- 2 days ago
Nine Amish family income ideas can change the way you think about money, work, and farm life. Rather than relying on one paycheck, the video explains how families in Lancaster County build a mix of small trades, repair work, seasonal sales, and land-based income that fits around the rhythms of the farm.
Elias Yoder walks through the logic behind the system: save money by fixing instead of buying, choose work that is busy when the land is quiet, and stack several modest income streams instead of one fragile source. From handyman repairs and workshop goods to roadside stands, plants, teaching skills, and renting out pasture, barns, or equipment, each example comes from real Amish life and practical experience.
It is part story, part small business guide, and part country living lesson for anyone interested in Amish income, off-grid work, homesteading business ideas, seasonal side hustles, and rural entrepreneurship.
Perfect for listeners searching for Amish family income, small farm business ideas, rural side hustles, homestead income, and practical off-grid work strategies. This narrated guide also fits searches for country living business ideas, seasonal farm income, and simple ways families earn money without a traditional job.
Elias Yoder walks through the logic behind the system: save money by fixing instead of buying, choose work that is busy when the land is quiet, and stack several modest income streams instead of one fragile source. From handyman repairs and workshop goods to roadside stands, plants, teaching skills, and renting out pasture, barns, or equipment, each example comes from real Amish life and practical experience.
It is part story, part small business guide, and part country living lesson for anyone interested in Amish income, off-grid work, homesteading business ideas, seasonal side hustles, and rural entrepreneurship.
Perfect for listeners searching for Amish family income, small farm business ideas, rural side hustles, homestead income, and practical off-grid work strategies. This narrated guide also fits searches for country living business ideas, seasonal farm income, and simple ways families earn money without a traditional job.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00There is a number you have to come up with every month, and you know exactly what it is.
00:06You have worked it out at the kitchen table more than once.
00:09That figure has to appear, or the whole thing comes apart.
00:14And the reason the plan sits in a drawer is that you cannot see where it comes from once you
00:20stop going to a job.
00:22So you go looking for the answer, and what you find is a man telling you to start a channel.
00:28I am Elias Yoder, and I am not going to tell you that, because I cannot do it and would
00:35not know how.
00:37What I can tell you is how the families around me live.
00:41This is not a new problem in Lancaster County.
00:44Our ground got dear, and our families stayed large,
00:48and two generations ago a great many households here had to work out how to live off a place
00:56that could no longer feed everyone by farming.
00:59They worked it out.
01:01And the answer they came to is not the answer you will be given anywhere else,
01:06because it is not one thing.
01:09It is not three things, either.
01:12My grandfather taught me this in a bad year, and he did not explain it.
01:18He made me count.
01:19I was about fifteen.
01:21The cash crop had gone wrong, properly wrong, and I had been quiet about it for a week.
01:27He came and got me after supper, and walked me round the place in the half-dark,
01:33the barn, the shop corner, the hen house, the wood lot,
01:37and at every stop he asked the same question.
01:41What did this bring in this year?
01:44Eggs?
01:45Milk?
01:46A little timber off the back?
01:48Two heifers sold?
01:49The hay off the far field?
01:52Repairs he did for other men in the winter?
01:55Four or five more I have forgotten.
01:57Eleven things.
01:59I counted eleven.
02:01Then he said the name of a man down the road who had lost his place the autumn before,
02:06and he asked me how many that man had.
02:09One.
02:11He had one.
02:12Never let one thing be the only thing that feeds you.
02:16I gathered the whole of it into a book at EliasYoder.com.
02:21The book is the long version.
02:23If you want it, it is there.
02:25I will not mention it again.
02:28Now, two things before the list, and they matter more than any item on it.
02:34The first one, the man in that video got right, and he still undersold it.
02:39He said a dollar saved is worth more than a dollar earned, and he is correct, and here
02:46is the part he left out.
02:48A dollar you earn gets taxed before you ever see it.
02:52A dollar you do not spend does not.
02:56So, depending on what you make, a dollar saved is not worth a dollar earned.
03:01It is worth a dollar and a quarter earned, near enough.
03:05Which means, every month you bring that number down, you have given yourself a raise you do
03:12not have to work for.
03:13Fix the thing instead of buying it.
03:16Use the barn wood.
03:17Learn to mend the pump.
03:19That work is the highest paid work on the place, and it never shows up on any list of income
03:26streams.
03:27The second thing nobody tells you, and it is the rule the whole of this turns on.
03:33Pick the income that is busy when your land is quiet.
03:37Everyone talks about wanting flexible work, and almost nobody says what flexible actually
03:43has to mean.
03:44It does not mean work you can do any time.
03:48It means work whose busy season falls opposite your own.
03:53Your land has a season when it will take every hour you have, and it has a season when it
03:59asks
03:59almost nothing.
04:00If the money work and the land work both peak in June, you will do both badly, and resent
04:07both.
04:08That is why the shops around here are winter work, and the fields are summer work.
04:13It was not an accident, and nobody designed it.
04:17It is just what is left standing after a few generations of trying it the other way.
04:23Here is what getting it wrong looks like, and I have watched it happen.
04:27A man takes on a market stall, because a market stall is what everyone pictures, and market
04:34day is Saturday, all summer.
04:36Saturday all summer is also hay, and harvest, and the one day his sons are home to help him
04:43with a roof.
04:44So the hay comes in late and wet, the roof waits another year, and by August he hates the
04:50stall.
04:51There was nothing wrong with the stall.
04:54It was the wrong season for him.
04:56Right.
04:57Nine of them, and they are in the order I would actually do them.
05:02One.
05:03A trade you carry to other men's places.
05:05This is the fastest money there is, and it is the one that feeds you while everything
05:11else is still growing.
05:13You already know how to do something.
05:15Somebody within 20 miles of you needs it done and cannot get anybody to come.
05:20That last part is the whole opportunity, and people miss it.
05:26Out in the country, the trouble is not that there is nobody who can do the work.
05:30It is that the men who can do it are busy on big jobs and will not return a call
05:36about
05:36a small one.
05:38Be the man who answers and shows up on the day he said.
05:42That alone, before you are any good, will keep you busy.
05:47Our young men go out on framing crews.
05:50Others do fencing, barn work, concrete flat work, hauling.
05:55In my own case, it is the kind of repair nobody wants to come out for.
05:59You put a paper up at the feed store in the station.
06:02You do three jobs properly, and after that, your name goes round, and you can stop advertising.
06:09On what to ask for it, do not go in cheap.
06:14Men who come in low get treated as cheap labor, and they stay there, and the customer who chose
06:21you on price will leave you on price.
06:24Find out what the going rate is in your area by ringing two or three outfits and asking what
06:30they would charge for the job, then sit a little under that and be worth more than you
06:36charge.
06:37You can raise it later.
06:38It is very hard to raise it on the people who knew you when you were cheap.
06:43And find out what your state wants before you take money for work.
06:49In most places, there is a dollar figure under which you need no license for small jobs,
06:55and over it you do, and the fines for guessing wrong are worse than the jobs were worth.
07:06This is the one that lasts, and it is winter work, which is why it fits.
07:20Around here, you can find all of it within a few miles, and most of those shops started as
07:26a corner of somebody's barn with second-hand tools and one customer.
07:31The reason a shop beats a trade in the long run is that you are not selling hours.
07:38A man selling hours has a ceiling, and the ceiling is how many hours there are.
07:43A shop sells a thing, and a thing can be made ahead, made by two people, made better next year.
07:51I am putting this on its own because it is the most overlooked way to make money in the country,
08:10and the barrier to it is almost nothing.
08:13Small engines.
08:15Mowers.
08:16Tillers.
08:17Chainsaws.
08:19Generators.
08:20Pumps.
08:21Half of what people throw out needs a carburetor cleaned and a plug,
08:26and the shops that would do it have either closed or will not look at a mower under a certain
08:32value.
08:33Hand tools.
08:35Furniture that has come apart at the joints.
08:38Sharpening, which is the smallest and steadiest of all of them.
08:42Chisels and blades and knives and shears, and in autumn every mower blade in the township.
08:49You can learn any one of these on broken machines nobody wants, which you can have for the asking,
08:56and you will be paid for the first repair you get right.
09:00And they are not hard to come by.
09:03The end of a driveway in spring.
09:05The back of a hardware store.
09:08The man at church whose mower has sat behind the shed for two years.
09:13Take four of the same kind of thing and you will have one working machine and three sets of spare
09:21parts,
09:21and you will have learned the insides of it on something it did not matter if you ruined.
09:284.
09:29Custom work with the equipment you already own.
09:33If you have had to buy a serious piece of equipment for your own place, it sits idle most of
09:39the year,
09:40and idle equipment is money sitting still.
09:43A sawmill cutting other men's logs.
09:47A tractor doing garden plots in spring.
09:50A trailer and a truck for hauling.
09:53A cider press in October.
09:56Help on butchering day.
09:58A log splitter and an afternoon.
10:00The beauty of it is that there is no new money going out.
10:04You bought the thing already for your own reasons.
10:08Everything after that is paid for.
10:115.
10:12The stand at the end of the lane.
10:14Now we come to the land itself, and the smallest possible version of it is the one to start with.
10:20A table at the road.
10:22What you have too much of.
10:23A price on a board and a box with a slot in it.
10:26No stall fee.
10:28No market day.
10:29No license in most places.
10:31As long as it is produce you grew yourself.
10:34Though that varies, and it is worth 10 minutes to check.
10:38It will not be much.
10:40In season, it can be a few hundred dollars a month on a small place.
10:45And that is a few hundred dollars for walking something out to the road.
10:49What it really does is teach you what your neighbors will actually buy.
10:54And that is knowledge you cannot get any other way and will need for the next one.
11:00And the box works.
11:01Not every time.
11:02And you will lose a little.
11:04And it still works out ahead of standing there all day.
11:086.
11:09Value added, never fresh.
11:12Here is the plain arithmetic that decides whether land makes money or not.
11:17Fresh produce competes with every other person who grew the same thing in the same week.
11:23And you are all selling at once.
11:25And tomatoes in August are worth almost nothing because everybody has tomatoes in August.
11:32Turn it into something and that changes entirely.
11:36Berries become jam and keep until Christmas.
11:40Goat milk becomes soap and never spoils at all.
11:44Apples become butter or cider.
11:46Cabbage becomes kraut.
11:48Cucumbers become pickles.
11:50A sack of flour and a morning become bread and pies.
11:55And baked goods are the steadiest seller in this county by a long way.
12:00Two things carry across all of it.
12:03The thing keeps so you are no longer selling into one desperate week.
12:08And you are being paid for your labor instead of giving it away, which is the only way a small
12:14piece of ground ever pays.
12:17Do keep an eye on what the container costs you, because that is where people are surprised.
12:22The jar, the new lid, the label, and the sugar can come to more than you think on a small
12:29batch.
12:30And if you have not counted them, you are not making what you believe you are making.
12:35Buy jars second hand where you can.
12:38Buy lids by the box.
12:40And work out the cost of one jar before you set a price on it, rather than after.
12:46The warning on this one is real.
12:49The moment you process food, rather than sevet as it grew, you are into your state's kitchen and labeling rules.
12:58And those vary a great deal, and some of them have teeth.
13:02Find out first.
13:04A stand shut down in July is a year gone.
13:097.
13:10Plants, which cost nearly nothing to begin.
13:13Of the nine, this is the one with the smallest start and the best return on what you put in,
13:20and hardly anybody does it.
13:22A packet of tomato seed costs a few dollars and will give you a hundred plants.
13:28Those plants sell in spring to people who want a garden and have no patience for seed.
13:35Cuttings off berry canes root in a pot of soil and are plants worth money the following year.
13:42Fruit trees can be grown on from seed or from a rooted sucker.
13:47Divide a clump of rhubarb or horseradish or mint and you have four of them.
13:52You are selling time, and the time was going to pass anyway.
13:57It is seasonal and it is short, six weeks in spring, and that is a point in its favor, because
14:04six weeks in spring is before the land has got hold of you.
14:088.
14:10Teach the thing you know.
14:12Somebody will pay to learn what your hands already know how to do, and it is nearly always a thing
14:19you think is ordinary.
14:21Canning.
14:22Bread.
14:23Butchering a chicken.
14:25Sharpening.
14:26Keeping bees.
14:28Harness and leather.
14:30Working a horse.
14:31The women here teach quilting and sewing, and they fill those rooms every time.
14:37You need almost nothing for it, and the reason to put it on this list is not the money which
14:44is modest.
14:44It is that the people who come to learn become the people who buy from you for the next twenty
14:51years.
14:539.
14:54Rent out what you already have.
14:56This is the last one, and it is the one that was not on any list I have seen, and
15:01for most of you, it is the easiest dollar on this page, because you have already done the work.
15:0710.
15:08Pasture.
15:09If you fenced ground and are not grazing all of it, somebody with cattle or horses wants it, and the
15:15fence is already up.
15:18Barn and Shed Space.
15:19This one surprises people.
15:21There are men in every township looking for somewhere dry to put a camper, a boat, a trailer, or a
15:28tractor over the winter, and they will pay real money by the month for a bay you were not using.
15:34It is the least work of anything in this video, by a wide margin.
15:40Hay ground, if you have more than you can cut.
15:4310.
15:44Bee sites, where a beekeeper puts hives on your ground and pays in rent or in honey, and your garden
15:51is better for them being there.
15:5311.
15:54Standing timber, thinned properly and sold, which is not income you can take often, but is there when a year
16:01goes badly.
16:0212.
16:03Two cautions on this one and then I will leave it.
16:0613.
16:06Put it in writing, even with a man you have known 30 years, because what you both meant comes apart
16:13a year later and a single page saves a friendship.
16:1714.
16:17And ring whoever carries your insurance before somebody else's property or somebody else's animals are on your ground, because you
16:26want to hear what they say about that beforehand rather than afterward.
16:3014.
16:32Now the order, because this is where that video and most others go wrong.
16:3715.
16:38Those nine are not nine options to pick from.
16:41They are a sequence.
16:43The trade and the repair work pay this month.
16:46The shop and the land businesses take one to three years to be worth anything, which that man said himself
16:53and then laid his three ideas out side by side as though you could choose any one of them and
17:00go.
17:0015.
17:01You cannot.
17:02If you move onto a piece of ground and wait on jam money, you will be gone by spring.
17:0815.
17:08So the trade feeds you while the slow ones grow.
17:1116.
17:12Then the slow ones take over as the trade takes less of your week.
17:1616.
17:17Nobody starts at the end.
17:1916.
17:19And now the plane limits, because I am not going to pretend any of this is easy.
17:2417.
17:25Not one of these is a living on its own.
17:2817.
17:28Any single item here might bring a few hundred dollars in a month.
17:3217.
17:33That is the whole point of there being nine, and if you are waiting for the one that replaces a
17:38wage, you will wait a long time.
17:4118.
17:42Four or five of them together is a living.
17:4418.
17:45One is a hobby.
17:4819.
17:4920.
17:49If there are already three women selling soap at your market, you are not going to be the fourth and
17:55do well, and you should not try.
17:5721.
17:58Find the thing nobody there has got.
18:0122.
18:01And do not go in against a neighbor's established trade, because out here you will need that neighbor long before
18:08you need the money.
18:1022.
18:11Reputation is slower than you want.
18:1422.
18:14Two or three years for people to pass your name around is normal, and there is no shortening it.
18:2023.
18:20And nearly all of this is seasonal, which means there will be months with very little coming in.
18:2624.
18:27February is thin here, and it is thin for most people doing this.
18:3125.
18:31So the money that comes in heavy in the good months is not all spendable in the good months.
18:3726.
18:38Some of it has to be set aside in June for a February you can already see coming, and the
18:43families who do not do that are the ones who look like they are failing every winter and are not.
18:5026.
18:51And frugality has a floor.
18:5327.
18:53There comes a point where saving another dollar costs you two hours, and your two hours are worth
18:59more than that.
19:0028.
19:01Know where that line is for you, and stop there.
19:0429.
19:05There is no scheme in any of this, though it is worth seeing why the advice you get is
19:10shaped the way it is.
19:1230.
19:12There is far more money in selling a man a course about homestead income than there is
19:18in most homestead income.
19:2031.
19:20A program with a price on it is a business.
19:2331.
19:23Nine small trades that each bring in a few hundred dollars is not, and nobody can sell it to you,
19:30because every bit of it is a thing you would work out yourself in a year of paying attention.
19:3631.
19:37And the whole arrangement of the ordinary world is built for one paycheck.
19:4232.
19:42A man with one wage can be measured and lent to and insured.
19:4633.
19:46A man with nine small incomes is nearly invisible to it, and that is not anybody's plot.
19:53It is just the shape of the thing.
19:5534.
19:5535.
19:5535.
20:0336.
20:0637.
20:0737.
20:0737.
20:0937.
20:1338.
20:1339.
20:1539.
20:1840.
20:2140.
20:25or the space one sitting there unused and have never thought of it that way. And if you are new
20:31here, tell me roughly how much ground you have as well, an acre or ten or a hundred, because that
20:38changes which of these is worth your while. Next time, I want to go back a step, to buying the
20:45ground in the first place, because there are a few things to look at on a cheap piece of land
20:51that will cost you more than the land did if you miss them, and water is only the first of
20:57them.
20:57Never let one thing be the only thing that feeds you. The people who built this country
21:03with their hands knew that, and we are only just starting to remember it.