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40d:Farm plot

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Revision as of 07:01, 27 October 2008 by RomeoFalling (talk | contribs) (→‎Caveat: restyled, added verify tag)
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A farm is a building that allows dwarves to grow plants from seeds. Plants can be used for food or to brew alcohol. Farms built outside have completely different crops to farms built inside.

In large fortresses, a farm is the most compact way of producing food. Early forts can subsist with herbalists collecting plants from bushes outside but that is insufficient to support large populations. (Note that plants gathered by herbalist can be processed for the seeds necessary to set up an outside farm.)

See the article on crops for details on the conditions needed to grow the available plants.

Building the farm plot

Farm plots must be built on a suitable location and require a dwarf with the farming (fields) skill enabled to prepare.

To place a farm plot enter the build menu and select farm plots. Use the u and k keys to expand the width and height of the plot, and m and h to decrease the size. When the plot is the desired size, and in the right position, pressing Enter will place it. A free dwarf with the grower skill should then start clearing out any rubble or other impediments away from the farm plot.

Growing plants

See farming.

Suggested size

A 10x20 plot should, with several dedicated farmers, provide enough food to feed a full 200-dwarf fortress. Much smaller plots can serve smaller forts, and if you supplement them with plant gathering, hunting, fishing, or trading they can become smaller to the point of non-existence.

Try to leave a little extra space in underground farm rooms for farmers to stack spare boulders. Stones that get moved under doors in a farm will keep them open, causing potential flooding problems if you need to irrigate.

Caveat

If you build a farm plot and the majority, but not all of the tiles are underground, the plot will be an underground plot, but will be completely unusable. There's no notification of any sort to tell you this and it'll just look like your farmers are lazy. If your farmers stop working check and see if you accidentally channeled above it. This may also happen to a plot which is primarily above ground/outside, but has at least one tile that is underground/dark.[Verify]

See also