Yes pretty aquainted with hard work especially from a young age on 15k+ acre farm + livestock. Wasn't a so called normal childhood running around playing and being a kid. It was about work and I just thought that's the way life was.

So is that part of your income, whatever you get from the land?

Where do you get your power from?

My son is on his own and my daughter will be going off to college in a couple years, if all works out. Then it will be time to look really hard at all the options at downsizing considerably and becoming more self sefficient to not worry about much later in life. Especially the way things are going.

In your case I wish you and your wife the best, it may seem like work now but I bet in time it will get easier

The good thing is you have a lot of options and directions you can go with it, that's awesome.

Thank you Sphorange.

I have been contemplating that very question for a long, long time!

First off, the land came with the olive orchard we put the tiny home in. There are about 130 trees that are between 55 & 60 years old. They are Sevillano variety, which are primarily harvested for making table olives. They have a low oil yield, however the oil derived from Sevillano olives is the most expensive olive oil in the world presently. Thus, the wife & I plan to have a small, commercial olive oil press by next harvest season (Oct.- Dec. in the Northern Hemisphere) & press about one third of the harvest. Another third we plan to brine & turn into tasty table olives. The final third we will sell to a commercial outfit to be further processed into table olives also. At least that's our plan for the first season (we were actually moving in during this past 2015 olive harvest season & had no way of dealing with the labor-intesiveness at the time).

My wife is, among many other creative, cool things, a floral designer, so she's planting a ton of bouquet flowers as we speak since February here so far has been fairly mild, warm & sunny.

I plan to experiment with different Chinese medicinal herbs since that's been one of my main vocations in my life. I've already grown quite a few at different rentals over the last decade & I am very familiar with which ones will grow well here. What I'm waiting for is one of those "ah-ha" moments where I get that feeling that "I really like this plant species; it grows well here; this is what I'm going to focus on".

I've presently got about 40 bonsai trees that I have been training for anywhere from 3-15 years. One of my dearest dreams is to have a bonsai tree nursery, but I'm pretty sure that that is such a small, niche market we're going to need much more than that to make ends meet.

Next, I'd really like to eventually get a heated, lighted greenhouse set up going & grow tomatoes year round here. They are very easy to grow in the summer & fall here, but I have never seen locally grown tomatoes around these parts in say December, January, February or March. That'll be quite the investment & experiment!

Then there's this 1-2 acre patch of dry, desert-like land directly to the Northwest of our olive orchard. Barely any water gets there, so I'm considering creating a desert plant section laden with San Pedro cactus, Incense Cedar & White Sage, perhaps some other cactus species thrown in there for good measure also. We'll see.

These are just a few of the many ideas we've got. There are many more.

We also have 3 old Acacias on the property that shed the coolest-looking red-purple seed pods each fall. I'll be looking into what the species is & what, if any, part may be psychoactive. Heck, thay've got to be at lest 40 or 50 years old. I am trying to find the file on my computer where I put the downloaded pics of those. Stay tuned.

Well at least you're getting a plan together and it'll work out no matter what direction it goes.