Making Money from a Small Homestead: How to Start for 2025
If you are already dreaming about your homestead goals for next year and finding a way to make extra money is on your list, this post is for you!
With many years of earning extra income from our small farm under my belt, I've learned a lot about what works and what doesn't. Even if you have little space, no existing customer base, a day job off farm, and no money to start a homestead business -- it's absolutely possible to earn additional income to help cover some (or all!) of the costs it takes to grow your own food!
3 Things to do NOW to Make Money from Your Homestead in 2025
First Things -- If you want to have long time success making money homesteading, understand that you need to commit to TREATING IT LIKE A BUSINESS - not a hobby.
Nobody accidentally ends up with multiple profitable income streams. You need to be intentional about how you are managing, tracking, and spending your time/money.
These 3 Tips will help you start that process of separating your hobby farm to a profitable business in the simplest way:
STEP #1. Brainstorm Your Potential Ideas
Make a BIG list of any good idea you have for making money.
Ideally, this would be something you have already done successfully consistently (don't put "sell chicken" if you've never raised meat chickens before! Trying to making money from something you have no experience with is a great way to waste a lot of time).
BONUS TIP:
Don't limit your ideas to just physical products such as farm-fresh eggs, homemade jams, garden produce, or maple syrup.
Think about ALL of my homestead income stream categories: Physical Products, Services, Knowledge, Hospitality, Digital
SERVICES
What could you offer like renting your tiller for someone's new vegetable garden or using male animals for stud services? Think about all the tools, skills, and equipment you have that other’s may not.KNOWLEDGE
How can you utilize your knowledge for income? Offering classes on dairy animals, how to make homemade soap with goat milk, or pruning fruit trees are a good low-start up way to generating income!HOSPITALITY
What type of events would be possible on your property? Maybe you want to host craft fairs or have a u-pick farm or a pumpkin patch. Some people even rent out space for photo shoots!DIGITAL
One of the best parts of being a modern homesteader is the ability to use the internet to reach a lot of people at once! Digital products/services/knowledge products are great options - especially for those feeling limited by the size of your property or rural location.
STEP #2. Separate Your Finances
I spent 5 years making money from our homestead before I separated it from our personal finances. And you know what I learned? It was it WAY easier to keep track of our ACTUALLY numbers (both income AND expenses) when I wasn't trying to sort them out of the dozens of personal charges in our account.
I know managing money/budgeting isn't a very exciting topic -- but it's absolutely essential if you want to have an accurate summary of your expenses and determining your profit margin. And honestly, if you don't like tracking numbers, having a secondary/separate account JUST for your homestead will make it 100x easier/more painless!
It doesn't cost anything to separate your homestead finances from your personal ones. I just opened up a second personal checking/savings account for my husband and I with our current credit union. We have debit cards with FARM written on them and any and all expenses and income go through that account and that account only.
Before we had consistent income coming in, I determined how much from our personal checking account I was willing to give the farm each month and transferred it over as "seed" money.
BONUS TIP: We have a fair amount of farm expenses that we use cash for (like getting feed from our local Amish Mill)... I just withdraw cash from the farm account and then keep a "notes" list in my phone with the date, amount, and what the cash was used for to reference later.
Trust me, you won't regret learning how to track/manage your homestead finances now. Do it while your finances are SIMPLE and you are only making $100 or $500/month so that when you are making $1,000++ you have systems and habits already in place!
STEP #3: Start Sharing What Your Doing
The best way to to find potential customers is to just start SHARING what you are doing without any intent to sell.
People like to support or buy from people they know and connect with and they will naturally start to associate you with topics that they see you talking about. Even during the winter months, there is plenty "behind the scenes" topics you can talk about to peak people's interest.
Things you can share about:
Creative ways you store your food without extra space
A tour of your chicken coop
Your favorite place to order extra seeds from
Planning your large garden
How you’re experimenting making your own compost
Pictures of your farm animals and introducing each one
Where you buy day-old chicks or essential oils
An easy way to use older raw milk
I find for local customers, Facebook is the best social media platform.
I primarily use a Facebook page I made just for our homestead (that I will from time to time share posts from to local groups or to my personal FB page). If you prefer video - you can also do a YouTube channel. Of course, be sure to mention it in conversations with those in your local community or connect with other local farms that may off different products too!
Social media is definitely the most valuable resource though for reaching lots of people without having to spend time/money to be at your local farmers market. I could make a whole post about ways to build a customer base this way but just know, they key is CONSISTENCY and SHARING more than selling.
BONUS TIP: I try to do 10 “share” posts between an actual "sales" post. Here are a few examples from my page:
This is post doesn’t sell anything — but it does let people know two things: #1 - We know how to butcher deer! (Which is a service we plan to offer in the future). #2 - We know how to can and use canned meat! I teach a class on pressure canning meat so this is a great subliminal “plug” to peak interest for that too.
Again, this post doesn’t promote anything specific. But it does show “legitimacy” in us as homesteaders.
This could promote onions for sale — if I sold them (I don’t!)… but it does let people know I have knowledge on gardening and preserving veggies for a root cellar! Both of which are classes I offer.
Simple post without really any deep goals/intention.. it’s just a “feel good” post :) (though I guess you could argue it does show people we have livestock guardian puppies if they are in the market for one or hear of someone who is!)
That’s the three tips for today. If extra cash from your homestead is a big goal for 2025 -- start with these three things and be sure to check back for more in depth tips in the coming months!
Making a lot of money from our homegrown and homemade goods has been hard work but such a blessing to our family. And the best part is that farm business ventures are also good way to pay for upgrades to your property without having to do extra work off farm!
Blessings until next time!
Beth
