Summer Rose, my very best return on time and investment are my fruit trees. They are fairly inexpensive to purchase. They do require careful and precise care, but it does not take a lot of hours. The fruit crop is valuable and can be sold or bartered; fresh fruit is great to barter with because everybody wants it.
I plant the mid-size trees and pick fruit with a fruit pole. I need the larger root system for anchorage from my heavy winds. But you can plant dwarf fruit trees and never have to get on a ladder to care for them or to pick fruit. Also, serious commercial fruit growers plant the smallest dwarfs and train them to grow on trellises like grapes. That makes for easy care and easy harvest and the trellis prevents wind damage.
If you are getting a dozen eggs a day, you probably have too many chickens. I'm not suggesting you get rid of pets, but rather that you be cautious about adding any more.
I added up all my expenses for the duck eggs and they cost me about $4 a dozen to produce. You have to add in the cost of chicks, brooding, raising before they lay, the time in the winter when they don't lay, and even the cost of keeping the old pets who have stopped laying but have not stopped eating. By selling purebred quality hatching eggs, I can get over $4 a dozen. I know that some people are able to get $4 a dozen for eating eggs. But unless you can sell eggs for more than your total cost, all you are doing is paying part of someone else's grocery bill, which increases the cost of every dozen eggs that you keep for yourself.
Thus I say: be very truthful with yourself about what the eggs cost and if they can't be sold for a nice profit, keep the numbers down to what you can use for yourself and maybe the occasional gift.
