Income Report: Farm Stand Peak Summer vs Dead of Winter

Everyone knows a farm stand is busier in July than in January. Fewer people know by how much, or which costs keep running when the tomatoes are gone. This income report puts one peak summer month and one dead-of-winter month side by side for the same small stand, line by line, with every price checked on October 14, 2026. Market vendors ride the same seasonal swing, and our breakdown of how much you can make selling at farmers markets runs those numbers across a full market year.

The stand in this report is a model, not a real family's ledger. We built it so you can swap in your own numbers, and every place we made a guess, we say so.

How Much Does a Farm Stand Make in July Compared to January?

In this model, the farm stand makes $2,695 in sales in July and $559 in January, so January brings in about 21% of July. After costs, the stand keeps $2,385.50 in July and $405.12 in January. January keeps a smaller share of each dollar because the hens eat the same amount of feed no matter how many people stop.

Here is the whole report in one table.

Scroll sideways to see every column.

Model built for this post on October 14, 2026. Prices and fees were loaded that day. Unit counts, the payment split and the hours are our assumptions for one family stand with 30 hens. "Kept" is before income tax and self-employment tax.

Three things jump out before we get into the details:

• Sales fall by four fifths. The stand sells $2,136 less in January than in July.
• Costs only fall by half. Feed for 30 hens is $111.92 in both months, so it eats 4% of July's sales and 20% of January's.
• The hourly pay holds up better than the total. Winter pays $20.51 an hour against $25.04, about a fifth less, or about half once the July jam hours and supplies are moved to the months that sell the jars ($15.55 against $29.03), while sales fall by four fifths.

What Kind of Stand Are These Numbers For?

These numbers are for a small self-serve stand, open 31 days in July and 15 in January, at the end of a driveway on a two-lane county road, run by one family with a large vegetable garden, 30 laying hens and a row of blackberry canes. Nobody staffs it. Customers pay into a locked cash box, scan a Venmo business QR code, or reserve eggs and produce ahead on an online storefront and pick them up at the stand.

This is a small part-time stand, not an orchard market with a store and a cooler room. If your stand is bigger, the dollar figures will be larger, and how deep the winter drop goes depends on your climate and what you can sell after the harvest.

What the model assumes, so you can change it:

• July 2026, open every day. That is 31 open days at the height of tomato season.
• January 2027, open Friday to Sunday. January 1, 2027 falls on a Friday, so that is 15 open days.
• 30 hens, two dozen eggs a week kept for the family. Everything else is for sale.
• Produce comes from the family's own garden. Seed, compost and water were paid for in spring, so they are not in July's cash costs (more on that below).
• No hired help. Every hour in the report is family time.

What Sold at the Stand in Peak Summer?

In July the stand sells $2,695 of six products, and slicing tomatoes are the biggest line at $960. Tomatoes of both kinds bring in $1,660, which is 62% of the month. Eggs, the product people most expect at a farm stand, are only $285 in July because the garden is doing the heavy lifting.

Slide the table to see each product's price anchor.

Unit counts are our model. Price anchors come from the Homegrown catalog pull and the BLS average price series, both loaded October 14, 2026. The tomato and squash bags are weighed at home on a kitchen scale before they go out, so the stand sells fixed bags, not loose produce by the pound.

How the money came in matters for fees later, so here is the split:

• Cash box: $1,345, about half the month.
• Venmo business payments: 80 payments totaling $810, about $10 each.
• Homegrown pre-orders picked up at the stand: 36 orders totaling $540, $15 each on average.

What Sold at the Stand in the Dead of Winter?

In January the stand sells $559 of four products, and only the eggs were produced that month. Eggs lead at $175, then potatoes dug and stored in the fall at $150, blackberry jam made in July at $144, and stored squash last at $90. That is the main thing to understand about a winter farm stand: it mostly sells things you grew, stored or made months earlier.

Swipe sideways to see where each winter price came from.

Unit counts are our model. The $3 squash matches the smallest butternut on Homegrown ($2.99) and sits under the $4.99 and $5.75 listings on purpose, because a self-serve winter stand moves stored squash at a round, low price. Prices loaded October 14, 2026.

Winter changes how people pay, too:

• Cash box: $224, about 40% of the month.
• Venmo business payments: 15 payments totaling $135.
• Homegrown pre-orders picked up at the stand: 16 orders totaling $200, 36% of January's sales, up from 20% in July. Fewer people drive by on a cold Saturday, so the regulars who reserve their eggs ahead carry a bigger share.

Why Do Hens Lay Fewer Eggs in Winter, and What Does It Cost the Stand?

Hens lay fewer eggs in winter mainly because laying follows day length, and many hens also molt, replacing their feathers, in early fall. University of Minnesota Extension names both causes, says hens need at least 12 to 14 hours of light each day to keep laying, and that a laying hen lays roughly six eggs a week and a 6-pound hen eats roughly 3 pounds of feed a week. Shorter January days push laying down, while the feed bill does not fall, and in a cold January it can rise.

Here is how that plays out for 30 hens:

• July: 30 hens at six eggs a week over 31 days is about 797 eggs, or 66 dozen. The family keeps about 9 dozen, and the stand sells 57.
• January: we assumed a light on a timer in the coop and four eggs per hen per week, which is about 531 eggs, or 44 dozen. The stand sells 35 dozen.
• Feed both months: 30 hens times 3 pounds a week over 31 days (about 4.4 weeks) is about 399 pounds, which is eight 50-pound bags of layer pellets at $13.99 each, or $111.92.

So eggs bring in $285 in July and $175 in January, against the same $111.92 of feed. In July the hens clear $173 over feed. In January they clear $63, and that is with the light on. University of Maine Extension also notes that hens eat more in cold weather to stay warm: a hen may take in up to 340 kilocalories a day in winter against 260 in summer, so a cold-climate January feed bill could run up to about 30% higher than our flat figure.

The federal egg safety rule is not the thing that limits a stand like this one. FDA's rule in 21 CFR 118.1 covers producers with 3,000 or more laying hens that do not sell all their eggs directly to consumers, and 30 hens is nowhere near that. Two federal rules do reach a 30-hen stand. 21 CFR 101.17(h) says the label of all shell eggs, sold in state or across state lines, must carry a boxed safe handling statement telling buyers to keep eggs refrigerated and cook them until the yolks are firm. 21 CFR 115.50 says shell eggs held for sale directly to consumers, in state or across state lines, must be stored and displayed at 45°F or colder. Your state can add its own rules on top, such as a license and labels, so verify your state's current rules and read our guide to farm stand permit requirements before you put a cooler of eggs by the road.

How Were the Stand's Prices Picked?

Most of the stand's prices sit above grocery store averages and inside the range other small sellers ask on Homegrown; cucumbers, at $1 each in a bundle of 3, sit below it. That is the usual spot for a farm stand: a little more than the supermarket because the food is fresher and local, and not so much that a driver keeps going.

We used two kinds of anchors. The Bureau of Labor Statistics average price series gives the national grocery price for eggs, tomatoes and potatoes each month. The Homegrown catalog gives what small vendors actually list.

Scroll right to compare the grocery price with the stand price.

BLS U.S. city average prices, series APU0000708111 (eggs), APU0000712311 (tomatoes) and APU0000712112 (potatoes), loaded October 14, 2026. January 2027 figures do not exist yet, so the January row uses January 2026.

Potatoes carry the smallest markup. Shoppers know what a 5-pound bag costs at the store, so a stand can only ask a little more. Eggs carry the biggest, because farm eggs feel like a different product to most buyers. For the full method behind egg prices, see our guide on how to price eggs at a farm stand.

That catalog snapshot was taken in October, as fresh produce season was ending. It still shows what farm stand vendors choose to list online: things that keep, like bread, jam, honey and eggs.

What Did Each Month Cost to Run?

The stand spends $309.50 in July and $153.88 in January. Feed is the biggest cost in both months, and in January it is 73% of everything the stand spends. July's bill also carries $88.96 of jam supplies that will not sell until fall and winter.

Swipe left to see both months' costs.

Supply prices checked on October 14, 2026: Nutrena layer pellets at Hatchet Farm, Stromberg's large blank egg cartons, WebstaurantStore pint baskets and kraft bags, Fillmore Container's Ball 8 oz jelly jars, Sure-Jell pectin on Kroger's product page, and sugar from the BLS average price series. The jam recipe is the National Center for Home Food Preservation's blackberry jam with powdered pectin (8 1/2 cups of sugar, about 11 or 12 half-pint jars a batch); we used 11 jars and King Arthur's weight of 198 grams per cup of sugar.

A few costs are missing from that table on purpose, and we list them in the section on what this model skipped. The short version: spring seed and compost, the coop light's electricity, and anything the stand loses to the honor system.

How Much Did Payment Fees Take at a Self-Serve Stand?

Payment fees took $49.85 in July and $14.67 in January, under 3% of sales in both months, because half the July money came through the cash box with no fee at all. Venmo's business rate is the cheapest per payment. An online checkout costs more per order, but it is the only kind of option here that also takes the order ahead of time.

Here is the full fee stack for each way this stand could take money, on the same $20 order.

Scroll sideways to see every option's full fee stack.

Checked on Venmo's fee page, Square's pricing page, Local Line's pricing page and Homegrown's signup page on October 14, 2026. Processing is figured on the $20 price. Venmo and the cash box take money but do not take orders ahead of time, keep a product list or track stock. Square's tap rate needs a card reader left out at the stand, which is a hard ask when nobody is there.

Two things in that table matter more for winter than for summer:

• A flat plan is a bigger share of a small month. Homegrown's $10 is 0.4% of July's sales and 1.8% of January's. Local Line's $87 would be 3.2% of July and 15.6% of January for a stand this size.
• Per-payment fees shrink with the month. Venmo and card processing only charge when money comes in, so a slow January costs less in fees, not more.

How Much Did the Stand Keep Each Month?

After every cash cost, the stand keeps $2,385.50 in July and $405.12 in January. Per open day, that is $76.95 in July and $27.01 in January, so a winter open day is worth about a third of a summer one.

Slide the table left to see January's column.

Model figures, October 14, 2026 prices. Kept is before income and self-employment tax, and before the spring garden costs and coop electricity that this cash view leaves out.

There is a second honest way to read January. The 18 jars of jam it sold cost about $1.91 each to make in July: $84.04 of the $88.96 went into the 44 filled jars, and the other $4.92 bought 4 empty jars still on the shelf. If you charge January for its share of those jars, $34.38, January keeps $370.74 instead of $405.12. If you take the jam supplies out of July, because they were really winter stock, July keeps $2,474.46. Count the 10 hours of jam making the same way and the hourly gap widens: January's share, about 4.1 hours, brings it to about $15.55 an hour, and July without any jam hours earns about $29.03.

How Many Hours Did Each Month Take?

July takes about 95 hours of family time and January about 20, so on the cash view January pays $20.51 an hour against July's $25.04. The stand is a lot less work in winter, not just a lot less money.

Scroll to the right for hours and pay per hour.

Hours are our estimates for one family, not measured. Your own first two weeks of a season, timed honestly, will beat any estimate here.

The hens are the one job that does not shrink. They need the same 15 minutes a day in January whether the stand is open or shut, which is why closing the stand for winter does not close the work.

Why Does July's Jam Show Up in January's Income?

July's jam shows up in January because winter stock has to be made while the fruit is ripe. The stand spends $88.96 on sugar, pectin and jars in July, makes 44 jars from its own blackberries, and sells 18 of them in January for $144. On a cash view, those January jars cost nothing that month, so they quietly make winter look better than it is.

This timing works the same way for every winter product on a small stand:

• Potatoes and squash are planted in spring, dug in fall and stored. January only pays for the bag.
• Jam and other preserves are made in summer. January only pays for the time it takes to put jars on the shelf.
• Eggs are the exception. The hens cost feed every single month.

Before you plan jam for a winter stand, check that your state lets you sell it there. Jam is usually a cottage food, meaning a low-risk food you can make in a home kitchen, and each state decides where cottage foods can be sold. In Minnesota, for example, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture says cottage foods can be sold from a stand at your home property if your local zoning allows it, and you must register with the department before you sell. The same page says cottage food ordered online must still be provided to the customer in person, so plan to be at the stand when a regular picks up jam or bread they reserved online. Other states draw the line in different places, so verify your state's current rules before the jars go out. Our list of value-added products for a farm stand covers more winter shelf ideas.

Let Winter Regulars Reserve Eggs Before They Drive Out

The hardest part of a January stand is that a regular drives ten minutes in the cold, finds an empty egg cooler, and does not come back. A pre-order page fixes that by letting people reserve eggs, potatoes and jam before they leave the house. Homegrown costs $10 per month billed annually ($12.50 billed monthly) with no percentage fees beyond 2.9% + $0.30 card processing, and your customers pick up at the stand on the days you set.

Here is how it fits a self-serve farm stand:

• Pickup at the stand on your schedule. You add the stand as a pickup location and set the days and hours, like Friday to Sunday in winter and every day in summer.
• Stock that counts itself down. Online orders update your quantities as they come in, and a low-stock alert tells you when eggs are running low.
• A QR code for the stand sign. A printable code sends drivers to your storefront so they can check what is in stock next time.
• A pause for the months you close. If you shut the stand for part of winter, you can pause the subscription, which takes your products down but keeps your account, messages and posts.

How it compares with what most stands use now:

• A cash box and Venmo cost little or nothing, but neither one takes an order ahead of time or tells a customer what is left. You will still want both at the stand.
• Square's free plan costs $0 a month for its basic tools and takes card payments, but its online orders cost 3.3% + 30¢ each on that plan, and its tap rate needs a reader at an unattended stand.
• Local Line is built for farms selling online and wholesale, at $87 a month billed annually, which would be about a fifth of everything this model's stand keeps in January.

What Homegrown does not do, so you know before you start. It does not take cash or tapped cards at the stand, so keep your cash box and Venmo code. It does not price by the pound yet, so you sell fixed bags or bunches, each with its own price. Customers create a Homegrown account to place their first order. It has no drops or countdown release feature. Your storefront is listed on the Homegrown marketplace, but plan on most orders coming from people you send to your own link. Card processing of 2.9% + $0.30 is paid by you, with no pass-through to the customer.

If January is the month your regulars give up on the empty cooler, set up a pickup page for your stand before the first frost, so the habit of reserving starts while summer traffic is still high.

Which Changes Move the Winter Number the Most?

Adding a winter product you can make in the kitchen moves January the most in this model, and of the changes that keep the stand open, turning off the coop light hurts it the most. Closing the stand for January is worse still: it does not save money, because the hens still eat.

Move the table sideways to see what January keeps after each change.

Bread line: $300 of sales, minus $30 of ingredients at $1.00 a loaf and $17.70 of card processing on 30 orders; bread bags not counted. The bread row also counts no time for mixing, shaping and baking the 30 loaves, so it does not compare hour for hour with the other rows. King Arthur's naturally leavened sourdough recipe uses 685 grams of flour plus 454 grams of ripe starter for two loaves, about 912 grams of flour if half the starter's weight is flour, or about 1 pound a loaf, which is $0.55 at the September 2026 BLS flour price; we rounded up to $1.00 for salt, whole wheat flour and starter feedings. The egg price change assumes the extra dollar comes in as cash. The light-off row assumes the 25 dozen not sold would have been cash sales, and saves their 25 cartons. Model figures, October 14, 2026.

Bread is a cottage food too, so the same state check applies. It can also turn a quiet winter stand into a weekly stop. On Homegrown, sourdough loaves at stores named with "farm stand" or "farmstand" run $8 to $15.

What Do Real Farm Stands Report About the Slow Season?

Real stands report a winter drop too, but how deep it goes depends on climate and on what they sell once fresh produce stops. One owner who published his numbers credits jams and jellies with holding up his winter weekends, and national data shows most farms that sell directly to consumers sell some processed or value-added products.

What the data and owner reports say:

• On-farm stores and stands are the biggest direct-to-consumer channel. In the USDA's 2020 Local Food Marketing Practices Survey, farms sold $2.9 billion directly to consumers, and on-farm stores or stands made up $1,231 million of it, more than twice farmers markets at $514 million.
• Most direct sellers sell something processed. The same survey found 75% of farms selling directly to consumers sold processed or value-added products, against 42% that sold fresh food. NASS counts bottled milk, cheese, meat, wine and jams in that processed group. Jam, bread and other kitchen-made products keep a stand stocked after the harvest ends.
• One Georgia fruit stand owner reported the seasonal drop in dollars. On the Side Hustle School podcast (episode 2406), he said a good peak-season month brought in about $2,000 every weekend, and that adding jams and jellies held winter weekends to about $1,500 on average. He also said he took several weekends off each year in the off season, and a Georgia winter is far milder than a Minnesota one.
• Our own year-round planning guide, an estimated model rather than one stand's books, agrees on January but shows a smaller drop. The year-round farm stand guide puts a typical January at $400 to $600 and July at $1,600 to $2,200, and says winter revenue is typically 30 to 50% of summer revenue. This model's January sits inside that range. Its July runs higher because it assumes a busy county road and a big garden, so its January comes to 21% of July, a wider gap than the guide's.

Which Costs Did This Model Skip?

This model counts the cash that moved in each month, so a few real costs are left out. Each one would lower the $2,385.50 July and $405.12 January figures, and you should add your own versions before you trust the totals.

The costs we did not count:

• Spring garden costs. Seed, transplants, compost, row cover and water were paid in March to May. Spread over the season, they belong partly to July.
• The electricity for the coop light and the egg fridge. Eggs held for sale have to stay at 45°F or colder, which on a July roadside means a powered fridge or a cooler kept on ice. A single bulb on a timer is small, but neither bill is zero.
• Carton labels. The blank cartons in the cost table do not carry the boxed safe handling statement that federal rules require on every carton of shell eggs, so budget for stickers or a stamp, plus any label your state adds.
• Losses at an unattended stand. Some produce leaves without money in the box, and some wilts before it sells. Our guide to farm stand theft and the honor system covers how stands keep that down.
• The stand itself. Lumber, a sign, a cooler and a lock box are one-time costs, not monthly ones.
• Taxes. "Kept" is before income tax and self-employment tax. A simple log of income and expenses makes tax time easier.
• Hens getting older. Laying drops as hens age, and replacing part of the flock costs money in some year.

None of these change the main finding. July pays for the year, and January mostly pays for the hens.

How Do You Track Your Own Stand's Two Seasons?

You can build this same report for your stand with one notebook and about 15 minutes a week. Pick one peak month and one slow month, and track the same things in both.

• Count what leaves the stand. Write down how many bags, pints and dozens you put out each morning and how many are left at night. The difference is what sold or walked away.
• Split the money by how it came in. Count the cash box, export your Venmo payments, and download your online orders. You need all three to know your real fee cost.
• Log feed by the bag. Write the date and price every time you open a new bag of feed. That one line tells you what your hens cost per month.
• Keep supply receipts in one envelope. Cartons, baskets, bags, jars, sugar and pectin go in the same place, marked with the month you bought them.
• Time two normal weeks. Use your phone's timer for restocking, picking, hens and money. Two honest weeks beat a season of guesses.
• Mark what was made earlier. When a winter jar or stored squash sells, note the month it was made or harvested, so you can see which summer work paid off in winter.
• Put the two months side by side. Sales, costs, kept, hours and kept per hour, just like the first table in this report.

This model's answer is simple: winter is worth opening for if summer already covers the costs that never stop, like hens, and if you have stored or kitchen-made products to sell. If you want help choosing what to grow and stock for each month, our seasonal farm stand planning guide goes month by month.

Once you know which weeks carry your year, give your regulars a way to reserve ahead so the busy weeks sell out on purpose and the slow weeks have orders waiting.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does a small farm stand make in summer?

In this income report, a small self-serve farm stand with a big garden and 30 hens sells $2,695 in July and keeps $2,385.50 after supplies, feed and payment fees. Stands on busier roads or with more products make more, and stands on quiet lanes make less. The best way to know your own number is to count one full summer month of sales and costs.

How much does a farm stand make in winter?

In the same model, the farm stand sells $559 in January while open Friday to Sunday and keeps $405.12. Most of that comes from eggs, stored potatoes and squash, and jam made the summer before. Turning the coop light off drops this model's January to $291.72 kept.

Are farm stands profitable?

A small farm stand can be profitable in summer by a wide margin, because the produce comes from your own garden and there is no booth fee. In this model, July keeps 89% of its sales and January keeps 72%. The weak spot is winter, when costs that never stop, like feed for laying hens, take a much bigger bite of a much smaller month.

Should I keep my farm stand open in winter?

Keep your farm stand open in winter if you have eggs, stored crops or kitchen-made products to sell and regulars who will come. In this model, closing for January would lose $121.92 in feed and the ordering plan with no sales, while staying open on weekends keeps $405.12. Winter takes about four fifths less work, mostly because there is nothing to pick.

Why do my hens lay fewer eggs in winter?

Hens lay fewer eggs in winter mainly because laying follows day length, and many hens also molt in early fall. University of Minnesota Extension says hens need at least 12 to 14 hours of light each day to keep laying, and January days are shorter than that in every U.S. state. A light on a timer in the coop can keep a farm stand flock laying through the slow season.

What sells at a farm stand in winter?

Eggs, stored potatoes and winter squash, jam and other preserves, bread and baked goods, and honey are the usual winter sellers at a farm stand. In the Homegrown catalog on October 14, 2026, stores with "farm stand" or "farmstand" in their name listed 74 baked goods and 13 pantry products among 94 listings, with no fresh vegetables. Check your state's cottage food rules before selling kitchen-made foods.

Related Reading

These five guides answer the next questions most stand owners ask after running their own summer and winter numbers:

• How to Make Your Farm Stand a Year-Round Operation covers winter weather protection, shorter hours, lighting and how to switch your product mix between seasons without losing regulars.
• What to Sell at a Farm Stand (And What to Leave Out) lists the products that move best at a roadside stand, including the ones that hold up for days in a self-serve cooler.
• How to Price Eggs at a Farm Stand walks through the egg price math in more detail, from feed cost per dozen to what nearby stands charge.
• How to Handle Shrinkage and Theft at a Self-Serve Farm Stand shows how unattended stands cut losses from the cash box and the shelves.
• How to Make Money in the Off-Season as a Food Vendor gives more off-season income ideas for market vendors whose markets close for winter.