A little difficult to answer without knowing your current skills or how much initial investment your planning on, but I'll throw out a few ideas.

If you can weld, welding shop.

If your skills are more towards woodworking, get a half decent tablesaw and start making cutting boards, wooden signs, and small crafty type stuff. It's amazing what people will pay for little stuff like that, which require minimal skill and time to make, and materials can often be sourced from scrap lumber.

Since you're close to an urban areas, power washing, window cleaning, or Handyman work.

Morning, Nostr friends.

Off to get shit done today.

Few hours at the sawmill this morning, then a yard to mow, the haul a trailer load of compost back home to prep raised beds tomorrow.

#grownostr #homestead #hustle #dumptrailer

One of my many gigs is sawmilling. Here's the view from my office this morning.

#grownostr #lumber #sawmill

#grownostr #homesteading

In these large operations, when the hens pass their prime laying age, they are promptly evicted from the barn and a new batch of birds is brought in. Due to the economic absurdities of operating at this scale, often these birds are just killed. This is a great opportunity for someone with a backyard flock to get several bird at a low price or even free, and though they're past their peak laying age, these birds still have many eggs left.

Obvious disclaimer: Do Not start stalking chicken barn operators, and do not just show up at a poultry operation, there are biosecurity rules. But if you happen to meet one of these farmers and you casually mention in the conversation that you would be interested in a few hens when they age out of their operation, then you might just get some cheap or even free chickens.

Chicken Cheat Code

I do not claim to be an expert on poultry, but I've had chickens for about a year and recently expanded our flock.

I have 27 laying hens. They cost me exactly $0 to procure.

Yes, free hens, you just have to know the right person. Here's how this works.

If you have commercial chicken operations in your area (yes CAFOs. I'm not a fan of the corporate food structure, but, at the farm level, they are run by regular, average people who think they're doing what's best or often what they have to in order to attempt to pay off the multi-million dollar investment in the facility), get to know the farmers who own the chicken operation.

Cont.

Nice. I suspected you were reasonably close when I saw Ozarks in your username.

I don't make over to Webster county very often but I pass through Bolivar almost daily.

Our older cows are a simmental/limosin cross which is a large frame breed that is many years out of "style" for grazing, but they're hardy old cows and raise a big strong calf, so we have a few still around. We've been gradually replacing them with smaller frame Angus and gelbviegh.

Being in Missouri, our pastures are mostly fescue (the blessing and curse of fescue is a topic for it's own dedicated note). I've overseeded many of the pastures with annual lespedeza, and have a couple paddocks of red river crabgrass.

When they won't let you get out and spot them, you're pretty much at the mercy of the operator.

What type of trailer do you use? I haul with a little 10 ft dump trailer and it's definitely one of the most useful pieces of equipment I've got.

An Introduction.

I am, among other things, a rancher. My wife and I operate Red Cedar Ranch, a pasture-based cow/calf operation in Cedar County, Missouri.

We strive to raise healthy and profitable livestock while also improving the land. When I learned about the mission of #[0], I had to be involved.

If you are in Southwest or West Central Missouri, and want to reserve a beef for next year, contact me here or find Red Cedar Ranch at The Beef Initiative site.

#grownostr #beef

Yeah that happens often. In time, you'll learn to judge the weight of the load by sight, and you can hand signal them when to stop.

Thanks for the video. I just got three barrels of old wheat seed from my uncle. Germination rate will probably be too low for planting or sprouting, so I was thinking about trying fermentation.

Plumbed the barrel for quenching from the bottom.

Saddle cut barrel, build fire in it, as the wood burns down to coals, add another layer and repeat until the barrel is full.

Not sure if it's cheating or not, but a DeWalt leaf blower seemed to speed up the process.

Results of my weekend project, making #biochar inspired by #[0]

#grownostr #homesteading