Farming, orchards and bees

Everything the kitchen cooks starts in the ground, on a tree or in a hive, and much of what the workshop spins, weaves and dyes does too. There are over a hundred and fifty things to grow: vegetables, grains, berries, herbs, flowers, mushrooms, fibre plants and dye plants, and nine orchard trees. The full list, with pictures, is on the farming page.

Seeds and planting

You do not buy seeds. Cutting grass, ferns, leaves, wild flowers and sugar cane sometimes shakes one loose, and which seeds you find depends on the biome you are standing in: chili and cotton turn up in warm, dry country, cloudberries and rye in the cold, watercress and cranberries in the sugar cane by rivers and swamps. Most vegetables, grains, fibres and some dye plants go in tilled soil. Berries, herbs, flowers and mushrooms go on plain ground: grass, dirt, podzol or moss. Mushroom spawn needs no light at all, so a cellar works.

When you set a seed down, the action bar says how long it needs and, in plain words, anything that will slow it.

Growing

A plant grows through several stages you can see, the last one being ripe. Right-click an unripe plant to see its stage and when it will be ready. Bone meal pushes it a fifth of the way, whether you use it by hand or a dispenser fires it at the plant.

• A plant never dies. Without light, or for rice, taro, watercress, papyrus and the other water crops without water beside it, it waits. On dry soil or in the wrong climate it grows at half speed.
• Time counts while you are away, up to half a day at a time, so a month away is not an instant crop.
• Water, pistons, fire, explosions, mobs and trampling leave planted crops alone.

Picking

Right-click a ripe plant. You get the produce and some seeds back. An annual starts over at once; a perennial (berries, most herbs, mushrooms, kale and the cut-and-come-again greens) drops to a young plant and gives again. Breaking a ripe plant picks it without replanting, and pulling up an unripe one gives you its seed back.

On a claim, only you and the people you trust can pick, bone meal or pull up your plants. See Claiming.

Farmers are paid for every vegetable, grain, berry, herb, mushroom, fibre, dye plant and orchard fruit; Florists for flowers. See Jobs. /journal opens your journals: the grower's journal keeps a book of what you have picked, with a page for each, and the herbarium presses every herb you pick ripe and says what the kitchen makes of it.

Orchards

An orchard starts with a graft. Cutting leaves in a tree's own country now and then shakes one loose (pears in birch woods, peaches in cherry groves, oranges in the jungle, figs and apricots in warm country). Set it in soil with open sky above it and it grows into a real tree in about half an hour, faster in good light and not at all in the dark. Then fruit hangs under the leaves, in a cycle of about half an hour: right-click or punch each one to pick it. Pick them all and the tree begins a new crop on its own. Sometimes a pick shakes loose a new graft, and breaking a young sapling gives its graft back.

A pear grows into a white-barked birch-shaped tree, a peach into a pink cherry-shaped one and an orange into a small jungle tree; the rest grow as oaks.

A tree at the very edge of a chunk bears fewer fruit, so give an orchard some room.

Keeping bees

Bees visit your flowers on their own, and a hive is a normal hive. Seven grown flowers make their honey taste of themselves: moon daisy, amber tulip, dusk cornflower, ember poppy, lavender, marigold and foxglove.

• Honey. Light a campfire under a full hive, plant at least two blooms of one of those flowers within seven blocks, and fill a glass bottle. You get that flower's honey, and the flower with the most blooms wins.
• Frames. Five sticks make a hive frame: three across the top and one at each lower corner. Set up to three in a placed hive (a wild nest takes none). Each frame adds one more bottle of honey to a stack of glass bottles, or two more honeycomb to shears: up to nine.
• Reading and lifting. An empty hand on a hive tells you its frames, honey and smoke. Sneak with an empty hand to lift a frame out. Frames come back if the hive is broken, burned or blown up.
• Wax. Honeycomb is stock for the chandlery in the workshop: beeswax cakes, polish, waxed thread and more.

Smoke first. A hive without a lit campfire beneath it keeps its vanilla ways, and its bees keep their tempers.

The grower's journal keeps an apiary page too: every flower's honey you have bottled, plain honey and honeycomb.

Arranging flowers

A florist's bench is two flower pots with a plank between them, over three planks, on two sticks. Set it down anywhere and arrange on it with your hands:

• Lay flowers. Right-click the bench holding a flower: one stem goes down each time, and you can see them on the bench.
• Choose the shape. Right-click holding what holds it: paper for a bouquet (5 stems), a decorated pot for a vase (6), a vine, osier willow or hops for a wreath (6), a candle for a centerpiece (4), a wooden trapdoor for a window box (4).
• Tie it. Right-click with shears once the count is right. Stems all of one colour family (pale, blush, crimson, golden or twilight) keep it; a mix makes a meadow arrangement. Thirty to collect.
• Change your mind. An empty hand reads the bench; sneak with an empty hand to take the last thing back. Breaking the bench gives back the bench and everything on it.

Florists are paid once for each arrangement, and the grower's journal keeps a page of the ones you have made. On a claim, only people you trust with your chests (the Containers flag) can use your bench.

What to do with it all

The produce, honey and fruit go straight into the kitchen: vegetables roast and puree, grains become flour, rice and oats, and there are dishes built around each. Many grown crops stand in for the plain ones a recipe names: parsnips and peas where it asks for carrots, sweet potatoes and taro for potatoes, squashes for pumpkin, salad leaves for meadow greens, rye and spelt for wheat, new berries and orchard fruit in the jams, tarts and fillings. Herbs dry into herb bundles or steep into garden teas (mint, green, fennel and sage) at the pot, and the leafy and pungent ones grind into pesto and a garlic herb rub for toasts, potatoes and roast chicken. Flowers dry into petals and posies, pulses into flour and stew.

The workshop takes the rest: flax, hemp, cotton and nettle spin in place of string, madder, woad, indigo and weld (and some flowers) colour the dyed cloths, papyrus stands in for paper, and rush, osier and rattan for cane. See the farming page for every ingredient and where it comes from.