If you live rurally...

[just_lily]

... how do make your living?

We have dreams/plans of homesteading, but any land we are likely to afford is quite rural. Our biggest stumbling block at this point is figuring out how we could continue to support ourselves in a small community.

So how do you do it? Do you make income just off of your property? Are you and/or your partner employed outside the home? What do you do? Was it hard to find a job?

We plan to become as self-sufficient as possible, but we will still need some income in order to survive. That is the hardest part to figure out.

[Chicky2]

My dh works an hour away. I guess that's not what you wish to hear. He also works side jobs. We could not make it on what we grow/sell/raise here.

[confustication]

To be blunt, right now we scrape by. I'm going to have to commute to improve our financial well-being. Sadly, jobs are hard to come by right now.

I freelance, and I work for our local newspaper. Even combined, I'm very much underwater at this point. I'm actively looking for other positions. Once I secure one, I'll have to decide whether it's worth the commute to live rurally.

[Caneel]

I now live in a small town but growing up, we were way off the beaten track as was everyone else in the family.

My mom commuted about 35 minutes each way to work. My dad had an hour+ commute.

My grandmother worked at a local school that was right up the road from their farm. My grandfather, in addition to the farming, worked part-time for the township (plowing snow and such) and drove school bus.

My uncle was a mechanic, his commute was about 30 minutes. My aunt worked at a local woodshop. (Sadly, those types of small, mom and pop businesses are long gone in my neck of the woods.)

Another aunt was a substitute teacher. Even within the district, some of the schools were an hour round trip. She also did music lessons in her home.

I live in a farming area. Lots of people homestead or are very close too it. The ones that work off the property have at least a 30 minute each way commute, 45 minutes is probably more the norm.

[JamieCatheryn]

We're on our way there, and right now it looks like any position he'd take will require travel to several different major cities anyway (either economic consultant or regional management), so a place right in the middle sounds good to me.

[just_lily]

I am not worried about a bit of a commute, as long as there is a community to commute to. My DF works from home now, but was travelling 45 min to an hour each way in his previous job - some times more depending on traffic. We live in a town of 12,000 just outside of a 1MM+ city.

If we do get an acreage/homestead it will probably be much further from a large center. We are Canadian, so there is a lot more space between places!

Right now I run a home daycare and DF is a computer tech. I also have a business degree. So I think I would take in kids if there was anyone around that needed that, or think about maybe setting up a dog boarding kennel on the property (again, if there was demand).

I wonder if it is easier to make a living if you have always lived in a community. Then when a job opens up when you are 19 you take it, and that's your career. I think aybe it is harder coming in from outside. Thoughts?

[Green_Ma_4]

Hey ya,
Great Thread!
We make enough off the farm to feed our livestock for free and to bring our grocery bill down to just about nothing. Which makes our need for a HUGE income not so big. I stay at home and run the farm and homeschool my 4 kidlets, while Tuesday- Friday my husband Truck drives for a company about 2 hours away. We are gradually cutting down His hours by increasing the things we sell and where we sell them. Right now we do markets and our littler corner store (which is really a house llol )buys from us and also we sell our eggs and produce at the end of the driveway. Hopefully by next september we will only have to work wed-frday.

[hildare]

i have a 45 minute commute. dh owned his own business but next month will be a WAHD. i earn enough so that only i have to work to make ends meet. what we do on our farm isn't to sell but is for subsistence.. our own veggies, meat, etc. money is tight with this arrangement, but we sure do like it out in the sticks!

[hildare]

Originally Posted by just_lily

I wonder if it is easier to make a living if you have always lived in a community. Then when a job opens up when you are 19 you take it, and that's your career. I think aybe it is harder coming in from outside. Thoughts?

I don't know, people these days move around so much. i was raised in a rural area, and all the kids i went to school with moved away. I'd say living in a community all your life is no guarantee of finding employment.

[Caneel]

Originally Posted by just_lily

I wonder if it is easier to make a living if you have always lived in a community. Then when a job opens up when you are 19 you take it, and that's your career. I think aybe it is harder coming in from outside. Thoughts?

Interesting question. In my experience, yes. But then again, I grew up in an area where everyone knows everyone and has for 3 (if not more) generations.

I have an aunt and uncle who have worked at the same small manufacturing plant for more than 30 years. (interesting place as it is located on a farm, the owner farms and makes speciality parts) Their son, my cousin, started working there straight out of high school.

My dad's helpers all come from the farms in the immediate area. He would always hire someone local over a transplant because that is his nature, he gets a comfort level from knowing the family's work ethic.

It is very common to see, for example, two generations of Smith's, multiple siblings in each generation, working at the Ford service garage.

[Aubergine68]

I understand that there is still quite a demand for childcare in some areas of our province that are rural, especially in areas that are booming due to oilpatch work.

If you are semi-rural -- ie. close enough to a medium sized town, even if not in it -- the home daycare might still work for you.

We may be moving to a more rural area in a year or so. My husband sells sickness/accident/critical care/life insurance to people without benefits -- usually the self-employed, which means that farmers and tradespeople who work the patch make up a lot of his clients. So the kids and I living in the city and him commuting to rural areas isn't making so much sense anymore.

I've been in touch with home daycare agencies servicing the area we would be moving to, and indications are, I might be able to make an ok income doing the home daycare. There are safety concerns though re: fenced yards and wood stoves, etc, that I'd have to address.

[Farmer'sWife]

It sounds like with the job backgrounds you and your DH have, especially with him working from home currently, you'll do just fine. Although we live in a rural farming community, the majority of people now days do not farm and even if they do at least one spouse has an off farm job besides. You may be suprised at the industries and jobs that are available in rural areas. Locally we have multiple food processing plants that offer everything from entry level line work to high-tech automation and upper management office positions. No matter where you go there are always government work (my mom works in court administration at the county courthouse), schools, health care, etc. And if DH is a computer tech, no matter where you go, people and businesses have computers that they need help with!

[mamadelbosque]

We live with my dad who works for ODOT. If we stay here for much longer DH will be commuting 30-60 minutes to a job (currently he's commuting 60 minutes to school a 4 or 5 days a week).

[HeatherAtHome]

Years ago we were thinking of moving somewhere off the beaten track. We ended up buying a cheap house just outside of town near a "major" city in our area. (not really huge, but central to area). We're a 15 min drive to the city but where our home is located feels really rural. We're surrounded by woods and fields, have some neighbours but not too many.

I grew up in a rural area (an hour's drive to the 'city' where the high school was located). I agree that sometimes in rural areas where everyone knows everyone else that they do hire locals (or NOT hire you!) based on who your family is. Being an outsider isn't awful, you'll start to blend in with the locals after awhile.

One little tid bit of info. Where I grew up was kind of considered poor. People might how would I say this.... frown upon, feel negative? towards you if you come in throwing money around. We had the 'rich' people building cottages all along the lake shore and during the summer months there was a constant stream of dump trucks and flatbeds going by. So annoying.

[AliciaP8]

I think it also depends on how rural you are thinking. Most of the jobs mentioned here don't exist where I live. There is a small grocery store with pharmacy, maybe 10 jobs total. A bank with 3 employees and a family owned restaurant and a family owned gas station. All are about 15 minutes drive from our house. It doesn't matter if you've livedh ere forever or not, if you want a job, you commute to a bigger town. Both my husband and I commute 45 minutes to work and unfortunately, in different directions. We're very comfortable financially and we love coming home to our home and acreage. It wouldn't be for everyone and I know most of my co workers think I'm crazy for travelling so far.

[Peony]

We live closer to town now, 10-15 minutes, before DH had a 45 minute commute in good weather. It took me 12 minutes to get to my office today, SOO much better than the long drive. Here, it doesn't matter if you grew up here or not. Almost everyone I went to school with moved on due to lack of options and jobs, rural areas are very limited in that area.

[PreggieUBA2C]

We're not yet set up. We're doing the renovations on our home that have to come before we can make gardens and housing for livestock. We live on a farm and our friends who own the farm provide us with lots of very fresh food! It will be much cheaper when we can provide it for ourselves though.

Anyway, for now and the next few years, dp commutes for an hour to his job; we're 35 minutes to town, but he works out of town on the other side. I stay home and we are in the midst of making a studio for both of us to write, compose and practice our music/instruments and also for me to make art. We intend to make as much of our income as possible by these means and as we can, he will decrease his hours at his job until hopefully, we won't need him to go anymore. Things are a bit slow with me being pg and having four littles, although I think we've made a lot of progress even still.

We're in a hugely arts-supported region though, and very privileged to even have that as a viable income opportunity/plan. Many people here live on income from their arts, and homestead for sustenance.

We wouldn't want to live closer to town, and dp's commute is very stress-free. It's just highway driving and not ever busy. A traffic jam here is when two drivers combat generosities at a stop sign.

[MrsJewelsRae]

I'm a SAHM and dh brings home the bacon. We live on a 10 acre property- our neighbour farms 4 of our acres and my kids and I help come harvest and get free food, 3 acres is forest and the rest is our yard (house, barn, garden ,etc). He is self employed through 2 businesses- he does web design from home and also has a lawn care/ maintenance business too. We don't make any $ off our "farm" but we are working towards a little more self sufficiency. We have a large garden that provides fresh produce in harvest and I can and freeze everything I can think of. We buy our meat from the neighbouring farmer, we now have a poultry flock for meat and eggs come fall. I have had a couple people at church approach me about buying eggs but that would mean keeping more chickens, feeding more chickens and more clean up...I'm not sure I want to get into that.... dh thinks as the kids get older they can take on more responsibility and maybe set up a fruit stand and sell eggs...we'll see! At this point I just want the eggs for our family and if I have too many to use myself I'll give them away. I'm so not an entrepreneur- I couldn't even sell Girl Guide cookies as a kid!

[mckittre]

I live in a town, but it's a 300 person town off the road system in Alaska, so pretty rural. For income, my husband and I both work from home on the computer doing environmental consulting work, I'm also a writer, my husband does some geology fieldwork sometimes, and we're part owners in a jewelry craft business. Our paid work takes fairly little of our time, and we spend most of our time doing self-directed work for our small environmental nonprofit, outdoor adventures, and general home chores. We could spend more time on paid work and make more money, but choose not to. The biggest secret is a low-cost rural lifestyle. We have very few bills, no mortgage, no debts, and a lot of subsistence food options. So we probably make around $20,000 a year, and feel very wealthy on that income

[annethcz]

My DH commutes to a job 35 miles away. I teach in a small charter school 10 miles from our house.

We've had some income from our property, but not enough to maintain it.