"8. What is even stranger is the fact that not one person who has responded has said, "Hey I do permaculture for a living and we are able to pay our bills, feed our kids, love life, and we are not sinking further and further into debt."
Hey Diego! My name is Lindsay Hodge (I'm signed in to my husbands forum so my name is probably showing Chris:-))
I want you to know that My husband and I have started our permaculture farm last year. We are not doing the homestead thing full bore yet because we still have too much debt to make it work, yet. I will say that since we made the switch to permaculture, our needs and wants have changed significantly and we have knocked out a huge portion of our debt. When you live a permaculture life you do it because it feels right, and you make sacrifices to become self sufficient. We will have no debt in 3 years (or less if we can manage it), and our expenses at that point will be food (for humans and animals), utilities (which will be minimal), clothing, healthcare, and the various insurances that our society says are mandatory :-) We will need to make just less than $1000 a month in order to live well. But hey we only started last year! Give us a couple and I'll tell you that we do permaculture for a living and we feed our kids, love life and all that jazz!
In my opinion, limiting the income to only the farmy stuff is a little shortsighted. If it's permaculture than it should be a multi-faceted business. For my husband and I we have a list in a notebook that is two pages long that describes all possible streams of income. You are right that it's important to make ends meet. It all comes down to this: Spend less than you earn, and do your best to put some away for a rainy day. You just have to manage your farm right. And besides t's difficult to quantify the amount of money having a personal use farm makes because of the amount of money you don't end up spending on food. If you do it right, you won't have but a really small grocery bill. We are raising our own meat, eggs, fruits and veggies, and honey. That leaves us to buy grains and goodies. And we only have 4.5 acres:-)
You can see all that we are doing now at www.havenhomestead.com. We are hoping that Chris will be able to quit his 9 -5 (which is really a 7 to when ever he's done, usually 6:30) when the Agri-tourism business takes off, or when we are completely out of Debt. He is currently exploring other ways to make more money while having time at home!
If you are interested in having a successful permaculture business, you could check into Spin Farming.
From the spinfarming.com website:
"Make farm-size income from garden-size plots with the SPIN-Farming guide series. It’s the easiest and most effective way to learn how to make money growing food for those with no agricultural background. It is non-technical and process-driven, and equips you with everything you need to start in your backyard or neighborhood lot. And the authors, Wally and Roxanne, are available by email to answer your questions every step of the way!"
Good luck on your foray into Permaculture!
