Make (& Save!) Money
Money doesn’t grow on trees or in a field, but you can boost your bank account with these side hustles.
Boost your bank account with these side hustles.
We could all use some extra cash and having a reliable side hustle can help — especially when you’re able to leverage resources you already have. Here are 20 side hustles for farmers to consider, to make a quick buck or two.
Take the Scenic Route
Got honeybees, a rare sheep breed or fields full of sunflowers? Shooting some eye-popping farm photos could pay off — a little at a time. Stock photography websites such as iStock.com pay photographers small royalties for their images. Earnings depend on how many photos you’ve uploaded for potential use and how many times customers download them. Stock photo outlets’ average pay ranges from a few cents to a few dollars per licensed photo. Provided you meet their minimum payment thresholds, most pay out monthly.
Doug Sandquist is a Las Vegas-based dentist with a landscape photography side hustle. Although he’s sold some of his travel photos on stock image websites, he admits, “They’re a hard way to go.” Instead, he recommends selling through websites such as Society6.com or Redbubble.com.
These enable you to upload and feature your photos on T-shirts, mugs, canvas prints and more. When customers order your photo products, you earn a percentage. Again, most sites pay out monthly, as long as you’ve reached minimum payment thresholds. For instance, Redbubble.com’s threshold is $20.
Rent Out Small Plots
Many people wish they could garden, but they lack the land to do so. Some are apartment dwellers who aren’t allowed to dig up the grounds. Others are homeowners with too much shade, too many munching deer or both.
But if you have soil to spare, consider staking off some 10-by-10-foot parcels and renting them to gardeners for the duration of the growing season. Renting just one plot from, say, April through October at $20 per month would bring in an extra $140 in all.
Be prepared to provide car or bicycle parking spaces, access to water and a few essential garden tools as needed. Also, make sure your farm’s insurance policy covers this type of arrangement. (You don’t want to leave yourself unprotected in the event that one of your guest gardeners is injured while working in his or her rental plot.)
Get Your Goats
Plenty of homeowners joke about replacing their lawnmowers with goats. But, as it happens, employing goats to clear brush is a viable — and potentially very profitable — endeavor. “As far as cost that you can make in this business, it varies from state to state and region to region,” says Tammy Dunakin, owner, operator and franchiser for Rent-A-Ruminant, LLC, in Seattle, Washington.
Dunakin typically charges clients $820 per day for either 60 or 120 goats. “And I have a ¼-acre minimum and a three-day minimum,” she adds.
If you already have goats, perhaps you’ve been curious about trying this work. “There are a lot of moving parts to it,” Dunakin says. “What you really don’t want to have, if you are doing a job for somebody, is something that involves harm to the animals or harm to somebody’s property or goats getting hit by cars or causing an accident.”
Tethering your goats and relying on someone else’s fencing are both nonstarters. “Don’t imagine that you will just drop your goats off and leave,” she says. Instead, you’ll need to set up portable, clearly marked electric fencing to coral your goats. You also need to be able to identify the plants they’ll encounter in advance, because many plants are actually toxic to goats.
It’s also just as important to check your insurance coverage. Some custom farming plans will cover you on and off of your farm. Finally, you should also plan to do some of the brush removal yourself. “You have to help clear