Start farming

Goal: grow a crop on a field and have produce in hand to sell.

1. Pick flat ground. You can farm the river meadow (A8, B8 and C8, except the landing at B8) or any cleared parcel that is not steep. Steep parcels say “Too steep to farm.”

2. Click the parcel, then click Break ground for a field (1 crew-day and 150 bd ft). The panel now reads “Plowed, nothing planted” and shows soil at 100% fertile.

3. Choose a crop. Each button gives the seed cost, the growing time and today’s price:

   Crop	Seed	Ready in	Yield	Soil effect
   Hay	30	3 hours	4 tons	restores 15%
   Oats	40	4 hours	6 sacks	uses 8%
   Potatoes	60	6 hours	10 sacks	uses 12%
   Wheat	50	8 hours	8 sacks	uses 12%
   Apple orchard	300	24 hours, then every 8	10 crates	none

4. Wait for the crop. The panel shows “ready in” and a progress bar. With No waiting on, Grow timber 12 hours also moves fields forward.

5. Click the parcel again when it says “ready to harvest” and click Harvest (1 crew-day). The produce goes into your store, not your lumber. Sell it in sell produce at the mercantile.

6. Plant the field again, or click Let it go back to stump land to give the parcel up for free.

Your yield is the base yield multiplied by soil fertility, so a field at 88% gives 7 sacks of wheat instead of 8. Fertility never drops below 40%. Wheat and potatoes drain the soil by 12% a harvest and hay gives back 15%, so alternate them. In one test a wheat harvest left the soil at 88%, and a hay crop after it brought it back to 100%.

An apple orchard bears after 24 hours, then again every 8 hours without replanting, and does not wear the soil.

What can go wrong

Seed is paid in lumber at planting. A claim with no lumber cannot start farming. Plowing alone takes 150 bd ft.

Harvesting takes a crew-day. With No waiting off, crew-days are shared with cutting.

Fields do not count toward the deed. Farm income is separate from timber.

Rules and numbers: farming and the mercantile.