Who We Serve · Farms & Ranches

Find Out Which Part Of The Farm Actually Makes Money

Several enterprises, one set of books, and no way to tell which one is paying for the rest. That is the farm we meet most often, and it is why nine calls in ten start with profitability. It is also what decides whether there is anything worth handing to the next generation.

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$600K turnaround in one year at a century-old family dairy. Read how The Family Cow did it

The problem we see

Four Enterprises, One Set Of Books

You can see the whole operation. What you cannot see is which part of it is paying for the rest.

Cattle, hay, a farm store, some custom work. They share equipment, they share labor, and they share a QuickBooks file that was set up to file a tax return. On one P&L the business looks thin but survivable. Split apart, it is usually one enterprise carrying three, or three carrying one.

So the decisions get made on instinct. Which ground to plant, which line to expand, whether to take on the lease. You have good instincts, and they have got you this far. But instinct cannot tell you your cost per acre, per animal or per share, and by April it is too late to change what last year did.

"If I get hit by a bus, this whole thing stops. That's not a business. That's a job I own."

Something we hear, in some form, nearly every month.

Underneath all of it sits the question nobody raises at dinner. Whether the next generation wants it, whether they could run it, and whether the business is healthy enough to be worth handing over. That question gets easier the earlier you ask it, and it starts with the numbers rather than the lawyer.

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Is This Farm Profitable Enough To Hand Over?

Succession fails for financial reasons more often than family ones. Roughly three in ten farms make it from the first generation to the second, and fewer than four in a hundred reach the fourth. Six statements. Answer them the way you would if the family were not in the room.

Statement 1 of 6

There is a written succession plan, and more than one person has read it.

Where this usually begins

Three Ways In, Depending On What Hurts

Almost every farm engagement starts in one of these three places, and most start with the first. Whichever it is, the opening piece of work is deliberately small: enough to find out whether we are useful, and not a penny more.

Most common

Split the enterprises apart

Rebuild the chart of accounts so each enterprise stands on its own, with labor and overhead attributed where they actually go.

Accounting When a decision is stuck

Get the plan out of your head

A one-page plan with three moves, owners and dates. Budgets and pro formas a lender will accept, and pricing worked out by product.

Business consulting When the handoff is near

Structure the transfer

Model the buy-in, the retirement income and the debt, then bring in legal and estate people at the right moment rather than the last one.

Farm legacy

Farms we have worked inside

Four Farms, Four Different Problems

Four of the 700-plus farm and food businesses we have worked with, chosen because the problems are different rather than because the results are the biggest. Every quote is the client's own, from their published story, and names are used because they agreed to it.

Dairy · Accounting

$600K swing

Strong sales, $300,000 a year gone

Four generations, past a million in direct sales, and losing money. We rebuilt the chart of accounts and split the enterprises into separate companies.

“Your mission is dead in the water if it isn’t a profitable mission.”

Edwin Shank

Read the story Dairy · Succession

Father to son

A phased buy-in, and organic certification

We built the pro forma that proved the farm could support two generations, structured a seller-financed buy-in, and vetted the move to certified organic.

“Just having someone to start the succession planning process was invaluable.”

Matthew Byler

Read the story Poultry and row crops · Consulting

One wound down

Winding down the first thing he built

A $2.4M poultry purchase outgrew guesswork. We built a 13-week rolling cash flow, wound down the vegetable enterprise, and made the succession numbers work.

“Now Joseph owns a farm, I own a farm, and we farm together.”

Luke Howard, Owner

Read the story Farm and kitchen · Marketing

Farm to brand

A brand people actually notice

Turning a working farm and kitchen into something recognizable beyond the people already driving out to buy from it.

“The new branding makes people really curious to see what I’m selling.”

Wandy, Dragonfly Hill Farm & Kitchen

Read the story

Seven farm and food stories in total, across dairy, processing, row crops and retail. See all client stories

What the work looks like

Built Around Enterprises, Not A Template

A generic chart of accounts will reconcile perfectly and tell you nothing about a farm with four enterprises inside it. These are the differences that matter.

Class accounting by enterprise

Cattle separate from hay, separate from the farm store, separate from custom work, with subclasses underneath where you need them.
Accrual and inventory handled properly

Standing crops, feed on hand and animals on the ground are not cash in the bank, and the books should not pretend they are.
Labor tracked where it actually goes

Your largest controllable cost, attributed by enterprise and function rather than landing in one labor line.
A rolling cash flow you can see ahead in

Thirteen weeks out, week by week, so a problem arrives as a forecast rather than a surprise.