How much can you make flower farming?

guys it's Bree here from Blossom and Branch Farm and today I'm actually inside because I wanted to talk to you about some numbers so I have gotten so many questions about flower farming and whether you can make money farming so today I wanted to answer those questions we're just going to dive in so if you're here it's probably because you like to Garden um you might like to Garden a lot and you may be thinking this might be something that I can make a living at so I want it to be totally transparent with you today about how much money we make on our less than two acre flower farm and how much of that goes into expenses and other things let's just go through numbers I'm not going to sugarcoat any of this at all these are literally all of my tax documents this is straight numbers my mom is an accountant she doesn't let me fudge anything so what you're getting here is 100 the truth so the total that we made last year and this is not including taxes expenses any of that stuff we made 107 170 and 82 cents so we're gonna break that down into a couple things now here at our farm we do a few different things we sell flowers we sell wedding flowers we sell workshops and occasionally we will do some Consulting and teaching and that kind of thing so when we're looking at these numbers these numbers are not just numbers from flowers and produce and that is something that's really important to remember if we were to back out this Services piece of our Revenue last year the services alone accounted for sixty two thousand dollars so the majority of the money that we made last year was actually from workshops classes coaching and education of other people our sales was around forty three thousand dollars that's flowers and produce wholesale and Retail but that's not money that we walked away with because Within These numbers we are not including things like my health insurance cost I also haven't included income taxes I haven't taken this income taxes out of these numbers because that's going to vary depending on where you are how much your spouse makes all of that fun stuff let's dive into expenses first so when we're looking at expenses here on the farm our biggest expense by far last year sorry it's traumatic my biggest expense by far is always seeds plants bulbs corns so that covers things like cover crop seeds specialty flower seeds like our lizanthus seeds that tend to be very expensive um any seed that we grow any plant that we grow sometimes we buy plants as cuttings so for example our lavender plants those are all patented varieties every year we're also having to repurchase some of these things so obviously seeds we try to save what we can but certain patented seeds we can't save there are also things like ranunculus corns that we are not allowed to save and regrow year over year because those are patented by the Italian renunculus company that grows them so we have to repurchase things like that every year now as we've been going with this journey of flower farming this number has gone down a little bit because we're growing a lot of perennials so as we invest in those perennials we don't have to repurchase them every year but there is a big upfront expense when we're buying these plants in because we have to buy so many for the most part we do grow from seed and even that gets expensive last year for our seeds bulbs and plants thirty four thousand two hundred and Seventeen dollars and 81 cents it's a lot of money I remember we're growing on a big space most of the things that we do buy we are buying wholesale but every once in a while there are things that I can't get wholesale or I want to support a local Nursery or I want to support a native nursery and so we'll buy native plants from places that don't offer wholesale prices so this number might be higher or lower depending on what you are growing you're growing all annuals from seed that number can be much lower our next highest expense that we're going to get into is going to be infrastructure infrastructure is one of those things that Azure farming is going to be a much bigger number up front and then as you go on in the years as you accumulate all of these materials and this infrastructure that you need that number should go down a little bit but bear in mind there's always maintenance on all of these things so when I'm looking at infrastructure I'm looking at a few things now because we do workshops out of our barn space we have to make sure that we're keeping that Barn maintained and safe and not rotting so we have to invest in things like a New Foundation we had to make sure drainage was good around the barn we had to do some fixes to the roof so there are are a lot of expenses that go into that infrastructure piece so things like irrigation tape drip tubing all the little end pieces for all that irrigation Frost fabric so we have Frost fabric on hand in case we get an earlier late Frost hail netting so we have horizontal netting the Hoops to hold up all of that hail netting and that Frost fabric so when we look at the total for the year on the infrastructure that is fifteen thousand one hundred and sixty eight dollars and 20 cents coming in at number three is what I kind of round up into General materials so things like vases rubber bands bouquet wraps um the paper that we used to wrap them in we have buckets uh Clippers sharpeners we use these little Eco wraps and they're compostable wraps for the ends of the stems so that they don't dehydrate as the customer takes them home so we have to factor those in now in addition to that Barn space maintenance costs we also have to think about things like tables and chairs and cups and plates and napkins and things like that because we do workshops business cards the cards that we stick into bouquets as we pass them out all of those things get rolled up into our materials cost and that materials cost is fairly high that one comes in at 8 82.63 our next biggest expense is water soil amendments we're including water into our soil and amendments category so water soil and amendments now we don't spend that much here because we make our own compost and we also do a lot of soil building with our regenerative practices so we try to not buy in a lot of soil but occasionally we do have to bring in some filtered or something to them nature and this also includes again those water irrigation costs so for the year for those expenses we're looking at two thousand six hundred and sixty two dollars and ten cents now remember I said soil amendments water we don't really use a lot of amendments or fertilizers here at the farm because we practice regeneratively if you do not practice the way that we do utilizing cover crops and manure that is grown here at the farm from our sheep then your input costs might be higher because you might be having to pay for fertilizer and depending on what kind of fertilizer you use may be expensive it may not depends on how you operate so that cost could go way up or it could be around where ours is education and business so when we're looking at things like websites marketing and membership on Zoom so that I can do Zoom meetings all of those things get rolled into my business expenses and also our insurance so even though we have a agritourism law that protects Farmers here in Colorado we have to have additional insurance for our flower business and so we have to roll that up into this business expense and this also includes any education that I do that total is 2548.36 so if we're totaling all of these numbers up we're looking at an expense total of 63 479 and 10 cents however here's a couple things that number does not include so that number does not include my employee so I have an employee named Savvy and she is my right hand gal I could do what I do without her but it would be really painful um she is not only a great shoulder for me to cry on and to sweat with and just company in the field because farming can be really lonely um she also is very very helpful she's been with me for four years so I don't have to tell her where anything is I can give her an instruction she just goes and does it very independent love savvy so Savvy cost me around so Savvy cost me around ten thousand dollars last year let's break that down into an hourly wage shall we if we were to run my hourly wage based just upon this without taking out my income taxes yet I am making an average of 10.58 cents an hour um I do this calculation based off the number of hours that I work on average a year now I don't track every hour that I work maybe I should but at the end of the day I don't have the energy to do that so I average it now during the growing season which is usually April through October I'm averaging around 60 hours a week some weeks I work more some weeks I work less it just totally depends on the week on the workload usually I get a little bit of a break in June right before the peonies are blooming now November into kind of march-ish I'm working less I'm still working because this is the off season is when I do a lot of the nitty-gritty stuff so marketing updating my website the other thing that we're doing a lot of is seed starting so I seed start almost all of my plants because I don't like to buy in a lot because it's expensive and B we don't know what we're getting but anyway I seed start a lot now I will say last year I bought a lot more plugs or little plants already pre-grown on than I am this year so this year I'm anticipating my costs are going to be lower on that seeds and Bulbs number um but last year I bought in quite a few plugs now I'm not doing that this year because I've learned that a lot of those plugs are treated with pesticides that I don't want in my soil and I don't want to be spreading around to my pollinators so that's why I'm starting more from seed that's also a little bit cheaper it's actually a lot cheaper but when we do the the way off of time so we have to calculate our time input my time savvy's time that's always going to be the most expensive thing so even though I'm saving some money by starting from seed I am spending more money because I am having to take that time to be out in the greenhouse starting seeds nurturing those seeds making sure they don't die now I personally enjoy that I love to serve from seed I like to be in the greenhouse I like to be working with my hands I I enjoy it but that for me is something that I enjoy not everyone is going to enjoy that so when we're looking at our labor hours for that off season when I'm not really in the field but I'm in the greenhouse and doing marketing and business stuff I'm usually looking at closer to 40 hours a week maybe a little bit less so we're going to say that I'm running around 960 hours total in off season so if I add both of those up that brings me to 2880 total hours for the year and if I am making thirty thousand dollars that's about 10.58 an hour I don't put this video out because I want to discourage anyone I don't want to discourage anyone and you know what you can live on this kind of money now to be fair I am in an urban suburban area in a High Cost of Living Space so I'm in Colorado our cost of living here near Denver is pretty high so that has pros and cons pros that I have quite a few clients and customers in this area who are willing to pay for really well-grown local flowers Khan is that it's expensive to operate here things are more expensive here in the city than they would be rurally our land was very expensive compared to what rural land would have been so there's a pro and a con to that Suburban space uh if you really feel the call to Market farm and to be outside and to be a regenerative farmer now there are people who make a lot more money doing this than I do because they're diversifying their income stream quite a bit so maybe they're doing airbnbs they're hosting people on their property everyone's situation is unique we have two young children I don't really want to have people on my property that I don't know um so Airbnb isn't really an option for us if I you know if I put in more time to this I would probably be able to make more money and if I hired someone else I'd be able to make more but for me this business is not about making money what I do is not about making money now at the end of the day it's it is nice to make some money for what you do obviously because that helps us pay for a lot of the things that we do here buying trees investing in our property investing in the pollinators investing in the ecosystem and then you know yeah it's nice to go on a vacation and every once in a while I'm not gonna lie I like to do those things too just like everyone else does but the money is not why I do this job it's not why I do regenerative agriculture and at the end of the day a lot of what I do is because I want to be able to take all of this to my home Farm in Minnesota that's 250 acres and be able to scale this up and talk about soil with a lot of knowledge and hands-on experience and to be able to say you know let's try this cover crop let's do this let's do that because I've been there and I've done that so a lot of this business is about experience for me it's not just about the money so I don't want to discourage you by saying I only make ten dollars an hour but that is a big piece of reality there's a million different ways you could go with this business you can do workshops you can do coaching you can do education and you know maybe you'll make more money doing that maybe you'll make more money if you just do weddings it all comes down to what works for you what works for your farm if you want to start farming but just be realistic I want you to have an idea of what all these numbers look like at least on our scale for us so that you can gauge appropriately whether it's something you want to try for yourself hi guys I hope this is helpful for you I'm sorry if it was dry I really wanted it to be exciting but I just wanted to give you the numbers that you can make some decisions for yourself all right y'all we'll see you next time for more fun in the garden and the greenhouse this is Bree from Blossom and French Farm hi guys

Channel: Regenerative Gardening with Blossom & Branch Farm

Views: 64,201

Keywords: farming, flower farm, flower farming, is farming profitable, make money farming, market gardening, farm startup, growing flowers, garden for a living, farm expenses, what does it cost to start a farm

Id: RWhyPyvc8dg

Length: 14min 29sec (869 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 24 2023