Set Up Soil
Crops can only be planted on tilled soil by farmers assigned to that zone. To designate land to till, click on the farm zone and under "Uses" you will see farming soil. Click on that to "build" an area of tilled soil to farm.

Choose Crops
You control what is planted by setting up the priorities of the zone. Click on the farm zone, assign priorities, the soil to see the crops available. Pay attention to crops with a note about being out of season. Pressing the up arrow will produce 1 proportional area relevant to your other crops.

Let's say you built 10 tillable tiles.
having all crops set to 0 means nothing will be planted.
If wheat is then clicked up to 1, and it is in season, then 10 tiles of wheat will be planted.
If wheat is 1 and carrots are 1, then 5 wheat and 5 carrots are planted.

If you want to plant more of a crop then others, then you can increase it's ratio relevant to other crops. So 2:1:1:1 of wheat:carrot:potato:parsnip means 2/5th's of the field will be wheat. Carrot, potato, and parsnip will each be 1/5th of the field for a total of 3/5ths. Circling back to our example field of 10 tiles, 4 tiles will be wheat, 2 tiles carrot, 2 tiles potato, and 2 tiles parsnip.

Seasons
Crops have seasons. If you choose an out of season plant then your farmers will not plant it. That means your ratios will not include those crops. Let's say wheat was out of season in our 2:1:1:1 example. That means that 1/3rd of the field will be carrots, 1/3rd potato, and 1/3rd parsnip.

If you go into a new season and don't choose new crops then your famers will not plant them.

Tip: I find it helpful to leave the ratios I want to plant in place, so if for example I want 1 of every crop then if it's in season it will be planted and if it's not in season it will be skipped

Unlike food crops, grains have to be processed using a threshing spot.

The grain crops are:

• Wheat
  
• Oat
  
• Barley
  
• Rye
  
• Rice

Grain Cycle on the Farm
1. Farming spot is built
2. A grain is sowed
3. A grain plant is reaped.
4. Harvested plant is stored in a ground storage.
5. A farmer will pick up the harvested grain and take it to a threshing spot to thresh it.
6. Straw, Grains, and Rice Grains are produced depending on the plant (see picture below).
7. The straw is stored in ground storage
8. The grain is stored in a silo.

Tip: If you notice that farmers are not threshing into grain check out the troubleshooting section

Best for maximizing flour - wheat and barley. Both produce 1 straw and 3 grains. If you don't need straw these are the most efficient for sending to the grain-flour-bread chain. It takes 3 grains to produce one flour.

Best for maximizing straw - oats and rye. Oats are more efficient since they produce 2 straw and 2 grains compared to rye's 1 straw and 1 grain.

These values may change. You can easily see the current ratios by hovering over the threshing spot in the build menu.

Trees are highly efficient food producers that take almost no maintenance except in the fall when they are harvested. Currently apple and pears are the only tree crops.

Steps to plant:
1. On any area in the farm zone click the tree build icon.
2. Place the tree spot on any untilled accessible space in the zone.
3. The farmer will plant the tree.
4. The tree will slowly grow, but if planted in the spring you will get a harvest that fall.
4. In the fall the trees will fruit and will be harvested.
5. In winter the trees lose their leaves and drop any fruit not harvested. Fallen fruit is not collected in barrels but can be fed to animals.
6. Next spring the trees will grow leaves, flower, then fruit without extra work.

Setting your fruit production:
By default apples and pears are products that are set to 1 however you also need to click on the trees tab and turn pears to 1 if you want to produce pear and apple trees. The default setting is 1 apple tree. These ratios follow the same rules as crops except there is no "out of season" sowing. Check the planting crops section for more details on how planting ratios work. Current state apples seem more productive then pears.

Tip: I find it works well to have 1 family with an apple orchard and another family with a pear orchard. There is no need to adjust the apple/pears on the products tab, you can control this by turning apple tree to 0 and pear to 1 or vice versa.

Removing unwanted trees
You can remove unwanted fruit trees (and rocks and flowers or any item naturally growing on the ground as well) by clicking on the build menu then choose salvage structure and click on the base of the tree. The owner of that zone, in the case of fruit trees the farmers, will then cut down the tree and you can build in that space.

Tip: Trees can block production areas so if a tree is near your furniture and you get an inaccessible error remove the tree.

Farmers and foragers can raise animals. Farmers can raise the following animals:

• Sheep - produce wool and meat
  
• Cows - produce milk and meat
  
• Chickens - produce eggs and meat

Taming Animals
In order to raise animals you must first click on assign priorities > animals > then click the up arrow until you show the number of animals you are aiming to keep. The farmer will then go a tame that animal. I've had good luck with taming 1 male and 1 female if I choose 2 animals, but I'm not sure if that's luck or by design.

Tip: If your farmers aren't taming that animal, check to see if the animal has spawned in an inaccessible region, such as across a river with no bridge. Build the bridge to make it accessible and taming will resume.

Breeding Animals
Animals will breed slowly. In a years time I've seen maybe 1 or 2 lambs, 1 calf, and as of yet have never seen a chicken reproduce.

Pens
All animals need a feeder which can be built under the "uses" menu. This trough must be in the farming zone. It defaults to auto but can be set to a specific animal. It's also ideal to pen in animals by building a fenced in area with a fence gate. Build the feeding spot inside the fenced in region. Free range animals will eat crops and potentially get locked in other villeins houses where they will slowly starve. the roadmap mentions dangerous creatures and it seems likely unpenned animals will be in more danger.

Tip: Current state animals are not brought to the pen after taming. Or if they are it's very irregular. Thus it's best to build the pen and feeding spot prior to taming to insure animals are brought into the pen

Feeding
Animals are fed straw, fallen fruits, and acorns. Villeins will bring these items to the feeder. Feeders are species specific and can't be shared.

Animals can also be free fed by grazing in their zone.

Cows, Milk, Cheese, and Butter
Cows will be milked by a Villein daily. Milk will be consumed and sold as is. In addition milk will be churned into butter and cooked into cheese but only if you have the farm set up correctly.
Butter requires that a churn is reachable in the farming zone and that the butter product is set to at least 1. Cheese will be cooked at a cooking table in any zone the farmer owns; again only if the cheese product is set to at least 1. It is not neccasary to have a cooking table on the farm as long as there is a cooking table in the farming families home zone.

Tip: If butter and cheese are not being produced despite having the right tools in the farming or home zone and having the products set to at least 1 then see the troubleshooting section for more help

Sheep and Wool
Sheep are vital for tailors and clothes as they are the only source of yarn. No cotton or flax for these villeins - wool only. Sheep will be sheared every few days to produce 1 wool. Wool is stored in a chest. It can be processed into yarn and silk by tailors. Unlike cows and chickens sheep don't require any other furniture besides the feeder and pen.


Chicken and Eggs
Chickens need a chicken bed where they will lay eggs as they sleep overnight.

Farmers are the workhorses of the village, even more so then foragers. They have to till soil, plant, harvest, thresh, store products, feed animals, shear or milk animals, gather eggs, plant trees, and carry hundreds of products too and from market. Some of these products are then further processed into butter, cheese, grains, and straw. All of this leads to the most likely culprit of your farm not producing products:

Your Farmer Villeins Are Overworked

A farming family needs to be large. Frankly I don't accept a family if it has fewer then 4 members. 5 is the ideal starting size because there is just so much work on a farm!

One way to tell your farmers are overworked is to look at the field. If it's well into the season and you see any black plants, that means the plant rotted before it was harvested and means you have too much work for your farmers to get too. If it's at the start of the season don't worry if you see black - plants that are out of season from the prior season will turn black before they are replanted.

Farmers also have a work order:
Sow/harvest
Feed animals
Milk/Shear Animals
Thresh/Make Cheese/Butter

So if all your crops are taken care of but you aren't ever shearing sheep or milking cows then you are overworked.

Specialize and Don't Overplant - The Goldilocks Principal
Your first family will have to be crop focused. Don't try to have them also raising 4 cows, 8 sheep, and 10 chickens. If you are unlucky and don't get another farming family by the fall, then add 1 sheep to the family so you can start to support a tailor. Cows and chickens aren't needed but if your family is large you can probably support a cow.

For a crop based family this formula seems to work well:
(Family Size - 1) x 20 = land to till.
So a family of 5 would have 4x20 or 80 tiles. It's -1 to account for having at least 1 family member selling/buying at market for a large portion of the day.

In addition to the crops, you can also add 5 trees per person. So a family of 5 could sustain 25 trees in addition to the 80 tiles above without workflow issues. This ratio allows for threshing within the season. If you want to thresh in the winter only but turning off the grain product you can probably plant more crops or sustain some more animals.

Constantly Evaluate and Readjust
Got farmers idle? Expand the crops or add more animals.
Got crops turning black in the field, or milk piling up with no butter or cheese in sight, scale back the crops or animals.
You may also want to lower till area if you want to focus on grain products and increase it if you are only doing food crops.