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The Homestead Revolution V
Part 5 of a 6 part series Do What You Love
Some of us can and sometimes do find work we love in the
corporate world. Sometimes the work would not exist except that
it
has corporate support or subsidy. Often you can do the same or
similar work outside a corporate environment. If you have not
yet
done so, ask yourself how you would spend your productive hours
if
you did not require pay. How many hours each week would you
spend
at this activity? A time budget makes more sense than a dollar
budget.
What would it take for this activity to provide the income you
desire
when you do require an income? The unincorporated, non money
loving world allows you to make such choices and find others you
can
work with. Even the loner can tailor her business to meet her
needs
without much or any assistance, if rapid growth is not an
object.
I've been amused by the marketing changes I have seen in my
lifetime. I remember the milk man bringing dairy products to our
home. The egg man brought eggs. The bread man, bread and the
garbage man came and hauled off our waste. Then our small town
got
its first supermarket and soon, only the garbage man came to our
home. The others were forced out of business. We saved money by
forgoing home delivery service. Today we have a proliferation of
convenience stores, often charging inflated prices to save us a
trip to
the supermarket. Lesson? There are always enough people who will
pay for convenience and there is nothing more convenient,
profitable
and environmentally friendly than home delivery service.
Many of us have dreamed of holding up in a store, five to seven
days a week, as our customers keep us hopping or biting our
fingernails. Now I see so many disadvantages to storefronts, I
would
always give them a second thought, unless I had money and life
time
to throw away. A storefront usually means you are not starting
on a
shoestring or you will soon wish you weren't. Storefronts can be
very
capital intensive and you must lure customers to your location,
then
hope they will come and buy on a regular basis. Home delivery
sharply
reduces start up costs and is the ultimate in customer
convenience. In
the beginning you can afford to take a few minutes to chat with
customers. In a storefront, the customer comes and goes as she
pleases, may not want to chat while other customers are present
and
may be shy about asking for your time. A customer on their own
property is a comfortable and often sociable customer. Home
delivery
offers regular repeat opportunities for one on one conversation,
friendship and sales. Your customers are expecting you, not the
other
way around.
In a storefront, you hope your advertising will bring new
customers. With home delivery, you knock on a door and find out
if
you have a new and regular customer, in a few minutes. Your
delivery
vehicle and satisfied customers provide cheap advertising of the
highest quality - such that money cannot buy. You determine
their
regularity by your delivery schedule. In a storefront, your
business is
split between regular customers and occasional customers. That
makes it difficult to plan inventory requirements, week to week.
With
fresh food, this can be very expensive. I say, consider home
delivery
to compete successfully with high overhead, corporate
convenience
and chain marketers. The delivery business lets you start small
with
your daily transportation, one, two or more sessions per week.
You
can expand your routes and add to products and services as you
choose to grow. You can reinvest profits a storefront probably
will not
allow you for years. It is the best way I know for the little
guy to
compete with corporate marketers.
Lessons Learned
I recently tried to create a local food bank and home delivery
business combination with a partner. Neither of us got paid and
there
were no profits during the six week trial. It was my intention
to
provide marketing for local organic food growers and encourage
more
local gardeners to grow surplus for market. I relearned an old
lesson.
A shoestring business needs capital reserves until it reaches a
profitable volume of business. It needs subsidy from other
revenue
sources or it needs to be profitable quickly. I have chosen the
last
option for my next attempt to jumpstart local food production. I
am
going to market value added products, beginning as a food
processor.
I will start with a heavy duty juice machine and a few dozen
canning
jars. I will deliver fresh, organic fruit and vegetable
juices,
door to door. Profits will allow me to purchase more jars and
fresh
food stock. As the juice business grows, I will buy bulk organic
nuts,
seeds, grains and build vertical stacking, sprouting cabinets. I
will find
very palatable juice and meal recipes for the sprouts and add
them to
my juice line. Now I have a bulk food storage operation for
survival
purposes that also generates profits. As this business grows, I
can add
fresh fruit, vegetables and a truck to deliver them to more
customers.
Profits from this expanding business will let me add partners
and we
can start planting our own gardens, vineyards and orchards to
produce
food crops all year. Profits allow land purchases - land allows
expanded food production. Vertical integration at the local
level. One
produces, processes and distributes much or all of her own
products.
Gardens can be quickly profitable if we focus on the crops we
are
buying for juice and sprouts, gradually replacing them with our
own.
The profitability of my already established and expanding juice
business gets a big boost. We can add crops for sprouts, like
sunflowers, corn, pumpkin seeds etc. These can also be sold as
dry
goods, further expanding our market. Vines can produce their
second
year, as well as many perennial crops. Trees take two or three
years
for dwarfs, three to five for semi dwarfs and five to seven
years for
most standards. The idea is to get permanent and perennial crops
planted as soon as money and labor allows. Our basic business is
indoor operations at start up, except for delivery. We then add
outdoor
crops to support the indoor businesses. We have built up our
marketing, so we can market your goods and others' as well.
Surely
you will pay us well for our marketing service, which saves you
much
time and money. You can focus on efficient, conservational
production
at home.
Starting the Garden
Gardening has traditionally been very inefficient and resource
intensive. Square Foot Gardening is a simple and elegant system
for
hobby or commercial growing, regardless of planting acreage. If
we
are beginning in virgin soil, it will pay dividends to do
preparation work
as much as a year in advance of the first beds, tree or vine
plantings.
No matter what the existing soil type, any soil will benefit by
pre
treating with water and enzymes, such as Nitron. This will
soften
subsoil down six feet and more, especially with multiple
applications.
Sow a deep root cover crop like alfalfa on the softening soil,
which can
be used for animal feed, sprouts or compost. The deep roots mine
subsoil minerals garden crops can't reach and brings them to the
surface in the above ground plant. Dead alfalfa roots decay and
allow
more air, water and enzymes into the soil. Soil and subsoil
become a
huge sponge and we prevent the loss of valuable runoff to a
neighbor's
property. It reduces the need to collect and store runoff as
well. We
will be using no till garden methods but if you are going to
till the land
even once, it will go far more quickly if the soil has been pre
softened,
which is not expensive or difficult to do. We would simply do
this on all
land we are likely to plant next year and the year after. We
would
continue growing alfalfa or a similar crop on this softened
land, until
we were ready to make beds and tree wells. This way, the land,
whoever owns it, will be ready when we are.
If we are growing organically or planning to, we also need to
start
composting and worm farming - ranching ahead of time. In
composting we now have biological aids that minimize turning and
speed the process to give us a specially enriched product in two
or
three weeks from the start. The biological helpers I know about
are
called Effective Microorganisms (EM). There are other
competitors as
well. Compost made with these helpers creates special micro
environments around plant roots that make the plants healthier,
more
vigorous and drought resistant. They have also been shown to
boost
the immunity of animals who get them mixed with food or in
water.
Topically applied, these little bugs also promote the healing of
wounds
on livestock and probably humans. I am devising experiments to
see if
EM affects the growth and reproduction of earthworms.
About the author:
Ed Howes sought and found, knocked and entered. Now he sees
things differently. To see more of what he sees, please do an
author search here at Go Articles.
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