I don't have much to add except this:

I'm on my second season of large gardening. I'm not sure what level of scale it takes to make it profitable. Every time I think I am going to have enough surplus to actually sell I either lose the crop, give away the perceived excess in trade, store it for winter, or give as gifts to friends and family. I try to be frugal but, at times, I am forced to buy something I need to make gardening easier/faster/better.

All of that tends to keep resetting my 'profit' calculations.

Fertilizer, spreader, seeds, irrigation pumps, water lines, water hoses, electric pumps, PTO systems, tractor repairs, tractor purchases, bug spray, more bug spray...

For example, I can harvest a gallon of pickles per day. Easily.

However, each needs to be picked, sorted, washed, sliced, packed. I will then need vinegar, salt, sugar, dill, tumeric, red pepper flake. Plus I will need a (cleaning, sanitizing) jar, new lid, band. Jars are about 1.00 each, plus the band and lid, call it 1.50 to 1.75 in each quart jar for spices and jar cost. This assumes the pickles themselves are 'free' with no costs associated.

At 1.00 per jar profit (sold at 2.50-3.50 per quart) I *might* make five, maybe ten, bucks per day on that gallon of pickles. Ten bucks per day? For an hour's work at minimum? That is not viable, to me.

I have alot of corn coming soon. I might look at selling some of it to the retailers at the local market. I've spent, at times, two hours per day dealing with irrigating the corn. If I sold 100 ears for 50 bucks...I might clear 1.50 per hour for my time.

None of those 'profit' figures even start to calculate property taxes, fuel, or other items I listed at the beginning, etc.

If I sat down and added it all up, I am growing the most expensive food I have ever eaten.

Keep in mind, I started close to zero. I owned the land and one tractor. I've purchased items used and on Craigslist for under market value. I still have yet to see any viable method for making this really pay for itself year to year. The more I scale up the more I am forced to admit that I can't do it all myself, and adding more to my garden makes me even more dependent upon rain.

Or, I could invest a thousand in some drip irrigation... See?

TRG

Raise oats, harvest, throw oats away, bale straw, sell for $6 a bale.

Your most prescient post to date.

TRG

Absolutely! You can't tell if you're making money if you don't know exactly what you're spending.

We started running our agricultural pursuits as a business this year but at our scale of production I won't be quitting my day job.

One thing I suggest is to separate the notion of "for profit" from "paying all the bills." IIRC, my accountant told me I need to show a profit 2 years out of 5 for the revenuers to look favorably on the idea that what we do is a genuine "business" and not a hobby. Another thing to think about is the difference between "profit" and "profitability." The former is just making more the you spent. The latter is having a large enough profit that it's worth continuing the venture.

+1.

We sell eggs currently, and are looking in to selling goat milk products (soap, ice cream, cheese, maybe milk....but it's more work). I don't expect we'll ever pull a profit. But it's something to do in spare time, and if SHTF, we've already got a regular food source.

pumpkin farms around here make bank with all the people coming in and buying pumpkins for halloween. They'll set up a petting area, hay ride, selling fall produce, pictures with/on creatures. You can go and have birthday parties there. They make more money from people visiting the farm, than any item that the farm actually grows and sells.

My grandmother told me once....I pity the FOOL that trys to make a living off this land.

This was the eye-opening part of my time at the overnight farmer's market. 'local' produce meant Hecho en Mexico. Fruits, vegetables, jams, jellies all came off of trucks and were sold to the unknowing.

TRG

Yeah, a pea farm half a mile from me was selling 'East Texas tomatoes, and water melons' in April.

Most people (myself previously included) have no idea of when a crop is available locally any more.

TRG

I set up a box with corn at my gate today. 1.00 per ear or 12 for 10.00

Sold 12 ears so far.

I live on a dead-end street with only neighbors for traffic. Not bad, I think.

TRG

I take it they have 10% over permits for harvest out there too?

Theres lots of ways to make a farm profitable, thats one reason agriculture is fascinating, there isnt really a wrong answer to too many questions. A friend of mine makes a full time living and employs some high school kids off a ~5 acre vegetable garden....lots of hard work though. He sells to specialty local restaurants, and has gotten to be part of a local growers co-op to broaden their market. I know grain farmers that run cattle on the untillable woods, I know farmers that have commercial hunting operations on the untillable parts, I know farmers that stay profitable by running a small trucking operation on the side, I know grain farmers that expanded into specialty tree farming on the side, I know farmers that bought equipment way too big for their farm so they could do lots of custom work ....theres thousands of stories like that all across this great fertile land.

Dont let anyone ever tell you there's "only one way" to farm, theres thousands of ways, and none of them are "wrong"