Selling Your Produce: Farm Stands, Farmers Markets, and Agritourism

So your homestead is producing more food than you can eat, give away, or preserve. That is actually a great problem to have. Because now you can start making money from it.

The second half of Chapter 7 in Backyard Farming: Homesteading by Kim Pezza covers selling your produce and a concept called agritourism. Both are ways to turn your homestead from a hobby into something that helps pay for itself.

Three Ways to Sell Your Produce

Pezza breaks down three main selling options. Each has different levels of effort and regulation.

Farm Stand

This is the simplest option. Set up a table or small stand in front of your house and put out your excess produce. Think of it as a lemonade stand but for tomatoes and zucchini.

Low overhead. Low commitment. You grow too much of something, you set it out. Someone drives by and buys it. Done.

Farm Market

A farm market is a step up. This is an actual market on your farm, usually in some kind of building or permanent structure. You are running a real business at this point.

That means business regulations apply. You may need permits. You may need insurance. It is more work but also more professional and potentially more profitable.

Farmers Market

These are the community markets set up in parks, parking lots, or town squares. You rent a spot and sell alongside other local growers.

Here is the thing. Some farmers markets require you to prove that you actually grew what you are selling. They do not want resellers showing up with grocery store produce and pretending to be farmers.

You will likely need insurance. And some markets will even sell your produce on commission if you cannot be there yourself. That is a nice option if you have a full-time job during the week.

Value-Added Products: Turn Raw Into Revenue

This is where things get creative. Value-added products are when you take your raw harvest and turn it into something more valuable.

Instead of selling a basket of strawberries for a few bucks, you turn them into jam and charge more. Instead of selling raw tomatoes, you dry them and grind them into tomato powder.

Pezza lists a bunch of ideas:

• Jelly and jam from your fruit
• Dried tomato powder for seasoning
• Herb stem bundles for grilling (people actually buy these)
• Beef jerky if you raise cattle
• Fruit leather from dehydrated fruit
• Cheese, butter, and ice cream if you have dairy animals
• Salad mixes from your garden greens
• Rubs and sauces from your herbs and spices
• Herbal vinegars for cooking
• Chile wreaths for decoration
• Cut and dried flowers if you grow them
• Firewood if you have wooded land

The beauty of value-added products is that they are often shelf-stable. You can make them when harvest is heavy and sell them year-round.

Teaching and Workshops

Once you get comfortable with a homesteading skill, you can teach it. People will pay to learn how to can food, raise chickens, make cheese, or start a garden.

On-Farm Workshops

You set the schedule. You set the price. You control the whole experience. But you also handle all the advertising and logistics.

When pricing, factor in your materials costs. If you are supplying jars, food, and other supplies for a canning class, those costs add up fast. Pezza suggests offering a 50% refund policy if you are providing materials. Full refunds on materials-heavy workshops can eat into your income.

Adult Education Programs

Many communities have adult education or continuing education programs that are always looking for instructors. The pay per student is less than running your own workshop. But you do not have to advertise, find a space, or handle enrollment.

It is a good starting point. You learn how to teach, build a reputation, and figure out what people want to learn. Then you can graduate to running your own classes on the farm.

Agritourism: Bring People to Your Farm

Agritourism is when you invite the public to your farm for some kind of experience. It has become a real industry.

Here are some popular agritourism activities:

• Farm tours where people see how a working farm operates
• One-time events like harvest festivals or seasonal celebrations
• Petting zoos with your farm animals
• Corn mazes if you have the space for it
• U-Pick operations where people pick their own pumpkins, berries, or apples
• Sugaring events if you tap maple trees
• On-farm bed and breakfasts for the full farm experience
• Cheese tastings if you make your own cheese

Some of these charge admission fees. Others make money from the sales that happen during the visit. U-Pick is a particularly smart model because the customers do the harvesting labor for you.

One practical tip from Pezza about U-Pick orchards. Use dwarf trees. Standard-size fruit trees require ladders, and ladders plus random members of the public equals liability. Dwarf trees keep everything at ground level.

Safety When the Public Visits

If you are opening your farm to visitors, safety is a serious concern. Pezza has some straightforward advice:

Do not let visitors use your home restroom. Rent a portable toilet instead. You do not want strangers walking through your house.

Keep tool rooms and storage areas closed and locked. Farms have sharp tools, chemicals, and equipment that can hurt someone who does not know what they are doing.

Clearly mark public areas. People should know exactly where they can and cannot go.

Supervise petting zoos. Animals can bite, kick, or knock over small kids. Always have someone watching.

Portion out animal feed. If you let visitors feed animals, give them pre-measured amounts. Left to their own devices, people will overfeed your goats until they are sick.

Ensure adequate parking. Nothing starts a farm visit off worse than people parking on your crops or blocking your driveway.

The Bottom Line

Selling produce and doing agritourism are not requirements for homesteading. But they are real options for making your homestead financially sustainable.

You can start as small as a table of extra tomatoes by the road. Or you can build up to farm tours, workshops, and a year-round market. Pezza’s point is that the options exist, and they scale with your comfort level.

The key is starting simple and growing from there. Just like the homestead itself.

Previous in the series: Preserving Your Harvest: Canning, Freezing, and Drying

Next in the series: Homesteading With Absolutely No Experience

This post is part of a 12-part series reviewing “Backyard Farming: Homesteading” by Kim Pezza (Hatherleigh Press, 2015, ISBN: 978-1-57826-598-5).