Five crops and one farmer

Until now a field in Groundwork was a field. This week it learned to grow things. There are five crops: wheat takes eight days and gives five grain, carrots take four days and give two, onions five and two, cabbage six and three, potatoes seven and four. Each field sows whichever crop you pick. If you change your mind while it is growing, the new crop waits for the next sowing, so nothing already in the ground is thrown away.

Every tile holds four plants, and I drew them small on purpose. I wanted a field to read as many little plants and not as one big green lump. Each crop has its growth stages, from a seedling to something you would want to eat.

The farmers got a new way of working too. They sow and harvest plant by plant: walk to one, bend down, tend it, walk to the next. The tending pose is two-handed, low and quick. A farmer carries up to eight plants to the nearest farmhouse, and from there the haulers take the harvest on. Plants only grow within about fifteen tiles of a farmhouse, and fertiliser from the farmhouse makes them grow half again as fast. There is also a new food stall with a striped awning, which I will get to tomorrow.

Making the video was a small comedy. I put a yellow panel on the farmer, “Farmers sow and harvest plant by plant”, and filmed. The panel pointed at empty grass for the whole clip, because the farmer was off doing something else. A label on nothing is a very honest way to learn that your farmer is not where you think. So now the film waits until a farmer is actually standing in a field before it shows the panel.

That is why there is a farmer among the cabbages in the video. He is not working harder, he is just in the right place now.