Two farmers seem to have independently hit on the same, clever income model: rent low-maintenance, established systems to consumers who want to ease in to home production.
An LA-based company rents
containers with good soil, established plants, and an automated irrigation system ($16-$25/month per 3 square-foot container)...greenhouse already provided, courtesy of
National City Lines.
And in Northern Michigan, $250 gets you a
coop with two laying hens, for the summer.
Seedlings and baby chicks are the hard part. There's a market in skipping the hard part, or at least putting it off until the more routine parts have built up a reserve of skill and confidence.
This sort of thing has tremendous potential, in my humble opinion. The business model works better, the more self-sustaining such a system is, and the better it integrates with the needs and products of surrounding systems...in other words,
permaculture could kick it up a notch or two.
"the qualities of these bacteria, like the heat of the sun, electricity, or the qualities of metals, are part of the storehouse of knowledge of all men. They are manifestations of the laws of nature, free to all men and reserved exclusively to none." SCOTUS, Funk Bros. Seed Co. v. Kale Inoculant Co.
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