“Everything that I sell in my store is farm-fresh.”
“Even the canned soda?”
“Bought a canner and a compressor just for that.”
Welcome to Farm Fresh, where you can develop your own farm and turn your farm-fresh Food Stamps into donations to your food bank of choice or use them to buy seeds to grow your own real food!
People working together in a Grange can offer discounts to fellow Grange members, have a special consignment store where their goods can be easily sold to each other, and can improve the Grange Headquarters, unlocking rewards for all members (lower prices on seeds, a communal seed bank, better fuel prices, etc.)
Green Stamps are earned whenever you purchase from J&S Farm-Fresh, and each type of Green Stamp is counted separately (Pumpkin Green Stamps can't be combined with Lemon Green Stamps). When you fill a book with a particular type of Green Stamp, you can exchange it for Gold Stamps, the game's special snowflake currency, which can then be used for in-game or out-of-game special rewards and services. Construction Green Stamps are earned by hiring J&S workers to build a new barn; Did It Myself Green Stamps are earned by buying DIY Building Kits; Furniture Green Stamps are earned for buying new furniture; Decor Green Stamps for buying new decorations; etc.
When you buy an item from J&S Farm-Fresh Online (or an item directly from their store in town that you can't haul back), you have to wait a set time for delivery, although those with a good relationship (or willing to spend a bit of money or Gold Stamps) will get slightly faster delivery. Items ordered with Gold Stamps deliver fairly quickly (eight hours regardless of how esoteric they are.) The shortest delivery time is one hour; bonuses and modifiers might shrink that by up to 50%. The Magick It Up bonus can get it there instantly but requires Gold Stamps to use.
“Technically, there's no way a truck could deliver your goods any faster. However, via flagrant bribery and violation of the fourth wall, we've found a way to hand items direct from our digital catalog to your player, cutting out the middlemen, for a premium charge.”
The Farmer's Friend is a newspaper that is given to a player every day they play, free of charge, and contains a random, usually low-value seed packet, allowing them to play and earn money even if broke. It also gives news about upcoming events, notifications about discounts at J&S Farm Fresh, advertisements for granges looking for new members, and so forth.
Your Farm consists of a 30 x 30 space that gives what would be a total of 900 Outdoor Tiles if not for the fact that some are unusable (you can only put certain things on river tiles, for example, and you can't block the road); however, one should expect about 400 usable Outdoor Tiles at least. Here's some of what you start with.
Size: 4×4 Outdoor Tiles
Your Farmhouse is where you and your family lives, and can be decorated however you like. You can store excess goods in your Farmhouse, but your workers aren't allowed to access it directly. Your workers can access the Farmhouse's Cellar, however, in order to do work or store goods.
The Farmhouse consists of several rooms which each have some space available in a pinch, and can be decorated with furniture. The Farmhouse Kitchen includes a free Refrigerator, Chest Freezer, and Stovetop. The other rooms of the house are the Farmhouse Living Room, Farmhouse Dining Room, Farmhouse Bedroom, Farmhouse Guest Room, Farmhouse Pantry, and Farmhouse Attic. Storing items in the Pantry, Refrigerator, and Freezer ensures that they are readily available to anyone cooking on the Stovetop, although it (and other items) can make use of items stored anywhere; the job will take longer if items are stored farther away (because you have to fetch them first, of course.)
The Farmhouse is not movable (how would you move a full-sized house and its cellar?), but can be upgraded.
By default, you and your Workers store things in your Farmhouse's Cellar. Your Cellar has 100 Indoor Tiles of space, where you can store items or set up furniture. If your Workers don't have a better place to put things, they'll load them down here. Your Cellar starts with a few Barrels to store goods, as well as a Trash Can left behind by the previous owner.
Size: 4×2 (can be changed)
This is an area 4×2 in size where garbage is collected from your farm by the city. The previous owner left a Garbage Dumpster here that you can have emptied by paying the city to come pick up its contents. Note that the more garbage you have, the more you'll have to pay to get rid of it, so reducing or dealing with your waste will eventually become important.
Size: 8×8 (can be changed)
The previous owner of your farm had an 8×8 section zoned for farming. You can choose to make Outdoor Tiles into Farm Plots, but bear in mind that the quality of the soil on these plots will influence the quality of plant that can grow there.
Size: 2×30
Along one edge of your farm is a stream, which the property assessor noted is already shored up on either side to help prevent flooding in the event of major storms. It currently isn't being used for irrigation, power, or anything else, but a good farmer can change that.
Size: 1×1 each
Power lines run along the road that leads towards Town; you can't remove these poles, even if you don't use Power from Town. They connect at one point to a Power Box that is adjacent to your Farmhouse.
Size: 1×1
All powered buildings on your Farm get their Power from this Power Box, and all generators on your Farm are connected to it. (The power cables may not be visible, but rest assured they're there. Really.) Any Power not provided by your farm must be purchased from Town, and a farm without Power can be unpleasant. (Ever try keeping food cold when the refrigerator has no power?) Until you can get your Power locally, you'll have to pay for it; remember to pay promptly if you don't want unpleasant surprises.
Many items require Fuel or Power to operate. Fuel can be purchased readily with in-game currency from Fuel Stations, trucked out to you, or even manufactured locally as bio-diesel. Power, likewise, is purchased from the local Power Company based on load, but you can offset it or eliminate it entirely by setting up generators and batteries. Most drivable machinery runs on Fuel; most stationary equipment uses Power. Items like your Stovetop, Refrigerator, Freezer, and Lights all use Power throughout the day, which accumulates a bill at the Power Company that must be paid. They are fairly patient people, but go too long and you will have the power cut until you make payments. Refuse to pay your bills and you might find people waiting around your Roadside Stand to collect payments from you as soon as you make a sale!
Items in an unpowered Refrigerator or Freezer will begin to spoil rapidly, so don't let the power go out too long! Power from Town may be lost if you fail to pay, but can also go out during extremely bad weather.
A Generator is a device that creates Power that can be used to power the Farm's needs, recharge electrical equipment, or stored in Batteries for when the power goes out (due to lack of payments or misfortunes) or to drain in general to offset Power usage.
This burns Fuel to supply Power. Just fill the tank and let it run. Of course, you need Fuel to run these generators.
These use local wind currents to create Power. Note that they're useless in periods with no wind, and have an upward limit on how much wind is a 'good thing'… trying to run a Wind Generator during an extreme storm is just asking for trouble.
Got an extra Worker with nothing to do? Add 'Pedal Power' to the Worker tasks, and a worker with nothing better to do who isn't feeling lazy will pedal away on this generator to create Power and charge up your batteries. Of course, it only works while it's being manned, so this isn't a good solution for your everyday Power needs.
These harness the local stream to generate Power. They are a fairly low-tech, but effective solution - though in drought weather with less water flow, they generate less Power, and if the stream goes dry, they won't provide power at all.
These harness the light of the Sun to generate Power. Unfortunately, they require clear skies to get best performance - bad weather means poor sunlight. Upgrades allow them to reposition themselves for maximum effect (moving with the sun to provide the most power).
This generator uses flammable substances and water to generate steam to turn a turbine to produce Power. While not the most efficient generator, and requiring plenty of combustibles and water, it does have the benefit of using commonly found materials. Need to clear thorny vines? Throw them in the fire and put them to use!
Your Roadside Stand must be staffed by someone in order to sell your goods, but when it is, you can charge what you like for your produce. Note that items have an intrinsic approximate value, and your ability to get more for them relies on high quality as well as good Negotiation and Salesmanship. Customers visit your Roadside Stand from town and form an opinion, which can influence the likelihood of your items being bought by non-players. Players can visit your Roadside Stand and buy whatever they like, even if its value is grossly exaggerated - caveat emptor! Items remain in a Roadside Stand for at least one minute (?) before a non-player has a chance of buying them, to allow people to set up informal exchanges.
Your Roadside Stand starts as a small place to offer up whatever can fit in four barrels, but gradually grows to include shelves for non-barreled items and more barrel room. Each barrel has a Capacity, but only holds one type of item; items will continue to spoil while in barrels. Your Roadside Stand has Indoor Tile space, which can be used for display shelving, refrigerated cases, and more.
The game has an economy where the unit of currency is the Coin - which is a penny. That is, if you want to sell a single apple for one dollar, it sells for 100 Coins. Seed packs typically cost 100 Coins per pack. A gallon of Fuel costs 500 Coins (roughly $5 - not horribly unrealistic for diesel). And so on. This also means that trying to sell an apple for 5000 Coins will be considered ridiculous.
The rate of time passage in Farm-Fresh is subjective based on whether you're playing it or not. As a rule, when you are absent time passes at a one to one rate until Farm-Fresh Time reaches 6 AM the next day, at which point it stops, awaiting the player's return.
When a player is actively playing, however, they can control the passage of time:
Stop Time: Time doesn't pass at all, giving the player the ability to give orders everywhere that they're needed without worrying about keeping ahead of everything.
Real Time: Time passes at normal speed, with a minute of real time being the same as a minute of game time. This gives the player the ability to get used to the game's pace without becoming overwhelmed, and to observe how his workers perform from moment to moment.
Fast Time: Time passes at six times normal speed, with a minute of real time being the same as six minutes of game time. This allows quick passage of time when otherwise you might have to wait, and allows players to observe the overall activity of workers.
Hyper Time: Time passes at sixty times normal speed, with one second of real time being the same as one minute of game time. This allows for very quick work days - eight minutes will be a full 'shift', and twenty-four minutes a full day.
Because this is a game, reality gets a little wiggle room in terms of storage capacity. Items have Weight and Space; in small environments like your Refrigerator, Space tells you whether you can fit ten turkeys in your refrigerator. A large refrigerator with interior space of 6 feet by 2 feet by 2 feet holds 41472 cubic inches of items (we'll round down to 40000); an apple takes up four cubic inches of space. This means you can store 10,000 apples in a large refrigerator (why is another question.) A turkey might be 2000 cubic inches; this means you could cram in 20 turkeys if that's all you stuffed in the fridge. And so on.
Space is also important when shipping goods out to J&S Farm-Fresh, other farmers, etc, as only so much will fit on a truck - but again, it's handled by 'how much fits in this space', not 'a number of arbitrary slots'.
Many items in Farm-Fresh can be made locally, if you have the materials and the experience. Need a wooden crate to stow your produce in, or a wooden shelving unit so you can stack more than one storage container in a space? All you need is wood, nails, a hammer, and some effort. They may not be as 'quality-made' as the items you buy at the store, but they will usually work just as well. That said, having a worker go home early because he hit his thumb with the hammer is a risk you take when ordering your workforce to make their own crates.
This extends to metal items (there's a mine), plastic items (refining bio-plastic from corn), etc; if you want to put in the time and effort, there's probably a way to make everything you need and want locally.
Capacity is measured in units of space, which approximately balance out to 1 Space per cubic inch. Storage Items generally are measured in round numbers of available Space - the large refrigerator above might have 40000 Space, while a walk-in freezer (6 feet by 6 feet by 24 feet) has a whopping 14000000 Space (actually 1492992, but some lowering due to expected waste-space and to make a round number.) The more full an object is, though, the longer it takes to find it when you need it, and the more possible damage to spoilage might occur while a worker is shuffling around looking for the one item he needs amongst the two thousand he doesn't.
Pruning Shears: These delightful Pruning Shears from J&S Hardware are perfect for cutting through the most stubborn branches and vines. However, it is not rated for cutting through metal or rock, and is particularly not intended for use in shearing bolts or clipping barbed wire.
Broken Pruning Shears: These Pruning Shears are broken from heavy farm use. You can return them to J&S Hardware for recycling and earn some money, or recycle them yourself if you have the proper equipment.
Items are commonly used for basic around-the-farm tasks (although some quests may require you to have items, and manufacturing certain crafts requires items that you don't necessarily have the ability to machine yourself.) For example, Pruning Shears are used for, well, pruning large trees and small bushes, and they do occasionally break. If you assign someone to Pruning, he will require one pair of Pruning Shears or another tool appropriate to the job; if people don't have tools and thus can't do what they're assigned to, they may find other work (or be reassigned by a Manager), or may go slack off…
Buildings are large outdoor structures that take up your available farming space, and usually have specific benefits. They use Outdoor Tiles.
Size: 4×4
The Farmhouse is where you and your family live. You can go inside and make changes to the decor; when first starting out, you can use it as an impromptu storage space, but you should build other solutions soon.
Size: 1×1
Silos hold one type of grain per silo, but they hold a lot of it. You should generally have a silo for every grain type you plan on producing, because of this massive capacity advantage. They aren't cheap, but they pay off in reclaimed space bigtime.
Size: 1×1
If you own a non-full Compost Pile, then organic trash will be dumped here, and you can eventually collect Compost Fertilizer from it after it's had time to decompose. Compost Piles have a maximum Capacity, and the trash stored within gradually shrinks over time as it becomes Compost. Note that Capacity is used by both trash and Compost, so use your Compost Fertilizer regularly!
Size: 1×1
This acts like a Compost Pile, but is smaller and stored indoors, allowing you to provide a place to dispose of organic trash without requiring a long walk. Its Capacity (and Compost output) is much lower, but it is still very useful.
Size: 2×1
This is a large dumpster for holding garbage of all types, that is picked up occasionally by the city. Note that this service costs money, and that it is typically only once or twice per week, so this is another impetus towards finding ways to recycle your garbage. Also note that if Workers have nowhere to store trash due to it being full, it will end up dumped in the general vicinity of the Garbage Pickup (where the Dumpster is located), but if not properly stored in the Dumpster or a Trash Can, it will not be picked up!
Workshops are indoor structures that allow people to make certain items or perform certain tasks. They use Indoor Tiles, although some can be hauled or placed outdoors; if this is the case, the space this uses will be noted in the description.
Size: 1×1
Trash cans are useful for storing any form of garbage created indoors. Workers will carry Trash Cans outside to the Garbage Pickup when they are full; up to four Trash Cans can be stored in one Outdoor Tile. Note that if the Garbage Dumpster is full and there are no Trash Cans capable of holding refuse, garbage will be left on the ground near the Dumpster and will not be picked up until it is put in a Trash Can! (Local ordinances forbid trash collection services from being required to pick up bagged garbage.)
Size: 1×1
Your first stovetop is found in the Farmhouse kitchen, and allows you to prepare homecooked foodstuffs from the materials you grow (or purchase). You can then use these foodstuffs to satisfy your workers' Food requirements, or sell them at your Roadside Stand or elsewhere for Coins. Most stovetops require Power in order to work; different stovetops may make cooking easier (less time spent) and better (improving quality of products made), or add additional options and traits to dishes.
Size: 1×1, 4×4
Your first refrigerator is found in the Farmhouse kitchen, and allows you to store food; food stored in the Refrigerator spoils very slowly. It also makes cooking more convenient if you happen to be storing the food you need nearby, which can speed up the time required to produce a particular dish. For large operations, you can purchase a walk-in cooler, which acts as a gigantic refrigerator large enough to walk through; this has a very high capacity.
Size: 1×1, 2×1, 4×4
Your first encounter with a Freezer will be the large Freezer you find in your Farmhouse Kitchen; this device has a large Capacity and allows you to freeze foods and keep them frozen. Frozen foods do not spoil, although they may lose some Quality upon thawing; if you're running a City Restaurant as one of your remote operations, you may want to avoid sending them frozen food, and if you're making food to sell or use locally, it will be best if made fresh.
1×1 freezers are essentially the size of a refrigerator, while 2×1 freezers are wide chest freezers. Both are useful for storing food. Walk-in freezers take up 4×4 blocks of space and have a much higher capacity.
Size: 1×1
Barrels are most commonly used in the Cellar and Roadside Stand, but can be placed anywhere you like. They are equally capable of storing goods or products, have a reasonably high Capacity, and if stored in an Outdoor Tile, four can fit in one Tile. Each Barrel can only hold one type of item (no mixing Corn with Blueberries or Screws with Sausages).
Size: 1×1
Sealed Barrels hold a particular type of liquid, with the barrel being opened to add or remove the contents, then resealed to prevent spillage. Otherwise, they are generally identical to normal Barrels.
Objects are discrete items that can be stored outdoors or indoors and may perform some of the basic tasks of Workshops or Storage items. Depending on their Size, they may be placed on, under, or in other things, and multiples may be stackable on one Tile.
Size: 4000 Units
Coolers are generally designed to keep their contents cool in hot days, especially when also storing Ice or Ice Packs.
Aside from being unpleasant to look at, trash causes problems when left lying around. Organic trash (spoiled food, for example) can cause nearby food to spoil faster (so you should remove spoiled food from your fridge quickly, and remove withered crops before the unpleasantness spreads.) They also encourage pests (which literally eat into your profits if allowed to) and can clutter workspaces, making work slower and lower-quality until cleaned.
Ever notice that it's harder to find one item in a completely filled closet? Capacity limits are generous, but there is a time modifier to fetching items as the item they're stored in is closer to its maximum capacity, unless that item is plentiful enough to be conveniently reached. For example, Barrels are always easy to fetch things from because they only store one specific item in as much quantity as they can hold; a Walk-In Refrigerator full of every possible item in the game, meanwhile, will make it harder to find one specific item amongst the various things being stored.
Nobody likes a barnyard covered in garbage, and organizing trash collection gives you one more annoying bill to pay and one more thing to manage. As a result, being able to recycle your trash locally has a number of advantages. Most types of trash can be recycled in some way or another into useful materials for your farm. Some examples:
Metallic Trash: Can be melted down at a Metalsmith to provide metal sheets that can be used in crafting.
Glass Trash: Can be melted down at a Glassmaker to provide raw glass that can be used in crafting.
Organic Trash: Can be stored in a Compost Pile to make Compost Fertilizer for your plants.
Flammable Trash: Can be burned in a Furnace to generate Power for your farm, or used as a fuel source for certain Stovetops.
Most food items go bad over time - leave your apples out at a Roadside Stand too long, for example, and they won't be worth buying. The time it takes depends on the item, and where it's located; for example, Apples in a Refrigerator will spoil very slowly, while Ice Cream that -isn't- in a Freezer will melt very quickly on a hot day!
Crafts, like a Horsehair Blanket, will almost never 'go bad' unless something damages them (a Farm Dog chewing on them, perhaps.)
Either way, spoilage or damage will rapidly lower the value of an item when it passes certain thresholds (for example, the melting ice cream would lose half of its value in an hour and be considered nearly worthless in two hours; the apple might start to go bad in 7 days and be ruined in 14.
Foods in a cool place like your Cellar spoil more slowly, while foods left out on a hot summer day will spoil more quickly.
Foods in a Refrigerator spoil much more slowly, though they do still accumulate spoilage.
Foods in a Freezer don't spoil at all, but non-frozen-treat foods lose some Quality when thawed out, which can be devastating after multiple occasions.
Foods in a Vacuum Packed case have almost no spoilage, including foods in cans or jars.
Anything exposed to pests of any sort will spoil very rapidly!
Note that any 'must be cold' food will always go bad if allowed to get warm - vacuum seal it all you like, thermodynamics will still ruin you and melt your ice cream.
If you want to sell frozen desserts, one low-cost way is to get an Ice Cooler and some ice for your Roadside Stand; the ice melts over time, but the food will spoil at the slower, Refrigerator, rate until the ice is all gone (handwaving thermodynamics a little.) Ice Packs are better; you can refreeze them to restore their cooling power, and they don't get water everywhere (which can damage things).
Farm-Fresh may require Kickstarter funding to get programming team together and to pre-fund the Gold Stamps people can exchange for actual seeds in real life, donations to food banks, and other cash-out options.
Donating to your local food bank, with a tax deductible receipt, lets you receive the equivalent in game currency - let's say you can trade Gold Stamps in for coins at a rate of 1 per 1,000 Coins. Let's also say you can buy Gold Stamps at the rate of 10 for a dollar. So if you donate a dollar to a food bank, you can receive 10,000 Coins in game currency.
You can also donate your crops to the Central Food Bank instead of selling it. When the Central Food Bank's supplies grow high enough, a donation is made to a real food bank. (This might be 100,000,000 Coins in game currency translating into a $10 donation, but the idea is that it does matter.)
Original green stamps used books, with stamps given out in denominations of 1, 10, or 50; 50 would fill one card, and 24 cards filled one book. Therefore, 1200 points was one 'book' of stamps. The cash value was $1.20 for 1200 points. Current values of greenpoints:
| Green Stamps | Value |
|---|---|
| 9000 | $5 gift card |
| 15000 | $10 gift card |
| 20000 | $15 gift card |
| 31000 | $25 gift card |
| 59000 | $50 gift card |
Possibly make it so that 1200 stamps collected = $1.20 of Gold Stamps. So if 150 Gold Stamps costs $10, you can trade in 1200 Green Stamps for 18 Gold Stamps?
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1940/whatever-happened-to-green-stamps
http://www.greenpoints.com/info/inf_help_faquse.asp
Food and item storage are semi-unlimited, with logical reasoning behind limits.
You store most of your items in a Food Cellar to start with. Food Cellars have a semi-limited capacity (say, 100 squares worth) which is used by whatever machinery you keep down there (a machine for preserving jams might take a couple of spaces, but would be worth it in saving space and increasing sale value), as well as whatever you can't fit somewhere else (bags and boxes of produce, for example).
You store store-bought (or won packets of) seeds in a Seed Drawer, where you can easily sort through your available seed packets. Note that seed packets are the source of Seed Green Stamps.
You store loose seeds recovered while farming in a Seed Bank, which you can then use to make heirloom crops of higher quality. You don't get Green Stamps by using these - at least, not directly.
Collecting a full book of stamps gives growing tips for the seed type being stamped.
Roadside Stand allows you to sell crops to passersby - or other players.
Refrigerator lets you store refrigerated foods. A normal refrigerator (like that in a house) holds a limited supply; a walk-in refrigerator holds much more.
Freezer lets you freeze foods to preserve them for much longer. A normal freezer (like a chest freezer) holds a limited supply, while a walk-in freezer holds much more.
You start with a Farmhouse and a Cellar, and can build barns, factories, sawmills, workshops, and other things to benefit your farm-fresh lifestyle.
Crops don't wilt rapidly in this game, and Workers can be hired to collect and care for them when you're not around.
Uses for Food:
- Feed workers.
- Feed animals.
- Sell for money.