Homesteading for Income

Why am I obsessed with fishing? I've always considered myself a homesteader to some extent; I do as much as I can myself to save as much money as possible. I fish to eat, I cut my own hair, I grow a garden, and I bought myself a welder so I could fabricate.

There are many available resources for those interested in learning more about homesteading, but the basic Idea is this:

Our homes used to help us generate income, now they do nothing but cost us money for 30 years or more. What changed?

Think about what a house used to be. There was a garden that grew vegetables, an area where livestock was kept, it was surrounded by land where the owner could hunt, fish, and keep an orchard. A family might have had beehives, or made and canned jams. A doctor would practice from his property, as would a chair maker. The idea was that your house was a place that helped to make you money.

In modern times a house is nothing more than a place where we relax and sleep. We pay amazing sums of money over long periods of our lives for a place to sit down and eat, as we spend more and more time at work trying to pay for it. It is a vicious cycle, but it is an arrangement that can be modified. You can make real changes to help your house make you money.

I don't mean Airbnb, though it is a valid way to make money from an extra room. I mean creating an environment that not only fosters the feeling of growth and potential, but actually provides growth and potential. Start with a small vegetable patch. Buy seeds is cheap, and once they are planted all you have to do is keep them watered and keep the weeds from growing. You're talking about an investment of $50 maximum and that's only if you don't have the gardening tools necessary.

Gardening is not time intensive all year long. It takes minutes to water your vegetables, and if you go out for just a few minutes every day and keep the weeds down then at most you're talking 5 minutes a day. The sense of satisfaction you get after biting into a carrot you grew is really an amazing feeling that makes you feel like you stepped back in time. Not to mention the taste difference between a homegrown carrot and a store bought one.

There are more options, and one of my absolute favorites is fishing. I've written an eBook on it that should be hitting Amazon soon. It's called Basic Fishing for the Average Human, and it will be available on Kindle Unlimited. In it I explain the basic gear needed and how to catch panfish and bass. I went fishing yesterday and caught a rainbow trout, and if I were to have gone to the store and bought it I would have paid at minimum $10. I plan on going back out this weekend and trying to limit out every day (6 trout per day). By spending my spare time doing a hobby I enjoy, I am actually making myself money by not paying to buy meat for dinner.

The same goes for hunting, or foraging wild foods. There are even clubs that go around big cities showing you the kinds of fruits that grow within the parks that you can eat. It's one of the amazing parts about being more self sufficient: There is literally food all around you, and it doesn't make you look 'poor' to take advantage of it.

So, I challenge you to try something to have your house help you make money, or go out and try a hobby that can provide you with something valuable. Look up homesteading online and read the stories of families who have thrown away the modern idea that everything of value costs big money. Get inspired, make a change, and reap the benefits.