I've finally had time to get caught up on paperwork, so it's time to put forth those second quarter numbers. Rather than put forth reports for each quarter, I'm just doing a year-to-date report. You can find the Quarter 1 Report here.
Are costs are pretty much as expected. Pig Feed is our biggest costs, followed by turkey poults and the materials to build the turkey shelter. Pasture rent is also a big one. The food plots don't cost much, but they are the biggest time sink (see below).
No big surprise here. We've only brought in in cash from deposits thus far. Next quarter we'll get a big bump from pork sales and additional Thanksgiving Dinner Basket deposits. This underscores the challenge of cashflow on this (and any) farm. Most of our costs come in the first two quarters, and most of our income comes in the last two quarters. You need to have money saved up to cover that gap (although many farmers borrow, which is something we will never do).
Daily chores dominate the time spent on the farm. These consist of preparing feed for the animals, bringing that feed out to the pasture, feeding animals, and moving shelters and/or electric fencing. At 232 total hours, that works out to about an hour and twenty minutes of chores every day. The second biggest time sink is working the food plots. As I mentioned above, the tradeoff of a low cost for materials is a high labor requirement. Lots of soil prep, planting, weeding, and soon harvesting.
All in all, we've spent about $8700 so far this year, brought in a little less than $300, and worked 530 hours. If you're scoring at home, we're making -$15/hour! That's a bit of a silly calculation, though. Our goal for this year is still to come as close as possible to breaking even.
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