I FINALLY decide to work a farm...

ETA: The reason I got an error was because I didn't have enough Sim points. I shut down my game, bought some points and it let me make the purchase and download. Just thought I'd mention it in case anyone else has this problem.

Playing an actual farm is very fun and rewarding. I have several throughout each of the worlds and they all are a lot of work! One of my favorite farms to play is located in Riverview. On this farm I have x1 cow, x3 chicken coops, x4 bee boxes, x2 horses, x2 hunting dogs (they hunt gems), x1 hunting cat (she hunts small animals) and, a double sized garden (based on x2 Swift grow stations placed side by side) which grows produce to be sold at my farmers market and to the local grocery store. This household also owns and operates various businesses in town so, there is always something to do and never a dull moment.

The other farms I play are:
1. Vegetable Farms
2. Fruit Orchids
3. Dairy Farms
This one requires being able to grow the egg, cheese, steak and patty plants. Tofu and roasts are provided by way of the Omni plant.
4. Catfish Farms
This farm harvests perfect quality recipe fish and sells them at their family-owned fish store. As-well-as to the local restaurants.
**To create this type of farm, have your Sim fish until they catch perfect quality fish, catch 10 of the same fish and create a pond on your home lot to populate these in. Every day or as needed, just fish the fish out of your pond and sell them).

So, what type of farm are you creating?

https://i.postimg.cc/jS7Ypf6h/236283624-856420861948834-3998953110349631854-n.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/fyRhpg53/236903152-856420991948821-7390810486702927607-n.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/g0bbm0Nb/237125065-856420961948824-526511050873825291-n.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/PrckVyDx/237206861-856420905282163-2075475894179410295-n.jpg

I absolutely love playing a farm! I have my sims get up at 4 to start breakfast, then send them out to work about 5am-6amish

@Rhiannon58 - Congratulations on the birth of your twins! Your Sims are about to be busy! I hope you have a blast with them every step of the way.

The type of Farmer's Market you create should depend on what you want to sell there. The market can be created with or without mods. Although, I play a modded version because it gives me more options.

To create a Non-Modded version you will need:
-The 'Humble Harvest Stands' which are a part of the 'Al Fresco Street Market' venue. This allows you to sell your home-grown produce.

-The 'Savvy Seller's Collection', which comes with the world of Midnight Hollow'. This allows you to sell any buyable object.

-The 'Baker's Bazaar Collection', allows you to sell food your Sims have made.

-'Grandma's Canning Station', allows you to create homemade jams, marmalades, relish, ketchup and preserves.

-In addition, if you have the 'Artisan's Glassblowing and Jewelry Making Station' and the 'Bohemian Fruit and Nut' set, you can expand the variety of items offered for sale.

**If you're interested in the modded version of creating a Farmer's Market, I will post back with the mods I use and how I have set things up.

My Fish Market is created by way of mods. I once read a Sim cannot sell their fish through the 'game's natural mechanics'. I have never explored that info to discover if it is true or not, I simply by-passed it and created one which uses a modded selling system in order to work.


@GraceyManor - Beautiful Farm! My Sims also have to get up at the crack of dawn to begin working the farm. Breakfast doesn't happen until all of the animals have been fed (or taken care of) and a few 'cleaning chores' have been started. It's a lot of work but it's soooooo much fun :D!

@mw1525 I love the work I have to do with it.XD
It does eat up my sim's day though!.

"Rhiannon58;c-18016411" wrote:

"mw1525;c-18015638" wrote:
-The 'Humble Harvest Stands' which are a part of the 'Al Fresco Street Market' venue. This allows you to sell your home-grown produce.

This option seems to be the most interesting for what I'm looking for. Do you know if the stand can be placed on a home property? Reading the description in the store, it appears to be. I don't want to create something where my Sims have to leave home to manage.

On a side note, I see that the stand is on sale and the sale ends "10/12/16". Obviously that is incorrect but did they just leave things in a frozen state on the store or do they actually rotate around with what's on sale?

The sale page has been stuck like that. It did rotate to a new weekly sale the week after that but somehow reverted back to the 10-12-16 date and has been like that ever since. The team could never figure out way that happened, so they don't even worry about it anymore. Every once in awhile they do maintenance on the site but that's it.

@Rhiannon58 - Yes, you can set up shop on your Sim's home lot and sell your goods from there.

Manual Clip
Every day can be a farmer’s market when you set up the Fruit and Veggie Stand on your home or community lot!

I suppose I do have farms too I just don't think of it that way. My sims almost always garden and I tend to have huge basement gardens because I don't want to mess up the look of my worlds or houses I build. I prefer to use the space at ground level for other things. Or just leave it empty.

If you're interested in mods there are a few that would help. I'll get to that a little later.

The thing I do is I garden and if my sims need simoleans they use the humble harvest stands to sell their produce. But I don't put the stands on their home lot. Never thought of that. Also don't want random townies showing up as they tend to annoy me when they venture indoors or stand outside shouting through a locked door.

Since they need seeds to plant their gardens, and the best place I know of to get seeds is at the Stones Throw Greenhouse, I always add a greenhouse to my world and put 4 humble harvest stands on it. Then my sims can consign their produce and get paid. The process is like using a consignment store without a sim needed to manage the store. Sims can tend the humble harvest stands if they want to but I rarely bother with that as it just is a way of giving them some different idle actions.

https://i.postimg.cc/g0JLXNFT/Greenhouse-With-Stands.jpg

There are 4 humble harvest stands and the lemonade stand placed in front of the greenhouse. I put it on a 40x40 lot. The greenhouse comes to fit on a 40x30 lot.

The beauty of the humble harvest stands is you can put them around town on various lots. I sometimes place the Al Fresco Market as well. It has the humble harvest stand, the lemonade stand and purple eggplants and lemon trees as well as a few other items.

I almost never use a store venue as it comes from the store because they only use items that come new with the venue or are base game.

The Bohemian Garden set adds extra fruit and nuts.

The Grandpa's Grove adds orange trees.

Plus there are mods that provide new different types of produce with recipes.

If the garden gets too much for my sims to handle I hire a gardening service. This is from a mod.

https://modthesims.info/d/459967/gardener-service-v2-3-4th-may-2014.html

You need to use the landline phone to hire the gardeners. You get enough gardeners to handle the job each day. You can use the phone to sack them if you don't want them any more. They do all the weeding, watering and harvesting. They put the produce in the fridge at the end of each shift. They need access to the garden.

I've had lots of farms but only one that I called the farm. It is a large indoor garden that doesn't have a basement. It has a second level running along the back of the lot which is where the sims can live. I initially meant this lot to be on a second lot owned by the family but decided they could stay there sometimes too.

https://i.postimg.cc/Hx6k9SDL/The-Farm005.jpg

It has cows and chickens too.

https://i.postimg.cc/fLBpWWgH/The-Farm004.jpg

I have the tractor in it but don't like to use that object as the sims inventories get too full and they start deleting the tractor at the end of each run around the track. And their inventories get so full the game just about stops running.

Ages ago I built a couple of Savvy Seller shops and added humble harvest stands to the foyer. When I use these shops in a game my sims consign their produce to the 4 hh stands at the greenhouse plus the stands at the shop(s) and there are 4 or 5 stands at the Al Fresco Market.

https://i.postimg.cc/50sVQQgj/Shops-K7-GFloor-Foyer.jpg

Now there is another mod that is quite new and might interest you. It is the Sim State mod. It allows you to run a business at home. I found it works best on a residential lot. I made a YouTube video on my findings. It will give you a good overview. You will see how the sims buy from the shop and how it gets restocked and you hire staff. And I found the preserves made from Grandmas preserve station sell well.

https://youtu.be/kVYkmJWRmZA

There are some things I've said in the video that I've since learned more about and changed my mind about. But it will still give you an idea of how I got it to work. It isn't perfect but I found it fun. But not enough fun for me to want to use it all the time.

This is Alfina. She owns the shop.
https://i.postimg.cc/0jPyHd50/Alfina001.jpg

This lot was already set up with the Oven from the Bistro venue and also one from the Bakers venue. It's kitchen has Grandma's preserving thing as well. And the shop already had savvy seller shelves and mats. The mod wasn't designed to run with the mats or shelves so if you don't have them then you might get a better result than I did as I may have had conflicts.

Here is Alfina celebrating the arrival of her breakfast.
https://i.postimg.cc/JhjmVD26/AlfinaCelebratingArrivalOfFood.jpg

So the bakers oven still works as does the items that came with the bakery set with or without the savvy seller rugs.

I used the display cases that came with the bakery set and sims kept buying and my sim and her employees kept restocking.
https://i.postimg.cc/HxGwnK3W/BakeryDisplays002.jpg

I found I had to keep an eye on the restocking as after posting the video I worked out the cost of restocking does come out of the household funds and where there are employees they might sometimes line up to restock and item and will all restock the same item and you get charged for it each time so I would suggest you don't let them line up to restock. This should be easy to manage if the items for sale are not as spread out as mine were in this video.

I had a greenhouse in the back yard in which my sims grew the produce used to make preserves. There was also a barn at the side of the house where my sims had horses. The sims lived in the living quarters above the shop. I had to lock doors to the living quarters to keep customers out.

She was earning money from sims buying bakery items and they would stay and eat in the shop or take the purchases home.

There are lots of mods available on Mod the Sims and other places that you can use to change how things work.

https://i.postimg.cc/RFXb2rkC/Old-Mill-Cafe-00015.jpg

I have a scarecrow in the back garden and had to lock the gates to the horses as they got the panicked moodlet when they saw a scarecrow.

Have fun. I hope you've got some more ideas on running a farm business.

EDIT: I realised I didn't give you a link to the Sim State mod. Then thought you'd be better off with a link to the forum discussion on the mod. It is 4 pages of posts by various people and has a link to the mod in it.

https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/987500/sim-state-the-sims-3-open-for-business-mini-expansion-launch-trailer-available-now/p1

"deavve;c-18016954" wrote:
Looks nice, gotta try it some time! I'm afraid that the cow and chickens from store won't work and store fixes crash my game lol

The most likely reason your premium content won't work is a corruption in your ccmerged.package file in DCBackup folder.

There is a downloadable version of this file. It works for some people and not others.

https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/740582/how-do-you-fix-the-ccmerge-file-with-nonosims

They way to make a new ccmerged.package file is to
1. rename your existing Sims 3 folder in Documents (the folder that contains your DCBackup folder).
2. launch the game to generate a new Sims 3 folder
3. install ALL of your premium content. There is a lot of it. I'm pretty sure it came from the store. Any content that has extra actions associated with it. I think the first thing I got that was premium content was the wind chimes. This link might help identify it
https://store.thesims3.com/setsProductListing.html?scategoryId=14442
Don't forget the content that came with worlds.

Once you've generated your new ccmerged file then you can rename the new Sims 3 folder and restore the name of the old Sims 3 folder and delete the ccmerged.package from DCBackup and replace it with the new version you just created. And if it works, and you haven't forgotten anything, then you can keep a backup of the file somewhere safe for future use if needed. It'd be a good idea to keep the Sims 3 folder you used to make the new ccmerged file until you have tested all of you premium content works just in case you forgot something and need to install it in the folder you used to make the new ccmerged file.

Happy Simming

Wow! I love this thread and all the ideas. I've attempted farms. This thread gives me lots of good information and inspiration!

Thank you for sharing!