Blue Earth County, MN Home Business: Zoning & Home Occupation Permits (2026)

Section 24-326 of the Blue Earth County Code conditionally permits home occupations as accessory uses in the county's zoning districts. A Level I home occupation must be conducted entirely inside the dwelling, carried on by the inhabitants with no more than three outside employees, kept clearly incidental and secondary to the dwelling's residential use, and held to 1,000 square feet of floor space; it cannot include internal combustion engine repair beyond small engines, body shops, machine shops, welding or ammunition manufacturing. A Level II home occupation operates from the dwelling or an accessory building, employs up to six people beyond the inhabitants, and is capped at 10,000 square feet, except that an outdoor-storage home occupation is instead limited to four acres with associated operations held to 10,000 square feet; junkyards and scrapyards remain prohibited under subsection (b)(4).

Both levels must begin no earlier than 8:00 a.m. and end no later than 5:00 p.m., with additional hours needing planning commission review and county board approval, and both require an application under subsection (f) with a site plan showing wells, septic systems, driveways and floodplain boundaries. Outdoor-storage home occupations existing on January 1, 2025 must obtain an interim use permit within one year under Minn. Stats. § 394.36 subd. 2.