10 Small Business Ideas for People Who Love Nature

Almost anyone can be an entrepreneur; the only thing missing for many is a great idea. The best place to find a great business idea is to look into something about which you are passionate, for example, if you’re passionate about nature, there are plenty of business ideas with which you can run!

1. Adventure Club

A great idea for those who know the area around them and aren’t afraid of a little excitement is an adventure club!

These clubs usually consist of a leader (that’s you!) taking members on outdoor adventures. The element of excitement is really up to you and your adventure-seeking customers. These adventures could be as simple as hiking an easy trail together or as exciting as white water rafting, depending on your expertise. 

Your profits will be even higher if you are teaching your club members something they don’t know. For example, teaching people how to rock climb might come with a higher charge than group hikes.

2. Outdoor Cleaning Service

You probably already know that cleaning service businesses are profitable.

While it might take a little more time than cleaning a bathroom, you can also take a cleaning service outdoors. You can keep your services as simple as cleaning up litter in a backyard to as involved as construction clean up or even graffiti removal. Depending on the area in which you serve, one type of cleaning service might be more popular than the other.

3. Landscaping

If you love the outdoors and have a bit of a green thumb, consider starting a landscaping business. A landscaping business helps people transform their yards, gardens, or other sites into something they love and even boost kerb appeal.

It’s important to note that a landscaping business typically requires some level of education. After all, you have to know how to analyze a site, plan out a landscaping blueprint, and become familiar with local and national building codes and ordinances. It’s also important to know how to not only make a site attractive, but also how to make it safe and effective. For instance, you will need to consider factors such as stormwater management.

4. Run a Horse Stable

If you love horses, you could always make a living working with them. Simply owning horses won’t really earn you a living, but if you have land and farm buildings, then you could offer a boarding service for other people with horses. 

Alternatively, you could also teach riding, subject to the appropriate qualifications, licensing and insurances. This will give you the opportunity not only to spend time outside with your favorite animals but to share that love with others as well.

5. Small-Scale Farming

If you want to make a name for yourself at your local farmers' market, you don’t have to turn around acres of crops. Instead, you can turn your garden into a space for growing some veggies and maybe even fruits. You can earn extra by offering products as well as raw crops. For instance, if you know how to make jam, you can sell this for a higher price - again, subject to the necessary certification.

6. Dog Care

Maybe you still want to take care of animals but large animals are a little too much; maybe they aren’t your preference or maybe you don’t have enough land. However, there are plenty of animals that you can take care of while living a smaller, more frugal lifestyle.

To spend time outdoors, you can start a dog-walking business. This is a great option because there are many people who can’t take time in the middle of the day to come home and walk their dogs.

If you want to push this business to a more profitable level, you can board dogs as well. You can be selective in the dog breeds you choose to board to ensure you don’t end up with an untrained dog in your house for a weekend.

7. Start Your Own “Green” Shop

If opening a retail shop or purchasing a franchise is a bit too much, you can easily start small by opening an online store. You can also sell products that you make to a small following. You can link up with sites like Giving Assistant to help earn you a following and boost sales.

Your love of nature comes in with what you make. Maybe you want to make your own, homemade tea blends or make everyday products through a greener process. This is your chance to use your love of nature to create something of which you can be proud.

8. Open a Beauty Salon

Creating your own beauty salon doesn’t quite sound linked to nature, but it can be, with a little creativity. Think about it this way: When you visit the beauty salon, how many chemicals and ingredients damaging to the environment do you see?

As an alternative to this, you can start your own beauty salon that uses safer products. There are plenty of hair products and skin care products that you can make with completely eco-friendly, vegan ingredients.

9. Eco-Consulting

Do you already dedicate your life to green living? Is recycling and composting a part of your daily routine? Are you greener than the average person? If so, then you might be the perfect person to start an eco-consulting business!

Many people don’t live or operate their offices in the most eco-friendly ways. In many cases, these people simply aren’t sure of where to start and where to go. This is where you step in: Your business would be to help these clients transition to more eco-friendly businesses, operations and lifestyles.

10. Green Housekeeping

As we pointed out earlier, many people are willing to pay for cleaning services—inside and out. However, much like we mentioned with beauty salons, these services usually include an alarming amount of harmful ingredients to nature—and humans!

Regardless of the type of “nature” business you choose to start, there are plenty of options available. With a little creativity and hard work, you can turn your love for nature into a healthy living—in more ways than one. 

You should always check that you have any essential qualifications, permissions and/or insurances necessary for carrying out your chosen business ventures but there is bound to be something you can do that combines your love of nature with income generation.

Frugal Living from Scratch 2

 

Part 2 of 2: Getting right back to basics - Each step forward can be seen as another step back towards the starting line. Each tiny achievement marks the successful completion of part of your lifelong challenge, your quest for freedom. Along the way you will meet many sceptics, cynics and even a few cheats and liars whose only ploys are to get your money. As long as you have your 'get out of jail free' card then you know you'll be back in the game soon.

So here I am, sat in my latest home, looking out the window at a pretty grey and wet day with 'pretty' being the most important word in that sentence. The curtains are quite awful, but that's an easily remedied problem once I get around to making some new ones. Perhaps I'll add a pelmet or even some nets, who knows? I haven't decided yet. For now, the curtains serve the purpose of shutting out some of the cold at night.

Most of my days will now be spent between here and Frugaldom, planting and sowing, clearing and cleaning, plotting and planning and wading through all the meetings that these projects seem to involve. The site where we have the caravan is quite busy with fishermen, so I'm managing to hog the satellite wifi connection very easily from my makeshift office corner. It has great views and has all the facilities I could possibly need.

Buying a bigger caravan and siting in on a holiday park may seem like a major luxury to some - indeed, it has already been commented upon! However, this suits our needs and was within a strict budget. Now my new neighbours will know who and where I am, as this lot's sitting outside the caravan waiting to be built into the new decking. I can't wait to see it completed and then I'll be ready for welcoming visitors. I'm using this week as a trial run to work out what is needed, having come here on Friday with only the barest essentials. There's hot water and a heated towel rail, hand washing items of clothing isn't a problem. (Neighbours, if you happen to be reading this, come and introduce yourselves. Just make sure you get the right caravan, as I see several had decking delivered this week.)

This is frugal living! The little fridge is rather bare but I've cooked up some pasta salad, made some fruit jelly and strawberrry whip for desserts and will waste nothing - anything else is from a packet and most of it is vegetarian until I get the groceries brought over from the house. Meals are interesting! I had a box of individual milk portions at the office caravan that came free with an Approved Food order some time ago, so I decanted all of their contents into a jug and used it to bake some rice pudding with sultanas. Had some for lunch today and can have the rest as breakfast, snacks or pudding tomorrow.

Each of the tiny milk cartons has been washed and will be used to plant a single pea, so I can have some home produce. No point wasting good cartons when they can be put to good use. This is frugal living - waste not, want not. We'll grow what we can wherever we can and hope to have enough produce to swap and share. It's just a little chilly out to expect miracles at the moment.

This is my frugal life! The view of our barn dwarfed by the snowy Galloway Hills on the horizon is an awesome reminder of how small we all are in the grand scale of life. Only we can choose how we live and if we choose to live in a simple way then so be it. We don't own the land even when we buy it, the land ultimately owns us and will dictate what grows where, no matter what. Frugaldom is very much about watching the lie of the land and working out what might do best where and when in the future. Some people choose to spend their money on a big house, expensive jewellery, a luxury car, designer labels or visiting foreign and exotic places - we choose this.

Tree planting on a chilly but sunny day, overlooked by hills and snow, with the sheer joy of this being no more than a short walk from home - for some it is a nightmare they would never want to have but for others, it's their lives' work, investing in a better future.

Just to make sure we truly appreciated these days of walking, fetching, carrying, digging and tree planting, we were honoured by the presence of this beautiful bird in flight as it soared above us on our walk between field and caravan - the Red Kite has reached Frugaldom.

Believe it or not, in the beginning it is quite difficult to stop spending money when you're on a roll - no matter what you buy, it becomes a habit, just like smoking, drinking, gambling, even clothes, shoes, handbags or hobby stuff. We each justify our spending but any manner of excuses but we are wise to remember that the ends justify the means - and I'd rather end up with the freedom to soar wherever frugal life takes me. I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that, but taking your first flight of fancy into your own future of freedom is like starting from scratch over and over again. You just need to quit spending on stuff that weighs you down, then spread your wings and work like crazy to reach each goal.

Join us in Frugaldom, give up spending on what you don't need and shape yourself a new and affordable lifestyle while you invest in your future.

Frugal Living from Scratch 2

Carbon Footprints and Planting Trees

Today I calculated the household's carbon footprint at 3.5 tonnes per year. (This is a big reduction on previous years and is well under half of the national average, but more than the ideal global average.)

I then proceeded to calculate how many trees we need to plant to offset that. Averages suggest one native broadleaf tree per tonne of CO2 per year, so I'm making an effort to catch up over my own lifetime. Are you?

Find out how to calculate your own carbon footprint then if you haven’t space to plant your own trees, we can plant them for you.

Find out more about our Frugaldom wilderness and woodland project HERE

Zero Waste Week at Frugaldom

Sunset at frugaldom wild camp

Waste not, want not… let’s all do our bit to reduce what ends up in the landfill and make the most of every penny we spend.

This week, we have been wild camping, repurposing an old log burner, picking home grown produce, knitting string dish cloths and taking cuttings from the herbs in the garden.

Read the first instalment of our Zero Waste Week here

Growing Willow

PART 1

One of my long-term goals has been to cultivate willow (Salix). There are hundreds of different types with many colour variations, so I refer to them all as just willows. I have successfully grown cuttings and planted small rows of willow in each of my previous three gardens, always to be foiled by the need to move on so, when we finally bought Thrift Cottage, I set about, once again, planting my willow.

Being of the frugal ilk and in developing this as a frugal project, you’ll understand my need to create my willow plantation from scratch and on a very strict budget, so all cuttings are appreciated.  

Read more here

I’m hoping to develop it far enough to make the willow growing self-funding and productive enough to help support the entire Frugaldom project

Addressing the Speaker of the House on the Subject of Small Gadgets.

Here in Frugaldom, I am forever trying to source great gadgets that can be relied upon in emergencies, but equally put to good use during normal, day-to-day life. We seem to have to deal with power cuts on a fairly regular basis, so anything electricity free is a good start.

The first handy gadget I encountered this year was, of course, my Ventus Twister - the foot pedal operated mini washer and spinner that allows you to do laundry without needing to plug into an electricity source. (Half price offer still stands if you use the code word 'laundry' at checkout when buying via the store. (See this post for details of our recent competition.)

But what about this for a handy wee gadget?

It's a tiny speaker, a mini boom box, if you like, complete with built-in FM radio, micro-card reader, flashy twinkling light display and a fully integrated battery, recharged via USB to computer or electrical adapter (also available from Ventus). It has a tiny, retractable aerial to help with radio tuning, with a booster available by way of plugging in a short cable, if necessary. (Special £5.00 off voucher code included later in this post .)

Read more here…

Surveying the Lie of the Frugal Land

Fools Rush in where Angels Fear to Tread

Microholding is another life choice I made several years ago - it's like smallholding for people who can't afford to buy or rent their own land.

 

Since leaving home to follow my adult route through life, I have moved house 13 times, this is my 16th address. Every one of those addresses has had garden space where I have started trying to grow fruit and/or vegetables and, where possible, keep chickens, ducks and quail. The garden in this first photo was the smallest ever, so stretched to no more than some pots of herbs, salad leaves and an attempt at composting. This was taken in 2006, at the cottage we rented after a family crisis in 2004 forced me to relocate - again!

 

The following year, we'd to move house again, but it was a good move as far as gardeing was concerned because the garden was massive in comparison to the little green postage stamp we'd been restricted to at the cottage. It was great fun sorting it out, as the owners had already begun planting veggies before they left and let out their house. Some of you may even remember these photos from posts done back in 2007, when I finally used the proceeds of my £2 coin savings challenge to buy the plastic greenhouse, extended the veggie plots halfway up the garden and dug out the first 'micro pond'.

We had a hedgehog lived in this garden and a serious snail problem, along with major cat problems from the 12 or so cats that lived between the houses on either side. These photos were taken in 2007 and then 2008, showing progress made and the lovely old fruit trees that grew in the top half of the long, thing strip of back garden. I loved that garden, was very proud of progress and very sad to leave it behind, when we'd suddenly to move out the following year.

 

From there, we went further out into the country, renting a run-down, semi-bungalow with a scrap of garden area that hadn't been cultivated in some time. 

 

Time to start over, again...

 

I was living in hope that this move would be for the long term. It was tough going while trying to create any sort of garden from the rocky soil, if it was even worthy of being called soil! Anyone remember this, from when we first moved in 2009? It took a full year of clearing and digging to get much growing in there, then we managed to get the little greenhouse from neighbours, who moved out from the house next door. It was starting to get interesting by 2010 - we had the chickens, ducks and quail, plenty of eggs and over a mile of driveway for foraging wild berries. We also had sheep escaping into gardens and cows munching everything they could reach by pushing over the broken fence!

 

Then, at the start of 2011, we were dealt a particularly cruel and unbelievably vicious blow! Once again, we had to uproot - literally - and find a place to stay, after being pretty much made homeless.

Fortunately, the legal bigwigs were able to protect us from that, delaying it long enough to allow a solution to be found. But it let me see, once and for all, how little one can trust those you think can be trusted. Of course, that's when the car chose to give up the ghost and houseshare lost his income!

 

We threw every penny we had, right down to the contents of my son's coin tin, into buying a fixy up - this place! It wasn't habitable, but we'd no option other than to move in as soon as we had electricity and running water, even if it did mean carrying buckets of water from the burn to the house to flush the toilet until that got fixed! That was last April, and this is what we had acquired by way of garden. (Anyone remember this?)

 

More work was done in that 'garden' during the latter half of 2011 and first half of 2012 than in any other garden. This, at long last, was going to be HOME! It's ours, there's no landlord, there's no mortgage, there's just an awful lot needing done to turn it into a proper home and the usual legalities to resolve when you throw all your savings in with a third party to jointly buy property. (Those technicalities have still to be ironed out, so 2013 MUST include having a will made! I have been sharply reminded of this by the four deaths that have occured in the family over the past 14 months!)

 

Work continued, as per all the blog posts - clearing the hen runs at the bottom of the garden, digging into rubble mountain, clearing the banks of the little stream that runs throught the bottom of the garden, creating a wildbird garden, planting the mini-orchard, digging a duck pond, planting all the fruit bushes, digging raised beds, herb gardens, building wildlife habitats, a recycled greenhouse, even a brand new shed! It was starting to look fabulous in summer (what we had of it), with a load of colour and the fruit canes and trees all beginning to settle after their rude uprooting last year from the previous garden.

 

It's been a long time in happening, and there's still a huge amount of work to do before the place comes anywhere close to becoming a microholding. A friend who is a permaculturalist (is that the right word?) visited and, from thereon in, it's been a case of observing the lie of the land to determine where best things should be sited for the longterm good of the garden. THANK GOODNESS we did!

 

The Mayan calendar may well have foiled the doomsday believers, the earth did not end. But, here in Frugaldom, yesterday's midwinter solstice definitely marked the end of an era and this morning saw the dawning of a new age - one that acknowledges once and for all to any doubters that  nature is the ultimate dictator in how we lead our lives. We NEED to respect that. Losing the car last month was a bit of a big deal for us, but we'll manage without it somehow. Seeing the garden destroyed is something I'm not relishing the thought of, so fingers crossed!

 

Right now, I need to hope that the hens survive the floods by staying on the upper levels of their coops, which are down by those trees, and that the water level stops rising soon, otherwise even the ducks will have no safe place to go.

 

This is a sharp reminder that we need to follow the natural course of things, keep to the contours of the land and, most importantly, show respect for our environment and all that sustains life on this planet.

 

Keep safe everyone, let's hope the rain stops soon and the water levels drop quickly. I realise that this little garden problem in Frugaldom is nowhere near as serious as events documented on the news, where towns are flooding, rivers are breaching water defences and landslides are closing roads, nor does it come remotely close to the devastation caused in foreign lands by tsunamis, earth quakes, tornadoes, droughts, epidemics or famines, but surely it comes some way to demonstrating how lucky we are that we have the ability to choose how we solve our own problems and lead our own lives. There are many millions of others can hope for nothing more than survival.

 

Cheers for now,

Frugaldom - with sand bags at the ready, just in case!