Unique side hustles?

[Natty Bumppo]

Not a farmer, but enough land and timber to do a small side hustle selling small timber frame sheds. I do about one a year. The spruce and fir I drop via my TSI projects I then have milled locally by a guy I know with a sawmill. I'll then build a small 10x12 or 12x16 timber frame and sell it locally.

I just bought a neighboring 15 acre property with a 5,000 ranch that I am currently demo'ing and would like to turn half if it into a Timber Frame shop...selling timber frames and teaching timber frame classes. Still a few years out on that one.

Christmas trees is a popular side hustle too here in the Northeast for many farmers. Thinking about doing that one as well.

 

[Telemark]

I think local grafting classes could be a nice side hustle. Around here they get good money for it.

 

[Westwind]

Someone is selling started Miscanthus on fb marketplace for $15 per pot.

It would take time to get in the miscanthus biz but the rhizomes are pretty darn harvestable

 

[cbw]

We sell hedge (Osage orange) for fence posts and traditional bows.


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[Maddog66]

It’s not my hustle, but I let a guy on my land for about a week every early fall to cut white cedar boughs. Then later in the winter he comes back and cuts black spruce boughs. I make enough $ off that to pay about 1/2 of the property taxes. I think he makes fairly serious money off my place and about 5 others similar…….but he works like a dog for it.

One thing I’ve looked into is buying one of the drones you can use for a herbicide treatments and advertising to food plotters, TSI, field edges…….etc.

 

[Turkey Creek]

Not a farmer, but enough land and timber to do a small side hustle selling small timber frame sheds. I do about one a year. The spruce and fir I drop via my TSI projects I then have milled locally by a guy I know with a sawmill. I'll then build a small 10x12 or 12x16 timber frame and sell it locally.

I just bought a neighboring 15 acre property with a 5,000 ranch that I am currently demo'ing and would like to turn half if it into a Timber Frame shop...selling timber frames and teaching timber frame classes. Still a few years out on that one.

Christmas trees is a popular side hustle too here in the Northeast for many farmers. Thinking about doing that one as well.

If you ever get to the point of teaching classes let us know. I would enjoy doing that for a weekend. Right out of college I met a girl ..... yea well we know how that goes sometimes. Anyways I ended up in upstate NY for a couple of months. Went to work for a company that was salvaging old, super large wooden warehouse beams and then turning them into timber frame beams. All the new guys started as the bitches that stood out in the freezing cold and pulled all the "metal trash" out of the beams so that we wouldn't destroy to many blades when resawing. Had just made it to an inside job and was refinishing old wooden flooring when they suddenly laid off about 2-3 of us newer guys. Not sure what that was about, but about that time I decided I was ready to move back to Nebraska anyhow. I was looking forward to getting to that point of actually doing some timber framing. We looked at having a company do some of our great room in the new house, but cost got in the way.

 

[bigboreblr]

Probably would not be hard to make a thousand bucks a year selling scion from our orchards.

Glad to give folks on here them for free though.

 

[Westwind]

We sell hedge (Osage orange) for fence posts and traditional bows.

I have literally burned dozens of these, including many long straight pieces because I was too dumb to figure out how to do what you are doing.

 

[ksJoe]

my (earl 20's) son was making money flipping used counches for a while. All you need is a strong back, a pickup, and some ratchet straps.

When someone without a truck buys a new couch they'll give away the old one for free or close to if you'll come pick it up.
When someone without a truck wants to buy a used couch they'll give a few hundred $ for it if you deliver.

You can view it as getting paid $200-$500 total for doing 1 pickup and 1 delivery.
He kept 3-4 couches crammed into his appartment for a while. He rented a stoage unit so he had space for the big sectiononals (they'lll sell for around 1000 used). He got bored after a while and quit, but it was a lucrative side hustle.

 

[4wanderingeyes]

A couple things I have considered is selling apples, and hosting an archery 3d shoot. I have done a few with just friends and family, it was a blast. I have gone to, and help set up several for a local archery club, we would charge $25-40 per, usually $1-2 per target. The shoots we set up were usually between July -September, so it wouldn’t really affect hunting season much. One shoot I use to set up and attend we would get about 300-400 people in a weekend, and we charged $40 per person. Most shoots were 20 targets and $20 per person and we would bring in 50-100 people per weekend, and we would set them up every other weekend late summer to fall.

I had about 30 3d targets at one point, but I sold them all off while they still had value. I am not sure of permits, or insurance needed, because that was always on the land owners.

 

[Turkey Creek]

A couple things I have considered is selling apples, and hosting an archery 3d shoot. I have done a few with just friends and family, it was a blast. I have gone to, and help set up several for a local archery club, we would charge $25-40 per, usually $1-2 per target. The shoots we set up were usually between July -September, so it wouldn’t really affect hunting season much. One shoot I use to set up and attend we would get about 300-400 people in a weekend, and we charged $40 per person. Most shoots were 20 targets and $20 per person and we would bring in 50-100 people per weekend, and we would set them up every other weekend late summer to fall.

I had about 30 3d targets at one point, but I sold them all off while they still had value. I am not sure of permits, or insurance needed, because that was always on the land owners.

I have thought about hosting an indoor archery league in the Winter. One of our farm buildings is long enough to shoot 20 yards inside.

 

[4wanderingeyes]

One archery shoot I loved going to, but I was never involved in set up, was set up in a river valley, and was about a 2 mile walk through it. It wound up and down through a river valley, setting up unique shots, up steep hills, down steep hills, long 80 yard shots, even shooting from deer stands down on to deer. It was the best shoot I have ever shot at. It helps having a variety of targets, everything from a 2 foot spider, to an elephant, and about everything in between. They even set up a zombie hunt during a Halloween shoot. I was friends with one of the presidents of that club, they made bank after these shoots. They would be for a weekend, and they would do them about 6 times a year. Think $100X 400-500 people per shoot, 6 times a year. But location, expensive targets, many members to help, and the land to do it.

 

[J B]

I grow chestnuts, persimmon, and some other wildlife trees. Sell to mostly local property managers. I can get a chestnut to 36-48" in a year, 5-7' in 2 yrs, and 10-12' in 3 yrs. I use root pruning pots. Its all word-of-mouth sales, no ads or marketplace.

Guegalunas- Can you share the exact pots that you are using? Not sure that I could do pots out of the ground here in WI.

 

[gurgalunas]

That is very impressive growth, what is your seed source?

Nothing wild and crazy... I started out with Chestnut Ridge of Pike County as my source for nuts. As my trees matured, I started collecting my own from my orchard.

Ive got my trees set up in racks with drip irrigation. I think this is one of my keys to success. Consistent water, and having it automated to eliminate error/time investment is important. If I had to remember to water, they would all be dead...

 

[gurgalunas]

Guegalunas- Can you share the exact pots that you are using? Not sure that I could do pots out of the ground here in WI.

I used to start in RootMaker 4" pots, but they were hard to get the intact rootball out of. Plus they were not very efficient in terms of space. I switched to deepots in a 2"x5" size. I grow in these for a couple months, getting 18-20" trees to pot up into 1g rootmakers. I grow the rest of the first season in the 1g.

After a year, I move them into 3g fabric pots, specifically the Root Pouch brand.

For the 3rd year, I move them into 10 fabric pots, I think the brand is Gardzen (on Amazon).

I assume your concern with WI is the cold winters. I have that concern here in the KC area. I overwinter trees in a couple cellars (one at my barn, one at my cabin), and the 10g I dont sell in the fall get moved into our attached garage for the winter. You might be able to overwinter in a shelter made of straw bales and a fabric tarp. A lot of nurseries use similar methods, even in MN.

 

[hunts_with_stick]

Everybody and their brother seems to do pumpkins, eggs, and sweet corn now. Flower bouquets are becoming more prevalent too. I tried the pumpkins and flowers but too much dealing with customers. People suck!

Switched to growing dahlias and selling the tubers. All sales done online, and all orders shipped, almost no dealing with people.

Last year the 900 square foot dahlia patch grossed 1/3 of what my 40hr pays. A couple more years of expanding the field and it'll gross the same as my fulltime.

I’d be interested to hear more? I’m in Ohio

 

[Kdog]

My mom flips things she buys at auctions on ebay but she is retired. Doesn't put too much effort into it and she enjoys it. I do it a little as well when time permits.

I used to grow, graft and sell trees. Had a landscaping company for a while and sold it off when the kids got more involved in sports.

My oldest has several things he does on the side in addition to his primary. He has three rental houses now, he works as a bouncer two nights per week (that's $1K cash per weekend), he flips motor cycles/ATV's/UTV's, but his real money comes from trading. He made more in January trading than he made from everything else combined last year.

 

[Barndog56]

I’d be interested to hear more? I’m in Ohio

Dahlias are in the same plant family as potatoes, so grow fairly similar. You buy a tuber and plant it about 6" deep, after your last frost in spring. The plant grows until a killing frost in the fall, producing flowers constantly, while making a new clump of tubers underground. After frost kills the plant you dig up the tuber clump and separate them. Some varieties produce just a couple of tubers, some will produce 20. Then you sell those tubers. All plants grown from tubers in that clump will be clones of the original.

There are over 50,000 different varieties of dahlia. The flowers differ in size, color, and form. Some are very common and we sell for $5 a tuber, others are hard to find and go for $50 a tuber.

Every dahlia grown from a seed is a brand new, unique variety. Breeders have to plant about 50 seeds to get 1 worth producing for sale. Our farm released 3 varieties for growing in 2026, and they sold out at $25 each.

The challenges in growing dahlias are diseases, pests, and overwinter storage. Gall is the hardest disease to deal with. When you find it the plant and tubers have to be destroyed and the surrounding soil removed as it's contaminated. Storage can be tricky as they need to be kept dormant without freezing, drying out, or rotting.

We started with just 35 plants to see if we could store them successfully. Since then we've expanded each year, up too 900 plants last year. We'll be around 1,250 this year. That'll probably be near the limit of how many we can dig and divide in the fall while holding down a full time job. It is a lot more work than pumpkins, or sweet corn. Unfortunately, busy season for our dahlia farm coincides with the rut!

We have a fall sale, and then restock again in March after counting viable tubers that survived storage. Right now we've got about 40 of 200+ varieties left in stock.

There are tons of YouTube videos explaining everything about dahlias, and Facebook groups as well. Facebook groups is where we do all of our advertising for sales, which then go through our website. One group we're in has over 300,000 members.

White River Acres

Online dahlia tuber store

whiteriveracres.com

 

[SwampCat]

It’s not my hustle, but I let a guy on my land for about a week every early fall to cut white cedar boughs. Then later in the winter he comes back and cuts black spruce boughs. I make enough $ off that to pay about 1/2 of the property taxes. I think he makes fairly serious money off my place and about 5 others similar…….but he works like a dog for it.

One thing I’ve looked into is buying one of the drones you can use for a herbicide treatments and advertising to food plotters, TSI, field edges…….etc.

I use a guy every year for some herbicide and seeding work. I would like to have a rig like his myself - but too much money for personal use. He can spray gly, switch out the hopper, and spread seed right back over the same area

 

[Brian662]

I have a property management company that got off the ground last year, primarily to plant food plots for others semi-locally.

It started as my neighbors asking me to do work for them and expanded from there to a legitimate LLC that will be a sustainable business when I retire from my main job in a few years.