Field is unlocked after researching Agriculture.

In the farm you can recruit free workers to spend their lives on fields and pastures. Level 1 farms can have up to 4 workers, and level 2 (current max) can have up to 6 workers. Every farmer will be able to work on a 50-size field, orchard and a single pasture during the year. Having more farmers will be able to do this faster.

In Fields you can grow:

• Wheat - used for making flour and, therefore, bread.
• Hay - used for feeding animals during winter.
• Hop - used for making beer.
• Herbs - used for making medicinal herbs, vegetable soups or meat soup.
• Barley - used for making beer.
• Mushroom - basic food resource, also used for making vegetable soup.
• Cotton - used for crafting clothes.

Please note that barley and hop are used in 2:1 proportion when brewing beer, not 1:1 as for eg soup!

Different crops and different sizes have different grow rates, also influenced by weather. All crops need farmers working on them, and follow this order:

• planting (orchards only): happens in the spring for new orchards.
• plowing: fields are plowed in order of placement until the end of spring.
• sowing: plowed fields are sown in order of placement.
• growing: the longest stage, happens until autumn comes.
• fruiting (orchards only): yearly cycle of growing fruits, repeats each year naturally.
• harvest: begins in mid-summer for fast going crops and autumn for all others, as long as you have warehouse space for the resources. For orchards, it's possible to have more than one harvest - if they are done fruiting on day 150 and you harvest them quick enough, they can grow a bit more until they stop growing in autumn (fields do not grow again in the same year though) Crops that haven't been harvested will be lost in the first day of winter.
• fallow: useless stage of the land, happens after harvest is done and during the whole winter.

Note: it is possible for 1 farm of 4 workers to plow and sow 8 50-acre fields (in 2 blocks of 4 fields), but for better efficiency for growing, you should aim for 1 farm worker per 50-acre field.

In Orchards you can grow:

• Grape - used for making wine.
• Apple - basic food resource.
• Berry - basic food resource, also used for making vegetable soup.

Orchards take more time to grow than field crops, and only need farmers for harvesting. Some resources like grapes and apples can be ready for early harvesting in summer and will then continue to grow until autumn.

All land in the Field area can be arranged, split, combined and demolished. If you apply any of these options in the non-fallow stage, all crops will be lost until the next spring.

Information courtesy of Shyshaeia. Forum post.

Fields and Orchards grow according to the following formula:
[Building_Power * Temperature_Modifier / Growing_Difficulty] progress per tick.

Building Power can change based on weather type: Sun and rain give +50% weather modifier, Cloudy gives -25%, Wind and Storms are no modifier.

Growing Difficulty is based on crop; Hay and Mushrooms have difficulty of 10, all other field crops have difficulty of 20. Orchards will have two separate difficulties: one for growing the orchard itself and then one for fruiting.

Temperature Modifier is based on temperature range (all in Celsius):

Tested accurate as of v1.1.8

In pastures you can keep animals, such as chickens, cows, sheep, horses and pigs. Animals can be obtained in the hunter's lodge, by changing their option to tame animals, or bought in the market. They also need to be fed with hay all year round. Animals can also be butchered to produce meat.

Horses are also used to create light cavalry and horse archers.

Animals will breed slowly once 2 animals exist in the same pasture. Higher numbers of animals in the same pasture will increase the breeding and produce rates. Each animal generates chores for the farm workers to do. If these chores are not performed they will rise until the pasture suspends all activity (at about 25-26 chore units), this may happen in spring or autumn when farmers are busy in the fields.

Farmers will always work on fields and pastures depending on their placement order, and would try to disperse the best they can. Eg, if you have 5 farmers and 4 fields, they'd be distributed as follows: 2-1-1-1. If you have 5 farmers, 6 fields and 2 pastures, farmers would be distributed one on each of the first 5 fields, and 6th field and pasture would wait for farmers to do their current tasks and pick up next ones - that's why it might be better to control work progress by manually enabling/disabling fields so that farmers aren't spread too thin and can attend to animals as well.