# Flexibility and thinking outside the box ...



## SFM in KY (May 11, 2002)

Both are major assets if you are planning ... or developing ... a home business.
When one product market disappears you start working on something else! Being able to shift gears when something isn't working ... or seeing early that something is not going to continue to work and being able to make changes is something that is vitally important.

For a number of years DH built and marketed a hand-operated one-farmer tobacco seeder that he sold locally/regionally. When he was the busiest, I suppose he might have made a profit of $10k a year ... highest volume was 100 seeders during the "season" ... which was about three months starting in January or February.

With the tobacco market disappearing here in KY, there are now not many small individual farmers still planting a few acres of tobacco for a cash crop. Those that are still growing, lease the acres from the smaller allotments and have much bigger acreages ... requiring mechanized equipment.

So the first thing DH did was develop a bracing system for our steel T-post fences ... as we get older, it is getting harder to dig postholes and being able to use T-posts as braces rather than having to set wood posts for the brace corners makes it easier. We tried the ones on the market ... light aluminum things that fall apart ... and after ending up with pieces of that all over the farm, DH built a bracing sleeve out of heavy gauge metal, one piece with just one bolt. Even I can manage it ... and once some of the local farmers saw it, they've started having him build some for them.

Then, because he was getting tired of wrestling his welding equipment around to where he needed to use it ... oxygen tanks, generator, etc. ... he rebuilt an old metal framed trailer as a portable welding wagon that can be moved anywhere it needs to be for the job. Far enough and he hooks up the pickup, if he needs it just to the other side of the barn, the tractor or even the riding lawnmower will move it.

And he's now getting calls from the neighbors to "come weld this" out in the field ... where they can't get to it easily to load it and take it to the welding shop in town 20 miles away.


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## sisterpine (May 9, 2004)

How very very cool! sis


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## EarthSheltered (May 9, 2008)

I think diversity in business is a good thing too. DH and I were just talking about this today. My business (horses) is slowing down, as is his main business, but we have people eager to rent our two rentals. :shrug: I'm thankful for that! Now we have some free time to fix them up before renting them out, which would not have been the case last year.

We have a neighbor who welds. He had a truck that he mounted a very heavy acetalene (sp?) tank on, along with other equipment. When that truck died a slow and painful death :Bawling: he went to the local auto auction and bought a bucket truck for very little. They were dumping them because they were diesel, and were not running efficiently. He did some research, found that they had a filter not just in the engine, but half way back was another one, that had never been changed :nono: runs perfectly now  Anyway, my point is now he has a truck that he can weld from up high, down low, wherever he needs to. Its a blessing when working on the big combines. No climbing up and down. 

He took a chance, did the research and the risk, and is now ahead. Very little money was involved, just ingenuity! :dance:


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## SFM in KY (May 11, 2002)

One thing I'm seeing change, especially here in a rural/farming area, is that people are looking for ways to repair, modify, make-do rather than replace. 

One of the welding/ repair jobs DH has now is a local dairy farmer that is having feed troughs repaired ... replacing the metal bottoms that have rusted out with heavy polyethelene and replacing some of the metal braces. Normally, he would have simply dumped these when they rusted through and bought new ones.

I think we are going to see this more and more with this kind of economy ... people are going to "buy smart" when they buy new ... and look at their options for repairs, particularly if the repairs can be made so that it may actually last longer than the original.


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## kesoaps (Dec 18, 2004)

SFM, I've been wondering how that T post operation of your's was going. Seems I spotted something in a magazine somewhere that had that system and wondered if it was you?


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