I don't think you can earn a living competing with the big guys. If you want to earn some income it is possible but how can you compete? I can't afford to feed my family on organically grown, gmo free, free range food sources.
I can feed myself, because I do it myself, but forget about competing. Does the average person know how much work goes into producing a head of lettuce? What about a stalk of broccoli? Raising a chicken? Man it is hard work.
So we have to race to the bottom and get the cheapest prices. There is an old saying that you get what you pay for. I have seen the studies that say that organic food is just the same as factory food. I do not believe it for a second. Our eggs, when compared to a store bought egg are far superior. Just looking at them shows you the quality that is imbedded in the yolk. You can tell it is a richer orange than the store eggs. The whites are not as pale as the store eggs. I do not know what it is exactly that is missing from the factory eggs but it must be micronutrients that the birds get from eating a varied diet of seeds, bugs, larva, real gravel for their gizzard etc.
These are the intangibles or the micro fill in the blanks that nutritionists are saying are missing in our diets. They show up later in life as a strange illness or rash that won't go away, or something that is unexplainable.
We have totally free range turkeys, chickens, layers and goats. They are not penned up in a coop with access to sunlight. They go wherever they want. Let me tell you, more than once I have been very frustrated to find duck poop on the deck, or all of my strawberries gone. It is a tradeoff. I need to make more secure netting to keep the poultry out of my gardens. It is a pain but the payoff in the end is worth it.
