Beyond Eggs: What It Really Takes to Keep a Farm in Business

I was on vacation not long ago, sitting with my husband, when I overheard someone lament after visiting a local farmers market: “There were hardly any vegetables! Just crafts and baked goods.”

Her words lingered in the air. She saw empty produce tables in October as a disappointment — as if farmers had failed to deliver what she expected. But what she didn’t see was the frost that had already settled into the fields, the hours of labor that went into coaxing one last harvest from tired soil, or the cost of keeping a greenhouse running past its natural season. What she didn’t see was the truth: in New England, October is no longer the growing season.

I turned to my husband and reminded him of how often customers used to walk into our farm store looking for strawberries or blueberries in October, and leave frustrated when I explained that they were long gone. Others would stop in faithfully every week — but only to buy eggs. They’d walk right past freezers full of pasture-raised chicken, pork, and rabbit, past jars of jam, loaves of fresh bread, dry goods, and crafts, straight to the egg cooler.

Eggs alone, they seemed to think, could keep a farm running.

But the reality of farming here in the Northeast is a patchwork of seasonality, economics, regulations, and land challenges that most people never see. It’s a story worth telling, because if we want farms to survive here, we need to understand what it really takes to keep one in business.

Seasonality and the Illusion of Abundance

Walk through a New England farmers market in July and you’ll see abundance everywhere: overflowing baskets of tomatoes, cucumbers stacked high, sweet corn in neat rows, blueberries and strawberries glistening under the sun. The air smells green and alive.

But by October, the frost has come. The days shorten, soil cools, pests change, and the fields begin to brown. Kale may cling to life, a few root vegetables can be pulled from the earth, but most crops are gone. To stretch beyond that natural limit, farmers need heated greenhouses, high tunnels, and artificial lighting — costly infrastructure that requires money, fuel, and labor.

The average frost date in New Hampshire is early October, and the growing season is just 120–150 days long depending on elevation. Compare that to California, where frost may not arrive until December, or Florida, where fields grow year-round. The expectations we carry into farmers markets here are sometimes borrowed from those other places.

Consumers may walk away disappointed when they don’t see strawberries in October. But disappointment doesn’t change the soil temperature, the frost line, or the limits of a short season. What it does do, though, is discourage farmers from even trying.

Eggs: The Gateway That Doesn’t Pay the Bills

Eggs are often the first thing a customer buys from a farm. They’re familiar, relatively affordable, and carry a reputation for being fresher than anything you’d find in a store. But from a farmer’s perspective, eggs rarely keep the lights on.

Feed makes up 50–70% of the cost of producing eggs. Small farmers don’t get discounts on grain; we pay almost the same per pound as the average consumer. In 2024, a 50-lb bag of layer pellets cost around $18–20 in New Hampshire. Multiply that across dozens or hundreds of hens, and the cost climbs quickly. Add bedding, utilities, housing repairs, predator losses, cartons, and labor, and the profit margin per dozen eggs shrinks to pennies.

Meanwhile, grocery stores often sell eggs below cost as “loss leaders” to draw in customers. They can afford to because they’re buying in bulk from massive operations and making up the difference elsewhere. A local farm can’t.

So when customers come faithfully to buy only eggs, week after week, they’re unknowingly asking the farmer to survive on one of the least profitable products in the barnyard. Eggs are an entry point — but they cannot be the backbone.

The Meat Math: Why $6 Chicken Isn’t $1.29

If eggs don’t cover costs, meat often does. But meat brings its own maze of challenges.

Take a pasture-raised chicken. By the time it reaches processing weight, the farmer has invested in feed, housing, fencing, predator protection, water systems, and daily labor. When that chicken goes to the butcher, the farmer pays processing fees that can run $5–7 per bird at USDA-inspected facilities. There are no bulk discounts for small farmers. We pay retail.

Once slaughtered, the carcass weight is less than the live weight. After cutting and packaging, the yield shrinks again. By the time the chicken is frozen and ready to sell, the farmer needs to charge $5–7 per pound just to break even.

Meanwhile, grocery store chicken — raised in vast barns with tens of thousands of birds, fed bulk grain at contract prices, processed in massive plants that run day and night — might sell for $1.29 per pound. That price isn’t the “true cost” of chicken; it’s the product of scale, subsidies, and a system designed for volume, not sustainability.

And then there are the regulations. When I sold meat at farmers markets, I was once told I had to log the temperature of my coolers every single hour — even though the law required my product to remain frozen solid. Imagine standing in a sunny parking lot, thermometer in hand, recording temperatures in between answering customer questions, handling cash, and keeping kids from running under your tent. The spirit of the law was food safety. The reality was a burden that small farmers often cannot bear.

The Red Tape of Selling Local Food

Selling food directly from a farm isn’t as simple as putting a sign at the end of the driveway. Each step forward brings new oversight.

• Unmanned farm stands face theft and vandalism. Once theft outweighs sales, farmers turn to manned stores.

• Farm stores require town permits. Zoning boards often classify them as retail businesses, not agriculture, triggering site plan reviews, parking requirements, fire code inspections, and sometimes public hearings.

• Weights and measures laws require certified scales for anything sold by weight, with annual state inspections.

• Food safety rules mandate proper labeling, refrigeration, sanitation, and sometimes specific packaging.

• Insurance companies raise liability premiums when a farm begins inviting customers on-site.

• Health inspectors may require logbooks for refrigeration, appliance inspections, or upgrades to meet retail code.

Every step is meant to protect the consumer — and many of them are important. But layered together, they form a mountain that a small farm must climb just to sell a dozen eggs or a pound of sausage directly to its community.

The Land Itself: Farming on Fractured Ground

Even if you could navigate the seasons, manage the feed bills, and survive the regulations, the land itself here in the Northeast poses another challenge.

Unlike the West, where wide open ranches stretch for miles, New England farmland is small, patchy, and shrinking. Between 2001 and 2016, the Northeast lost an average of 24 acres of farmland every day to development. Every hayfield that becomes a subdivision or a strip mall is land that will never graze cows or grow vegetables again.

Pasture-raised and free-range sound idyllic — and they are — but in practice, our land base limits how far we can go. Grass-fed beef requires grass, and here grass grows well for maybe five months a year. The rest of the time, animals eat hay or grain, which farmers must buy at full retail price. Free-range chickens scratch happily in summer, but when snow is three feet deep, they stay in the barn, eating grain that costs us the same as it costs you at the feed store.

We don’t get feed discounts. We don’t get special pricing at the butcher. And when land is carved into smaller and smaller parcels, fencing, rotating, and grazing become more expensive and less efficient.

The Divide Between Small and Large

The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that 88% of American farms are classified as small family farms — yet they produce less than 20% of the nation’s food. Most of the food comes from large, often corporate operations. Those operations buy grain in massive quantities, negotiate with processors, and receive subsidies designed for commodity crops like corn and soy.

Small farms don’t see those benefits. We navigate zoning boards, logbooks, and insurance hikes — all while trying to sell food at a price that competes with subsidized, mass-produced products on grocery store shelves.

It’s no wonder so many small farms close their doors each year.

Keeping Farming Alive in New England

So where does that leave us? For many, it leaves us tired. Farmers burn out. They sell their land. They quit the markets. They retreat to producing for themselves or their neighbors only.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Farming here can survive. It can even thrive. But only if the community understands what it really takes — and commits to supporting it.

It only takes a few steps:

• Buy from your local farmers directly — not just once a year, but regularly.

• Embrace seasonality. Don’t demand strawberries in October. Celebrate squash and root vegetables instead.

• Support the whole farm. Buy meats, jams, baked goods, and crafts — the products that make survival possible.

• Encourage farmers at markets, even if their tables look sparse. Your support helps them return.

• Advocate in your town. Work with planning and zoning boards to ensure ordinances support farms rather than hinder them.

• Stay educated. Ask farmers questions, learn about the real costs, and share that knowledge with friends and neighbors.

  
  

A Final Reflection

When I think back to that person’s comment — “There were hardly any vegetables!” — I wish I could have stopped them, taken them by the hand, and shown them the frost on the fields, the feed receipts on the counter, the butcher’s invoice, the zoning paperwork, the insurance bill.

I wish they could see the whole story, not just the empty produce tables.

Because farming here is hard. The land is limited, the weather unforgiving, the regulations heavy, and the margins thin. But farming here is also beautiful, essential, and worth preserving.

If we want it to survive in New England, we all have to play a role. We have to look beyond eggs. Beyond strawberries in October. Beyond the idea that farms exist simply to please us.

We have to buy from them, support them, and fight for them — because the future of farming here isn’t guaranteed. It’s a choice. And that choice belongs to all of us.