I just sell to friends and neighbors for enough money to pay the monthly feed bill. I recently had to up the price by 25 cents, to $1.50 a carton, 'cause the feed cost went up. I have lots of folks saving their cartons for me, and they are just happy to be able to recycle and get cheap, fresh eggs. I started out telling folks that the price would go up if I had to buy cartons, so that got 'em motivated! When I first started trying to sell eggs, there didn't seem to be much of a market - lots of my neighbors have their own birds (and some of them give away their spare eggs). But word slowly spread, and now I have regular customers and no problem selling all I care to part with. I just started out carrying eggs with me when I went to community gatherings, the dentist's office, etc. For me, it seems it was just a matter of getting some people in the habit of buying from me, now they come and get them. One of my girlfriends has also cultivated a market for my eggs among her co-workers, so she takes all I've got if they start piling up at all! pam

Are you talking about full-size carts or miniatures, display size? Is the man a horsey kind of guy or just a mechanic? If not horsey, it might be hard to explain certain things that have to be figured in for the way horses go along. Locally in Michigan, the Michigan Horse Drawn Vehicle Association is a good contact point. They will have a booth at the Novi Horse Spectacular on Nov. 10-11-12. Should be a number of carriages and carts available to see and folks to talk with. They have a site: http://www.mhdva.com/ They cover most aspects of horse driving, know other contacts to connect with. Friendly bunch. We are members. Nationally, the Carriage Association of America has a lot of historical information available. More variety and fancier type carriages are common with them. Site: http://caaonline.com/ For people who drive, all kinds of horse driving with National coverage, the American Driving Society is real good. Site: http://www.americandrivingsociety.org/ A good angle to have him consider, would be refinishing and fixing old vehicles up. There is not much in good restoration in Michigan. Some Amish stuff down by the Ind. line area. Witmers is an Amish company in PA who sells all kinds of carriage parts that allow good repairs. Nice folks to work with, ship promptly. He would not have so much money tied up in inventory, though maybe equal in equipment to work on pieces-parts in repairs. I can look up the number, it is not handy at the moment. It just can be hard to make vehicles and then sell them. Lots of makers come and gone in the last years.

Are you wanting to start a business selling live bamboo? Cut bamboo poles? Or is the only option is to sell the removal rights to someone? I think your best bet is to search for bamboo farmers in your area, close by, to see if they wanted to harvest it. A long shot but they're the only ones I can think of who would have the know how and way of selling the product. I have no idea what kind of bamboo you have but you might not get much money, or any money, the harvester might even charge you. The savings would come from reduced removal cost. The value isn't so much in the standing bamboo, it's in a product. Creating that product is a serious investment.

Interesting thing I noticed about Home Depots around here is they have someone at the self-checkouts who come and want to scan/ring your stuff for you. Thought that was sort of an oxymoron. Debby_ab, you being in retail can appreciate what I've experienced. I've had a lot of retail experience over the years. Asking if there is anything else prompts people to get moving, promotes impulse sales, reminds if you forgot something and more. Anyone who gets upset about that should not be allowed in public. I've said for a long time that people should have to do some time serving in a retail setting and dealing with the public to understand what the employees go through day in and day out with the customer is always right attitude and snob attitudes. Shame on all of them. They think they're so much better than retail employees but they ain't better than anybody. In fact, they're much below. As far as I know all the Aldi stores use the coin system to help return carts. No, there's not a "charge" or a rental, it's simply a deposit. That's why I chuckle about what people will do for a quarter. And many of the stores with checkouts have people watching on monitors to cut down on customer theft at the self-checkouts. People try all sorts of things, from making a motion like they are scanning and drop it in the bag without actually scanning, item substitution, even putting different bar codes over the one on the item. The scale has cut down on that, but it's still out there. I too think the employees would be far more valuable on the floor keeping the store stocked, helping people find things, get more when they run out, answer questions and in general, serving the customers. While I understand the argument of a job is lost, streamlining a store's operation is essential for the store to be able to continue and for those people to even *have* a job. I often thought it was shameful to have just one person working a gas station/c-store at nights (or during the day for that matter) and subject them to robbery and more. I had nightmares that something would happen to one of my employees similar to what happened to Katie Poirer some years back. I'm so relieved to see that many places have changed their policy in this regard.