Did a little digging over the weekend and found some very interesting information. I had mentioned awhile back that my parents agreed to let me take half the basement in their house. I started looking up some of the regulations for their area and found a nice surprise.
The property they own used to be part of a farm (Gustafsons Farm in Watertown CT) over a century ago. The farm still exists, but part of it was sold off to developers 25-30 years ago and was turned into two dozen relatively large and private pieces of property. My parents are on one of those pieces of property. Their property is zoned as farmland, and owners of land in such zoning, by right, can commercially farm and build whatever structures are needed to operate said farm. They also have the right to sell to market from their property. This might be even be possible without permits, but the zoning documents I read weren't completely clear on that, so I'm going to have to contact the town.
Anyway, my father is ready for retirement. His company offered him a nice sum of money to stay on for an additional year, but after that, he's going to need something to keep him busy. He's always talked about becoming a part time consultant doing what he does now, but I've got him seriously considering this as a possible/viable business endeavour. I spent the better part of Sunday doing math, modelling, creating floor plans, and making graphs and potential projections based on a wide array of variables. I've begun putting together an official business plan.