Could You Make A Living On 10 Acres

[hedgerow pete 25]

well as someone that has seriously looked into and trialed quite a few ideas and standards i know a lot about this sort of thing

 

so heres a few ideas for you

 

first up there is no real one thing you can do to make a reasonable living off the land .

 

i am thinking here £25k which is poor £40kk is well off

 

what you have to do is split it down to lower amounts

 

the problem here is you have to be come a jack of all trades and also each job/role/occupation

 

so bee keeper is one of mine, yes £200 per hive, set up with kit, £400 basic to £2k for ten hive

 

logs from the hedge line is another one, dont chop the whole tree down harvest it so we want polard or copice

but you need to replant the hedge line for the right trees, tools and labour and saplings £500

 

animals, yes great, pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, rabbits and so on.

but stock takes food and supliments and medical bills and so on, so loads of risks and costs here, this year sheep are high price next year they not

 

i come from a market gardener back ground so crops feature heavily, but why sell cheap carrots, when you can value add to them and sell them as some thing else,

 

this is the most important words going

VALUE ADDED

 

cheap honey is worth 50 p a jar

value added honey, ie honey with added whiskey in a nice jar and label is worth £7 a lb, best i have ever done is £15 a lb to idiot londoners and they thanked me for it, all ways look for the Chelsea tractors with an idiot in the front

 

you need to amass as many hobbies ans skills each one doing its fair share, honey is only going to do two weeks work of the year, late april may time and october time and thats it, so two weeks down you then need to work on the next 50 weeks

 

also its planning as well. certain items in the year are fixed, buy a large open plan sheet calender or google " printable pdf calenders" and you can get one

 

then highlite att the saturdays and local market days as you need to be selling items

the local shows, honey is 50p a jar, show winning top quality standard honey as featured in the local press as a show winning honey is a much better cost

 

you need to add items like sap rising in the trees, late feb early march and either self collect or get people to pay you to do so, we charged £2 a gallon collected

 

if your worm farming the local fishing competition dates have to be added and worked back from

 

say the comp is in june, you need the worms ready mid may,say they take two months to grow then you need to be dealing with worm farming issues in march time and so on.

 

this is where people go wrong , every thing is not planned or planned backwards

 

we sell chickens, live ones hatched out our selves and so on. average sale is £6 per bird at the live auction at penkridge, but sell the cute fluffy ones on a kids school holiday wednesday and the prices shoot up well past £20 as the townies are in the auction buying for there kids, but the birds have to be a certain stage 6-8 weeks old or 2-3 weeks old, so you need to run the incubators in march feb for the witson dates

[air gun ant 1,666]

I'm going to meet the landowner and dicuss rent etc tonight on 10 acres, im well excited lol see what youve started budharley!!!

[The one 8,511]

You looked at pick your own Soft Fruit ?. no so labour intensive

[Tiercel 6,986]

On the gardening front, runner beans are the most prolific earner per area of land they occupy, Given good conditions you could expect 3 to 4lb of beans per plant over a season at £1.50 a lb not to be sneezed at.

 

TC

[Waz 4,274]

Interesting topic this, 10 acres is roughly the size of my plot (France), but not all plantable, 2 acres is a lake, and 4+ is woodland. and take of the rest the house and barns. House is almost liveable, but had to put it on hold for possibly the next 3 or 4 months. But... hope to get a bit of income with letting out a small cottage with the lake to families for fishing or whatever they want to do, maybe set up a simulated bow hunting gig aswell. Would be nice to have a few sheep as theyre is a steep bit which I can get up and down in the 4 wheel drive tractor 3/4 of the year but come October when the sun is not on it as long, foget it, learneD the hard way! (mind you I do have turf tyres on it and not agri's).

 

Wont be selling any wood as intend to heat the house and the water with woodburner/boiler. But been playing at propogating & love it, so intend getting up a stock of garden type plants, shrubs trees etc and when I got enough to sell, either advertise or do a couple of markets, & see where that takes me. A few wild rabbits to keep on top off to stop them doing any damage, and a few deer and a few boar, but dont see a big problem there Doubt if I will ever make my 100% living from this place, as social charges are high, but it'll keep me out of trouble and hopefully out of the red! & if I can go back to being self employed alongside it rather than an employee doing shifts I will be over the moon.

[Fieldsporthunter 1,864]

need planning approval for a weekly clayshoot. Once a fortnight and you are fine

We had one most Sundays and there was not many we missed. towards the end there was a police presence that many complains went in off niebours.

[hedgerow pete 25]

i dont want to put you off i want to inform thats all

 

as i said its a £100 per day you are looking at to raise, £30 belongs to the tax and stamp man the rest is yours and you can have the weekend off

 

but here lets talk and walk the walk

 

at this time of year we were busy selling instant veggie gardens, a seed tray i made from pallet wood, 1' by 2' by 2"

in it was a row of leek seedlings, onion seedlings, cabbages, spring greens and so on a whole tray full of rows, we used to sell them for a tenna and make £4 profit on them, but we were planting them in december/jan in time for the markets

 

some here has mentioned the great runner been,

so lets do the runner bean to death and you can see how hard it is to get right

 

you can harvest runners from april to october in the uk at either end the prices are high in the middle when everyone has runner beans the market price is pence

what we need to do is to aim for the value added stuff so either very first or very last and a bit in the middle, or we need to sell, pickles beans, curried beans, bean seeds and so on, in fact it works like this, you need three types of runner bean to grow ready from april harvest to early june and three different types from august to october and even november so that six different types, each one has to be sown every week so say 150 plants a week growning ( not 150 seeds but 150 plants that have survived the slugs and birds, 1500 plants is 50 of each sort of the three types of spring sown)

 

those 50 will also want pollination in the winter time and or spring when there is no bees so you need to use a kids paint brush

 

we are also going to need bean canes they are roughly £40 for a bundle to 250, plus petrol for the rotavator and or digging machine, they want weeding and watering, the over winter crops need a poly tunnel £400 second hand frame and new sheeting

 

so your first crop of beans is going to set you back the following

poly tunnel, rotavator, petrol, weed killers, hoes, hand tools, been canes and so on and so on and so on

 

why not just sell the townies so hazel sticks cut from your hedge as bean canes, eco -green-tree hugging and so one the muppets love it, we used to sell hazel sticks, sun shots we called them, 6 foot long and 1" at the base for £1.50 each or 5 for a £5 and made 100% profit

 

i knew someone with an old coppice we started to rework and he loved us for it, he had the logs we had the copicing

 

also slugs dont eat bean canes

 

think of any idea and then rethink it a different view

 

grow 150 bean plants and sell none you have to start to make chutney, dont sell hazel sticks they are still ready for next weeks sales instead

[Silversnake 1,099]

Study permaculture, I am not sure what plants or animals would be suitable for your climate or terrain but it is all about efficiently using your land space and improving your yield and soil every season and every plant, animal, structure, etc has at least 3 uses eg sheep is to eat, provide wool and manure for garden, an apple tree can be shade, fruit and to tie up a dog, etc, etc. A lot of people do this practice or close to it without calling it permaculture, but if you look up permaculture you will find some wonderful ideas. I wish permaculture (or something similar, you can call it something else if you want) was taught to kids in school.