Newish to the game, my first Farm plan

[PhailRaptor]

Been playing for a bit, have now gotten to Fall Y3. Found the Planner tool, and now I'm falling down the rabbit hole. But I also have some questions...

First of all, the layout I've put together:
https://stardew.info/planner/27-clever-guinea-pigs-snuggled-merrily/

I just used the generic "crops", for the plants. Most of the sprinklers are Iridium, but a few are Quality to fill in the awkward gaps. Junimo huts do not overlap, but the one right below the Greenhouse is kind of wasting a fair amount of it's AoE. I can't place all the paths over parts of the "pretty" terrain, so it's a little broken along the top of the farm. 3 Deluxe Scarecrows, and some regular ones to fill in the gaps. Pine/Maple/Oak Trees are also placed pretty wonky in the planner, too -- I already have a number planted along the cliff to the north, and behind the Shipping Box near the Farmhouse.

Now, for the questions....

Do Junimos harvest from *everything*, or just plants? I have made a point of putting Bee Boxes on all the spaces the Junimos could reach but could not cleanly be watered by the Sprinklers, along with some Lightning Rods. But if that's not gonna work, I should probably change that.

Do Lightning Rods have an effective range, or do you just need 1 and that'll do it?

Anything special about Bee Boxes? Or do they just produce Honey at some point every day or 2?

Is a Slime Hutch "worth it"? I don't really see much on my Crafting menu that uses Slime, which would mean that Slime Eggs would be the only thing, which then makes.... Slime Mayo? Or does that not work? I don't know...

Any real benefit to the Mountain and Beach Obelisks? The Desert one is obvious -- up to 4 extra hours from skipping the bus, ignoring the (by this point paltry) fee, and the ability to easily go back and forth to the Desert multiple times in a day (with the Return Scepter from Krobus). But I don't really see the point of teleporting to the Beach or to Leah's and Demetrius' house.

Is that enough grazing space for a full Deluxe Coop and a full Deluxe Barn? Is that enough Silos to get through Winter and the first part of Spring for a full Coop and Barn? I suppose it varies based on what you're stocking both with, though... I've currently got White Chicken, a Brown Chicken, a Void Chicken, a Duck, and 2 Rabbits, alongside 2 Cows, 2 Goats, and 3 Pigs. Not sure what I want to do with the remaining spaces yet.

Should I keep the Fish Pond, or do something else with the space? I only just built my first a couple of days ago, it hasn't asked for anything yet to grow the population. Is Caviar worth it? I'll keep it at least long enough to get 1 Caviar for the Forgotten Bundle, but after that... I don't really care much for the entire fish and fishing thing in the game, honestly. (Which reminds me... I still need a Lingcod for Willy...)

I'm assuming a Deluxe Scarecrow is just a Rarecrow, right? I haven't encountered a craftable And the only place I've ever seen a reference to a Deluxe Scarecrow is the planner, so... *shrug?*

[Turtleswatter]

The questions I can answer are below:

Lightning rods - you only need 1 BUT if you don't have enough you will lose crops to lightning as once the rod has been struck all the other strikes have a chance to hit trees and plants.

Bee boxes - the honey can be turned into mead. Also if you plant a flower by them the honey is flavoured by the flower and increases the price. Different flowers have different economical effects.

Slime Hutch - they can be lucrative in that their eggs go for a good price. However I think they are mainly in the game for people to have fun breeding them. You know, trying to make different colours etc. The main benefit of the slime hutch in my opinion is to give you something to do end game.

Obelisks are a personal choice. Some people find the speed of walking too slow - even with the horse and prefer to port straight to where they want to go. If you are like that the obelisks save you having to make oodles of totems.

Grazing space looks fine to me. If you add more animals you will be able to tell if there's not enough space when they start eating the grass faster than it grows. Silo space. Winter is 28 days long therefore you need to be able to store 13 (the amount of animals you have) x 28, plus a bit extra for the grass to kick in early spring. That means the minimum you'd need is 364 slots. A silo is 148 iirc so you'd need 3 silos.

I think you're right about the scarecrows but only because I haven't come across anything that would make me doubt it.

Questions I can't answer:

Juminos
Fish Ponds

[TheCollector]

"I'm assuming a Deluxe Scarecrow is just a Rarecrow, right? I haven't encountered a craftable And the only place I've ever seen a reference to a Deluxe Scarecrow is the planner,"

No ... It is in the game ...

"The Deluxe Scarecrow is a craftable scarecrow that prevents crows from eating a player's crops. The player can obtain the recipe for a Deluxe Scarecrow only after obtaining all 8 rarecrows, which will trigger the "Z.C. Rarecrow Society" to send the player a letter containing the recipe the next day.

The Deluxe Scarecrow has double the radius (16) of that of a normal scarecrow (8)."

see
https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Stardew_Valley_Wiki
https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Deluxe_Scarecrow

[smeredith]

Junimos harvest normal farming plants and tea bushes that are in range. They do not harvest wild seeds (crafted from foragables). I do not know if they harvest fruit trees.

Lightning Rods, as said you will need multiples. Around 20 is enough to not take any crop or tree loss.

Any flower except Tulip is worth more as honey than mead. Blue Jazz comes out to the same price as mead. Wild Honey and Tulip Honey should be processed into mead to maximize profit. Honey is produced every 4 days.

The Beach and Mountain Obelisks can be used while on horseback. You cannot use the Return Scepter on horseback though, so you have to leave your horse behind or run back. Hopefully this changes or there is a call bell for your horse introduced in 1.5.

For fish ponds, they're passive money makers, but nothing extremely high. The highest value roe is Lava Eel (which are a nightmare to catch in the mines to get your first one). Lava Eel also occasionally gives Spicy Eel (useful for the Skiull Mines).
https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Fish_Pond#Produce lists what you can get from each type of fish, so you can decide if the rare drops are worth it.

The Deluxe Scarecrow has double the radius of a normal scarecrow. The recipe is obtained from collecting all 8 Rarecrows (one of which is in the Casino in the back of the Oasis). After collecting all 8, you'll receive the recipe in the mail the next day.

[TheCollector]

A general question : What is the purpose of your farm?

Earn money?
You earn 2-3 times more money by refining your crops using keg and jar, but for such a large farm you need hundreds of them which requires a large amount of wood, coal, iron and copper and oak raisin .. and you need some place to place them, allthough this can be done outside the farm area.
Once you have bought the valuable items like gold clock and the scepter and the obeliscs, there is no longer much use for money in the game and earning more money soon becomes pointless. This is a weakness of SV that it lacks longtime motivation after completing the community center and the achivements and earning ca 10-20 millions.
At some point it is usually more fun to just start a new farm.

Have a nice looking farm layout for roleplay?
In that case I would check some of the other players' farms for inspiration.
see the previews on https://upload.farm/ for examples.

[Stardustfire]

For the Lightning Rods: Each can attract one Lightning that woud go elsewhere otherwise (you see them bulging when they cought one) , and produce one battery at the next day. but they dont have a 100% chance to atract every lightning that comes, even if you have still "unused" ones. they only have a very high chance to attract the lightnings. my rule of thumb are 14-16 to get over very bad stormy days.

[Lunacy]

Random tip i learned from somewhere, you can put a grass starter in your animal pen then place a lightning rod over it. Then you got an untouchable grass generator until winter.
You can also use pretty much anything that isn't a fence as a fence, they won't decay and you can get uses out of them, such as chests, artisan machines, and lightning rods.

Also junimo huts gather any crops in a square 8-tiles out from the door, but they're slow and inefficient so they might not be able to gather all of it. Also do not block the entrance, or they cannot work (bottom left one)

6 Silos is also a bit overkill for only 2 animal buildings (i'd suggest a 3rd deluxe barn full of pigs) You only need 1008 hay for winter for 36 animals (36x28) then they can start eating outside on spring1 4 will provide just under 1000, 5 is fine.

I've also used multiple sheds to store kegs and preserves, one of them is exclusive for greenhouse produce. If you had 18 peach or pomegranates planted in the greenhouse as well you can make nearly 25k every 3 days off of jam.

Also if you ever decide to start using a horse for anything, vertical gaps (going up and down) need to be two spaces wide, gates can be 2-wide as well.

I poked around with it and if you want more fish ponds or a 2nd shed, you can move fish ponds to the grass, move the hutch to the right by 1, and put a 2nd shed next to the slime hutch.

[I Kinda Fail]

1. Junimos only harvest crops, including flowers, so if they're near your bee hives they need to be fenced in. I'm not sure if they'll grab forage you grow yourself, but I suspect it's anything on the ground with the + sign on it. They don't harvest fruit trees or lightning rods.

2. Lightning rods will cover your entire farm, with each rod = 1 lightning strike. So on a very stormy day, you'll potentially get 16ish (I think that's the max I've gotten) lightning strikes, and even on a non-stormy, rainy day, you can still get a few uncommon lightning strikes. They're fairly easy to put out of the way - put them along a cliff, or use them to fence in animals, or put them between tapper trees. I recommend having at least 15, but more than 20 is overkill.

3. Beehives produce honey, for profit. That's it. The wild honey can be used to make warp totems, but otherwise you should always use flowers.

4. Slime ranching has 3 primary uses. The more obvious ones is building a slime pen outdoors and raising purple slimes, to gather diamonds and iridium ore without having to enter the mines. The less obvious one is to unlock slime eggs as monster drops, and then convert the slime balls into slime eggs from the hutch and sell them for profit. (If you do this method, but have no interest in slime ranching, it's a passive buff to money made from combat; you can immediately destroy the slime hutch after the Marlin cutscene, if you want.) Finally, slime is needed for wild bait, a crafting recipe unlocked from befriending Linus. It gives a chance of catching double fish. For someone focused on farming, a slime hutch is wildly not worth it. But for someone who focuses on mining or fishing, it's a passive increase to your income. I think the slime hutch could use some buffs and/or upgrades, personally... like raising the capacity to 50 slimes, and letting us use sprinklers to refill their water bowls, and an auto-grabber to harvest the slime.

5. The mountain totem is pretty useless imo. It's right in the middle of everything, so instead of being close to something useful, it's equally far from everything. You can use the mountain totem to get an extra ~2 hours of fishing in at the lake, I guess... It'd be far, far more useful if the totem was up by the mines and guild, so it could be used as an easy way to sell your loot or access the mine carts. Alternatively, putting it at the train station to help those who want to catch a train, or harvest trees that have been planted there would be nice.

The beach totem is more of an endgame thing, I think. It can be used to check the beach for forage, I suppose, or get to an event in a hurry... but I imagine the main use would be for someone who lined the docks with crab pots.

6. Fish ponds are okay. Some of them can rival an average farming patch, but for the most part they're not great. A few ponds can be used as uncommon item farms, like omnigeodes from an octopus pond, or for farming cooking ingredients. (I have a row of corn and a row of blue jazz in my greenhouse, and a few fish ponds dedicated to sea cucumbers, so I can have lucky lunch every day.) A maxed out sturgeon pond can expect to get an average of 840g per day, or 33.6g per tile; you can do the math to figure out if that's worth it to you. (At 9-10 sturgeon, they have a 25% chance to produce 2 caviar per day.)

7. Deluxe scarecrows are unlocked from collecting all 8 rarecrows; they have double(?) the radius of a normal crow.

[Tristin]

Slime Hutch and Bee House are pretty much useless for profit. If you plan to get different slime colors in the hutch just for collection, forget about it, because witch will turn it all into black anyway.
However, you might find honey useful in the beginning to craft Warp Totem: Farm.

Warp Totem Beach could come in handy, since unlike mountain, there is no Traveling Cart there for shortcut. You'll likely be crafting Warp Totem: Farm until the late-end game until you are able to purchase it at Casino and then to buy Return Scepter

All Obelisks are useful, except for mountain. I've made Mountain Obelisk but rarely used it since Traveling Cart takes me closer to locations that I need to go to. Robin's Cabin is really not that far off from farm either if you take the north path of your farm riding horse.

For coop, barn, fish pond you just need one, unless you decide to take animal profiting path. Don't worry much about grazing land, just give them your attention and their heart will increase, giving you better chance for higher quality.

If you do plan to use kegs, you might want to adjust your plan for the farm.

Here's a my post 2 weeks ago in regarding crop->keg end-game setup.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/413150/discussions/0/1747896471393120592/

You are able to place kegs just about anywhere, usable long as NPCs don't run over it.

Here's my recent farm, almost coming to a finish. All crops are Ancient Fruit, so I'll be done with this game after a year or two unless I decide to get Red Cowboy Hat, Blue Cowboy Hat, and Garbage Hat
https://upload.farm/1J8Czx

I used https://mouseypounds.github.io/stardew-predictor/ to get predictions to make my job easier in many instances.

Also you might find this https://thorinair.github.io/Stardew-Profits/ useful for starter.

You want to buy strawberry seeds much as you can at Egg Festival in the first year.