too low to where demand overwhelmed supply. In this case they likely could have raised their prices and did at least as well with less volume. For example, 100 deer at $60 versus 65 deer at $95 each. Same basic net, but at 40% less work. However, say they process two deer a day at $60 each with almost no overhead. That may net more out for them than the former volume. A third alternative is to only process into bulk chunks, rather than ground meat and sausage, thus limiting their processing requirements.

And more comments with the sender’s permission:

“Living in the Country” is probably very similar to “living in Paradise”. I doubt the reality ever matches their expectations. I live in Hawaii and we have loads of folks who show up from the mainland who are “moving to Paradise” and after they do, they then try to make ends meet. Some of their stories match the ones which were added in on your email. These folks move over “to paradise” and expect to find a job just to discover that there aren’t any let alone the type they were looking for. The mainland has a lot of jobs that aren’t in Hawaii at all – such as tool and die makers – and the jobs that are available generally pay less than the same job on the mainland. Also, the available jobs go to local folks first and transplanted mainland folks second so the new arrivals have to survive here about a year before they get any sort of good job. It also costs significantly more to live here so folks that can get by on the mainland try to live the same sort of life here and it just doesn’t work. On our particular island, the Island of Hawaii aka “the Big Island”, we are also very rural so we get the city folk moving to the country as well as the mainlanders moving to an island. They get hit with a double whammy.

Like the one mentioned in your email, we also have the folks who do over sized projects that fail, too. I have six chickens in my back yard and made about $600 from them last year. They primarily forage for food and I gather the eggs, eat a few and incubate the rest. I have two small table top incubators which we run off of solar electric so we don’t even have energy costs for incubation. Baby chicks sell for $5 each with a “rooster return” policy. When it crows, they can bring it back and I’ll refund their money. They bring me a plump tender rooster that they paid to feed up to that size and they let me use their $5 for six months. And they are happy about it! I am amazed, but my freezer is full of free chicken and they get to sleep in with no more early morning crowing. So, six chickens can bring in a bit of “egg money” as well as provide rather a lot of food. Last year a fellow moved over from the mainland and he bought 200 chickens and was going to make money with them. If I made $600 in one year from six chickens, he should make $20,000 in one year from 200 chickens, right? Looks good on paper! Oh well, the story continues with visits from neighboring dogs, mongoose raids, buying huge quantities of feed, fencing, etc. I’m not sure what his net loss was but between the 200 chickens and the 50 acres he bought he gave up on paradise and went back to the mainland with a lot less capitol that he started with. Fortunately he was able to recoup most of the cost of the land, although the improvements which the jungle ate he didn’t get back. Had he tried with five acres and twenty chickens or better yet, one acre and ten chickens, he probably would have made it work although he still would have needed to pay for the land outright to begin with and have at least a part time job.

My money making chickens didn’t work this year though, since the local feed store is now importing Rhode Island Red chicks in from the mainland so instead of $5 each, it’s hard to sell them at $2 each. I still get the freezer full of returned roosters, but the cash income is almost nil. Fortunately, there is no overhead to keeping the chickens so any money made or roosters returned is on the plus side of the ledger. I’ve bought (Ack! An expense!) some Black Copper Marans and some Black Jersey Giant chicks in from a mainland hatchery since the feed store doesn’t import those varieties so next year I’ll be hatching out breeds that the feed store won’t be selling and undercutting my price. Buying new chicks this year makes my profitable chickens about even this year perhaps next year they will be profitable again. Flexibility is a key thing in small business.

All this is just “pocket money”, it’s great for buying stuff at garage sales (where one can get much better stuff at lower prices) but I really don’t see any of this paying very many bills. I really couldn’t imagine running a homestead off this sort of stuff, I’ll go read your book now and see what better ideas there are! I also suspect that there won’t be one particular answer which will support a homestead, it will be a plethora of small ventures which all add up to a rural lifestyle which can be supported.

Thanks Again!
Cathy

In graduate school one of the proFessors told of a young many who moved to Alaska to take over his parent’s small grocery store. Eggs were obtainable only part of the year and costly due to having been flown in. He decided to build a heated hen house but few sold. Locals all said they ‘tasted funny’. They weren’t use to freshly hatched eggs, but rather ones which have been in storage for a while. Rest of seminar was on changing local buying habits.

Check with your local library to see if they can get you a loaner copy of 101 Best Home-Based Businesses for Women and 101 More Best Home-Based Businesses for Women, both by Priscilla Y. Huff. She may have authored other similar books as well.

Any, remember, probably about 90% of work-at-home business offers are scams in one way or another.

Ken Scharabok