E48: Making Your Homestead Pay for Itself While Building a Family-Centered Life | Beth Declercq of Intentional Homesteading

Homesteaders of America

From scaling a handful of pre-sold meat chickens into a profitable farm business to running classes, events, and online courses that now support her household, Beth Declercq has mastered the art of making a homestead pay for itself all while raising eight children at home. In this episode, she shares how she focuses on core income streams, grows profitable ventures, and even employs her own kids through the family’s LLC to teach them skills and keep more of what they earn. If you’ve ever wondered how to turn your homestead into a sustainable source of income without stepping away from family life, you won’t want to miss this conversation. Listen in!

In this episode, we cover:

• Beth’s path from city living to a thriving 10-acre homestead with her husband and eight kids

• How a focus on real food in 2011 grew into a diverse, mostly self-sufficient farm

• Creating a dedicated “scullery” to handle the mess of preservation, milking, and butchering outside the main kitchen

• Setting a goal for the homestead to be financially independent—and the strategy that made it happen

• Scaling from 100 pre-sold meat chickens to 750 a year, with profits funding the rest of the farm

• Focusing on core enterprises—meat chickens, on-farm events, herd shares, and poultry processing—rather than striving to make every element profitable

• Paying kids for their work in the family’s LLC-run enterprises as both a tax strategy and life skill

• Hosting entry-level classes and community gatherings to generate income and build relationships

• Turning repeated questions from followers into online courses and a membership that now supports their household income

• Encouragement for homestead dreamers to start small, accept imperfect beginnings, and build skills and income streams before they’re urgently needed

View full show notes and transcript on the blog + watch this episode on YouTube.

Thank you to our sponsors!

Nutrimill.com | High-quality small kitchen appliance products that function well, are easy to use, and promote healthy eating

McMurrayHatchery.com | A wide selection of poultry breeds and supplies to assist you with raising your flock

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