Start with a farm...
The smallest field allowed in a farm allotment is 5x5. By arranging 9 small fields into a 3x3 grid, you get several benefits.

• Staggering the rotation cycles so no two adjacent fields grow the same crop at the same time reduces crops lost to disease
  
• You get a 15x15 farm, which is the same size as a barn’s grazing area
  
• 15x15 is also a great fit for apiary coverage in a square-peg-round-hole kind of way. Put one in the middle square of the middle field, like your farm is a big Bingo card.
  
• With sufficient soil-improving crops, the cattle grazing effect, and additional composting with nightsoil, both fertility and fodder quality stay in the high 90-100% range and eliminates the need to rotate grazing areas.

Turnips, beans, carrots and flax are an effective mix. Beans aren’t winter cattle fodder, but they’re human food and good for soil. Use the flax-beans rotation for flax, else the carrot-beans for more food. Additionally, the crop mix has an overall positive soil improvement, so over time fertility and fodder quality will gradually increase to 95-100% and stay there, hence the “Set-n-Forget” feature. Since the fields are small 5x5 lots and the growing cycles are staggered, each 15x15 field will consistently produce the same crop outputs each year. By adjusting the crops in only a few fields, you can quickly and easily change how much of each crop is grown. E.G. Increasing your flax is as easy as changing “carrots” to “flax” in a few fields.



On a 5x5 field, only 1 farmer is needed, so 1 ranch-farm will use 9 farmers which is a bit higher than a single large farm would need, but other trade-offs make it worth it. Be sure to optimize the soil mix for all the crops in the rotation; that happens to be in the 7th segment, under the ‘C’ in the “No Crop Selected” text string above. Put a fence around the whole 15x15 area for a full 17x17 square of protected farmland. Don’t forget the gates, or farmers, herders and cows won’t get in.

Add 1 barn...
Now that you have your farm set up, add a barn. The herd will be a max of 10 cows which will fit in the smaller barn but upgrade anyway, as cows need less winter fodder in upgraded barns. I’ve tried more than 10 cows but found managing input/output was more difficult, especially cheese spoilage and loss of crops to grazing.

A herd of 10 cows needs 6 herders for full productivity. For around 240 winter fodder (and whatever they eat while grazing in the warm months) you can expect to slaughter between 1 and 3 cows per year (per cow: 340 meat, 4 pelt, 5 tallow) plus around 600 milk.



What’s the ROI on all this?
Hard numbers are difficult, as there are variables affecting results along the way: fertility, weather/disease, loss to animals, soil mix. But, using rough numbers, each year a 15x15 farm with 95+% fertility and optimum soil mix will have 3 fields fallow and 6 fields producing roughly 800-1000 total food. For about 1/3 of that used as cattle feed and loss to grazing, one should expect 1200+ in meat and milk for a total of about 1800-2000 food per year per ranch-farm, plus the pelts, tallow, and the wax and honey from the apiary.

A complex needs a 68x68 square area for full usage. In this diagram, I built 8 ranch-farms but the design allows 4 more to be tucked away in each corner for a max of 12. However, I think 12 would overwhelm the processing complex as 8 ranch-farms keeps things pretty busy. Alternatively, arborists and an extra preservist would be good usages of the areas.

Note the 1-square gap between the fenced fields for roads to lead into the central processing area. Also note that double-wide fields can drop the fences where they meet for a single 17x32 area to accommodate 2 farms and grazing areas.



Lay out the ranch-farms so they all face a central processing area bounded by a circular/rounded octagonal road that's 26 squares from side to side and 22 squares on the diagonal. Tuck 1-2 compost yards in a corners or by barns. The central work area will need:

• A well at the center of the work area (blue square in diagram)
  
• Rat catcher
  
• Storage yard (set to store only wood products) and a splitter. Might as well build a sawmill while yer at it.
  
• Warehouse (set to store only raw and finished farm products)
  
• 3-4 root cellars (exclude fish and other unnecessaries)
  
• 3 smoke houses (set to smoke meat only, no fish)
  
• 1-2 soap shops and 1 candle shop.
  
• 1-2 cheesemakers
  
• 1-2 preservists.
  
• 1 tanner or cobbler. You can build both, but will probably only get enough pelts to keep 1 busy.
  
• If this complex is growing flax, then build a flax processing area in one of the 17x17 corner spots. How many you need of each building will depend on how much flax you grow, but 2 farms growing 5 or 6 fields of flax should require something like
  ◦ 2+ weavers
  ◦ 1-2 paper mills
  ◦ 1 bookbinder