Entrepreneurship and Sweet Watermelon

 We are very fortunate to live just off of a very intersection of two of the main roads that connect 4 different towns. I say fortunate because every day we have a large number of cars that drive past our house, many times being caught by the traffic light and coming to a dead stop in front of our home. We don't have 100's of acres, only 1.5, but it is filled with animals, flowers, veggetables, and playing children. It draws peoples attention and gives them something else to look at besides the surrounding subdivions. While there are sections of farm land around, there aren't to many places where a person can see chickens pecking in the yard, turkeys sitting on the fence, or goats talking the day away.

This has given us a wonderful opportunity to sell a few things here at the house. We started this last spring with eggs. We had about 8 dozen in the fridge and thought it would be fun to see if anyone would stop to buy. Not 3 hours after we put our sign up, people started stopping and buying our eggs. We have been blessed with so many egg customers, that we had to take our sign down! Our poor little hens just can't keep up.

I love selling the eggs, but my favorite thing is just having the people stop and see the animals. They enjoy going back and seeing the ducks on their nest, chickens pecking at the bugs, goats jumping and playing with each other, and the turkeys strutting around showing their feathers off. I get to teach about "farm" life, sustainable living, and gardening to people who have never thought about where their food comes from. People generally walk away with a new respect for their food and the work it takes to raise it.

Making money, while doing something you love, is just an added bonus. We make just enoguh to help pay for all the feed and hay we have to buy throughout the year as well as needed repaires. Not much money is made for expanding though and my oldest daughter really wanted to build a glass greenhouse to grow vegetables in this winter. We had been looking at cost and it was going to take a few hundred dollars to get it made with all recycled material and that just wasn't in the budget right now. However, God provided a wonderful way for her to earn the money to build her greenhouse! She is spending her summer selling watermelon!



She was offered almost 300 watermelon from a local farm to sell right there in front of our house. She got some signs together, loaded up the old pickup truck, backed it up to the road right in front of our house where all those cars drive by, and started selling watermelons. She also decided to grab her wooden plant stand and put the herbs she grew this year out there as well.



Of course she is still offering eggs and our goats milk (for pet consumption only of course!), but watermelons are taking up most of the sales. It's hard work. It's hot outside. The melons are heavy. She is learning what it takes to get what you want in life. She almost has enough money to build her greenhouse and how sweet it will be when she is standing in it this winter, planting her flowers, herbs, and vegetables not only for her family to enjoy and eat, but also to sell at this wonderful busy intersection that we live on in the spring.

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