Start and run the farm

Build your farm

The farm is the resource loop in Welcome to Elderfield. Steam tells you to cultivate land, harvest crops, stop the growth of unruly tentacles, and manage strange otherworldly livestock. Useful crops named on Steam are corn, pumpkins, teeth or eyeballs. The same bullet that covers the farm also sends you to mine and forage so you can feed turn-based fights and daily chores. A How To Play trailer narrated by Chris Cote walks the opening loop; the Steam store stills show autumn plots, a windmill, a red barn and dark farm animals.

Farm evidence

Plots, tentacles and opening chores

Steam's about text is blunt: cultivate your land, harvest your crops, and stop the growth of unruly tentacles. Beings from the woods may wander onto the farm. Chris Cote's How To Play trailer is the moving walkthrough of that opening, and the 1.0.0 stills remain the layout you should expect on a current save. Windmill, torches and a ghost decoration in the overhead still are layout proof: you still plant what Steam named, then mine and forage to feed Item and Ritual.

Opening chores: till, water, harvest, and keep tentacles off the soil before night fights eat your surplus.
Community pages add a first-day note: starting tiles can be occupied by Ghost Tentacles that you clear with Cleansing Balm before you till. That clearing step is community-derived; the tentacle problem itself is first-party.
Layout proof in the overhead still: pumpkin patches, a windmill, torches and a ghost yard decoration — not a seed table or shopping list.
Steam never publishes days-to-harvest, sell prices or fertilizer math. Named crops and the tentacle chore are the store facts.
itch.io's v0.6.5 slice is an older Windows RPG Maker demo of the same chores, useful as a free vertical slice, not a 1.0.0 seed list.

Overhead autumn farm with pumpkin patches, a windmill, torches, a ghost decoration and the player among crops. — Official store still: autumn plots, pumpkins and a windmill.

Ranch yard in front of a red barn with cows, dark farm animals, and the player in the pen. — Official store still: barn yard and livestock.

Corn, pumpkins, teeth and eyeballs

The only crop names locked on the Steam about text are corn, pumpkins, teeth or eyeballs. That list is the store's example of useful harvests, not a complete almanac. Harvest achievements then give the only official volume numbers, which is how you know the farm is meant to run for a long save rather than a single season.

Named harvests on the Steam about text: corn, pumpkins, teeth or eyeballs as useful crops.
Devilberries x1 appear on an offering grid with Offer or Nevermind — a named farm output that feeds shrine or visitor prompts, not a full shrine catalog.
Pumpkins reappear in town as The Great Pumpkin, a grinning boss labeled on a Steam still, so the crop and the dungeon joke share a vegetable.
Corn is also the joke inside Cornstalker, the lab-coat enemy whose combat intro reads A Cornstalker appears.
Crop ladder: Farming Sim is harvest your first crop; Green Thumb, Green Hand and Green Soul are 100, 1,000 and 10,000 crops.
Gold ladder: Pocket Money, Doing Well, Business Person and Filthy Rich are 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 and 1,000,000 total gold.

Otherworldly livestock

Steam tells you to manage a variety of strange, otherworldly livestock. There is no official feed table, no named breeds beyond what the stills show, and no Steam list of every product. Keep animals as a second harvest track beside crops: they generate products, they share the yard with tentacles, and they feed the same gold and combat resource loop as mining and foraging. The barn still is the visual proof that cows and darker farm animals occupy that pen in 1.0.0.

Barn still: cows and darker farm animals in a pen in front of a red barn.
Product ladder: Animal Tamer, Animal Herder and Animal Fanatic track 50, 500 and 5,000 animal products.
Re-Gifter is give a Farm Visitor item right back to them, so visitors walk the farm with gifts you can bounce.
The yard is a social space as well as a production space — pair Re-Gifter with the Social menu from v0.11.17 if you are chasing hearts while you water plots.
Livestock products still count toward Animal Fanatic even on a cozy save, because those achievements do not name a difficulty gate.

Farm, mine, forage, then fight

The Steam feature bullet that names the farm also names mining and foraging. Combat then spends those gathered resources, buffs and equipment against Lovecraftian horrors. Cozy difficulty exists so you can stay on harvest and discovery if you do not want that fight loop; if you do want it, the farm is still the supply line. Build the farm first, then decide whether Cozy is enough. Read the combat page for Attack, Ritual, Guard and Item, and keep the Steam store farm copy plus Chris Cote's How To Play trailer as the developer how-to.

Launch copy sends you to spend afternoons in the mines without promising safety gear.
Forage through the surrounding wilds sits in the same Steam sentence as fishing and decorating your home.
All three gathers sit behind Item and Ritual in a fight, which is why a dead run often starts with empty plots rather than a missing sword.
Green Soul's 10,000 crops and Filthy Rich's 1,000,000 gold are the long-save targets Steam printed; a one-day farm is only the tutorial.
Animal Fanatic's 5,000 animal products is the livestock equivalent of that long save.