To answer your questions.

Is 6400 enough for 3 markets--that depends upon how large of markets you will be attending. 3 small markets, YES, 3 large markets, probably not. But since this is your first year, I would stick with the 6400 and try it. Your sales will not be as high this year, because people will need to learn to know you. Next year, you may want to expand.

Is $500 per month reasonable? Again, depending upon your markets. Smaller rural markets, possibly. Large metropolitan markets, you bet (I've done that in 1 large market, even 3-4x that during peak time) If you're talking sales, profit will be much less, but still possible---JUST DON"T COUNT ON IT!

I started as a hobby with the outlook of a future business. I have made LOTS of sales over the last 13 years, close to $300,000, of course profits are not near that. Main thing, be sure you enjoy both gardening and talking to people, if not, you will learn to hate your hobby.

Excited is one of the best things that you can have. Be sure to mention your 3 yr old and your philosophy about growing and her. It worked for me. Take her with her on some of the slower days, otherwise have some pics with her helping you in the garden. It makes you more personable.

Good luck

Marla

Thanks Marla. I think 2 of the markets are pretty small, both rural areas, the other may be larger, as it is in a college town. I do enjoy talking to people, I have pretty good people skills (I worked in retail for 7 years). I'll try taking your advise and bring him along to the market, especially since he is a really cute kid (I'm not biased, haha). And he is very photogenic and likes "helping" so taking pictures won't be a problem. This year I'm just going to do the garden for myself and family and see how well it does and if that is something I really want to invest in.

Your garden should provide (24) 4 foot by 50 foot beds with 2 foot walkways. Being your in a warmer zone than me
I dont know how cooler weather crops would fare. If for example:
you just planted lg. sweet onions,salad mix,tomatos,sweet bell peppers,cukes,pickling cukes,potatoes and beets,bush beans and green onions you could expect a fairly large yield and with sucession plantings could probably have enough to last 8-10 weeks at a medium pace market. As far as total sales I would expect close to $4000.00 or in a 10-12 week time frame around 350-400 per week. As far as total yield of the the examples I mentioned above I would expect around 2500 lbs. of produce.
Mark

3 markets a week and all you want to make is $500?! That is a lot for work for so little money. Is that profit or income? because there is a lot of stuff to buy: canopy, tables, sign, baskets, bins, bags, rubber bands etc not to mention seeds, and other planting needs.

My first year I did one market with a 10000 sq foot garden plus rhubarb, flowers and herbs outside of that. I had plenty for the 1 market. The problem I had was in being new I had a hard time selling everything I had and with only 1 market I just had that one chance a week. I put up a self serve table to sell through the extra but still threw a lot out. So my advice is to maybe do 2 markets or if you can do a self serve table start with that.

The market is way more work than you think before you start. it is like having a garage sale every week!

Specializing in a few crops like you mentioned is a good idea as long as the competition isn't going to kill you on those same items and also think about what weeks you would have them. If you have strawberries before any other crop is ready you will be going to market with only strawberries and maybe herbs and flowers. Carrots and onions are very popular and you might want to add those. I guess it is really important to see what is out there at the 3 markets before you make a decision.

Yes hopefully the 500 a month will be profit. I figured if I set a lower profit amount than I can be happy I made that and overjoyed if I make more. My goal is to make whatever I can. Again this is just a hobby so thankfully I don't have to live on it. I think I will add the carrots and onions. I was thinking of doing a variety of carrots ie:orange, red, purple kinds. I'm using this summer for research and see what everyone else is selling. I'm hoping next year with taxes to purchase a greenhouse. I'm also growing several types of heirloom vegetables this year for my family so I will be saving those seeds for next years plants, so that should help cut some costs. Thankfully I live/work on a ranch so I get free horse manure. I'm also using this year to slowly get the things I'll need next year like the canopy, tables, baskets, and other supplies. Thank you again everyone for being helpful.

$500 per month PROFIT, might be impossible for the first few years, if you taking into everything that it cost to start up. No matter what, you will need tables and other supplies.

My first year, we had 1/4 acre, more than what you're planning, and we did $1700 in SALES the first SEASON (6 months) I also did 1 year of research.

After a few years of barely making a profit, if that, THEN you should be able to make that $500 per month, but NOT until then. It's amazing how quickly the money goes out buying things for market, right Ajsmama? You'll figure this out the first Schedule F that you do.

This year, grow as much as you can, but don't expect to make much money. If you're going to do this, do it BECAUSE you ENJOY it. You may make money, but don't expect much for several years. By stressing over making SO much, WILL make you miserable (believe me, I know).

Learn to be happy with gathering knowledge, you will do this for years and years. Plus gathering with people that do the same thing as you do can be enjoyable by itself. It's so nice to find out that not only your tomatoes aren't doing good, but others are having the same problem. This has be reassuring to me in several areas.

Marla

Marla's right. Of course last year was a really bad year for weather/crops, I think I grew more in our small garden the year before (at least tomatoes and zucchini! Cukes were about the same, I had 3 plants that produced well and the picklers didn't do anything this year) than I did with the expanded garden and 200 row-ft of heirloom tomatoes (that all drowned in Irene).

But doing the schedule F (Marla's helping me) I found that while I only spent $45 on seeds, the starter pots and mix were over $200, drip hose was $150 plus $60 for rain barrels (my tomatoes were 1000ft from the house), deer fencing and bird netting added up, and I only sold $50 worth of veggies!

(We did have income from hay and berries, and jams/jellies, mostly berries but some pepper jelly).

BIG LOSS the first year, and I didn't even buy a table til Jan this year (borrowed one last year), or a shelter til the very last day of market (b/c it was threatening rain, it held off but as I was driving back to store to return it the skies opened and the box got soaked so I had to keep it - set it up in my basement to dry out and I'll use it this year).

Now, I'm hoping the weather is better this year and we all get good crops, but even if you can sell $500 and not $50 worth of stuff each month during maybe a 4-month season ( I don't know if you'll have stuff that long even if market is June-Sept), that's only $2000 and believe me, even without buying the pickup truck our first year expenses were over $1000. I spent $400 just on gas! $125 on market fees for ONE market, plus $50 for insurance certificate. I'm wondering if I can do 2 markets this year (Tues and Fri), that's $100 for certificates naming the markets as insured, plus our insurance went up over 10% even though we didn't make any claims (I just got the renewal, it doesn't break out how much is house and how much is farm, last year the farm liability was $105).

So let's say you can get liability insurance for $100 and your insurance company doesn't charge for certificates (some don't). If you find someone let me know LOL! We were getting a lot higher quotes from other companies that didn't charge per market for certificates.

But figure in your market fees for 3 markets, and all the gas you have to use to get to/from even if you don't use any/much ON the farm.

What are you doing for irrigation? Soaker hose and house water? Do you have a well? I watered the garden near the house from hose running across back yard, and only needed 1 month since June, August, and Sept were so wet, and I had no way of measuring how much electricity the well pump took but running a soaker hose a few hours a day can add up, esp. when your rates are as high as ours (I'm really going to have to try to figure it out for taxes - I did note in my farm journal which days I watered).

Marla's right, you have to love it. I enjoyed educating the consumers at market, and the comraderie with the other farmers (though some of use were in direct competition). But it can be an expensive hobby at this scale, do your reasearch (better than I did - when a spot came up at market I jumped though I wasn't planning on starting the farm then, it was already April and I just had the seeds started that *I* was planning to use). Maybe you just want to see if your town will let you put up a roadside stand, and if your homeowner's insurance allows it, and sell the "excess" from your "kitchen garden" before you get into it as a business? You may decide to do a market or 2 next year, or you may decide to just grow for yourself.

But "In for a dime, in for a dollar" I already started the business last year so I'm going to try to make a go of it for another couple of years until DH and the IRS tell me it's just an expensive hobby, not a business.

Oh, and something I'm doing NOW (wish I had done it a year ago) - setting up a spreadsheet with columns for each type of schedule F expense, so I can add items during the year and have the total for each category added up for the end of the year.

Going to input my old receipts now - Turbotax just wants you to enter 1 number, can't use equations like Excel does so I have to add everything up then put in final number - and of course when I categorized things the other day I didn't do it exactly the same as the IRS!

I'm hoping this doesn't get as expensive as my husband's hobby (tattooing). I tend to give him a lot of grief over how expensive his stuff is. I do have well water, and will be using drip lines. Thankfully I'm lucky because I don't have to pay my electic bill as utilities come with the house on the ranch we live/work on. I live about 7 miles outside of a very small town. We are pretty close to the Mendocino National Forest in CA, so we don't get much traffic outside of forest service and hunters when hunting season opens. I may try setting up something since there are also a couple of camp sites up there also. I'm not sure yet though. What is a Schedual F? Please forgive my ignorance. lol

Does he tattoo other people, or does he get tattooes? Yes, that could get expensive. My brother runs a tattoo parlor (his GF is the artist).

Schedule F is the Farm schedule for taxes. Don't think you're going to earn $500/month profit and not pay taxes LOL! I'm almost done with mine, big shock how much I spent on "Supplies"!

Your hubby should be filing a Schedule C (business) while you operating a "farm" business should file a Schedule F. Almost the same thing, just different terms on the schedule.

Yes don't forget that you will be paying taxes IF you have actual profit, it's amazing how little profit you will actually see for the first few years. Some years, I've reported $1 profit, just to be sure that I can continue as a business even if I really lost that $1.

Marla

He mostly tattoos me. lol. Though hopefully he will be starting in a shop soon. Ok from now on I'll start saving all my receipts. Since I'm hoping to buy my supplies slowly over this year for use next year do I still need to save the receipts and claim/report them for 2013 taxes? Can you file the Schedual F using Turbo Tax? I'm to cheap to go to H&R Block;) Learing so much here, thank you!

nico, I emailed you.

You do not need turbo or any other tax preparing software if you're half way good at math and can understand some of the tax questions. Of course, if you make a mistake then it's your fault not theirs.

Marla

keep all receipts, gas, eating out, postage, clothing, electric (if you don't have two meters there is a way to figure out what the farm is using. For example we run 1 freezer and two commercial fridges plus heaters and lights for two farm buildings and tell the IRS that that takes 40% of our electric.), seeds, feed, supplies, vet care,

Also keep a record of mileage on all vehicles. this is easy to do, just keep a small notebook and pen in each vehicle and write down the date and the starting mileage on your odometer in the notebook for every trip that is farm use. At the end of the year add up the mileage and you have the number the IRS wants

the other thing you have to do is keep a record of income. What I have done for years is I write out sheets before farmers market that have everything on them that I bring to market. that means before going to market I bag, box or weigh out everything that is going to market. yes this takes a couple of hours but the result is you know exactly what you brought and exactly what you sold.

Sloppy book keeping means you are losing money and it really is not hard to keep records and receipts properly, you don't even need spread sheets.I don't use them because my husband does the taxes and does not do computers so we do it the old fashioned way with paper and pen, including all our farming records-and that is a good thing as i have lost HD's and have found all my back-up to be garbage and if it were not for the hard copy records of everything we would be in serious trouble with a loss of 15 years of records