The fence is the field
Fields are now dragged out as rectangles with a fence round them, resized by moving the fence, and they need a farmhouse close by.
A field used to be a single tile. If you wanted a big field, you placed a lot of small ones next to each other, and it looked exactly like that. So now you drag a field out as a rectangle, two wood a tile, and if one tile in it is no good, the whole drag is refused.
Then I had a small epiphany. A field should not be a patch of ground with a fence added on top. The fence is the field. It stands on the borders between the tiles, so it takes no room, and people walk round it and go in by the gate. You make a field bigger or smaller by dragging a side of the fence, a corner moves two sides, and you drag the gate along the fence to where you want it. Take away a piece of the fence and the whole field goes, after an “Are you sure?”.
The first version of resizing moved the fence the instant you let go. That felt like cheating, so now it is work: the field keeps its size, haulers bring the wood for the new tiles, and a builder moves the fence. The new fence rises out of the ground and the old one sinks, a row at a time on the hammer. Only when the builder is done are the crops on the tiles you dropped really gone.
Then I looked at a save where nobody was farming. Three fields, three farmers, nothing sown. A new field waited for you to pick a crop on its card, and the game never said so. Now a popup asks for the crop the moment you let go of the drag, with your last pick ready, and Esc still places it fallow if you would rather choose later.
The same save had no farmhouse at all, and without one nothing grows. You could place a field anywhere and wait forever. Now a field needs a farmhouse within ten tiles, down from fifteen, which was a long walk for a farmer with an armful of carrots. While you hold a field, every farmhouse shows its ring. Without one nobody sows, and a warning says so in the alert list, which has moved to the left side of the screen. The farmhouse itself now holds 200 of the harvest for the haulers instead of 40, because one big field of carrots filled it in a single harvest.
One more change that fits here. A building that is taken down now leaves three quarters of its materials on the ground, and the haulers carry them back to the stockpile. Pulling down a cabin used to give nothing back at all; now most of it comes home.