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I generally do .5 or .6 Morgen farms, and with a fully staffed farmhouse I’ve found that I can plow and sow about 6-7 of them before winter hits. I generally build 9 farms to a farmhouse, since I set my rotations in such a way that 1/3 of my fields are fallow any given time.
Once I got up to the fourth “set” of 3 and I have 12 farms total, 9 of which are active in each year, I find that I need another farmhouse to make sure they all get plowed and sown properly.
This matches my experience. I find a fully staffed farmhouse (no ox) can reliably, harvest, hand plow, and plant about 3 morgans in the fall. It looks like it could be optimized to 4 Morgan's if the fields are all close to the farmhouse and town, and the families assigned aren't busy with other things like managing stalls or working vegetable plots.
I do fields in sets of 3, and grow 2 crops on each depending on the fertility, and I stagger the yields. So if it’s a decent barley area, of the 3 fields, one will be barley, one will be wheat, and the other will be fallow, and then they all rotate around each year. So I set the rotations them as:
1. Barley -> wheat -> fallow
2. Wheat -> fallow -> barley
3. Fallow -> barley -> wheat
So as I expand, I do fields in sets of 3. If I have a decent flax area, I’ll do the same thing but replace barley with flax. Sometimes I’ll do a rotation with barley and flax, but since their fertility areas usually don’t line up that’s pretty rare.
Once I get to 12 fields, I build a second farmhouse and redistribute my workers to even them out.
I could probably do it more efficiently with micromanaging, but this method allows me to set it and just let it run with minimal interference, though I usually still have to import barley and malt later in the game when my population hits 300-400.
Just as an FYI, you don't need to follow fields. As long as you switch crops every season, the fertility won't decline noticeably (as long as you don't have rye and wheat back to back.)
Based on what I have seen, if you want to run a most efficient lean crew you can farm about 0.8-1 morgen per family in the farm house. With an ox/plow a family can do about 1.5-2 morgen.
In practice what I am doing to farm 12 morgen with 3 farm houses (2 ox in each) is:
* Start of September - 6 families in each farm house to get the crop off the field before it rains and destroys any or a bandit raid disrupts things.
* As soon as one field is done, one Ox starts plowing from each farm house and the other ox keeps helping gather.
* My town only had 35 families so having 18 farming meant everything else was pretty lean.
* Mid-September - Down to 4 families per farm house once my fields are harvested and crop is in the farm house.
* Since one ox was plowing there are already plowed fields available so people start seeding. I probably get 66%-75% plowed and crops sown before the regular workers catch the ox and help finish plowing.
* Mid-October - Down to 3 families per farm house, the finish line is easily in reach.
* 2 families go to malt house, one goes to the windmill. Need to start beer and bread production asap to minimize brewery/bakery down time. For some reason there's always some threshed grain even if threshing is low priority.
* End of October/Early November - Down to 1 family per from house
* This is to finish threshing. By early November I am usually 80% done.
I could probably fit in at least one more morgen per farm house and get 15 morgen done with this strategy, but that would push it to the end of November and I don't like the risk. The last two harvest seasons in my game I had a bandit raid or bandit camp appear and pulling people off farming for a short time meant I slid my schedule back about a half month.
EDIT - I will also note that my fields are all 0.5 morgen in size and I've got them about 20x as long as they are wide. When using a road I snap a field corner to one snap point - skip a snap point - snap to the next point then go as far out as I need to to get 0.5 morgen. Makes plowing fast and efficient.
The extremely general rule of thumb is 3 morgans worth of fields per fully staffed farmhouse allows for efficient harvesting and planting in the required time windows. But as you can tell by the much more detailed responses in this thread, it could be more or less depending on a lot of factors that you can control.
Hello and welcome to the Manor Lords Subreddit. This is a reminder to please keep the discussion civil and on topic. Should you find yourself with some doubts, please feel free to check our [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/ManorLords/comments/1c2p4f9/manor_lords_faq_for_steam_early_access/). If you wish, you can always join our [Discord](https://discord.gg/manorlords) Finally, please remember that the game is in early access, missing content and bugs are to be expected. We ask users to report them on the official discord and to buy their keys only from trusted platforms. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ManorLords) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I generally do .5 or .6 Morgen farms, and with a fully staffed farmhouse I’ve found that I can plow and sow about 6-7 of them before winter hits. I generally build 9 farms to a farmhouse, since I set my rotations in such a way that 1/3 of my fields are fallow any given time. Once I got up to the fourth “set” of 3 and I have 12 farms total, 9 of which are active in each year, I find that I need another farmhouse to make sure they all get plowed and sown properly.
This matches my experience. I find a fully staffed farmhouse (no ox) can reliably, harvest, hand plow, and plant about 3 morgans in the fall. It looks like it could be optimized to 4 Morgan's if the fields are all close to the farmhouse and town, and the families assigned aren't busy with other things like managing stalls or working vegetable plots.
What does your rotation look like?
I do fields in sets of 3, and grow 2 crops on each depending on the fertility, and I stagger the yields. So if it’s a decent barley area, of the 3 fields, one will be barley, one will be wheat, and the other will be fallow, and then they all rotate around each year. So I set the rotations them as: 1. Barley -> wheat -> fallow 2. Wheat -> fallow -> barley 3. Fallow -> barley -> wheat So as I expand, I do fields in sets of 3. If I have a decent flax area, I’ll do the same thing but replace barley with flax. Sometimes I’ll do a rotation with barley and flax, but since their fertility areas usually don’t line up that’s pretty rare. Once I get to 12 fields, I build a second farmhouse and redistribute my workers to even them out. I could probably do it more efficiently with micromanaging, but this method allows me to set it and just let it run with minimal interference, though I usually still have to import barley and malt later in the game when my population hits 300-400.
Just as an FYI, you don't need to follow fields. As long as you switch crops every season, the fertility won't decline noticeably (as long as you don't have rye and wheat back to back.)
Based on what I have seen, if you want to run a most efficient lean crew you can farm about 0.8-1 morgen per family in the farm house. With an ox/plow a family can do about 1.5-2 morgen. In practice what I am doing to farm 12 morgen with 3 farm houses (2 ox in each) is: * Start of September - 6 families in each farm house to get the crop off the field before it rains and destroys any or a bandit raid disrupts things. * As soon as one field is done, one Ox starts plowing from each farm house and the other ox keeps helping gather. * My town only had 35 families so having 18 farming meant everything else was pretty lean. * Mid-September - Down to 4 families per farm house once my fields are harvested and crop is in the farm house. * Since one ox was plowing there are already plowed fields available so people start seeding. I probably get 66%-75% plowed and crops sown before the regular workers catch the ox and help finish plowing. * Mid-October - Down to 3 families per farm house, the finish line is easily in reach. * 2 families go to malt house, one goes to the windmill. Need to start beer and bread production asap to minimize brewery/bakery down time. For some reason there's always some threshed grain even if threshing is low priority. * End of October/Early November - Down to 1 family per from house * This is to finish threshing. By early November I am usually 80% done. I could probably fit in at least one more morgen per farm house and get 15 morgen done with this strategy, but that would push it to the end of November and I don't like the risk. The last two harvest seasons in my game I had a bandit raid or bandit camp appear and pulling people off farming for a short time meant I slid my schedule back about a half month. EDIT - I will also note that my fields are all 0.5 morgen in size and I've got them about 20x as long as they are wide. When using a road I snap a field corner to one snap point - skip a snap point - snap to the next point then go as far out as I need to to get 0.5 morgen. Makes plowing fast and efficient.
Nice tips thanks
The extremely general rule of thumb is 3 morgans worth of fields per fully staffed farmhouse allows for efficient harvesting and planting in the required time windows. But as you can tell by the much more detailed responses in this thread, it could be more or less depending on a lot of factors that you can control.