Guide to Farming

The Soilson/Soilbride's Path

Every town needs food supplies, and Rockhill is no exception. Unlike most places though, raisin bread is actually valued here.

The Layman's Guide to Planting, or How to Get Started

You will need the minimum materials to start farming or growing crops...

• Seeds: Gained by Striking produce with a blunt object, and can be destroyed by walking over them. (You'll need a certain amount of skill in Farming to tell seeds apart just by looking at them.)
• Dirt Tile: You can convert grass tiles to dirt via a hoe, which must be wielded in both hands.
• Container of Water: Preferably a Bucket as Mugs and Cups are too small for the amount typically required. Murk is fine for crops, so you can save the clean water for drinking/cooking.
• Fertilizer: Quality of fertilizers are Manure/Cow Pie > Compost > Ash.

Use the seeds on the dirt tile to make a planting space, then put the seeds into the soil for them to start growing. Water the soil and add some fertilizer. Compost and manure are ideal, but ash will also work and is far more common for bare minimum farming or if you're just starting out before you've built a Composter. An easy source of ash is to build a campfire, (Or greater campfire if you really don't like walking into fires. Any fuel added to them also lasts longer, so it might be worth trying to find a couple rocks if you're going to be in the area for a while.) throw sticks into it, and then pick up the ash after they've burned. Compost can be gained by Crafting a Composter using one small log and filled with any kind of produce, rotten items, (Tossing produce or meat into Murk will instantly rot it, leaving it outside of a chest for a while will do the same.) burned messes, and apple cores. They take time and need to be flipped occasionally, but they can store and stockpile a great deal of fertilizer as long as you don't take it out before you need it.

Primer on the Various Crops

While there's not a lot of crop options at this time, there are still enough for one to make a decent income at farming or to keep a certain number of people fed.

• Jackberries: Eaten straight, used to make raisins (Which won't rot.) via a Drying Rack and wine via a Barrel. (Poisonous berries will remain poisonous if made into raisins or wine, so be cautious!)

Found by searching bushes. However, make note that there are two types of jackberries, poisonous and regular, and the color of each type changes every round but remains consistent during the in-game week. (Be advised that the colors chosen have been know to be similar at times.) To easily determine which is which, eat only a few of the berries. (IE, take one bite.) If they taste like berries, then you've found the edible ones. If they taste like something and you start losing health, you found the poisonous ones. If you only sampled a few berries, then you can easily sleep off the health loss whenever you have a convenient time to do so. If you ate the whole bunch, then you're in for a lot of vomiting and eventually death unless you can get some healing or pass out/sleep ASAP. While the poison is valued and useful for other purposes, none of them are the focus of this guide.

• Apples: Usually eaten straight, but can also be used in pies like berries, or fermented in a Barrel for cider. Can be sold directly into the Stockpile, making it a useful crop for no-frills mammons.

Seeds are typically found in a soilson/bride's satchel or in the Boghill farmhouse, but the most reliable source are via whole apples from an established farmer or the Stockpile. As a basic food item, apples are probably one of the fastest and most efficient crops to get started, assuming one has the seeds, as well as the cheapest aside from berries. Apples, along with berries, are the only crops that don't have to be re-seeded after every harvest, which adds to their ease of growing. For hunting, Sweetbait made using two apples or three berries is the best that can be used.

• Wheat: Grows into Wheat Stalks which must be shucked or threshed (Anything that can Strike.) into Wheat Grain, which then must be ground into Powder via a Pestle and Mortar, or a Millstone. Can also be put into a Barrel for Ale.

Seeds are found in a soilson/bride's satchel or in the Boghill farmhouse, but they can also be found in some ruined buildings within the bog itself. However, your best chance of getting them is Striking Wheat Grain. Which, you'll need to do because this is the first crop on the list that you'll need to replant. Thus, it's entirely possible to use up or get rid of all your seeds for growing more wheat. (An easy way to prevent this would be to store a couple seeds in a chest. As a reminder, seeds can easily be destroyed by walking over them.) Wheat is also one of the crops that's a seamster's best friend as you can get fiber, AKA thread, from harvesting the fully-grown plant as well as threshing it into grain. (A decently skilled farmer can usually yield enough fiber to make a full bundle per plant harvested.) Between the fiber, cloth made from the fiber itself, and the wheat grain, all three products can be sold directly to the stockpile. Thus, bags, chests, or even a cart is advised to make your trips more efficient. The only real downside is how much time and effort you need to bundle up the fiber or craft it into cloth, but that can be done after replanting the wheat and waiting for it to grow. One more thing that wheat grain is good for is being used to feed animals, but because of how often it can be used in cooking compared to oats, it would be advised to save oats for livestock feed.