Homestead Careers

[Leta]

Continuing in this off topic vein, my grandpa was a Lion, and they have a big center here in MI where they train leader dogs for the blind. It works like this: eligible dogs (no breed requirements, just a certain size) are fostered as puppies and then sent to the center, where they are trained intensively for 18 months. They give the dogs away when they've completed training, but their waiting list is loooonnnngggg.

So maybe get in touch with a local Lions club and see if they can point you in the right direction. If you need a sight dog, they'll almost certainly be able to help you, and if you need some other type of service dog, they will probably at least be able to give you some phone numbers.

Good Luck!

 

[so lucky]

I have considered doing wall papering and interior painting as a self-employment. Also, I would consider housecleaning. Of course, those jobs require gas money, etc. Right now, I am still enjoying retirement, having just quit in March. I may need to suppliment my income somehow, tho. My DH and I have very few expenses, owe no money, and have no expensive habits. We don't even drink soda. We don't go out to eat (hardly ever). We wear our clothes till they fall off. We don't have cable TV. Most of this is by choice. Unfortunately, when you live as frugally as we do, there is no place to cut corners if you need to. Maybe we won't ever need to......??.....

 

[beerman]

I'm a chef but recently bought some carpet and upholstery cleaning equipment. If all works out I should be able to work by myself from home soon. Total it will cost me about $2000 startup.
Brian

 

[garden pixy]

When I was in 4H there was a club that raised and trained service dogs for people who needed them (non-profit), maybe check with your local extension office and see if there is a similar program in your area.

 

[Wifezilla]

beerman, we know quite a few people that own carpet cleaning businesses. Some of them are not doing well right now because a lot of people (me included) have ripped out all our carpet and swore to never get carpet ever again. Make sure you have other companion services like upholstery cleaning, etc... so you have options even if people no longer have carpet.

 

[lwheelr]

Hubby and I both work from home. We have a web development and software development business. Very low overhead, it is a good business to do from home. Part of it is for sale, with training, if anyone has the aptitude and is interested...

Hard - hard to be here and homeschool and grow our stuff, etc, and still run business. Hard working with my spouse sometimes - it brings its own set of challenges.

Good - love the time and having family around all the time. Love having hubby home.

Honestly the best thing we ever did.

We are now transitioning from full time web development to full time farming. It will be a slow transition.

 

[MyKidLuvsGreenEgz]

Why will the service dog cost so much? I'm disabled and use a service dog.

The original purchase price of the special puppy, and then there's the year or so worth of training which is where the costs come in.

Be careful, you can get seriously screwed over. I paid $500 for a dog worth well over $3,000. How did I find this fabulous dog? I bought her littermate on Craigslist. He is a service dog now too. He was awesome so I managed to track down the breeder and get a brood bitch that they ended up not breeding because they were retiring. It took about a month to convince them to let me buy her. A puppy is a crapshoot. A GOOD success rate is 80%. That means that with dogs specifically bred to be service dogs and with professional trainers, 20% of the puppies will not make it. You could invest thousands into a puppy that won't be a service dog, PLUS you have to get rid of your dog to be eligible to try again. Pay a GOOD trainer to evaluate adult dogs against the public access standard. You CAN get a dog that can walk out there and work public access with no specific training. I wouldn't touch a dog that could not pass CGC immediately and in a public place. Not worth the risk. It takes a heck of a bloodline with good nerve, but they do exist. Task training is the EASY part of it, so don't worry about that.

Much of the training you can do on your own. I, of course, train my own dogs. I helped a lady train her own dog. My receipts were about $5,000 over 2 years. Her dog's actual value is well over $20,000. Industry standard is 120 hours of documented training over 6 months. This training does not need to be done by a professional trainer.

Back to your regularly scheduled programming....

Appreciate the info but a puppy is recommended over a dog because it needs to bond with the autistic child as it grows up with the child. That's the "mitigating autistic meltdowns" part. As the puppy grows, he will of course be trained for CGC and then his certified for his jobs both for autism and seizure alert.

The puppy's price was a thousand dollars, but because we intend to use it as a service dog, $550 only. Great deal actually. Full blood from a good breeder (NOT a puppy mill). Chosen by the trainer who has extensive experience in these things, plus she was going by a list we'd compiled of what we want out of the dog.

Glad you can train your own dogs. Really, it's good that you can do that. However, I have no experience training dogs, and really have enough on my plate. I'm leaving the training to the trainer, to teach my son to do the training when she's not here. Really needs to come from him anyway since the puppy must bond with my son. And since my son's life may depend on the bond between him and the dog, I'll trust the trainer to teach us how to encourage the bond in every possible way. The last dog she trained saved that autistic child's life 4 times already.

I'll go without new clothes or fancy meals or a new computer that actually has sound to do the best for my son. Not that I can afford them now anyway.

Sorry, OP. Back to homestead careers.

 

[Leta]

No skin off my nose. I'm interested in service animals and I like dogs. I also didn't realize that people with autism used service dogs, but now that I think of it, it seems like a great idea.

Hmmm.... dog trainers could work from home... training service dogs seems like a noble profession... see, it's all come back around.

 

[keljonma]

We were producers for a local family farms group for a couple of years. This family farms group sold directly to groceries in the area. We provided eggs as well as fresh produce, flowers and herbs from our gardens. The eggs, produce and herbs were sold under the family farms label.

Pros:
We were raising hens for eggs already.
Growing extra fresh produce, flowers and herbs was an easy addition of gardens.
The family farms group provided a listing of items most requested the previous year (for planting purposes).
We determined what to provide and the quantities each week (based on the request list).
We could sell our eggs, produce, flowers and herbs from our farm, as long as it was done under our farm label, not the family farms group label.
They handled all the legal requirements for selling directly to grocers.
No selling through the individual farmers markets in our area (for me this was a big plus).
It was at-home farm work we were already doing; me full-time and TR part-time to supplement his full-time income.


Cons:
Naturally, on our small acreage, TR and I couldn't grow the large amounts of some of the other producers with much larger farms.
The farmily farms group determined product pricing (in their negotiation with grocers) and the pay-out to producers.
Producers were paid once annually, at the end of the year, based on the amount of product supplied during the growing season.
As with any farming venture, the weather can make or break you.
Most of the family farms group producers were consolidated in an area southwest of us, with a comparatively small number in our county.
Which usually meant long commutes to drop off fresh eggs and produce in the wee hours, when gas was peaking at or over $4/gallon and no one to trade off with on the driving.


In the state of Ohio, we could sell our farm eggs from our farm without having the state Dept of Ag inspect the premises. To sell through the family farms group required an annual inspection. Not so surprisingly, even though the number of our hens stayed pretty much stable, the inspection fee kept getting higher.

We liked working with the family farms group while I was only working on the farm. When I returned to full-time employment off the farm, we decided it made life easier to just sell from the farm.

 

[JRmom]

I've worked from home, on and off, for the past 20 years. I'm a graphic designer and have been working from home now for the last 4 years or so.

Pros: Everything! The only possible con for me is the lack of face to face interaction with other people on a daily basis. But as a lot of people/office politics irritate me, I guess that's not really a con. I talk to my dogs all day... they never irritate me. And since I choose to limit my client base and not work crazy hours, I've had to find ways to save money. But it's all good.

This spring I'm planning on starting/selling heirloom veggie plants. I'm certainly not going to get rich doing that, but it will be a few extra bucks and fun.