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• mightysprite Posts: 5,831 Member

  June 2022 edited June 2022

  So here's how the first week went.
  
  I spent just under 2k setting up the farm. The family members have different jobs to keep me from going crazy. Thomas and Rashidah planted the garden together. The first planting was about 50% oversize crops and 50% starter vegetables. There is also a row of apple trees.
  

  

  
  Maira loves fishing so that's her job. She is really good at it too.

  

  
  Imran is an animal enthusiast and he's on chicken duty. We started with two hens and a rooster.

  

  
  Thomas is the full-time farmer so he also has the job of caring for the large animals.

  He makes cheese too. There was going to be only a cow, but Kim Goldbloom smiled at him and asked if he could find any llama wool for her, so Thomas quickly got a llama too.
  
  
  The reward for the llama wool errand was a free grocery delivery. That was a very nice reward. Thanks Kim. They were able to stock up on flour, sugar and other ingredients for their kitchen, plus a few berries and cherries that they'll be able to plant.

  
  Rahmi's primary job is work outside the home.

  She's a stylist. Her sense of fashion is either extremely avant-garde or just terrible
  
  But when she's home she cooks, cans, and fixes things.

  
  Their marriage has taken a serious hit before the beginning of the game

  From the sentiments and relationship scores you can tell that Rahmi had an affair with the mayor Lavina Chopra, Thomas discovered it, and then Rahmi broke up with Lavina. Also, Lavina's son Rahul and Rashidah have a mutual crush on each other. Which is not weird at all.
  
  Because of the negative sentiments Thomas and Rahmi can't seem to have a normal conversation. Thomas is sad all the time and also constantly has a whim to woohoo with his wife. Sounds about right actually. Meanwhile Rahmi, who is romantic, is flirty all the time, but won't give Thomas the time of day. For the first few days they just stayed out of each other's way
  
  
  And I let Thomas buy a guitar to weep into. (and to have something to do when it's thunderstorming outside)
  
  
  At least someone in this family is having fun
  

  
  Between the fishing, the starter vegetables, the milk and eggs from the animals, the grocery delivery, Rahmi's very high cooking skill that allows a lot of meal options, plus the ingredients she makes by canning, Simple Living is not a hard challenge to overcome with this family. It's a good subsistence farm already. But how to get it to bring in enough money to pay the bills?
  
  Rashidah really got into growing the oversize crops. They work well with livestock since almost every time they clean the animal coops and sheds they find oversize crop fertilizer. She started keeping bees as well, though she isn't having much luck with them, the honey is poor quality and they're enraged most of the time and only occasionally is it because of mites.
  
  Rashidah also got to spend some time with Rahul and they're together now

  

  And she applied to college. I think she'll go off, get a degree and then come back. She got the Henford resident scholarship and... the E-Sports scholarship? Who knew.
  
  Everyone has a friend or two

  Rahmi has bonded with Cecilia Kang, Thomas talks to Kim Goldbloom and to the lads down the pub, Maira has a bestie Jace Laurent from school, and Imran has a little group of school friends including Orange Bailey-Moon.

  
  The wild foxes are a nuisance. I heard the llamas are supposed to defend against them, but not this llama. Maybe it's not placed close enough to the chicken coop. I didn't see it happen but a fox must have gotten one of the hens-- she mysteriously disappeared.
  
  Kim Goldbloom randomly stopped being the grocery owner.

  It may have been when she called Thomas and asked if he should change careers. He said she should follow her heart. Maybe it's for the best that he won't keep trying to impress her by doing errands. Though Rashidah should be grateful- the final errand taught Thomas the recipe for Veggie Treats, which is how you get your cow to make Mighty Plant Milk, a necessary ingredient in many lactose-free recipes. Rashidah is lactose-intolerant.

  
  On Friday, Rahmi took the day off work and she and Thomas stayed home and had a long talk. I decided either they were going to make up, or if I failed to get them to do that then they might separate. They made up. They have about 50% green and pink bars now so that's an improvement.
  
  On Saturday, Imran took a freshly laid Orange Egg to the fair. The fair was pretty boring and all he won was a Participation award. But he's cool with that, because the Participation award comes along with the recipe for Chocolate Treats and now his cow can make chocolate milk! At least, he thinks that is what will happen. They do have a chocoberry in the fridge from the grocery delivery. Let's see if someone can plant it before Imran gets his hands on it.
  
  The important thing that happened at the fair was selling the whole week's produce (minus some saved for ingredients) at the grocery stall, which pays extra during the fair. They earned 2,556. Not too shabby for week 1. They earned back the money it cost to set up the farm, and then some. On the other hand, they didn't get charged bills on the first week-- if they'd had bills to pay they would have lost money overall.
  
  
  I was surprised at how much the fertilizers can sell for. We already planted a similar garden this week for the second week of spring (I have 2-week seasons in this save), but now I'm thinking of doing fewer oversize crops in future seasons. I didn't notice how much the oversize crops sell for, I'll have to look next week, but it might not be as profitable as the regular crops since you only get one harvest every 5 days. And then if I just sell the fertilizers that might be better.
  
  And Maira didn't take long to fill the fridge with fish so I think she's going to need another job as well. Maybe when she becomes a teen I'll make her a baker.
  

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• MossyMeow Posts: 54 Member

  July 2022

  This is such a cool idea for a challenge! I never knew there was all that history between the families. It reminds me of the Sims 2 a little bit.

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• mightysprite Posts: 5,831 Member

  July 2022 edited July 2022

  Glad you are enjoying it @MossyMeow
  
  Here's how Week 2 went for the Watson family!
  

  The chicks grew up into chickens. Imran is taking good care of them.
  
  
  Thomas is better at beekeeping than Rashidah was, with scarcely a fraction of the effort.
  
  
  Maira and Thomas went fishing in the Bramblewood. It was a nice father-daughter outing. Guess which one of them actually caught fish.
  

  
  The large vegetables are coming along nicely too. This was one thing I'd been wondering about after Week 1, whether the large vegetables are worth the space they take up as well as the fertilizer I put into them from the animal sheds. Is it more cost-effective to grow the large vegetables, or to grow regular crops there and sell the fertilizers?

  

  
  The people are growing too. Rashidah got into the Biology distinguished degree. It was the only distinguished degree she got into. I guess the gardening skill helped! She's off to college and she wants to come home and become a farmer too when she grows up.
  
  Either Rahul is going to college too, or else he just missed Rashidah too much

  

  
  The twins had their birthday!

  

  
  Here's Maira

  

  
  Imran rolled trans, so she is Imra now. I'm trying to do her transition bit by bit through her teens into young adulthood. I love her in this bob

  
  
  Imra had the idea to start growing flowers in the garden alongside the vegetables. Their neighborhood has a little garden where she was able to harvest some roses, snapdragons, and tulips to plant.
  
  
  
  
  Imra really loves her chickens and is trying to be brave about taking care of them during the storm. They really need it...
  
  
  Caring for chickens can be sad too, when they get older and have to be sold or traded for meat...
  
  (This dialog is actually from before Imra's birthday, hence the old name and pronouns)

  
  On Love Day, Mom and Dad managed to get some time to themselves for a date.

  

  
  Now to the financial side of things, which after all is the point of this challenge...
  The bills seemed awfully low when they came. How come?

  
  
  Oh! They get a bonus from the NAPs!
  I think this was Green Gardening and Upcycling Initiative. (They have a home recycler to cope with my restriction on selling into the void-- anything that can't be used or sold at a stand gets recycled)
  
  
  Well that's pretty cool. This is a big difference from the 5k and change that they had to pay before.

  
  And now to sell all our goods at the Finchwick Fair... (+10% profit!)
  
  
  Oversized vegetables: Let's do some math!

  Let's say we had a normal crop there instead, selling for 4 simoleons an item. We'd have 4 plants on the garden patch, giving 4 items per day for 5 days. That's 320 simoleons. Then if we also kept one regular and one super fertilizer instead of putting them into the oversized vegetables, we'd have another 199 simoleons. It's a bit of a gamble how much the oversized vegetables sell for, but do we have any that total over 519 simoleons?
  
  
  We do! Two out of the four, by just a bit.
  However, the other two sold for really far under that mark. So on the whole, we would have been better off growing basic vegetables on those plots. I think we'll carry on with maybe one oversized vegetable per season to use as ingredients, but otherwise, concentrate on growing regular crops.
  Especially flowers, in seasons where we can grow more expensive flowers. We only had 2 days' worth of flower harvest in here, and it really changed things.

  
  And the totals:

  Had to do the selling in 2 rounds since we had very many of some crops
  
  
  
  8,614 and 611 simoleons = 9225 simoleons for the week. Plus a little under 200 from the fish that Maira caught on the morning of the fair and sold.
  
  Not too shabby! The Watsons now have 7k above what they started with!
  

  
  The crucial elements imho were

  1. the NAPs (kinda by accident, I really didn't remember that they had a financial impact on bills)
  2. Flowers, even the basics harvested from the neighborhood, sell for way more than vegetables.

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• SnowBnuuy Posts: 1,768 Member

  July 2022

  Ooh!!
  

  Oof, this challenge sounds like a difficult one to keep on top of- especially making all the odd jobs around the farm amount to enough money to keep on top of the challenge. High Cooking skill makes all the difference in challenges. It's the first thing I raise! Pretty good profit on Week 1 though, at least they managed to make profit on top of what they paid to set the farm up.
  
  Maybe a Bio degree will give the Rashidah the edge when she becomes a farmer after. Applying a bit of nifty science to growing plants and looking after animals might win a couple of fairs too! And woo for trans rep! Imra is so pretty and it's cool that you're doing her transition bit by bit as well. It's fun watching the family grow up as the challenge goes on, because when you're busy trying to stick to rules and hit targets I find it's easy to miss the actual family growing up and such too.
  
  Ohhh gosh yeah, bonding with the animals must be difficult when you know what you'll inevitably have to do to keep your farm flourishing and your family fed. Nearly 10k in one week is pretty darn good though!

  they/them or she/her

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• mightysprite Posts: 5,831 Member

  July 2022 edited July 2022

  Thanks @SnowBnuuy glad you are enjoying it!
  Yeah, no matter what I do I seem to gravitate toward "kids growing up" and/or "weird stuff" in all my saves those two areas are what makes the game fun for me.
  Good thoughts about Rashidah's degree!
  

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• mightysprite Posts: 5,831 Member

  August 2022

  So I'm about ready to wrap this challenge up. I didn't make it to the victory condition since Imra and Maira aren't young adults yet, but I think it's pretty clear that we're headed in the right direction and now that things are easier I'm sort of losing interest.
  
  Here are the things that have earned us our probable victory
  1. The NAP bonuses for Green Gardening and Upcycling Initiative
  2. Gardening flowers (and as of this week, bonsai buds)
  3. Minimizing gardening of oversize crops, except perhaps in the winter, and selling the Vitality and Super Vitality fertilizers from the livestock
  
  Anyhow some fun things did happen this week with the Watsons so here are some delightful moments.

  
  The garden set up for summer- notice only one plot has an oversize crop in it now
  
  
  Befriending rabbits. Cottage Living has the corner on cute moments I think
  
  
  Imra loves her chickies and always looks a bit surprised when a new one hatches!
  
  
  The bonsai buds, our latest cash crop
  
  
  What happens if a distracted teen lets the chicken coop go for too long...
  
  
  Maira is still fishing but I decided she needed another hobby. She's making and selling candles. Unlike Thomas, she would rather use a protective suit than go through bee bonding
  
  
  Making candles
  
  
  Selling candles. She looks very determined.
  
  
  Oddly, we have lots of foot traffic here all of a sudden
  
  
  The bees wreak their revenge by following the poor kids inside.
  
  
  I haven't been attending active high school with these guys because Thomas has too much farmwork to do during the day, but they've gotten to have some teen fun at least. Imra sneaked out to a party (in a fierce black dress)
  
  
  And got invited to the club, where she met Joaquin.
  "Move over, kid, we ain't down on the farm here!"
  
  
  "Oh yeah?"
  "Yeah."
  "Well, me and my friends are gonna get down like we get down on the farm. Like it, or go around it."
  
  
  I didn't think about the whole studying for exams thing. Poor Maira.
  
  
  As for Rahmi and Thomas's marriage, it seems to be improving
  
  
  Better late than never, to learn important things about pleasing your spouse
  

  
  Soon enough, Fair Day came! Here's the bottom line...
  (in several groups because of all the crops we had 99+ of)

  
  
  
  
  
  
  Let us not forget Maira with her one minnow from this morning.
  
  
  Making our grand total 12,395, plus Rahmi's earnings. Their bills are just under 4k with the NAP discounts.
  
  Conclusion: We will not lose the farm.

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