I’ve started the process of picking my first line of business for the homestead. This spring has been incredibly productive, and I’ve made a lot of progress getting things growing on the land. In a few years, the hedge should be stunningly beautiful and create mounds of fresh fruit each year. Even sooner, the vegetables will be providing for the table in a few months, and I’ll hopefully harvest fresh rhubarb next spring.
But this isn’t farming, it’s barely even homesteading. Self-sufficiency means much more than having a lovely garden. It means having diverse, profitable enterprises. After all, I’m not striving for subsistence agriculture, and I need my homestead to support itself
These projects are great. Especially since the things I learn from them will set me up for future success, but I can’t hope for any measurable financial impact from them. I have broader hopes for aquaponic food production, yet I don’t expect any commercial success from the systems I have planned. I can’t profit directly from cultivating food plants. Instead, I’ve been thinking pretty hard about what could be a viable enterprise to start with. Ideally, it would be something that naturally layers into the projects I’ve already started. Something that has a high return relative to time and space, but scales poorly. A business line that plays to my technical strengths and existing knowledge.
I have several ideas in mind, and I’ll probably test drive many of them. Most of them won’t work, but hopefully, some will. The only way to find success is to keep trying and experimenting. Throwing my ideas against the wall and seeing what sticks.
Why I’m Going To Try Raising Dwarf Shrimp
To start with, I’m going to try raising freshwater aquarium shrimp. On paper, Asian dwarf shrimp tick every box.
- Shrimp are small: I can keep colonies of them in 5- and 10-gallon aquariums.
- Shrimp are time-efficient: I once maintained a large colony of cherry shrimp in a low tech 55-gallon tank. Despite major neglect, this colony flourished for years, so I know from experience they can handle my city water reasonably well.
- Shrimp are prolific. If you have a suitable environment for them, shrimp will multiply rapidly without any special care.
- Shrimp are capital-efficient: My first colony might run a few hundred dollars to get running, but additional colonies will be much cheaper.
- Shrimp have a reasonably high retail price: $2-$12 per shrimp depending on species and variety.
- Shrimp slot into my homestead ecosystem. I can recycle shrimp waste through the aquaponic systems. Secondarily, aquatic plants growing in their tanks might provide a second revenue stream. Lastly, shrimp can eat vegetable matter from the gardens as an enrichment.
- Shrimp don’t scale well. These guys aren’t well suited for industrial supply chains and mass production. Bloodlines can need a lot of pruning to maintain color. More significantly, shrimp are easily killed by some of the chemicals used in the aquarium fish supply chains, and they aren’t well suited for the stress of shuffling from distributer to distributer.
- Shrimp ship reasonably well. Direct to consumer sales over the internet is possible.
- I have a lot of equipment to get started already. I have a bunch of aquarium and aquaponics equipment lying around that I can use for this.
- They’re conducive to geeking out. Geeking out on something helps me stay engaged, The more engaged I am, the more energy I have, and the more likely I am to find other ways to monetize around them as a product.
So, this is where I’m going to start. I’ve wanted to put a small aquarium in my bedroom for a few years, and I’ll use it to start my first shrimp colony.