Last night I got the last of the farm stand receipts entered into Quickbooks and sent out statements to anyone who had a balance over their credits. The stack above is all of the farm stand receipts from 2021! If you think you owe us for farm stand purchases in 2021 check your email for a statement. If you don’t see one it’s probably because you don’t, but we’re happy to send you a full accounting if you’re not sure.
We ask for CSA share payment at the beginning of the season, and farm stand purchases payment at the end of the season. There are a few reasons this works for us. Many of our CSA members are able to pay for their CSA shares at the beginning of the season and this gives us cash up front to pay for seed, soil amendments, tools, and labor without having to worry about cash flow. Enough members are able to pay up front that it’s easy for us to offer payment plans for those members who can’t afford to pay in one big chunk at the beginning of the season, and those payments give us a little extra cash flow through the summer and fall. The farm stand purchases are a relatively small part of our total sales, less than 5%, but having that money come in at the end of the season allows us to cover the final labor expenses of the year and early seed purchases for the following year. In addition, it takes time to process payments so just doing that twice a year saves us a little time in the office. One other factor is that there is a very small per-payment charge for every electronic payment we receive. This is totally worth the convenience for both us, and our members, and we minimize this cost by limiting the number of total payments through the year.
I also wrapped up things in the field yesterday. A quick trip to the farm to shut down the water for winter, put away hoses and a few other items and that’s the end of 2021 in the field. The rest of the year will be spent finalizing the bookkeeping and making the planting plans for 2021. We’re not doing any kind of formal year end survey but if you had favorite veggies, or any other feedback that will help with tweaking our plans for 2021 now is a great time to drop us an email.
Cully Neighborhood Farm 