"The Farm Dream" Manual

0. INTRODUCTION

0.1 Welcome, Buddy!

      This is Sticka Forkinit Ranch, a simulation of a little organic farm. It's got a few animals, but mostly it's a vegetable-growing affair.

      We ask that you respect a few loose and easy rules. First, nobody should try to be the boss except the Dream's owner. Second, the Dream's owner should try to be as helpful and encouraging as possible, while not giving out orders. Everybody has their own favorite activities and for this to be fun, it has to run on "requests" rather than "commands."

      This is a BIG Dream and there's a number of key locations. Here's a rough layout to help you wrap your brain around it:

           COMPOSTER                          
              ()      _. TOOL            
            GREEN  ,="' \. BARN           
      WATER HOUSE="'      \.                   
      TOWER ,="'            \. *?*                
FIELDS   ,="\. SHOWERS        \.            
 \.   ,="'    \.                \
   \="'         \.  FARMHOUSE                  
     \.ORCHARD    \                                
       \                                    

0.2 Getting About

      Most of the carts in this Dream are meant to be carried around but the ones drawn by ostrixes are there for getting to the Store and the Fishing area. The most commonly used is in the road, near the Toolsbarn.

      The ostrix will only take you on his route if you say a password. The password changes from time to time.

      You probably won't be able to do a web search for the password. It may take a bit of reading to dig it up, and that was intentional.

1. Growing Crops

1.1 Starting Seedlings

      East of our Water Tower is our Greenhouse.

      Let's say you want carrot seedlings. Step in front of one of the orange counters and turn to face it. Then say   [carrot seeds]   with the brackets.

      Next, pick up the seed tray, move into one of the brown tables, and drop the tray. Now all you have to do is wait for the tray to turn green.

      Bump into that counter, and the seedlings will appear at your feet. You can now carry the seed tray to an empty field :)

      There are ten different kinds of crops we grow. If you don't know the names of the crops, say   [crop list]  .

1.11 Our Seed Bin

      If you type    b    you'll see what seeds we've got. We begin with 10 of each seed packets. Each tray of seedlings takes away one "dose" of seeds from that list.

1.12 The Crop List

      There are 10 crops you can grow:

1.2 Planting

      After getting the seed tray, go to a field with some empty spots in it. PressF3 (or Ctrl-U) to plant a seed. When your tray is empty, drop the tray and it will dissapear. (They're biodegradeable, naturally.)

1.3 Watering

      After planting the seeds, you might notice the ground is a very light-brown color. It needs watering.

      Watering greatly speeds up the rate at which crops mature.

      (Avoid watering empty spots: It won't "break" anything permanently but it will interfere with planting seedlings until the soil has lightened up a bit.)

1.30 Hand Watering

      At the start, the main way crops are watered is by carrying buckets from near the house, where there is a pump.

      To fill buckets, first set them on the grating areas near the pump. Then F3 while standing NW of the pump, facing the handle. All the buckets will be filled at once.

      Carry a filled bucket to NW of a planted row. When you drop the bucket, it will water the 5 spaces SE of you.

      To accomodate hand-watering, we advise leaving a space in the middle of a row, so there are 4 and 5 plants with a space between. Later, when you can Irrigate, you can fill the whole field.

1.31 Irrigating

(This feature is only available to those with whom the farm Dream has been Shared. It used to be available to anybody but we found that too many furres just didn't know what they were doing, or were twinks who used it to annoy others.)

      Irrigating fills whole fields at a time with water.

      To begin irrigating, turn on the faucet that is red, and the faucet that is behind the faucet you turned on. If you aren't the owner and you don't have Share, ask someone with share, to turn the water on and off for you.

      It's now irrigated! Now just sit and wait for your crops to grow.

1.32 Batteries

      The Ranch starts out with one battery, which holds the electricity to run things crucial to safety and hygiene, like lights, plumbing, and so forth. One of our routine drains is keeping our basement refrigerated. We presumably wash, box, and store our crops here before they're sold. (Unsold crops cost us money, so they should be sold in a timely fashion.)

      If the Battery level ever gets to 0, the windmill(s) will get set to channel energy into the Battery, not pumping water from the ground up into the Water Tower.

      To reset it, stand facing the Water Tower's control switch on the SE side of it, and press F3.

1.33 Gaviotas Seesaw

      This amazing invention from the village of Gaviotas, Colombia, is an alternate way to fill the water tower. It takes two furres to use.

      The Gaviotan Sleeve Pump was invented by an engineer named Alonso Gutie'rrez. When Luis Robles, another engineer, was explaining the concept of a pump handle to some children at the Gaviotas school, one of them observed that it was similar to half a seesaw.

      Robles then built a seesaw and attached it to a sleeve pump outside the kindergarten so that when children played on the seesaw, they also pumped water for the school. In the late 1980s, Gaviotans brought their sleeve pumps and other appropriate technology to more than 600 villages as part of the Colombian government's Agua Para Todos (Water for Everyone) program.

      The Gaviotans refuse to patent their inventions, and share them freely with everyone else.

1.4 Harvesting

      You can check if crops are ready for harvest by standing on them, and saying  ?  . When the crops are finally ready, go to the tool shed (waaaay NE) and get a wide basket. Stand on your mature crops and press F3. (Because Dragonspeak doesn't do "personal" inventory very well, we all share one inventory.)

      After crops have been harvested, you can type i (for inventory) to see what we have in storage.

      Harvesting generates piles of greenery called `Brush'. Brush gets in the way of planting, but it is also a valuable resource. Bring this "green manure" to a Composter (big brown barrel device).

1.5 Making seeds

      If we are out of seeds for a certain crop, but we have that crop in storage, then you can sacrifice them to make planting seeds. Just type    [make tomato seeds]    (or substitute another crop name to get seeds of that crop.

1.51 About Heritage Seeds

      All Sticka Forkinit Ranch crops are "heritage cultivars". (A "cultivar" is a breed or strain of something domesticated.) Heritage seeds are special because they were bred both for fertility and for their best traits to "breed true". In many cases, they were selected for flavor over "yield". Thus, heritage tomatoes taste much much better than the storebought kind that are "hybrid" cultivars.

      To officially qualify as "heritage", a crop must date back to before WWII, which was when "hybrid" strains brought about a huge increase in farming prosperity. We owe much to hybrid food breeds but the down sides haven't become apparent until more recent history.

      In the 1980's, a tenth of the American corn crop was wiped out by a single disease. (The loss of corn might not seem so bad until you consider that it's also the source of millions of tons of corn products including sugar, corn syrup, alcohol, cornstarch, biodegradeable packing peanuts, corn oil, and so on.) The reason for this enormous economic disaster was too much genetic similarity in the commercial corn genepool. Only two companies 90% of all seeds for most of America's big farms.

      Because they aren't bred for fertility (a high chance of germination), seeds taken from last year's hybrid crop are not as good. Farmers who use them generally have to buy some starter seeds every year. This can make them dependent on big companies.

2. Composting

      The green heaps of Brush can be taken to the Composters, which look like brown barrels. To put Brush in, stand NW of them, and face them. Drop the Brush, then F3.

      After Brush is put into a Composter, it can be made into Compost (rich brown fertilizer-soil) by standing SW facing the Composter and pressing F3.

2.1 About Turning Compost

      In real life, plant matter takes months to become soil. (We made it this way because we thought this was more fun!)

      The barrels shown in the Dream are, more or less, just big drums with handles, on rollers. They're filled with plant material which ferments (turns to soil due to friendly bacteria) over time.

      There are lots of kinds of bacteria; the kind that can thrive with oxygen present (aerobes) give rise to an earthy-smelling dark stuff. The kind that are poisoned by oxygen(anaerobes) make trash very foul-smelling. To prevent compost from turning out this way, the barrel is ventilated and given a quarter-turn every day.

2.2 Selling Compost

      Sticka Forkinit Ranch can produce quite a bit of Compost. Someone with Share can sell compost at the store. (It's advisable not to sell any Compost until we have at least five fields developed; more on that later in the docs.)

2.3 About Vermicomposting

      Composting is normally slow but to speed it up, we use a species called "redworms" Lumbricus rubellus. They look like skinnier, smaller earthworms. They're very lively, so they're also called "Red Wigglers". Using worms to speed the composting process is called "vermicomposting" and raising worms to sell is called "vermiculture". The two goals tend to overlap naturally.

      The furres who live on Sticka Forkinit Farm produce a certain amount of waste, such as carrot tops and potato peels. In addition to the green piles of Brush, we toss all these scraps into the Composters. Charles Darwin was one of the first to notice how a pound of redworms could eat a pound of food each day. Instead of turning into a smelly sour mess, the food scraps are swiftly mixed in with the hay, straw, twigs and grass-clippings. The worm poop (castings) don't smell bad at all.

      Earthworms such as nightcrawlers are tunnel-builders. While it's true they do soil good by aerating it, they tend to move around very little dirt. Nightcrawlers, the big worms sometimes sold as fishing bait, tend to live eight to fifteen feet underground, so they don't do a farmer that much good. Redworms, on the other hand, churn the ground up. Along with the castings, a portion of the worms in the Composter end up out on the farmland. Fortunately for us, the worms reproduce at a very fast rate, too.

2.4 Using the Carts

      Carts may seem complicated but they're pretty easy once you get used to them. A few carts are usually kept in the Tools Barn.

      The carts are used by picking them up and carrying them once they are loaded. (Having them follow or be pushed by a furre was more trouble than it's worth.) A cart can hold up to five loads. They can only be used to carry one type of load at a time.

      Load a cart by standing on a pile of Brush that's right next to the cart. Face the cart and press F3.

      To unload a cart, stand on it, and F3. You'll fling the load to an empty spot in front of you.

      If you stand on the cart NW of the Composter, face the composter, and F3, you'll empty all your Brush into the Composter.

      Carts can also carry Compost. To fill one, stand on an empty cart NW of a Composter, and F3.

      (Carts are also used to tote around a load of five irrigation pipes.)

3. Making New Fields

      There are 3 rows of fields, labelled A,B,and C. We start out with two fields in Row A. The rest of the west side of the land starts out as a vast field of uncut greenery. Rows B and C have 10 fields each.

      When you're waiting for crops to grow, you can work on developing new fields. Tools for this are kept in the Tools barn.

3.1 Clearing with a Machete

      Greenery in the northwestern fields can be cleared by facing them and pressing F3. You might find some surprises out there.

3.2 Shovelling in Compost

      Once a spot has been cleared, put a load of Compost on it. Stand over it with the Shovel. F3 *twice* to mix it all in. Not only are nutrients added but when ground is aerated, that adds immensely to its fertility.

3.3 Hoeing Furrows

      After shovelling, use a Hoe to dig a furrow. Stand on the spot and F3 once. (You might notice there are lanes between the fields. These can't be developed and some of these spots are reserved for expanding the irrigation system.)

You now have a field ready to go! :)

3.4 Expanding the Irrigation System with Pipes

      Pipes are purchased at the Store by somebody with Share. It costs quite a bit to bring water from one row to the next, so it makes more sense to finish Row B before going on to Row C.

      Plants in fields without irrigation will still grow but it's much slower. Is it better to expand the Irrigation System or save up for a new Windmill? Probably the second Windmill, because irrigation pipes without an ample supply of water aren't much good.

3.5 Weeds

      You may notice some patches of greenery in the furrows that resist planting with seedlings. These are every farmer's worst nightmare: weeds! To get rid of them, get a Hoe, and F3 over the weeds. There! Dang weeds.

3.6 The Tools Barn

      Located NE of the Greenhouse and NW of the Farmhouse, the Tools Barn is chock full of neatly stored supplies. To take one out, just bump the ones on a wall or crate.

You can also put one back. Drop it on the floor and bump the appropriate wall or crate.

4. Security

      After much playtesting, it became apparent that some things you should not be able to do without share. If you are the Dream Owner and would like to change these, simply remove (or add) yellow carpet tiles.

4.1 Irrigation

      It was too easy to waste precious water, so the "master knob", the very first control wheel, SW of the Water Tower, is only for use by those with Share.

4.2 Buying

      Although the farm is run as a Co-op (co-operative) where resources are shared, and the MU (Monetary Units) really belong to everybody who helped, twinks go in and buy things the farm did not need. So, now, only those with Share may Buy at the Store.

      Batteries and Windmills are two of the possible major purchases.

      Batteries add to the total capacity of the farm's energy storage.

4.3 Selling

      Furres with Share may go to the Store and sell different resources (as explained there).

      The only reason not to sell all your crops is that you might want to Make Seeds.

      There's no reason not to sell apples and blackberries.

5. Apples and Blackberries

      Two of our crops don't need much care. They are the blackberries and apples. They aren't seeded or watered, we just pick them.

5.1 Apples

      SW of the Farmhouse is the Apple Orchard. Get a bushel basket from the shed and just walk into the tree multible times until all the apples are picked.

5.2 Blackberries

      Get a little bucket from the tool shed. Around the house are the Black berry bushes. Just walk into them and they will be harvested.

6. Fishing

      Ah, the grand sport of fishing...if you call it a sport.

      You need share to go into the shop, so don't bother going in. SE of the shop though, is the pond. You need to get a rod from the tool shed first before going to the pond, unless you just want to sit there forever... Sit down at the edge of the pond and press f3 to cast your line. Press f3 multible times to change the position of the line. When the ball turns red, quickly press f3 twice. the first time you press f3, you get a fish. The second time, it goes into the inventory.

7. Hunting

      Turkeys have been released onto the grounds. They are the beautiful and extremely tasty breed known as "Bronzes". If you can stand in the same space as one and F3 with any item, that will be add MU to the inventory. An axe is the traditional tool for that.

8. Hints