Insurance for Small Cut Flower Farmers. Do I need it? What are my options?? 

I always say, you are never too small to have an LLC ;-)

You’re right- every state is different. In NJ, we do have to pay sales tax for cut flowers and I plan to embed that in my prices. I use quickbooks for my business and it does a good job of tallying up how much I need to pay to the state on a quarterly basis but you could certainly do the calculation yourself. The tax is due 20 days after the quarter ends for us and I pay it online. Hope this helps!

@@bareflowerfarm thanks for the info. Thankfully cut flowers as direct sales from a farm are not taxed here in MD.

That’s a good question. I think it depends on 1) your insurance policy and 2) how you structure how you’re selling the soap and flower farm. For example, I sell soap too and keep my soap company under a different LLC. But that’s because it’s an established business of 9 years and it’s a very different business model (e-commerce). However, if you had a farm where you are also handmaking soap under the same brand, I really don’t see a reason why you couldn’t have it covered under the same policy assuming you bought a policy that covered both activities. I do buy separate insurance for my soap company under a soap guild and that is around $700 per year. Hope this helps!

@@bareflowerfarm Thanks. I really appreciate your advice.

I would say it depends and it depends primarily on your risk tolerance. If you don’t have employees, don’t have customers coming to your house for pick up, in my view there is less risk BUT it’s all dependent on what gives you peace of mind!

@@bareflowerfarm right now I’m doing a mix of growing some flowers in my apartment and some space in a backyard- I live in a big city so I was going to focus on selling through social media and I’m working on partnering with a local plant shop that doesn’t do flowers to act as the pickup spot, so no one would really be in my home? I’m just a nervous nelly I think lol.

So you main risk is less someone coming and tripping on ice- it’s more if someone has an allergic reaction or somehow their pet eats a poisonous flower. That being said, I would personally be OK with forming an LLC and making sure that if I’m selling anything toxic, it’s written/communicated to the customer. Based on my limited experience, I haven’t seen a ton of issues/lawsuits related to this. But if you’re a nervous nelly, then you may want to consider purchasing general liability insurance. The analogy I would give here is- you don’t live in a flood zone but there is a rare chance it may flood. Do you buy flood insurance? It’s up to you and your risk appetite!

@@bareflowerfarm those were my literal exact concerns! Lol, I have an old LLC I haven’t done anything with so I was planning on operating under that, I imagine for a limited first year operation that kind of insurance won’t be very much

It unfortunately only covers selling at a farmers market and no other location ☹️