Since you are in Michigan, but I have no clue how close to Detroit, it is my understanding that there is a higher population of Muslims in the area. Around me, goats are HUGE with Muslim's for food. There is a guy around here who trucks them in for the 2 major religious holidays they have a year where almost all practicing muslims buy and eat goats. The thing is though they (the muslim) has to slaughter it themselves and they are supposed to be fed a natural diet. My old neighbor (end of 2012) was Muslim and he said his family would pay around $400 per goat and that there were thousands of families lined up, literally waiting hours for their turn to "get their goat". It was about a 45 minute drive to the place that brought them all in. I think the average is 7 goats per acre if you want the goats to be able to browse for all the feed they need (you do have to supplement some feed/grain, but our 2 dairy goats eat 4 cups each combined per day and they are a larger midsize breed of lamanchas @ about 80lbs each). If you figure you could easily sell 20 goats @ $400 each twice a year, that would be $16k. We got a pair of goats last year for the later Ramadan feast for our old neighbor and he gladly came out and paid the above mentioned price. He told me to tell me how many goats we could raise total and he would have a buyer for each one twice a year...... Hispanics are big time into goat meat as well. I know there have been problems in our region with goats being stolen.
My other suggestion would be to find what you could raise for your family to eat off of that 4 acres. We actively grow as much as we can year round to supplement our table. Highly satisfying to have 90lbs of chicken in our freezer from 15 meat birds, 300 plus ears of corn, jars of jelly, salsa, beans, potatoes, etc. My wife is a stay at home mom though and spends a lot time out there though. We have computed it out to be around $200 during winter, and closer to $250 in the summer that we save a month on groceries. We can raise meat chickens for about $1.75 a lb (we sell them to friends for about $5 per lb for a whole bird). Corn for $3 a dozen. Eggs for $2 a dozen. We aren't raking in cash, but we easily cover the cost for animal feed and are far beyond our recouped costs for the seeds for the garden and diesel for the tractor. Plus when you start giving away jam's/jellies/canned good for birthday present or the like, it further lessens the impact on your wallet and is a low cost solution with that touch of boutiqueness (my wife's made up wording) to a person that they aren't mad you just got them a pair of socks or a tie
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To the chicken owners out there, $20 for a 50lb bag of food? We free range over about an acre (fenced in with our dairy goats) and have 14 chickens (13 layers, one rooster) We pay $11.95 for a bag of Nutrina layer feed, but we don't go through barely 50lbs in a month, they are constantly eating so many bugs, etc. We also throw all the table scraps out there; they are our garbage disposal.
So to the original poster, maybe the idea isn't how to make additional money to pay for what you need in life, but how to utilize the space you have to reduce how much you have to buy. It might come out the same to you in the end... unless you do the whole goat thing.
