Farming
Farming in Cataclysm can be a rewarding way of providing sustenance for your character. It takes a bit of work, but the returns are well worth it come harvest time.
Getting set up
You will need: A shovel, hoe, digging stick, or paws. Snow shovels won't work, unfortunately, so toss 'em out.
You can currently farm anywhere that has dirt as long as the weather is warm enough. Usually by day 75 of Spring you're good to go, but it can sometimes take a bit longer. Start by wielding your farming implement of choice, then activate it. Choose the "upturn earth" option to create a mound of dirt. This is where you'll be planting your seeds.
Planting
You do have seeds, right?. Seeds can be found in Gardening Supply buildings, Home Improvement Superstores, Hardware Stores, in Farms themselves, rarely in Houses, and some can be crafted by the player, using the crafting menu &, or by deconstructing some fruits. To get you started, you can get some early seeds by foraging underbrush in forests (examine underbrush) - wild vegetables or rhubarb you find can be crafted into wild vegetable stems or rhubarb stems (requires Survival 2), which can be planted like seeds. In summer, you can find strawberry or blueberry bushes in open fields that can be harvested for fruit, which can then be deconstructed for seeds as well. Small fruits, like berries, will generally be destroyed when you do this, but larger ones such as pumpkins or tomatoes will still be edible afterwards.
To plant seeds, you must examine a dirt mound with seeds in inventory. You can find some pre-dug dirt mounds at a farm, but be wary of monsters if you're visiting the farm for the first time. Clear the farm first then look around for some tools, if the farm has some farming tools or seeds then you can start right there.
Either way, once you have dirt mounds, you must apply the seeds by examining the chosen mound. This will pop up a menu of seeds in your inventory - just choose the applicable seed and hit enter. Once the seeds are planted, the growing process begins.
Your dirt mounds become planted seeds.
Growing
Now, just sit back and wait for the seeds to sprout. They don't pop up overnight - growth takes place in four stages: planted seeds, seedling, mature plant, and fruiting plant. The time to finish the full growth cycle varies by plant. If you've adjusted season length in the options, grow times will be proportionally adjusted as well.
You will know when your crops are done by their appearance (bright green #), and their description tag (harvestable plant).
One important thing to note is that the growth a plant experiences won't actually be reflected until you leave the plant's reality bubble and return, so if you think it should be harvest time but nothing looks ready, try leaving the area and coming back.
Another thing to keep in mind is that your crops are vulnerable must be protected. Zombies stumbling through crops can sometimes trample and destroy them, and other things like deer, cattle, and aphids love to snack on them. Portal storms tend to wreak havoc on crops, and unfortunately for now the best fix for that is to simply leave the area until the storm is over.
Each plant has its own growth speed. Vegetables like Zucchini are fast-growing, and can fruit in 47 days. Oats are the fastest-growing grain at 65 days, while many other plants will take anywhere from 80-95 days.
Fertilizer
Fertilizer can be used to boost the speed of crop growth. It can be found in places like hardware stores, or crafted out of certain chemicals. In older versions, fertilizer reduced crop yields, but this no longer appears to be the case. If you have fertilizer in your inventory and examine a plant, you'll be given the option to fertilize it. This can even be done after it's planted.
0.C (Cooper)
In 0.C (Cooper) (note that this version had shorter seasons), there are three speeds at which plants grow: Fast, Medium and Slow. Growth time generally takes a week or two.
Fast-growing plants take 2 days per stage, fruiting in 8 total days. These are oats and zucchini.
Medium-speed plants take 3 days per stage, fruiting in 12 days. These plants are barley, broccoli, chili pepper, carrot, cucumber, garlic, onion, and tomato.
Slow-growing plants take 4 days per stage, fruiting in 16 days. These plants are blueberry, blackberry, bee balm, buckwheat, cannabis, canola, cabbage, cranberry, corn, fungal, dandelion, datura, dogbane, lettuce, marloss, morel mushroom, mugwort, mushroom, pumpkin, raspberry, beans, rhubarb, potatoes, strawberry, sugar beet, sunflower, thyme, wheat, wild herbs and wild vegetables.
Harvest
Once they are ready, examine your plants to harvest them. Some plants, such as wheat, will require you to use a sickle or other tool with the grass-cutting quality.
Your yield will vary greatly based on your survival skill, in some cases it will be ten times what you planted! Some plants will only give fruits, others will yield withered plants, straw, or seeds. Some of this stuff will be ready to eat right away, other items will need further processing.
Grain Processing
Most grains will be harvested as stalks. These are still green and prone to rotting, so they'll need to be dried ASAP. The easiest way is to place a stooking spot via the construction menu. You can then drop stalks of grain into the stooking spot, and examine it when it's full. This will cause your character to stand up the grain in an A-frame shape so that it can dry. Doing this requires 2 survival ranks, but takes no time or materials other than the stalks themselves.
You can examine the stook to see how it's coming along, it should take several days. Once it's all dry, you will take it down and receive nonperishable dried grain stalks. But you're not done yet!
These dried stalks must be threshed, which you can easily do with a stick, but it'll go a bit faster with something like a peasant flail. You can find the recipes for threshed grain in the crafting menu. Once you have your threshed grain, it will need to be winnowed, which can be done by hand via the crafting menu.
Some grains, such as lentils, get to skip a step in the above process, so don't be too confused if your plant is already dry when you pick it. That's just how they work. As long as you understand the general process, you'll be in good shape.
Once winnowed, most grains are ready to be cooked. You can't eat them raw unless you're some kind of mutant, but they can be milled, made into porridge, used in soup, or even replanted!
Since grains are seeds, you can plant them as-is. You can also craft them into seeds (and vice-versa), which is really just for organizational purposes. You'll have fewer incidents with people eating the corn you intended to plant if you craft it into seed corn first.
Oh my God there's too many tomatoes
One of the biggest worries with farming is that most of your crop will all come in at once, and it can be hard to know what to do with it before it all spoils. Sure, you could stand in the field and eat 1000 raw zucchini like a dumb beast, but it might be a good idea to get familiar with food preservation before your crops come in.
Powered Farming
In 0.D (Danny) you can find and build farm equipment that plows, seeds, and harvests respectively.
The following vehicle (source) would allow you to reap, plow and drill (seed) two lines of tiles:
o o DPs>R DPs>R o o
In the example above, the reaper (R) is followed by an engine (>), a seat (s), a plow (P) and a drill (D).
As of yet, there is no fertilizer attachment for vehicles and the chemical sprayer doesn't accept liquid fertilizer. Details to follow.
Animal Farming
As of 0.D (Danny), you can also farm various animals such as cows. See animal husbandry for more information.
Healing animals
It is in 0.E (Ellison) not yet possible to heal animals directly, but animals will heal damage over time. So just keep the biters away, or install the Magiclysm mod, and use spells.
See also
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