Some folks are doing this:
Excerpt from The Athens Banner:
The three men started making chicken tractors about a month ago to make a little extra money in the sluggish economy.
Wade lost his job working on tractor trailers because of a lack of business and while Maxwell, a decorative concrete finisher, and Gibson, a carpenter, still have jobs, they say they have less work than usual.
They sell the tractors - usually priced around $150 to $200 - from the side of U.S. Highway 441 just inside the Nicholson city limits, and say they regularly run out of coops.
"We did not foresee the amount of people who were looking for them," Maxwell said. "People wanted chickens in their backyards."
Wade lost his job working on tractor trailers because of a lack of business and while Maxwell, a decorative concrete finisher, and Gibson, a carpenter, still have jobs, they say they have less work than usual.
They sell the tractors - usually priced around $150 to $200 - from the side of U.S. Highway 441 just inside the Nicholson city limits, and say they regularly run out of coops.
"We did not foresee the amount of people who were looking for them," Maxwell said. "People wanted chickens in their backyards."
I'm wondering if I need to do like Bruce Campbell says: "The way I see it #65: If you're worried about getting a job--or keeping one---start a company of your own. By doing so, you'll reap the rewards of your hard work and you'll only fired if you fail. This is the land of opportunity. Live in it."
According to one commenter about the chicken coops, the materials don't cost much and the markup is high: "$20 of materials may have even been a bit high. After taking a good look at the photo, there's not more than $15 worth of materials in each one. Rip your 2x4's, buy your roll of wire, hardi-board, screws and nails and crank 'em out. No more than $15 - $25 tops in materials and an hour of labor. Plans are on the internet. Google the plans, take your $20 to Lowes and get your materials, and make your chicken coops. Save $180!"
If it's just for yourself and your family, you can just raise all the veggies you can eat and sell the surplus. Just charge 30% less than the stores and you'll sell all you can raise.
You could supply every restaurant for miles around. Organically grown fresh garden vegetable taste ever so much better than those trucked in from out-of-state. Tomatoes, alone, grown in real soil, locally, have a taste no industrial tomato factory can match. Organic Gardening has had several articles about people who make a good living growing nothing but tomatoes.
Say you have a fairly large garden space of 100x100 feet. For an initial investment of a few hundred dollars, you could lay out a couple of hundred tires which could compete with any wholesale seller of vegetables.
I'm not going to teach you how to garden. Your library has dozens of good books covering every step of the art. I might suggest, however, that you specialize in just three or four vegetables, get a reputation for quality and freshness and make an excellent living growing and selling them. But you might rather sell tire gardens themselves. Start with 10 tires, four cages (two for tomatoes, one for cucumbers and one for squash). Add the planting medium.
The tires cost nothing. The cages cost $4.08. The planting medium (two parts soil to one part compost) may cost up to $5.00 per tire, or considerably less. Paint, may be a dollar, and your materials cost is under $60.00. Of course, there's labor. But if you have a couple of buddies, or make it a family business and sell the 10 tire complete gardens for $250.00, you'd get about $190.00 profit or more. Aside from processing, delivery and setup shouldn't take more than a couple of hours.
Marketing tire gardens is easy.
They would sell mainly to older people who couldn't go get the tires, cut them and fill them but would be delighted to plant, care for and harvest them. Most older people would shell out $250.00 in a minute to insure a large portion of their food for the rest of their lives.
So even if you don't appreciate this idea, older people will. And there will be a market for all the tire gardens you can produce. But there are a lot of mature young people, too. Not all of them are physical enough to gather the materials for the gardens but would welcome them ready-made.
It's no trouble to get soil and compost. Look up "landscaping" in your Yellow Pages. They'll deliver soil at well under 50 cents a cubic foot, compost and whatever you need, by the truckload. If you just want to set up a tire garden for yourself, your local nursery and garden supply can sell you everything you need at a reasonable cost.
To run such a business, all you need is the simple, cheap and easily available equipment described in this article. You will also need a standard pickup truck, which you may already have. If you don't have one, get one. If you drive a car, trade it in for a pickup. If you're going into any kind of business involving hauling, you need a pickup, anyway.
Now to selling the service.
First you set up sample tire gardens, featuring all the ideas in this article and ideas you will come up with. You might even stock a supply of bedding plants, seeds, garden tools, etc., when you've become established. But with your sample gardens, it would be best to have them already started, plants and all. Then contact your local newspaper and they'll be glad to do a feature story.
Put an ad in the same issue saying, "Come and see our tire gardens and let us set up one for you! " People will start coming around and you'll have all the business you can handle from then on.
Don't be afraid others will compete with you. You'll have the jump on any competition if you do a good job, and people will choose you over the competition.
You could supply every restaurant for miles around. Organically grown fresh garden vegetable taste ever so much better than those trucked in from out-of-state. Tomatoes, alone, grown in real soil, locally, have a taste no industrial tomato factory can match. Organic Gardening has had several articles about people who make a good living growing nothing but tomatoes.
Say you have a fairly large garden space of 100x100 feet. For an initial investment of a few hundred dollars, you could lay out a couple of hundred tires which could compete with any wholesale seller of vegetables.
I'm not going to teach you how to garden. Your library has dozens of good books covering every step of the art. I might suggest, however, that you specialize in just three or four vegetables, get a reputation for quality and freshness and make an excellent living growing and selling them. But you might rather sell tire gardens themselves. Start with 10 tires, four cages (two for tomatoes, one for cucumbers and one for squash). Add the planting medium.
The tires cost nothing. The cages cost $4.08. The planting medium (two parts soil to one part compost) may cost up to $5.00 per tire, or considerably less. Paint, may be a dollar, and your materials cost is under $60.00. Of course, there's labor. But if you have a couple of buddies, or make it a family business and sell the 10 tire complete gardens for $250.00, you'd get about $190.00 profit or more. Aside from processing, delivery and setup shouldn't take more than a couple of hours.
Marketing tire gardens is easy.
They would sell mainly to older people who couldn't go get the tires, cut them and fill them but would be delighted to plant, care for and harvest them. Most older people would shell out $250.00 in a minute to insure a large portion of their food for the rest of their lives.
So even if you don't appreciate this idea, older people will. And there will be a market for all the tire gardens you can produce. But there are a lot of mature young people, too. Not all of them are physical enough to gather the materials for the gardens but would welcome them ready-made.
It's no trouble to get soil and compost. Look up "landscaping" in your Yellow Pages. They'll deliver soil at well under 50 cents a cubic foot, compost and whatever you need, by the truckload. If you just want to set up a tire garden for yourself, your local nursery and garden supply can sell you everything you need at a reasonable cost.
To run such a business, all you need is the simple, cheap and easily available equipment described in this article. You will also need a standard pickup truck, which you may already have. If you don't have one, get one. If you drive a car, trade it in for a pickup. If you're going into any kind of business involving hauling, you need a pickup, anyway.
Now to selling the service.
First you set up sample tire gardens, featuring all the ideas in this article and ideas you will come up with. You might even stock a supply of bedding plants, seeds, garden tools, etc., when you've become established. But with your sample gardens, it would be best to have them already started, plants and all. Then contact your local newspaper and they'll be glad to do a feature story.
Put an ad in the same issue saying, "Come and see our tire gardens and let us set up one for you! " People will start coming around and you'll have all the business you can handle from then on.
Don't be afraid others will compete with you. You'll have the jump on any competition if you do a good job, and people will choose you over the competition.
PS-I'm posting this stuff for me as much as anyone else. I've got a lot of problems right now, health and economic wise, and also, since I'm not posting in the news forum, I didn't feel the need to post the whole news article or the whole piece by Kurt Saxon, or all the quotes ever made by Bruce Campbell. I'm just trying to help myself and maybe someone else might be able to use some of the information. I'm not posting conspiracy theories or engaging in an ad hom attack.
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