Work at Home Idea:
Start a Herbal Products Business
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If you love gardening and working outdoors, herb farming could be your path to job security and financial success.
Healthy cooking and fresh ingredients have experienced a tremendous growth in popularity. As a result chefs and gourmet food stores are in dire need of year-round sources of fresh cut herbs. There's also a huge demand for herbal medicinal formulas and herbs for aromatherapy.
A perfect part-time business, start-up costs are low and there's almost no equipment needed. With a minimum investment under $4,000, you can start earning an average net profit of $45,000 a year.
Our guide covers all the basics, from how to start an herb farm in your own backyard to harvesting, drying, and storing herbs, as wells as proven strategies for increasing your farm's profit margin.
This guide from Entrepreneur.com is necessary before diving into this home business venture.
Book Excerpt
Herbs are in these days. Everywhere you look, you find them in one form or another. Herbs star in gourmet cuisine at swanky restaurants, they put in regular appearances in the fresh produce section of supermarkets and greet you on drugstore shelves. They soothe, scent and stimulate the senses in potpourri, candles, body lotions and bath products. They are increasingly featured not only in the remedies of home-health providers like Dr. Mom, but also in the recommendations of a growing number of medical professionals. And, of course, gardeners look to herbs for their easy growing habits and aromatic qualities.
But herbs aren’t anything new. They’ve been prized as cosmetics, medicines and foodstuffs for thousands of years, long before written languages began recording their uses. Herbalism—mostly in a medicinal context—was practiced from China to North America, the Mediterranean and the Middle East. During the Middle Ages, European monks kept the secrets of herbs alive by copying herbals—detailed herb treatises with illustrations—that served as medical texts and minding “physick” gardens filled with medicinal herbs. Centuries later, herbs took a back seat to modern medicine and cooks abandoned fresh herbs in favor of modern—if flavorless—convenience foods.
A Little Romance
Now that we’ve arrived at the new millennium, however, herbs are back in favor in a big way. People the world over have rediscovered their romance, mystique and allure. But what exactly is this fascination? Why are we suddenly so taken with plants—most of which are essentially weeds—that have been around since long before humans wandered onto the scene?
“Herbs are especially important to us today, I believe, for both real and symbolic reasons,” says Susan Wittig Albert, a noted herbalist, columnist for The Herb Companion magazine, and author of a popular series of mystery novels that prominently features herbal tips and lore. “They offer useful culinary, medicinal, landscaping, crafting and decorating possibilities. At the same time, they represent a connection to a bountiful earth and to our human past and suggest a healthy and sustainable lifestyle. In our complicated, highly technologized society, we cherish herbs because they seem somehow right and simple.”
In a world that seems to be spinning ever faster, tantalizing us with technical wonders while threatening to forever leave the lifestyles of our grandparents, our parents and even ourselves in the dust, herbs help us tune in to nature and forge a link with prior generations of farmers, gardeners, cooks and healers. There’s something ultimately satisfying about rediscovering the secrets of the past and forming a partnership with the natural world in the present.
And everyone, it seems, is in on the trend. Chefs in trendy restaurants and home kitchens demand herbs to enhance flavor and replace blood-pressure-elevating salt. Medical researchers promote herbs as healthy alternatives to costly and dangerous pharmaceuticals. Makers of bath and beauty products infuse their goods with herbs both for their scents and therapeutic qualities. And everybody buys herbal teas, candles, potpourri and other aromatic essences for those same therapeutic qualities…all of which makes the business of herbs an exciting and rewarding one.
Herbs For All Seasons
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This guide from Entrepreneur.com is necessary before diving into this home business venture.
Disclaimer: The information presented and opinions expressed herein are those of the authors
and do not necessarily represent the views of Work-at-Home-Business.com and/or its partners.
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