Take a look at some of the KCARD staff's favorite holiday recipes - such as Logan’s pumpkin roll! And don't forget to give the gift of local this holiday season.
Check out some favorite holiday recipes from the KCARD staff! Remember to also give the gift of local this holiday season.
Farming is a risky business with significant costs, and one of the most expensive mistakes is failing to plan or oversimplifying the transition of the farm. At its core, successful transition planning boils down to clear, honest communication and planning ahead. When communicating across generations, consider addressing key issues early to build mutual understanding and ensure a smoother transition.
A well-hosted class or workshop can be one of the more profitable (and fun!) ways to engage visitors on your farm and offer agritourism opportunities. However, they can be quite labor-intensive and require lots of planning and thoughtfulness. Check out these tips to get you started!
KCARD works specifically with farmers markets on a wide range of topics, including where to find funding, how to structure the market, and how to think of the farmers market as a business entity. In this post, Terryn Varney, KCARD Business Development Specialist who specializes in farmers market assistance, answers questions about how and when KCARD can help your farmers market.
Farmers and business owners often don’t pay themselves a consistent wage/salary for a number of reasons, although they are contributing a lot of sweat equity to the business. Check out this post to learn more about how and why you should consider paying yourself as the owner of the business.
Keeping records is VITAL to your business. It helps you measure your growth (or decline), see what is costing you the most, and give you an idea of how much money you have at a given time. A business owner must think about how they can best keep records to ensure the system will be useful. We’ve listed three types of systems you can choose from or blend together.
We have a saying in KCARD when we are looking at financial statements or projections that come into our shop – “Did you find the dead body in them?” This is our little way of referring to the situation where we see a financial statement and instantly know that something is not quite right. A lot of times it is not on purpose. Instead, it is often where someone makes a mistake as they are developing the statement that can lead to the financial reports being inaccurate and the business owner not truly understanding the past or future financial performance and health of their business.
In our blog post a few weeks ago, we took a look at how you develop initial revenue assumptions for a new business. In this post, let’s talk about an existing business and how we help that business develop financial projections. Why bother with developing projections? You know they are going to be wrong, right? Sure. Projections will almost certainly not be exactly correct because so many factors go into what will happen to reach a sales number or expense number.
To prepare financial projections for a new business, you have to be able to come up with a way to calculate expected revenue. I have had conversations with people who insist that there is no way to come up with such a number and really struggle with this. How do you calculate your expected revenue for the next year to three years?
When working with clients, KCARD often starts by looking at a current income statement (also called a Profit/Loss statement) that is in operation and helps develop a projected income statement for a new or expanded operation. This helps to show if the business is profitable now or will be profitable in the future. However, the cash flow statement is critical to understanding whether the business will be able to survive the initial startup stage or any downturns. This statement shows inflows and outflows of cash to or from the business. So what’s the difference between the two and how they are used?
The Kentucky Center for Agriculture and Rural Development is a non-profit organization established to facilitate agricultural and rural businesses in Kentucky. We are supported primarily through grants provided by the USDA Rural Cooperative Development Program and the Kentucky Agricultural Development Board. Additional support is provided through our work with partners around the state and through fees charged for select client services.
