# farm and/or soap... separate or together?



## jdranch (Jan 31, 2010)

This morning's pillow talk was about how to categorize/ organize our farm and soap *interests*. Do you keep a separate farm *business* from your soap *business* or do you keep them together? Are either benefits or drawbacks to either?

Right now, I use all our milk to soap. The only other thing besides milk produced is kids (from goats)


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## eam (Aug 22, 2010)

Jennifer - we keep all our farm stuff separate from each other. We have a small meat csa where we sell chickens, turkeys, lamb, and pork on a share basis (the customer buys either a full share or a half share). We also sell chickens, turkeys, kids, eggs, a little milk, and soap products. Each item we sell has it own expense/income sheet (actually it's own separate tab in an excel spreadsheet). Then we roll up all the various products into a master farm spreadsheet. That way we can figure out which part of the business makes money/breaks even/loses money and we can adjust our prices accordingly. We also know how the farm is doing as a whole. For instance, we know that lamb, while we sell every lamb we have (and could sell more), we tend to lose money because of the cost of winter hay and keeping breeding stock year-round. But, we tend to do pretty well with turkeys. So, even though one aspect might not be a big money-maker, something else might take up the slack. We can decide which way to focus our business.

This actually is one thing that we're pretty good with and keep pretty good records on so I'm happy to help if I can.
HTH.
Elizabeth


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## jimandpj (Mar 11, 2008)

It's all grouped together here. Our goats are a part of the soap business and are actually counted as part of our COGS. Any goats we sell are counted as income and differentiated the way we differentiate bar soaps from liquid soaps from bath bombs. I don't know if that helps or not. 

I don't think there is a right or wrong way to do it - you just need to be able to get to the information if you (or your accountant) wants to know something. At least that is how it has worked for us so far. My accountant depreciates the goats we have purchased so I have to tell him by name who has been sold each year. 

PJ


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## Faye Farms (Sep 14, 2009)

I have everything grouped together to. The soap just counts as another farm product.


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## LynninTX (Oct 25, 2007)

Ours is separate. My dh does the taxes and they started separate because I was not making soap at the time we started Gifts From Our Hands... I asked about combining them now, but he said no since GFOH also has the candles, knitting, gift baskets, sewing, and well lots of other things... 

So we file as 3 separate businesses - Farm, GFOH, and his pool cleaning.


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## LynninTX (Oct 25, 2007)

Oh and even though our farm shares a market booth with GFOH... the records are recorded separately.


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## Aja-Sammati (Oct 26, 2007)

Separate. The goats are the farm and the soap is my self employed small business. My soap makes a profit, the farm doesn't always...fluctuating feed prices and mileage kill me.

Editing to add- Even buying my milk for soap at actual production cost doesn't earn the goats enough money, btw! I was shocked...it is because 1 gallon of milk makes so much profit as soap :? A mixed blessing!


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

Together although I do keep seperate books for goats, and soap company for myself. But then I am one of those anal folks who also knows who is pulling her weight and who is not out at the barn (saleable milk, saleable kids etc...) Vicki


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## Aja-Sammati (Oct 26, 2007)

> saleable milk


 That would make a completely different story!


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## Kalne (Oct 25, 2007)

Ours is all together.


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## jdranch (Jan 31, 2010)

thanks for all the replies!


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