Manor Lords: The Ultimate Farming Guide

Manor Lords' early access launch is a triumph for the world of indie games. Players everywhere are taking up the mantle of Lord or Lady and trying their hand at city-building their very own medieval settlement from village to township. There's a lot to learn, keeping your people fed chief among your duties. That's where this beginner guide to farming in Manor Lords comes in!

First, it bears mentioning that farming fields usually is not the best way to get your village started! Tilling fields is busy work that requires a ton of peasant labor. For your first year in Manor Lords, we'd suggest focusing your food production efforts on foraging and hunting, then build your first little field in year two.

Manor Lords: Crop Types and Their Uses

Once you've built your first field, there are a few basic crop types you'll start out with in Manor Lords. Here's a rundown.

Emmer (wheat): Can be processed to Grain at the Farmhouse building, to Flour at a Windmill, and then to Bread at a Bakery.
Barley: A food resource required to brew Ale for taverns.
Flax: Can be processed into Linen at the Weaver Workshop building.
Fallow: Technically this is the lack of an active crop. You'll be growing fallow to recover fertility levels in your fields.

Once you've laid out a field and chosen your first crop, build a Farmhouse building beside your field for peasants to work from. You can assign up to 8 families to a Farmhouse, and bear in mind that many hands make for quicker work.

Manor Lords: Low Fertility Fix

Whether you've over-farmed a field into oblivion or you're starting region simply lacks fertile land, build your farming fields as normal and plant fallow. After a couple of cycles, the fallow crops will greatly boost the fertility of your fields, setting you up to harvest emmer or barley later on. Consider it a medium-term investment!

Manor Lords Crop Rotation Tips

True to Manor Lords' leaning toward realism, crop rotation is crucially important. Growing fields of barley multiple years in a row will rapidly drain the nutrients from the soil. Alternating between barley and emmer is good, however, even better in Manor Lords is growing a field of fallow once per three cycles. This will ensure fertile farmland is exploited efficiently and gives the earth plenty of time to recover fertility between harvests.

The best part about growing a field of fallow? You can use fallow fields as grazing pastures for your livestock. Here's how.

How to Make a Pasture in Manor Lords

To graze your animals on fallow fields, you'll need to first unlock the Fertilization upgrade in the technology tree. This will allow you to use fallow fields as pastures for your livestock. Even better, doing so is the fastest way to restore fertility to a field in Manor Lords. Nothing quite beats the stink of manure, am I right?

And that concludes our crash course to getting started with farming in Manor Lords. For more speedy guides, check out one of the useful articles below!