Hello all my visitors, my name, as I said above, is Papa Joe. When I hatched the idea for this blog we were still awaiting our first grandchild, a boy, but time rolls on and now I am a full-fledged Grandpa named Papa Joe. So far the experience of being a grandparent is certainly matching up to the hype. But very soon little Cash will be making noise and “talking” and that is what I look forward to witnessing.
Let me give you a little background about myself and how much I love kids. First of all I was a kid many moons back and sometimes my wife and children wonder just how much I improved from that state as the years accumulated. But truly I enjoy children of all ages from everywhere because of their curiosity and particular take on the world. I even have been blessed on mission trips to interact with children in another country, Belize and take it from me, kids are kids no matter where you go.
I have digressed a bit from where I thought this initial post might go, so let me rebound to explain this why I am here post. From the title of my blog you know I have plans to retire in the near future. How near? Well that is the complicated part. Right now the major impediment is something called health insurance. I know that is a shocker, but the thought of having to pony up $15-20,000 per year to cover any health costs is a staggering thought.
So what is my theory of making retirement a real possibility? In my long hours of considering that question I have chased more than my fair share of rabbit trails. I considered a glass recycling business, but I could never get a good feel for how to generate a serious income with it. So living up to the job title I have carried for the last two decades plus of my working life, Project Improvement Analyst, I gave the problem a good old analysis and came up with a three-pronged plan.
Making hobbies into income
My wife likes to say I have lots of hobbies. I call them interests, but semantics aside it keeps a lot to maintain my attention. For instance I have been blogging on WordPress for almost ten years now. I also have written mutliple novel length books as well as participating in NaNoWriMo the annual exercise in November each year to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. If you are interested in the blogs I write for here they are:
Joe’s Musings – A general Topic blog and where the sojourn began
Chasing the Blooms – Devoted to my love of flowers which I will go deeper into shortly after this
Fiction Playground – Where the long form fiction writing is found
Living the Joy Prinicple – my faith based blog
I have have a smidgen of success monetizing my writing hobby. I originally began blogging on a platform called Hub Pages about four years before I started on WordPress and they have a $$ per view system that allowed me to pocket a few hundred dollars over the last decade. Yeah, I won’t be paying and insurance premium with that, so my writing hobby isn’t really the right vehicle for this purpose.
You remember I described it as a three-pronged plan, right. Well now you get to read about them individually.
ALPINE ACRES FLOWER FARM
To say I enjoy growing flowers is probably a seriously gross understatement. From about Mid-March to late October it is a full-fledged obsession and as a by-product of my motivation to solidify Alpine Acres Flower Farm as a solid first column of the retirement plan I am already laying out serious plans about what my strategy will be this year. Trust me growing flowers on the scale I am talking about can be an almost twelve month job, but it is one I thrive in.
There are two major flower types that carry the torch at AAFF. Sunflowers and Dahlias. You might think I chose Sunflowers because they are so trendy right now. By that I mean if you search instagram for anything with sunflower or sunflowers in it you can see they are an immensely popular flower. Possibly the greatest draw is sunflower photography. Years ago I purchased a photo of a sunflower field that I still have. Here are some photos I have captured that give you an idea of the appeal.
As I write this post it is Valentine’s Day 2021 and there is no sunflower bloom in sight for maybe at least another 80 days here in the mountains of Virginia, so these photos already stoke the interest I have in getting a plan together.
My plan for AAFF is to make it a destination for photographers, those who want their photograph taken and for those who want to come cut a bouquet of sunflowers. Ellie, a young woman from our church came to have senior pictures made in the sunflowers last summer. Here is a couple of those shots.
THE DAHLIA STORY
Something you don’t know about me is that I come from a long line of flower growing men in my family. YES, you read that right, flower growing men! Now my wife and I both are flower growers, but for three generations the men of my father’s family have grown dahlias and I am the benefactor of all that passion and sharing of knowledge.
When I began formulating a long term plan for Alpine Acres Flower Farm I knew the Dahlias would be a major component. At that time we had a small bed in a not so great location that needed to be re-positioned to provide better drainage and access to the sun dahlias crave and love. This will be the third year of the new dahlia garden that now boasts about seventy plants!
The past two seasons I have aggressively added to the collection of blooms, but this year I want to go a different direction. Of the three generations of growers, Including my Grandfather, two uncles, my dad and I only 1 uncle is left beside me. He is a retired Biology professor who has a garden with probably 200 varieties. My desire is to make cuttings of my uncle’s varities and get them to root and eventually plant them at AAFF.
There are several ways we use the dahlias. Primarily to cut bouquets for customers of my wife’s hair salon and to take to the local Farmer’s Market. This past market season was the first time I have set up regularly since I had my greenhouse business almost fifteen years ago.
Anyone trying to grow a business knows that marketing can be a challenge. Thankfully my dahlias and the sunflowers when I have them market themselves. As a matter of fact the dahlias brought me an unexpected order last fall. I got a call from someone I did not know who requested a custom bouquet as a surprise anniversary gift. I want to develop that side of the business, hopefully so that people will request bouquets through the summer and fall. Here is the bouquet we asembled.
If you are still with me I want to thank you. I recently had a heart procedure/surgery and exactly on week post-surgery My thinking is as clear as it has been in some time and I have a lot to say. Also since this is an introduction post I want to lay ou the full plan. There is more, so hang on a little bit longer.
PAPA JOE FLIPS
Prong two developed in large part due to the Coronavirus Pandemic. I ventured online into the world of TikTok for a brief time and it was crazy. But the crazy part for me was that all these people were growing a business online. Many are using crafting tools, such as the Cricut machines to accomplish this, including my youngest sister-in-law. With my retirement goal in mind I felt like there was some kind of opportunity like this for me.
I will skip forward tot he good stuff on this one. My wife and I enjoy going to yard sales, garage sales and estate sales. Coincidentally I was already buying and selling model railroad items on eBay (yes another hobby). However I had never considered the scope of items out there that could find a new home by way of eBay through all the sales we frequent.
The impetus for leaping full fledges into this idea was an item I picked up at an estate sale in August. It was a very rare Disney Lion King 12 piece figrue set. When I scanned the barcode on the packagfe with the eBay app I had trouble finding an exact match. What I didn;t realize immediately was that meant the item was rare and not listed. Rare on eBay usually equals valuable. That was true here and in less than a fortnite I nearly quadrupled my intial investment.
Now I am six months in and just opened an eBay Store called Papa Joe Flips. The Blue text is the link tot he store on eBay. I invite you to visit, shop and share with everyone you know that is looking for anything. In the store there is electronics, model railroad items, sporting goods, housewares and toys.
Things are kind of bland at the top but I have a logo and a custom drawn background for the right side coming that will spice things up quite a lot.
In the beginning things were kind of slow but steady I suppose. But as of this point, which is now Monday after valentine’s weekend 2021 I get to enjoy a pretty robust flow of sales to help accelerate the process of being ready to fund the insurance equation.
I have another partner in this process, a cousin who serves as an advisor and chief “listen to this” officer. I told him just yeasterday it might take me another two days to get this post published. I think now I may have oversot that target, so just know you are almost done!
PAPA JOE’s WHATNOTS
Prong three is a flea Market type space we have in a neighboring city. While I frequent all the sales looking for items I can easily ship to anywhere in the country or in fact the world, my wife is on a different hunt, for household items such as furniture, hanging art and other items of interest. This is the fifth month we have had our booth active and each month we have enjoyed enough success to perpetuate our business model.
Interestingly one of the stars of this prong is record albums. In fact in half of the time we have had our booth the record albums have covered our monthly rent on their own. We find the albums at sales and now they are in demand again many times by the current generation of music lovers who have rediscovered record players.
THE TIMELINE
Isn’t that always the question? When is the right time to make the separation? If I had the free ability to make that choice it would be today, Febraury 15, 2021. Alas i still have a few items to set in place before that can be reality. Interestingly when I retire it will allow me more time to work on the three prongs I feel are necessary to make retirement feasible now. My plan is to push really hard to make 2021 the last year I am in the ranks of the unretired. I invite you to join me in the coming weeks as I chronicle the journey here.
Papa Joe’s Retirement Journey 