In my last message, I think I stated my income rather confusingly (so someone might have thought: wow! She made that much! In that case, I'm going to start a nursery now!) What I meant was that after I quit academics and devoted myself full-time to the nursery, I made under 10K in my first year, and the net crept upward over the next 12 years to around 72K last year. Like Robin, I happen to own and live on the land where the nurery is, water is cheap here, and (don't know Robin's situation here) my husband's job gives us health insurance. If I had to pay for the land and the insurance, I'd be netting a whole lot less. Ellen Ellen Hornig Seneca Hill Perennials 3712 County Route 57 Oswego NY 13126 USA http://www.senecahillperennials.com/ ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ellen Hornig" <hornig@earthlink.net> To: "Pacific Bulb Society" <pbs@lists.ibiblio.org> Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2010 9:13 AM Subject: Re: [pbs] MBAs and Small Specialty Nurseries > In the last couple of years, I've cleared around $70K - probably better > than I would have done if I'd stuck with teaching economics in a small > state college. However, I built up to that with years where I made in the > low, then the middle, tens of thousands, so overall I'm quite sure my > career as a nuyrseryperson has been less remunerative than continuing my > career as a professor of economics would have been.