Food, Firewood, and Farming Setup

Keep yourself and your villagers fed, watered, warm, and stocked for winter. Early food sources, the field prep loop, and the firewood habit that gets you through the cold season.

At a glance


Food early	Hunt, forage berries and mushrooms, set a rabbit trap, fish.
Field prep	Grub up once with a Hoe, then Fertilize, Plough, Sow each cycle.
Firewood	Houses need it for heat. Never let stock run dry going into winter.
Winter rule	Stockpile food and firewood before Winter. Some foods get scarce.

Food, water, and firewood are consumed continuously, by you and by every villager you recruit. The early game is about covering your own needs. The mid game is about producing a surplus so your settlement runs itself.

Early food and water

Forage berries, mushrooms, and herbs that grow everywhere.
Set a rabbit trap early (it is a Chapter II goal) and hunt with a thrown spear or bow.
A knife lets you skin kills for meat. Cook raw meat before eating where you can.
Drink from clean water sources, and build a Well once you can so the supply is reliable.

The field cycle

A Field must be prepared once before its first use, then worked each cycle:

Grub up the new field with a Hoe (one time only, per new field).
Fertilize the soil.
Plough it.
Sow the right seed.

Crops are season-dependent, so you sow and harvest within the windows tied to the seasons. Exact per-crop season windows live on the wiki, so verify before relying on a fixed calendar. Once you grow grain, a Windmill grinds it to flour. A Barn handles threshing and lets you assign Field Workers to automate the loop.

Firewood and winter

Firewood heats houses, and villagers need it supplied or their Mood drops.
Keep Woodshed output ahead of demand so you always have a buffer.
Before Winter, stockpile both food and firewood. Winter makes some foods scarce and the cold is harsh.

Fertilizer the cheap way

Let berries and vegetables rot to produce fertilizer. A cabbage field can feed both your table and your fertilizer supply.
Keep pigs for Manure, a key fertilizer input, once you unlock animal husbandry.

Watch out for

Eating into Winter with no stockpile, then starving when foraging dries up.
Letting firewood run out and watching villager Mood collapse in the cold.
Forgetting that a new field needs grubbing up before you can plant it.
Sowing a crop outside its season window so nothing grows.