I've been playing
Farmville on
Facebook for a couple months now, and I must say I've become an agricultural expert. Here's what I've learned.
1.
Agricultural Diversity -- Plant a variety of crops to avert boredom. Real farmers make the mistake of only planting one thing, then they have nothing to do for hours upon end. One day I planted a massive field of artichokes, and was bored for four days straight. Warning, don't plant raspberries. You'll never remember to come back before they go bad.
2.
Animal Husbandry -- Clearly it's not necessary to slaughter animals. Have lots of pigs? Hunt truffles. Milk the cows and goats and capture wool from your sheep. Hair from horses and feathers from foul.
3.
Multicolored Cows -- Most cows are generally white. They give white milk. Brown and pink cows are more rare, that's probably why we see less chocolate and strawberry milk at the grocery store. Since the aliens visited, green milk should be available soon at a retailer near you.
4.
Friendly Neighbors -- Farming is a great community effort. If you're starting a real farm, make sure you have many neighbors because they love to stop by and fertilize crops and feed your chickens. You can give them a few dollars, but most will do it for the experience.
5.
Orchard Planting -- I know most people think of Florida for oranges, South America for bananas, and Washington state for apples. This is ridiculous. Clearly you can grow all of these things and more on a single farm.
6.
Energy Efficiency -- Unless you have very deep pockets and can afford to buy lots of fuel, you'll want to do most of your farming by hand. You can use a little bit of fuel each day in your harvester, tractor and seeder, but save your money and plow most of your fields by hand. I'm sure real farmers will follow our lead soon.
7.
Cottages to Mansions -- One of your goals as a professional farmer is to improve your living conditions constantly. Sure, a farmhouse is traditional but most of us can only afford a cottage at first. Stick with it. Eventually all farmers own massive plantations complete with a mansion. Clearly farming is for the rich and famous.
8.
Exterior Decoration -- The big problem with most real-life farmers today is that they don't care enough about decorating their property. When was the last time you drove past an attractive farmhouse on a rural road and saw it appropriately decorated. In my opinion every farm should have a wide variety of benches manufactured from varying material. Fences should be white, although girl farmers may opt for pink or purple. At Halloween you definitely should change all of your fencing to orange and black. Yellow hay bales are inexpensive, but colored ones are very handy at creating messages that can be seen from the air. This is critical. Every farm should have at least four of each color of gazing ball, several pink flamingos, and holiday decorations roughly the size of a small barn.
9.
Telepathic Farming -- A strategy used by many of the most advanced Farmville farmers is to surround their farmer with bales of hay. It's important that this happens in the exact center of your farm. From there, your farmer can do all of his daily chores using exclusively mental telepathy, which is much faster than wandering about from chore to chore.
10.
Gift Giving -- Stopping by your neighbors is important. Frequently they will want you to adopt an animal, or try one of their delicious golden eggs. Giftgiving is very important in farming communities. I encourage you, if you live in a rural area, visit every farm and take something. The farmer will thank you for it later.
Clearly, there is much to learn about agriculture and it can all be learned using Farmville on Facebook.
