I could write a book full of income diversity ideas... sell firewood, rabbit manure, rabbit pelts, rabbit feet keychains, baked or canned goods, flowers, vegetables from your garden, extra fruit from your orchard... rent out a portion of your property to photographers for wedding or graduation photos, lease a portion of your land to a hay grower, sell chicken and duck eggs or hatchlings... Sell your services - whatever you might be talented at. Knit, crochet, metalworking, blacksmithing, painting, website building, seamstress work, car repairs, cage and coop building, or writing guides. Sell stuff from the end of your driveway, or at a local farmer's market. Get into bees and honey production, or get goats and rent them out to people to help clear land. Breed rare breeds of animals, or breed angora animals and sell their wool. Offer on-farm classes, or farm-to-table dinners. Check local restaurants to see if you can sell your eggs/veggies/greens to them. And yet despite this vast well of ideas, I can't seem to make any work for us and our homestead.
With Facebook stopping animal sales, rabbit sales have become a trickle. I sold Ebony yesterday, but it's been a while since the last rabbit sale, and at $15 and $20, each rabbit sale buys one bag of feed, which lasts 3 days or so... So unless I'm selling at least two to three rabbits a week, I'm bleeding money and it's not even the cold season yet! With my ongoing health issues and my current inability to lift much, I'm going to have to make drastic cuts to our herd. I've got ads posted on Craigslist, Hoobly, and here on the rabbits page, but alas, not much luck moving them.
I had decent luck selling hatching eggs and chicks this spring, but that's seasonal and again, with Facebook cracking down, it's harder to find animal buyers. Our flock is mixed, so we don't have any purebred eggs/chicks. We tried separating the trio of French Black Copper Marans out, but as soon as we did, one of them became an egg eater. All three are going to the processing place this fall with the meat birds.
I can't rent out part of our property or have on-farm classes because of our dogs. They don't exactly enjoy company. I'm also paranoid about biosecurity, so it would be a nightmare with a free-range flock to have people coming on the property.
I need to focus on what I CAN do. I'm good at crochet. I've finished four blankets this year. I'm good at making cat toys. I'm learning how to re-purpose old clothes into purses and bags. I have an eye for photography, but I don't know how to sell my photos outside of Redbubble. I'm an expert at all things cat and dog, but again, I'm not sure how to turn that into a business model. I wrote a guide to cat behavioral issues, but I have no idea how to publish it or promote it. I could always fall back on my old stand-by of selling leftover garage sale junk online, but with the increases to postage in recent years, it's getting harder and harder to sell less valuable items (which is the bulk of my sales). On the plus side, I have a lot of inventory to move, and kids are constantly outgrowing their clothes, so it's a never-ending supply.
I think once I get in the swing of things with all the kids in school this year, perhaps I can focus on getting stuff in the Bonanza shop again. That might be a good first step anyway. It would also help me de-clutter again.