#Farming

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plucky surge
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How do I farm with villagers?

Once you’ve built fields and a Farm Shed, follow these steps to put your Farmers to work:

  • Provide tools: Farmers need Simple Bags/Bags to fertilise, Hoes to plough and Sickles/Scythes to harvest grain. Put these in the Resource Storage or Farm Shed chest.
  • Provide resources: they need 1 [Fertilizer](#1501928232692482119 message) for every field plot you have every season they’ll be sowing, and 1 [seed or grain](#1501928232692482119 message) for every plot you want them to sow. These also go in the Resource Storage or Farm Shed chest.
  • Define crops: for each field you have, open it up, and define what should be sown in each season – switch season with the top right tabs, select the Change Plant Type button, select a crop that is sown in the selected season, then drag it across the grid of your field. Do this for each season you’d like crops to be sown, for each field you have.
  • Add Farmers: in the Farm Shed you can add villagers like any other workplace, but there are no assignments. If you’ve done everything above, they’ll go to work.

Orchards work a little differently: you have to build, grub up and plant them yourself, Farmers will only harvest them once they’ve [matured](#1501928232692482119 message) – fruit trees in summer and hops plants in autumn

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Can I rotate fields & orchards?

No, fields and orchards are always oriented to the cardinal compass points: north, south, east and west. This is a limitation of the game’s engine, and won’t change.

If you’d like everything in your village to be ‘lined up’, use your compass and align your buildings to the cardinal compass points, so they’ll line up with your fields and orchards.

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Where do I get seeds/grain/orchard saplings?

For farming fields you’ll need 1 seed or grain for each field plot you want to sow each season. You can find them in containers around the map, but usually only a small amount. It’s far easier to buy them from a Resource or Farming [vendor](#1469283829415149630 message).

Once you plant and harvest a crop, you’ll get back more than enough seed or grain to plant again. You can sell what’s left over.

For orchards, you can also find apple, cherry, hops, pear and plum saplings around the map, but it’s easiest to buy them from a Resource or Farming [vendor](#1469283829415149630 message). You only need one per orchard plot, and once they’re planted you’ll never need them again. Note you can’t cut saplings from mature trees.

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Where do I get Fertilizer?

For farming fields you’ll need 1 Fertilizer for each field plot you want to sow each season. Early game you have a few options:

  • Buy Fertilizer from a Resource or Farming [vendor](#1469283829415149630 message).
  • Buy Manure from a Resource or Farming vendor, and make Fertilizer at the table in the Barn. 2 Manure makes 1 Fertilizer.
  • Collect Berries from bushes around the map in spring or summer, or Mushrooms in Spring and Autumn, drop them on the ground in your village, and next season they will have turned into Rot. You can then make Fertilizer with it at the table in the Barn. 10 Rot makes 1 Fertilizer.

Once you’ve got fields and animal buildings, it becomes easier:

  • A Pigsty with pigs in it produces Manure, and a worker can be assigned to gather it automatically. You can then make Fertilizer with it, or assign a Barn worker to do it and fully automate Fertilizer production.
  • Manure also appears on the ground in the Pigsty and other animal buildings. You can collect it by hand. This is entirely optional and is separate from the manure a worker ‘produces.’
  • If you’re growing Cabbage, it’s good for Rot – 4 per Cabbage – so you can do the same as with the Berries above.

Note that if you have turned on the option in Customise game that keeps dropped items from rotting, you can build the Compost Bin and put food in it to generate rot.

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What crops/orchards should I plant?

There are many options, but a good concept to understand is crop rotation, or growing different crops in the same field in different seasons.

A standard rotation is flax/cabbage/rye: sow flax in spring, harvest flax and sow cabbage in summer, and harvest cabbage and sow rye in autumn, then harvest rye in spring and start again. This keeps one field as busy as possible, and produces a lot for you: flax makes linen which can be sewn into valuable clothes, cabbage can feed your villagers or be left to rot to make Fertilizer, and rye can be cooked or ground into Flour for baking for food or profit.

Another typical rotation is oats/rye, which are needed to make Animal Feed - sow oats in spring, harvest oats and sow rye in autumn, harvest rye in spring and start again.

Orchards grow either fruit – apples, cherries, pears and plums – or hops. Fruit trees take 12 seasons to [fully mature](#1501928232692482119 message) and yield the maximum fruit, so planting them early can be an advantage.

Fruit can be eaten, fed to your villagers, cooked, or used to make juices and wines in the Tavern, a late game building. Cherry and plum wines are especially popular for their effects when the player drinks them.

Hops is only used to brew beer in the Tavern, and in a few potions, and it matures in 1 season, so there’s not much point in planting it early game.

This chart shows when all crops are sown, are growing, and can be harvested:

CropChart.png
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How big should my fields be?

Fields can be any size you want, from 1x1 to 16x16, but due to how Farmers work on fields, huge fields are less efficient than smaller fields. So instead of one 16x16 field, it’s recommended to for example have five 5x10 fields. As long as they’re all close together, Farmers will finish them all faster than the one huge field. A rough rule of thumb for efficient fields is no larger than about 50 plots.

As a rough rule of thumb, which depends on many things so may vary, is that one farmer will get 25 plots done – harvest, fertilise, plough and sow – in one day.

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Can I prioritise fields, or tell Farmers to not work on a field?

No, Farmers assigned to the Farm Shed will first harvest all orchards and fields everywhere, then they’ll fertilise, plough and sow every field that has [crops defined](#1501928232692482119 message).

If you’d prefer to harvest yourself, especially if you have the ‘Careful Farmer’ perk which gives you more yield when you harvest, you can make sure there are no sickles or scythes in the Resource Storage or Farm Shed chest, which makes it impossible for Farmers to harvest grain, but they will still harvest orchards and vegetables in fields.

If you want to harvest everything yourself you can kick everyone out of the Farm Shed on the first day of the season, harvest, then put your Farmers back in the Farm Shed when you’re done.

Note that building a fence around a field will not keep Farmers from working it – they’ll either work through the fence if it’s close to the field, or teleport inside it and work as usual.