I FINALLY decide to work a farm...

"mw1525;c-18017344" wrote:
@Karritz - You have a very active and large game! I love the look of your greenhouse! Out of curiosity, how do you manage all of the produce your garden yields? I find my Sim's stockpile inventories fills up very fast and I have nowhere near the number of plants you've shown.

When it comes to harvesting my larger gardens, I find the 'Harvester' which is created on the Inventor's workbench to be an adequate tool for the job. Although, personally I prefer for my Sims to do manual work the old-fashioned way by using their hands. While I do own the tractor, I haven't found a real use for it (yet). Maybe it will become a holiday 'hay ride' feature at my winter holiday events.

I tend to keep the harvestables but I've learned to check all inventories of sims who have been gardening. Every so often, especially when I have a lot of sims in the game, I start at the top of the portraits on the left of the screen and go through each sim. I check each one for their status of lifetime happiness points and inventory. Plus a few other things depending on the game. If they have any harvestables in their inventory I move them out of there.

I have a variety of ways to move the harvestables and collected items out of sim inventories.
1. Sell them - that's something I rarely do (I do it only if my sim needs simoleans or I've got more harvestables than I can cope with.)
2. move them to chests. I will often have several chests. I try to sort the items so they all go into the chest designated for their type of thing.
Examples of the way I may sort the items from sims inventories into chests include: fish; grapes or produce I might use for nectar making if I have them making nectar; seeds; tomb objects (possibly I'll have a chest for each of the worlds that have tombs).
I have lots of chest like objects that people have made and I've added to my game. Or I might buy chests from one or more of the WA worlds.
I add an insect cabinet and one of the larger cabinets from Supernatural and add all insects to the insect case; and tell sims to add all gems and metals, and elixirs to the other Supernatural cabinet. I might add mushrooms and other produce that is used for elixir making to the supernatural cabinets too.

I find the tractor is dangerous as their inventories fill up so fast you can be caught out and lose the tractor or the game can slow down to a point where nothing much is happening. Using the green dragon to harvest has a similar problem. If you've forgotten to check inventories and the tractor ends up in the garden instead of its proper parking spot then that is a sign you sim's inventory needs emptying. Same for the green dragon, if it resets and reappears near the gate to the lot then the sim's inventory is probably overfull of harvestables.

I rarely add produce to the fridge but if I use the gardening service (from a mod) they will put the harvestables in the fridge at the end of the day.

If my sims need simoleans I use humble harvest stands that I have placed at the greenhouse or in other parts of the world. I find they earn more from sales if I use the hh stands.

@Karritz - On the Riverview farm I mentioned near the beginning of this thread, I have seven 'chest-like' vegetable storage bins outside the house (most of my other farms only require about three). It's these bins which fill up very quickly. Even though I have a small garden, the number of harvestable I get per day adds up very quickly. Normally, I stop the storage count when each veggie, fruit or what-have you reaches 100. The produce grown on this farm is used in a variety of ways and shared throughout the world. I use the fridge to store food which is only for this family's use.

In addition, I use the Canning Station overhaul mod to make 'full meal rations and desserts' from group servings. Those also add up very quickly and tax my storage spaces. However, there's nothing quite like having ready-made meals sitting on the shelves (or in the cupboards) for those times when there just aren't enough Simhours in the day. Add in the normal things that can be canned and that's a lot of little glass jars!

The 'Supernatural Display Cabinet' is where my Sims store all of their elixirs and all ingredients for those elixirs including insects, gems & gem powder, mushrooms and foods specific to elixir recipes. This is the hardest storage inventory for me to manage because my Sims get three bottles of elixir for every single bottle they are told to create.

As a rule, I empty my Sim's personal inventory nightly before I save. During the day, they only carry a few items with them, rain & shine umbrellas, death flower, a book (for studying or reading), a piece of fruit to delay hunger and an MP3 player. They don't seem to need much more than that.

Canning Station Overhaul Mod:
https://modthesims.info/d/580462/canning-station-overhaul-update-aug-2-2016.html

Split Group Serving Mod:
https://modthesims.info/d/611234/split-group-serving-update-may-29-2018.html

Once again, thank you all, and especially @Karritz for sharing all those wonderful farm ideas! After playing my small farm for a while, and having a harvest stand in front of the house (outside of a locked gate to keep nosey busybodies out), I realized that this is a huge time waste. So I will indeed put my stand on a community lot somewhere. I do own "stones throw greenhouse" but never put one in my town. I just use the amazing "stuff" from it for my gardening Sims to have awesome gardens at their homes. If I setup a stones throw greenhouse in my town, does an NPC take over running it? I don't want to use any of my founding families for that. I suppose I could create a Sim to work it and leave that family letting them do their thing. I don't normally like to leave families uncontrolled but that might be a reason to do it.

I love how you had modded so that your families can work from home. That's one of the biggest things I miss from TS2. ALL of my stay-at-home parents had businesses in their homes, from tailors, to bakers, to toy shops, art galleries, you name it. It was one of the funnest aspects to play. I tend to stay away from mods. It took me literally years to finally get Nraas and I only did that so I could play my families rotationally like in TS2.

Thanks again for all the amazing ideas. It appears that farming in TS3 isn't really much different than gardening which I have done since the beginning. Gardening has been one of my most loved things to do in TS3 for my stay-at-home parents. I usually gave them the gardening profession and sold produce for their promotions as well as income especially for first generation families. So really, the biggest difference is horses. My farm family now has two horses and just did their first competition.

"Rhiannon58;c-18018860" wrote:
Thank you @Karritz! I did place a stones throw greenhouse in my town. I made it a community lot that allowed visitors. I tried to have my sim place their harvest stand there but each time I go into the buy mode or family inventory, it takes me right back home. How do I place something on a community lot?

The best way is to go into Edit Town and then click on the lot to edit it.

I usually make mine a hangout. I don't know if that helps or not.

"Rhiannon58;c-18018860" wrote:
Thank you @Karritz! I did place a stones throw greenhouse in my town. I made it a community lot that allowed visitors. I tried to have my sim place their harvest stand there but each time I go into the buy mode or family inventory, it takes me right back home. How do I place something on a community lot?

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As @Karritz mentioned, Edit Town will work ...
But if you want to know how your Sims/Family can build on any lot, at any time.

+{Shift]+
type ... testingcheatsenabled on ... press
+click on the desired lot
Click the "Build On This Lot" tab.


This also allows you to add cribs and other things to the houses owned by other Sims ...
without having to go to Edit Town, remove the Family, and then edit the lot (potentially making it too expensive to repurchase).
It helps because the money comes from your active Sim's/Family's funds.

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I love this thread! Question for the group. I built a pond on my farm, do I need a spawner to add fish? If so, how do I go about getting one placed? Any advice is appreciated.

Happy Farm-Simming!

@Rhiannon58 I think you say you're not getting sales. From my experience there could be two or three possible causes.

Firstly, the lot type. I recall doing some experimenting with lot types and having things for sale and I came up with setting the lot type as hangout as being the one that worked for me but I can't remember all the details now as it was years ago.

Secondly, lack of available customers. In my current video series on trying to get the 30 grandchildren badge my sims at one point were short of cash so I consigned harvestables to the hh stand at the greenhouse. Nothing sold. Then I realised I had an almost empty world with only about 6 townies in it. So I added more townies and the sales started happening.

Another possible issue could be oversupply. I am always careful to have several stands and to never consign more than about 10 items of any one type of harvestable to a stand at a time. And I limit the number of different harvestables consigned to a stand at a time.

I usually only have the 4 stands at the greenhouse, but I sometimes add a few stands to other hangouts as well and limit the number of different types of harvestable and number consigned to each stand.

@MamaSimTee - Yes, if you want to fish immediately you can add any fish spawners. Should you want to develop your own specific high quality fishing pond like the one I mentioned earlier, you will need to invest a little bit of time into having your Sim develop their fishing skill and then begin to catch high quality version of whatever fish you choose. Once you have ten of that type just deposit them in the pond on your lot and fish from there.

In developing my fisherman, I found it very helpful to have him read all of the fishing books so the bait for those fish would be added to his knowledge bank. To raise money while building the fishing skill, you could have your Sim register as a self-employed fisherman and make a bit of cash from the lesser quality fish they catch by selling them to the grocery store or at the consignment shop.

I don't know if this is universally true but, in my game, I had the hardest time catching perfect quality lobsters! I needed those lobsters for the lobster tank in my restaurant! My Sim was fishing Crystal Springs in Sunset Valley at the time, so it may be better in other worlds or areas.

"mw1525;c-18019295" wrote:
I don't know if this is universally true but, in my game, I had the hardest time catching perfect quality lobsters! I needed those lobsters for the lobster tank in my restaurant! My Sim was fishing Crystal Springs in Sunset Valley at the time, so it may be better in other worlds or areas.

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The quality of bait your Sim uses, combined with the skill your Sim has, combined with the challenges your Sim has completed in Fishing,
and combined with the number of fish they have caught in a certain category ... All have an impact on the Quality of fish they catch.

Point in case ...
The quality and value of fish your Sim will catch continually increases.
If your Sim Stocks a Pond on their property with Alley Catfish, Angelfish and Deathfish ... Your Sim can make a lot of money.

The Alley Catfish they catch will soon be perfect, because it takes less skill, and their Quality Score will increase faster.
Perfect Alley Catfish have a better chance of catching Perfect Angelfish, and at an increasing Quality and Monetary Value.
Perfect Angelfish have a much better chance of catching Perfect Deathfish, and at an increasing Quality and Monetary Value.

Your Sims can catch two Perfect Alley Catfish, with Normal Cheese from the Grocery Store.
Then use the Perfect Catfish to catch 3-4 Perfect Angelfish, and at a higher Quality Score.
The higher Quality Score can be seen in the increasing value of the fish caught (it will still fluctuate, but at a higher value).

Eventually ... Your sim can catch a day's worth of Perfect, High-Quality Angelfish ...
they then use to catch ever increasing Quality and Value Deathfish.

I have Sims that not only catches Perfect Deathfish, but Deathfish worth upwards of 6K Simoleons each.
It should also be noted that if you stock a pond with Deathfish, your Sim can catch them any time of day, and any quantity.
That is not the same as if you add a Deathfish Spawner.

If you want perfect Lobsters for your Restaurant, and the ability to catch them faster ...
Grow Perfect Onions to catch Prefect Tuna, to catch Perfect Lobsters.
The modifiers on Perfect Tuna and Perfect Lobsters will still increase slower than Angelfish and Deathfish.
It will take a while, but you can eventually catch Lobsters that come in around the 1200 Simoleon each range.

This can be beneficial for a purely Fishing Sim, as Saltwater doesn't freeze, and your Ponds will if playing with Seasons.

Of Course ... If your Sims can also build Bots, and produce. install the appropriate Trait Chips ...
(Sentience, Limitless Learning, Efficiency, Solar Powered, Simulated Emotions )
And keeps the Bot supplied with Perfect Bait ...


https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51728622291_57601cd64f_k.jpg


The Bot can catch Perfect Deathfish 24 hours a day without ever needing a Tune-Up or Recharge.
Happy Simming!


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