Posted: 1/3/2026 1:04:24 PM EDT
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I've been stewing on the idea of a sort of "training center" for homesteading. In many respects it would at first glance appear similar to a tenant farmer arrangement- very cheap/subsidized rent and OJT for a range of skills for a set term. Basically something along the lines of 4-6 small cabins that are each fully off grid which would allow small cohorts to experience homesteading for a year at a few hundred dollars a month for rent plus 10 to 20 hours of work per week. A lot of people think they want to try homesteading and then realize they got in way over their heads. This would give them a chance to "dip their toes in" for a year or so before they fully commit to homesteading life. Do you all think there would be a market for this? |
Twitter/Instagram: benunsuppressed
https://americanpioneercorps.org
https://americanpioneercorps.org
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You’d have a lot of people interested, but none of them will be able to afford that rent, and they will destroy the cabins and smell worse than the animals. The homesteading crowd is in the same demographic as the people trading Milsurps and uncle Mike holsters at gun shows, and renovating school busses for van life. Blood from a turnip. Now, you could offer them employment, as a farm hand or workcamper, and include room and board. |
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Yes. More than a few folks do this via seminars and internships. You will need a significant social media presence to pimp it. And, it needs to be tailored to your target demographic. Use words like organic, antibiotic free, regenerative grazing, GMO free, grass fed, and free range. Then, you lure people to the cabins for intensive workshop training and real hands on experience. Once in the cabins, you work them Ike indentured servants. You profit from the additional hands, and they get room and board. The fork in the road is politics. Do you focus on hippy,granola liberals? Or, go with the religious, home school crowd? The political angle is critical to insure people will work as farm hands for less than minimum wage. Either way, you need true believers that will buy the dream you are selling. So, the seminars and social media needs to be real slick. Sales pitch masquerading as education. I could tell you more, but if you really are serious, you urgently need to attend my ranch life internship this Summer. An intensive, immersive experience in which you will learn all the secrets of sucessfully developing and operating a cattle ranch in Texas. |
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My friend's son and DIL are planning to do this program for a year and travel around to different parts of the country. Something like this might get a stronger commitment from participants and take the burden of scheduling off your back. https://wwoof.net/ ETA: This is the first time I've visited the website and I can smell the BO masked by patchouli and the wafting skunk scent through my monitor. The couple I know are not like that and it will be interesting to hear their stories. |
I love a good double entendre.
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Yes but not for a year. For a week. Or two weeks. Or a month at most. You have to get people who have an income, and that means they have a job. Otherwise you'll be running a commune and managing their drug use and you'll be losing them to any really attractive protest within driving distance. The only way to avoid this is to make it a one-year internship for a college student in permaculture, etc. But you have to know something they need to know for school, to get that going. I would pay you to come work for you for two weeks to learn about, say, lambing. Or calving, or kidding. Or pressure canning. O butchering hogs. Or homestead woodwork skills (gotta be a high level of this. Most folks can watch youtube and slap together a shed) like timber framing or seriously nice looking outbuilding construction, meaning you're teaching the gap between framing and trim. I mention this last one specifically because it's on my mind. I'm about to post a thread about it. Most interns get paid by the sponsoring company. Sometimes they get paid PLUS accommodation. The old " Ranch hand position: room and board plus $5 a week." hasn't changed all that much at its roots. I would not pay you so I could give you my labor for a year while I stay in your cabin and cannot earn an income. Cuz the money I would pay you would be going toward my own homestead savings.  In any of these cases, extensive applications would be necessary. And there would need to be somebody to manage the flow of interns. Cuz that's a pita. ETA: This is just my 2 cents. Which now will buy only one square of toilet paper. 
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Nobody ever wakes me at 2 in the morning telling me that my grass is out on the highway.~~Radiopat
Wine is sunlight held together by water~~Galileo Galilei
Well-behaved women rarely make history~~Marilyn Monroe
Wine is sunlight held together by water~~Galileo Galilei
Well-behaved women rarely make history~~Marilyn Monroe