How to use the farm/fields!

A guide to show you how fields/farm work.

.

first some important informations...

• english is not my native language but i hope its good enough for you :)
  
  
• it's for version 0.3.0.3.
  possibly only accessible on the test server and a few days later to everyone
  
  
• at the moment there is no need to store tools for the workers, but should change someday
  
  
• the level of the field workers seems to have no effect so far, tested workers with skill of 2, 4 and 6 on equal fields of the same size and let they manure, plowing and sowing at the same time and they were equally fast ...

Create and prepare fields...

When suitable position for a field has been found, you can press the Q key to go to the construction menu . There you go to the tab " Buildings " and then to " Agriculture ".
Left click on " field ". Now you look in front of the one vertical bar , which will be a corner point of your field. As soon as you place it you will see a green frame in front of you. This shows you the current size of the field. By moving you can change the size of the field. If you have reached the desired size, you confirm the creation of the field with a left click.

The green frame now disappears and is replaced by wooden sticks, which initially show the boundaries of the field. Now it has to be plowed first, which you can do yourself with a hoe ( which would go faster ) or you can let your field workers do it.

Now there are 2 possibilities, either you do all the field work yourself or you let the others do the work for you.

Edit field by yourself ...

If you want to do all of this yourself, you need fertilizer (see below), seeds (see below) as well as tools such as hoe, bag and possibly a scythe, depending on what you want to grow. Put all of this in your inventory!

As mentioned above, after creating new fields, you first have to plow with the hoe.

Now you have to fertilize the field with a fertilizer (1 fertilizer per field section) and you need a bag for it. As soon as you have equipped the bag for a slot and have the fertilizer in your inventory, you have to take the bag in your hand with the corresponding button and right-click in the menu to select the fertilizer and fertilize the fields individually one after the other.

Once that is done, you have to plow the field with a hoe. Then take the bag again and right-click to set the correct seeds that you must have in your inventory. Now go back to the fields and do i like fertilization and that's it. Also consumes 1 seed per field section.

As soon as the field is ripe, you have to harvest the grain with a scythe and then collect it by hand! You can harvest vegetables by hand without tools.

Let the the villagers work on the field...

You first need a barn.

If you have not yet gained enough experience in agriculture, it will not be activated yet.
The easiest way to quickly get the required number of experience points is simply to create fields and plow it yourself with a hoe. Either you build one out of wood or you steal one from Gostovia :>, two of them standing around... but don't get caught.

As soon as your barn is in place, which is ideally built near the fields, you can hire your villagers as farmers or field workers .

• Farmer process the harvest in the barn (crafting)
  
• Field workers work as the name suggests, in the field and fertilize, plow, harvest, sow

If not already done you have to hire at least 1 FIELD WORKER .
Open Management Menu (N key) and clicks on a free person and assigns him a workstation in the barn as FIELD WORKER.

Now you have to choose what the field worker should plant. To do this, open the Management menu (N key) again and go to the tab of the fields (top left 3rd symbol).

Here you choose the right field and press F for more details .
Now select the desired seed from above and mark all fields with a black border so that the fruit is in all fields (you can take one corner and hold the mouse button down and drag it to the other corner).
Exit with Escape and apply the change with F!

Have you done that with all fields and the field workers are not yet working, you now save the game and reload it. It's best to press F5 once for quicksave and then F9 for quickload. Then the workers should start right away.

Field cultivation process...

At the moment there is no need to provide tools for the workers. It seems that they are currently using their own tools, but should change someday.

However, you need fertilizer and seeds. It is important that you have the seeds and not the fruit.
Fertilizer belongs in the raw material store and seeds in the food store. You can also pack these things in the crate in the barn, but it doesn't make much sense because the fertilizer automatically ends up in the raw material store after production and the seeds are brought to the food store.

The working hours of the field workers are from 7 am to 6 pm.
The work begins in the field, which means the longer the way from the house to the barn and from the barn to the field, the more time you lose on the field work. At 7 o'clock the worker goes from his house to the barn and only then goes to the field. The same thing happens if you load the game while there are workers on the field. Sometimes they go back to the barn and then back to the field.


The order of the workers is now harvest -> manure -> plow -> sow. In the case of a new field, he plows before manure if you haven't done it yourself.

The field workers fertilize and plow the field only in the season when something have to plant on it. Manually prior fertilizing and plowing in a different season does not help, because the field is set back when the season changes!

If you have many small fields to work on, the field workers are spread out and everyone does something. As soon as someone is done with their work, it appears that they check what tasks are still pending and then they do one of them. But as soon as a worker is standing and has no more work, there are no more checks at this day how it seems. Which ends that on one or the last field may only 1 person is working.

If you have more than one field worker, several small fields are better than 1 large one, since nobody hampers each other there and everyone has something to do. In a large field, they sometimes block each other because one is faster than the other.

If you have enough field workers, several workers can theoretically work on one field. It is e.g. possible that the first manure, the second plows and the third sows. But you should keep in mind that one or the other work can take different lengths of time depending on the skill and work. If there is enough other work for the field workers, it can be that not all work in one field.
Doesn't seem to work anymore?

If one has e.g. only 1 large field and want to let several people work, proceed as follows:

You let the first worker manure a few parts of the field, then quicksave and quickload. Then one person should continue manure and another should start plowing. Same game, start over, wait a short time until a few parts of the field are plowed and then save and load again. In this case there would now be 3 workers in the field and they would be hardworking.

Important:
Its not allowed to help these workers if you want that the field workers continue their working on the field after you helped.

As soon as you e.g. would plow self after manure, all actions for the field workers would be deleted in these fields where you plowed. In other words, the seed setting is deleted and therefore no action for the field worker. Then you have to set everything again under Management and save and load.

Sowing yourself is not a problem, because afterwards there is no more action until it is ripe.

Processing of the harvest / production

grain

Grains (oats, flax, rye, wheat) are harvested with the scythe. If you harvest yourself, the grain ends up on the ground and has to be collected first!

So that the grain can continue to be used, it must first be threshed in the barn (the little haystack). You either do it yourself or hire someone as a farmer. The result is 1x straw and 1x seed.
Farmers are hired in the same way as field workers, only that you then select farmers instead of field workers.
The higher the skill in agriculture, the faster the farmer can produce.

In order for the farmer to do something, you first have to set what they should do. To do this, open the Management menu (key N) and go to the category with the buildings. There you click on the barn and press F for more details . Here you have to click the 2nd symbol at the top right. (see picture on the right) →

Here you have to set what the farmers should produce (works the same way in every other production building). The total work performance is 100%. You can distribute the work in 5% steps, as shown in the example on the left.
How many pieces can be done per hour is only displayed when someone is working! The higher the skill, the higher the production.
If there are no raw materials to manufacture a product, the free working time is not automatically distributed among the others! You have to change it manually and distribute it to the others or you just leave it and live with it. Incidentally, the required raw materials can be seen below as soon as you click on a product.

If you've done everything right, the farmers are now working. They walk from one workstation to the next to be working.
The game is Early Access and not all animations are integrated or working properly or people are blocking each other, especially in the barn! But people still work, even when they're standing around.

Straw is often needed as a building material for building construction, but also for the production of animal feed and other objects. The seeds are used for replanting or for processing with other materials to make food. But it is also often used as a source of money, because the seeds are very light weight and you can carry a lot of them and you get good money for it. flax is highly recommended.

vegetables

Vegetables, on the other hand, can simply be harvested by hand from the field without tools and landed directly in the player's inventory. The seeds of vegetables can currently only be used for replanting or they can be sold.

seeds

Vegetable seeds are obtained by harvesting the corresponding vegetables,
Seeds from the grains are obtained by threshing the harvested grain in the barn (the little haystack).

Each field section consumes 1 seed.
A field of size 2x5 uses 10 seeds.

The shelf life of vegetables is:

• 2 seasons in inventory
  
• 4 seasons in chests
  
• 8 seasons in the food storage

There are currently the following seeds:

seeds	cultivation in...	harvest in...	to buy here...		food value	Harvest quantity...	...with fertilizer
oatgrain	Spring	Autumn	Rolnica			-	-
flax	Spring	Summer	Branica			-	Ø ~5,7*
ryegrain	Autumn	Spring	Gostovia,Rolnica			-	Ø ~5,9*
┌ Wheatgrain	Spring	Autumn	Gostovia			-	-
└ Wheatgrain	Autumn	Summer				-	-
Beetroot	Spring	Autumn	Denica,Rolnica		6	-	4-12, Ø ~7,5*
┌Cabbageseeds	Spring	Summer	Barancia,Denica		7	-	4-12, Ø ~7,5*
└Cabbageseeds	Summer	Autumn			7	-	4-12, Ø ~7,5*
┌ Carrotseeds	Spring	Autumn	Gostovia,Rolnica		5	-	4-12, Ø ~7,5*
└ Carrotseeds	Winter	Summer			5	-	4-12, Ø ~7,5*
Onionseeds	Spring	Summer	Gostovia		4	-	4-12, Ø ~7,5*

* harvest amount refers to the average harvest amount per field (tested on a 120 field)

Sorted by seasons:

seeds	cultivation in...	harvest in...
oatgrain	Spring	Autumn
flax	Spring	Summer
Wheatgrain	Spring	Autumn
Beetroot	Spring	Autumn
Cabbageseeds	Spring	Summer
Carrotseeds	Spring	Autumn
Onionseeds	Spring	Summer
Cabbageseeds	Summer	Autumn
ryegrain	Autumn	Spring
Wheatgrain	Autumn	Summer
Carrotseeds	Winter	Summer

manure/fertilizer

At the moment it is still mandatory for the field to fertilize it before something can be grown. I hope it will be more realistic later, so that you don't have to fertilize, but you can to increase the yield.

Each field section uses 1 fertilizer.

Fertilizer can be produced in the barn at the workbench.

There are 3 options:

• Either you have a pigsty with pigs and of course an animal breeder who then produce manure ... with 2x manure you can produce 1x fertilizer
  
  
• or you let food get bad, one season later the bad food will rot. And with 10x rotten food you can also produce 1x fertilizer
  
  
• or you just buy it from the trader

Can you live from the field?

The village can easily live from the fields all the year and you wouldn’t need any hunters, fishermen or cooks! At least when we talk about the food.
The player himself could theoretically also, if you don't stroll through the area for a whole season :)

The only problem at the moment is that you have to be around 100m around your fields so that the field workers work in the field.

After numerous tests the following came out ...
in vegetable fields the harvest amount per field piece is between 4 and 12 , average ~ 7.5 fruits per field piece were harvested and you get ~2 seeds per field piece, sometimes more, sometimes less.

seeds	cultivation in...	harvest in...	food value	Harvest quantity...	...with fertilizer	food value per field piece
Beetroot	Spring	Autumn	6	-	~7.5	~45
┌Cabbageseeds	Spring	Summer	7	-	~7.5	~53
└Cabbageseeds	Summer	Autumn
┌Carrotseeds	Spring	Autumn	5	-	~7.5	~38
└Carrotseeds	winter	summer
Onionseeds	Spring	Summer	4	-	~7.5	~30

Can you calculate how many fields I need to live?

theoretically yes, practically no

The need of food for the village remains the same day and night. Even if people are sleeping and you stay awake, the food goes away! Only when you go to sleep is no food consumed during your sleep phase.
Therefore, an exact calculation is not possible, unless you go to bed at the same time every day or never sleep, which is quite unlikely.

Now a little math:

• suppose we have a food demand of 12 per hour
  
• suppose we take carrots, which we only want to plant once a year
  
• Assuming we go to sleep around 8 p.m. and wake up at 7 a.m., we are awake for 13 hours

would then be 13 hours x 12 food = 156 food per day for the village
156 food * 3 days * 4 seasons gives food in 1872
In 1872 we divide the food by the 38 food per field and this gives ~ 49.3 fields
Now we'd rather round up and say harvest a field of 50 carrots once a year, since the harvest quantity varies a lot between 4 and 12 pieces per field. But that's only for the village.

You want to eat too, right?
You normally lose ~ 6 food per hour (4 if the skill "Survivor" is at max). That would be ~ 80 food a day if you went to sleep like above.
80 * 3 days * 4 seasons: 38 per field = ~ 25 fields

Makes ~ 75 field pieces that are best reduced to min. 2 fields distributed e.g. 6x5 and 7x5
At the moment this can be done by one field worker. Depending on how far your house is from the barn and from the fields, someone creates a field of ~ 50 per day (some more, some less, depending on the walking routes). Skill doesn't matter at the moment.

• Variant 1 : create a cabbage field , you can harvest twice a year
  
  • Advantage: only a small field required, as it is grown twice a year and better food value
    
  • Disadvantage: in the event of overproduction, the food expires too late and the warehouse is always full because it lasts for 2 years
  
  
• Variant 2 : create a carrot, beetroot or onion field , is harvested once a year and can easily come through the year.
  
  • Advantage: only harvest once a year, lower overproduction compared to variant 1, you must just one time in your village
    
  • Disadvantage: larger field required, as it is only harvested once, less food value

durability of the food

Here is an overview of the shelf life of the food in seasons!

Food	Inventory	Chest	Food storage
fruits	2	4	8
Vegetables	2	4	8
Eggs	2	4	8
raw/fresh meat	2	4	8
roasted meat	2	4	8
salted meat	3	6	12
dried meat	4	8	16
raw/fresh fish	2	4	8
fried fish	2	4	8
salted fish	3	6	12
dried fish	4	8	16
stew/soup	2	4	8
bread	3	6	12
Cake	2	4	8

Every time you process food, the condition is 100% restored!
for example:

You get fresh meat at the end of the season and put it in a normal chest.
Next season it would have the following shelf life: 50%
Then you fry it and the condition is now back to 100%.

Tips and important things in summary

• required tools: hoe, bag, scythe, as well as 1x fertilizer + 1x seed per field section
  
  
• At the moment the skill in agriculture has no influence on the villagers' work performance in the field
  
  
• To fertilize and plow fields in one season where nothing is grown has no use, because it is reset at the change of the season and is again unfertilized, etc.[/]

last words

Since I often see questions about it in the forum and in the bug area, I made this little guide. Hope it could help some.
I try to keep it up to date.

I play in German. If some terms are not as in the game, please let me know.

If you have any questions, suggestions or criticism, please. Speak up :)

[Limmin]

Field rotation has to be done manually, if you decide to do it. (Not needed by the game.) The best time to assign a field to a new crop is just after harvest.

[UyTheo]

Do you know if we can rotate the field?

[Kidney Airline]

There also is a compost bin under "Furniture and Decorations" turns food at the end of the season into rot, not sure if there is another resource needed, most likely straw. (it should be faster than rotting food in the barn as durability loss p/season is 25%)

[colinfas]

@Wendi
equip your hammer,right click ,select destroy,click a section of the field, this will delete the whole field

[Wendi]

How do I removed a Field?

[LanceMan]

Not sure if this is maintained anymore but Poppy is plant spring harvest Autumn

[Luigi Shizzione]

Great guide, thank you for taking the time.

[Kuraf]

Does anybody know how to extend farm fields? whenever I try to extend a field it creates a new one.

[Moai]

You Rock, I understood perfectly and thanks for the Info Dump!!

[haessliches Frettchen]

actually they need nothing,
but this will be added, but no one can say when :)