Livestock

The Merchant sells a cow (220 coins), a ewe (160) and a hen coop (120). Put one down on your own land and it works the way a sawmill does: it yields on the clock whether or not you are logged in, fills up and stops, and you empty it with E.

The pig gives the one thing on the farm that is neither eaten nor sold. Carry a load of muck to a bed of your own and press E: it puts back what a hard season took out, and it is the only thing that mends a field faster than leaving it alone. Spreading it on ground already in good heart wastes the load, so save it for the field that needs it.

The llama is the animal for bad ground — what the potato is to the crop table. A cow on thin hill pasture is barely worth her feed; a llama hardly notices. She is slower than a ewe and her fleece is worth almost twice the wool, and on good grass she is no better than anything else, because hardiness is a floor and not a bonus.

Grass matters. A sawmill reads the trees it stands in; an animal reads the grass it stands on, and the same open green ground that grows the best tomatoes makes the best pasture. A cow on bare rock gives nothing at all. Cows and ewes wander a few paces about where you set them down; the coop stays put.

Milk and eggs are poor on their own and the making of the best of the cookbook — buttered eggs and a farmhouse pie. Wool is the one thing a farm makes that nobody eats, so the Merchant buys it: a ewe pays back slower than a cow and in coin rather than in supper, which is the whole difference between keeping one and keeping the other.

The barn, and the fences

A barn (70 wood) is shelter and nothing else. There is nothing to collect from it — what it does is make every animal within a yard of it do better, which is the honest reason a farm has one. It works on the same number the grass sets, so a barn is worth most on ground that was never going to be good pasture, and worth nothing at all on bare rock: a cow in a shed with nothing to eat is still a cow with nothing to eat. Two barns are worth exactly what one is.

A silo (55 wood) is the barn’s opposite number: one is shelter, the other is fodder. It raises the same number, it is worth once however many you build, and the two together are what turn a poor field into a workable one. Neither is worth anything on bare rock.

A windmill (90 wood) grinds. Stand at it and press E — the same page the campfire opens, showing what is worked here instead of there. Four measures of grain become three of flour, with no fuel: the wind does it, which is what the sails are for, and they turn whether anybody is watching or not. Flour makes a risen loaf, which beats the flatbread you would have got from the same field; ashgrain makes ash flour and an ashen loaf, which mends less and keeps far longer — the usual bargain, and neither is the better bread.

And the yard itself: fence rails (3 wood), posts (1) for the corners, and a gate (8). They keep nothing in — your animals only wander a few paces from where you set them down anyway — but a field with a fence round it looks like a field somebody is keeping animals in, which is the point.

The gate opens. Stand at it and press E; it swings, and you can walk through. Press it again and it falls shut. Anybody can work a gate, not only whoever built it — a gate only its owner could open would be a wall with a handle on it, and whether you are allowed on that land at all was settled long before you got close enough to touch it. It stays as you left it, and everyone else sees it swing too.

So do the barn doors. Both leaves swing apart, and because a barn is big enough to get exact collision, opening them makes a real hole you can walk through — the doorway is genuinely open, and genuinely shut when they are closed.