Monday April 28, 2014

This weekend was really busy, but now I feel much more relaxed and ready for the week to start.  The highlights of my weekend were my one year anniversary with Will and my first ever dance competition, where we came away with two high gold medals.  All in all, it was a really nice weekend.

The best part about my weekend was finally getting some actual figures!  Captain Bill gave me the invoice from his order for Tabor's oyster farm, so I have been playing with the numbers a little.  Despite having the majority of the equipment come from Ketcham Traps, there were a few things that I still had to research, like ropes, chains, and buoys.  I mostly used West Marine, Lowes, and Home Depot, and Ace Hardware as my sources for prices.  It was fun looking at all the different options I had, but it was also pretty overwhelming since I didn't really know about what I was looking for.  (Honestly who knew there were so many options for different types of rope!)  For example, I was trying to figure out what sized buoy I needed to mark the four corners of my grant.  I knew I wanted buoys that would not be obnoxiously large or too small to see.  It took me a while, because I am really terrible at spatial relations and couldn't for the life of me figure out how large they were, but I finally settled on a 14.5" diameter buoy.

So this is what I was working on over the weekend.  It's a basic cost comparison of the two floating systems I was considering.  This cost comparison only includes the start-up equipment that I will need for my first year.  It does not account for any expansion in the next year, depreciation of products, inflation, or cost of running.  As you can see the floating mesh bag system is about 5,000 dollars cheaper, which is not that much of a difference.  Since there is not enough difference for on system to be ruled out as too exorbitant, I will have to take other factors into account.

So,  a Floating Cage System will last longer and depreciate slower then a Floating Mesh Bag System.  (Cages usually last 15-20 years.  Mesh bags last about 10 years.  However cages are much more expensive.)  Mesh bags are more easily accessed, which means more efficiency and less man power, which would be important especially towards the beginning of the business. 

Based on this information, I have decided that my farm will be using a Floating Mesh Bag System.  Which I can use the $49, 218.00 figure in my calculations for my start-up costs.