TOP-8 ways to ensure life through gathering

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Gathering the gifts of nature is one of the most ancient human activities. In fact, you never needed to have any adaptations for this, only the wilderness and the desire to search. At the same time, you can collect a variety of gifts - mushrooms, berries, nuts, medicinal or edible plants.

Mushroom picking

If you live in a mushroom place, then this is what you need. Much depends on the year, mushroom or not, and on your area. There are such forests in which there are literally a lot of mushrooms. For half a day, starting from 8-7 in the morning and before lunchtime, people manage to take out of the forest 5 baskets per bow. Filled with mushrooms to the top. If you involve your relatives in this, then you can pick up 100 kg of mushrooms in a day. In each region there are mushroom buyers who boil mushrooms in huge tanks right on the spot and send them to factories. If you are lucky, then it's up to a little - to float mushrooms with them. If there is no one to sell them in their raw form, then look again who may need mushrooms. If there really is no one, then preserve the mushrooms yourself, although this is a laborious process that takes a lot of time, pickled and salted mushrooms can later be handed over to stores at a good price. Milk mushrooms, especially white ones, are very good for this business. If they grow, they grow in such incredible volumes that it is just right to take a scythe with you to the forest. Milk mushrooms are very easily salted, salt them in wooden barrels (which it would not hurt to take care of in advance), and then, in winter, come to the store and offer a barrel of salted milk mushrooms. In this case, you can simply give them for sale, and later, when they are sold, get your reward.

Picking berries

Everything is easier with the implementation. If there is a wine and vodka factory in the region (and of course there is, because where the Russian people can go without …), then feel free to call there and find out what they need. As a rule, you need something. Rowan is very popular, it is easy to collect and there is a lot of it. You can donate berries both raw and dry. If you cannot bring fresh berries every time, then pick up a whole mountain, dry them, and then take them at a time. Dry berries are more expensive per kilogram, but there are much more of them in a “dry” kilogram than in a “fresh” one. No matter what they say there, but in every third settlement there is a sign "Zagotpunkt". If you do not have a procurement point, then look for it in a neighboring village or in the regional center, they can offer a lot of interesting things. Although the bulk of their purchases are garden berries (which is also a great income!)

Collection of medicinal herbs

Everything is sold in the same procurement points, or in pharmacies. At the same time, the option is absolutely win-win. Healing herbs are everywhere! I will not even undertake to list them, because only poisonous herbs are not healing herbs, the rest, with a few exceptions, will suit you. You can work for a buyer, or you can simply dry herbs in huge volumes, and then make different teas, collections (for example, antiparasitic: wormwood, tansy, oak bark, etc.) from them and sell them at retail to the population. You can also buy linen and sew on pillows with medicinal herbs inside.

Knitting brooms

There is a birch in any forest. Usually it happens like this: one person cuts branches, another knits brooms from them. A lot of work is done in a day. If a group of people does it, then even more! Brooms are bought by firms that dry and pack them in individual packaging. If you do not find such companies, then any public bath will buy brooms from you.

In addition, there are many more gatherings that are distinguished by their originality. For example, collecting algae, etc., but this should only be done if you have a distribution channel. As well as everyone else.

Breeding crayfish

This is a pretty lucrative business. There may be several prerequisites for breeding crayfish at home. For example, the presence of a pond or lake near the house, the presence of a room in which you can set up aquariums for crayfish so that you can breed them not only in the south of the country, but also in the north.

The first way to breed crayfish is to set up aquariums for them in a heated room. This is to prevent them from hibernating. When a cancer goes into hibernation under natural conditions, it sheds only once a year, after it turns two. Therefore, crayfish grow rather slowly in natural conditions in the north of the country. Breeding crayfish in an aquarium contributes to the fact that they molt once, but already in 2-3 months. Therefore, after a year, such cancer can be sold for a good price. The carapace of the crayfish that is placed in the aquarium acquires a valuable blue color after two molts. Blue crayfish is highly prized and often exported, so one can easily imagine how much profit can be made by breeding crayfish at home.

Those entrepreneurs who are engaged in large supplies of crayfish use another way of earning money. This method of earning has appeared as a result of the fact that very few people who live in the middle or northern strip of the country know how to cook cancer properly. Because of this, crayfish do not sell well at retail, it is better to sell them immediately in bulk, as entrepreneurs who breed crayfish know about. The ability to eat cancer correctly is also not inherent in everyone. Therefore, the type of income is to conduct master classes on the topic: "How to eat crayfish with beer" in establishments that sell beer and crayfish. To do this, you can make a paid entrance to the institution, organize an advertising campaign. The popularity of such a master class depends on how artistic the master himself will be. At the same time, suppliers of such goods, as well as entrepreneurs who breed crayfish, will be able to get a fairly high profit.

The third method concerns the breeding of crayfish, it consists in professionally catching crayfish, and then selling them yourself either fried, as a ready-made dish, or live.

Breeding crayfish can be done in another way. It consists in leasing a pond or lake, where the crayfish are imported. The entrepreneur's job is to catch and feed crayfish for sale.

Breeding chickens

I would like to present to your attention a small business plan for raising chickens at home. He will breed not only for himself, but also for his friends, neighbors, etc.

To implement a business idea, we need a country house with a small yard and a person who is constantly in this country house. Well, and of course, the chickens themselves.

There should be a chicken coop in the courtyard of a country house. If it is not there, then it will not be difficult to build it. In the southern regions, this is an ordinary shed made of boards, a door for people, a door for chickens (a small window just above the ground level with a small bridge to it), several baskets of hay (a place for laying eggs) and perches.

In the northern regions, the poultry house will have to be insulated, if possible, attaching it directly to the house.

Chickens are sold at any poultry farm. And also in any settlements (especially in the spring) they post advertisements for the sale of chickens. There shouldn't be any problems with buying a bird.

The maximum that can be asked for a chicken of the most common chicken of an egg breed is 100 rubles. Let's say we buy two dozen. This is 2,000 rubles. I will cite all calculations of profit to a minimum, and costs to a maximum, in order to get even a little closer to real figures.

The chicken will begin to lay by about the fifth month. Until that moment, she will live on your support. But there are several positive aspects to chicken when breeding them at home. This is the ability to search for food on their own and the ability to incubate chicks.

Let's take a closer look at their independence. If our chickens are given a small yard and periodic freedom of movement, then the bird will seek and find food on its own. It will be grass, seeds, worms, insects, etc. Therefore, cinnamon will only need evening feeding. It will include vegetable waste from the table, purchased grain, cereals or compound feed. Again, let's plunge into arithmetic: one chicken in the evening needs 50-100 grams. stern. This means that 20 chickens will eat 2 kg of feed per evening (provided that you do not add waste from the table, crush grain, and feed exclusively with factory feed and despite the fact that the hens scatter a third of the feed over the nearby territory), for 5 months they you will need 300 kg of compound feed. At a price of 10 rubles per kg of compound feed, another 3000 rubles will be obtained. Those. 5000 rubles to start our small business. I think that in 5 months you can allocate 3000 rubles from your own budget for feed for chickens. Or it won't be difficult to find food for them for free, but we don't take that into account.

By the end of this marathon, about 16-18 chickens will come if you buy young animals from a poultry farm (well, they are not tenacious). About 4 will be cockerels. In general, if you sum up this growing of young chickens, then the result will be about 10 laying hens and 1 rooster. The rest of the roosters, of course, go to the soup.

One laying hen will lay one egg for you in 2 days. Those. we will definitely get 5 eggs per day from 10 heads. 35 eggs per week. Of course, it will turn out more, but let's say we will sell 3 dozen per week. At a price of 50 rubles for a dozen village eggs, we get 150 rubles per week. Our investment will pay off in 8 months. This is a good return on investment.

Subsequent investments are zero. The hens will hatch the chicks themselves; you just need to lay eggs for the hens who are already hatching their offspring. In general, they are independent birds, but not very neat …

One person can easily care for 30 chickens without much difficulty. At the same time, receiving 500 rubles per week of net profit and providing his family with eggs and chicken meat.

Vermicultivation

The production of vermicompost and worms - this idea is a kind of continuation of what was started in the article on the sale of manure. I sold cow dung compost until I decided to slightly increase the profitability of my venture.

Here I will not talk about what an excellent fertilizer vermicompost and what nutritious food Californian worms are. It is what it is.

A bag of compost in the city costs 50 rubles. A kilogram of vermicompost is about 10 rubles. I carried 4 bags of compost with me in the trunk from the village to the city and beat off money for gasoline. Now, if I sold 4 bags of vermicompost, then I received 1000 rubles. clean.

I purchased a stock culture of the red Californian worm (Eusenia Fetida). A thousand pieces cost 500 rubles, I bought two thousand. It is the California red worm, and not the usual earthworm - because it does not go to bed for the winter, it eats (and therefore produces vermicompost) 10 times more.

According to the technology of vermicultivation, I prepared ordinary plastic boxes with a lattice bottom from under vegetables and fruits. These boxes are conveniently stacked on top of each other. I poured a few centimeters into the box, then a layer of ordinary earth 1 cm thick. Once every two weeks I poured a new layer of manure and a new layer of earth. After 3 months, a whole box of biohumus was obtained, about 5 kg and an increased population of the worm. When the vermicompost was ready, I put a new one with a nutrient medium on top of the old box, the worms crawled upstairs.

With this technology of vermicomposting, there is a lot of trouble. A large number of boxes are required, a separate room. In addition to regularly adding manure and earth, if you also need to get a good harvest of worms, then the compost must be loosened once a week - the worms need air. In addition, not all the worms crawled into the top box. However, this is the most productive way, if you really do business on biohumus, then only in this way.

It was much easier to make compost heaps from boards right on the ground. The heaps were filled with 1 m3 of manure and worms were launched into it. For six months they did their job there, and then I separated the worms from the vermicompost. Spread out a piece of linoleum, poured a bunch of vermicompost on it. The worm does not like bright light, wind and dryness, so it slowly crawled down the heap. I only had to remove the top of the pile every 30 minutes, until the worms appeared, until, finally, a ball of worms remained on the linoleum. However, it was especially difficult to make sure that the worms did not crawl over the linoleum. The disadvantage of this method is that the vermicompost is not entirely clean (not completely processed). In winter, the worms in the heap died from the Russian frosts.

I re-composted the entire manure heap of about 10 tons in 2 years without much straining. Unfortunately, it was not possible to count the money, and a large volume of vermicompost was used in the farm. Now I am not selling vermicompost, because I did all this, firstly, for the sake of experiment, and secondly, for the sake of freeing the backyard from the waste products of my parents' cows.

Almost all worms die in the winter, so I keep a reserve supply of worms in my house in the winter, and every year I start from almost zero. No matter what they say about their unpretentiousness, they themselves will not live and work for our benefit, it is necessary to create conditions. Especially if we want to get a harvest not only from vermicompost, but also from worms.

I fed the worms to the poultry, which made them incredibly happy. Now all the manure and dung on our farm is composted with the help of these worms in one big heap. Every spring I launch backup worms from home into a common pile. By autumn, their population increases in a heap, almost all die during the winter. Composting goes on at a fast pace, the pile does not grow. Vermicompost, due to the fact that it can be applied without restrictions, is used throughout the farm.

Sale of manure

My parents keep several cows in the village. The manure is piled up in piles, the length of which is constantly increasing. Especially in winter. In the summer, local villagers and summer residents with wheelbarrows come for dung, collect as much as necessary for thanks.

And the dung heaps grow and grow in the meantime. The manure does not have time to disperse at the speed with which it arrives. Previously, dump trucks were used to get manure. But now the people are not the same, they are lazy to load the body by hand with shovels, losing potential profit, it is easier for them to buy the same manure from the local cowshed, where the manure will be put directly into the body. Well, let … we get more.

Get to the point. When I firmly decided to get rid of the "golden mountains" I had a goal - to help out money for them. I often visit my parents in the countryside, but I myself live in the city. In the village, no one needs manure for nothing, but in the city, manure is worth its weight in gold among gardeners. It costs 4000 rubles to bring a car of manure with us at the moment. But, the vast majority of gardeners cannot afford such a luxury. And then I find out that our neighbor buys manure in bags of 50 rubles. per piece The farmer brings her manure in a UAZ straight to the garden, several bags each. And she is not the only one buying in the dacha area, but several more of her pensioner neighbors. Those. he carries 10 or more bags at a time. And it is correct, to lay out 4000 rubles. Not everyone can do it at a time, but buying a couple of bags of manure once a week is not a problem.

Perhaps I would have followed the path of this farmer if I had a UAZ, but loading fresh manure into the trunk of a foreign car is, you know, bad form. And there is a simple way out in the form of compost - half-rotted manure of a dark color, smelling of forest litter. I found the compost at the very beginning of the pile (the oldest manure) at the bottom of the pile. I posted an ad in a local newspaper, which, in my opinion, is most often read by gardeners. The text * of the announcement was as follows: "I will sell KOMPOST made of cow dung in bags, 1 bag - 50 rubles, free shipping."And the result was not long in coming. Mostly pensioners called, they were interested. Our city is small, without prejudice to my wallet I can deliver several bags to almost any suburban area for free, the main thing is not one, but better all 4 (just a whole trunk).

I didn’t carry less than 4 bags at a time. Yes, and it did not work, there were always willing, grannies cooperated. If I said that carrying 3 bags was not entirely profitable for me, then the pensioners entered the position and ordered 4. I put the film in two layers in the trunk, and put the bags on it. Such a load had no effect on consumption and controllability. Gasoline fought back. The dung heap decreased. I was pleased.

However, this did not last long. the compost was only at the edges of the pile and at its very beginning. Every time upon arrival I had to throw manure with a shovel in order to accelerate the maturation of the compost. The number of clients grew along with the volume of manure shoveling. If you shovel fresh manure once a month by shifting layers of hay and straw, then in 1-2 months you can get quite acceptable compost. So it continued until I came up with the idea of producing vermicompost from manure with the help of worms.

I don't know if this could be a business, but I got the opportunity to travel to my parents in the village for free. Although, if you needed to quickly come to them or just as quickly go back to the city, then of course there is no time for manure. But I had several clients to whom I could bring manure even in their absence, and take the money later. That helped me a lot, when I had to urgently get to the city, there was no time to coordinate delivery with clients, and because of a missed opportunity to earn extra money, a toad strangled.