So far this season we have gotten pretty specific about how to monetize your homestead, whether we're talking blogging or websites or using social media or maybe even starting in microgreens business like we talked about in episode 7, we've really honed it on the homestead niche itself and gotten specific about how we can monetize our passions on our interest within these boundaries.

However, today's episode is a little bit different because I want to talk about more out of the box ways that you can monetize what you're doing around your homestead or your future homestead and I have the perfect person to chat about this very topic with me today.

So you may know her Chloe McIntosh from Boxwood Avenue. She has an Instagram and a very successful website. She lives on a gorgeous cattle ranch at a tiny California town.

Yet she has been successfully curating an online shop and a soon to be brick and mortar mercantile and she fills these with handmade items from artisans and teeks and vintage finds.

She also serves a select number of clients each year to provide interior design services and she's joining us today to give us some inspiring insider advice on ways that you can monetize your homestead with maybe those skills you have that are definitely unique to you that may not seem like a homestead or sort of thing at first glance, but could actually be the key to unlock this first part of her journey. So let's dive in.

You're listening to the old-fashioned on-purpose podcast where ambitious people master the art of returning to their roots. Have you found yourself disenchanted with society or wishing you could opt out of the rat race? Perhaps you're craving a life that's meaningful and tangible a life where you can create and produce instead of merely consume.

I'm Jill Winger, best-selling author and long-time homesteader. Over the last 10 years I've helped thousands of families create or connection grow amazing organic food and find the ultimate fulfillment with old-fashioned lifestyle and I can do the same for you. Now on to our episode.

Hey Chloe, welcome to this podcast. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here. Me too.

So I think this is going to be a really fun conversation. So let's just start off at the beginning. How did you kind of fall into ranch life? Because I know you had sort of an unlikely introduction to it.

Yes, unlikely is funny. Funny where to use because I live in a town called likely.

Also, yeah, and that's kind of how the name of the town they I think they were trying this story goes who knows if this is true.

The story goes that they were trying to find it's the name of the town and they like couldn't come up with one that wasn't being already used or something like that.

So they said it's likely we'll never find a name for this town and then they said well we'll call it likely.

So I live, yeah, I live in Northern California. It's a super small town. My husband and I are full from Reno, Nevada. And we met it. I was actually in high school.

We went to college together and he had never been his family has owned this cattle ranch. We're fifth generation now, but he I mean he would come up here for Christmas and things like that, but he had never really worked on a ranch. He'd never ridden a horse or been around cattle before.

And we were going through finals. I think it was like his junior year or senior year of college. And he came back from finals and was like, I'm not going to sign up for classes next semester.

I don't think I'm going to finish finals. I'm going to move up to that my family's cattle ranch.

And I was like, okay, you know, have fun. There's no way you're going to last because he had never.

It's not, we can make it look glamorous, but it's not a glamorous life. Right. Right.

And then I, so I finished school. He moved up here. I figured he would kind of get it out of the system and come back to Reno. And he fell in love with it. And so when I graduated from college, I moved up here. I didn't really have anything else going on.

And I moved up here and just settled in. My sister moved up here with us. And that was really helpful to have somebody because it is a small town. And I didn't know anybody at the time.

So it was his grandparents home. And we lived here for two years. We now have renovated a lot of it. But at first, it was just his grandparents' old ranch house that we moved to the middle of nowhere.

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