A Snapshot of One Year’s Farmstead Expenses
I’ve heard it said multiple times that the only way to have 1 million dollars as a farmer is to start with 3 million. Spoiler alert…we do not have 1 million dollars! Let’s talk finances….how is our farm doing?
Keeping Track of Expenses
For all of 2022, we saved every farm related receipt and stuffed it in a desk drawer. Last weekend, I emptied the drawer and put each expense into a spreadsheet. Interested in learning what we spent?
We had a jaw-dropping total of $13,235.21 of farmstead expenses in 2022. That was significantly higher than we would have guessed. I consider James and I to be frugal with our money and we provide all of our own labor (for free), so where did all that money go? Let’s do a breakdown and see what some of our biggest expenses were.
Top 5 Farmstead Expenses for 2022
💵 $3483.08 for materials for our high tensile electric fence around approximately 2 acres. “To minimize the cost, we reused the wood posts that were already in place on 1 side of the pasture.
💵 $2065.00 for our goat herd breeding stock. We purchased 9 does/doelings and 2 bucks. Hopefully, in the next few years they will pay for themselves.
💵 $1345.29 for temporary fence. This includes step-in posts, polywire, reels, and Premier 1 electric nets. This is just the fence themselves and does not include any energizers. We’ve used temporary fence with chickens, pigs, and goats.
💵 $629.54 for poultry feed. We started 2022 with 6 chickens and at our highest number had 29 chickens and 13 ducks. Seeing this feed expense, we definitely need to re-exam our poultry flock and its purpose on our farm!
💵 $469.43 for a duck house. While we used second hand wood, we did buy new roofing and an automatic door. Animal shelters are not cheap!
What About Feed Costs?
While we keep hearing complaints about the cost of feed, feed was only 12% of our total expenses this year. We were actually surprised how small our feed costs were for our pigs and goats compared to our poultry. We’ve used rotational grazing for the pigs and goats and they had access to plentiful forage until about December. While moving the animals is time consuming, it definitely has reduced the feed bill.
What were some of your biggest farm expenses in 2022? If you knew then what you do now about the cost, would you still have spent that money?