One of the core mechanics of Vintage Story is the season cycle. It is integral to the hardcore survival experience as you not only need to ration out what you reap, but make sure you do have a harvest by winter. There’s plenty of ways to manage food, so let’s take a look at some quick tips to lengthen storage life, know how the weather turns, and how to optimise farming.

Green Thumbs, Greenhouses

If you have ever been to a garden nursery or have been around gardening enthusiasts, you would know just how warm and steamy a greenhouse can be. This isn’t just a hot box, it’s a way to extend the amount of time you have to harvest crops before the cold sets in.

A greenhouse can increase the internal temperature by 5C, allowing for crops that can tolerate cooler temperatures to continue growing before it gets too cold. To build a greenhouse, you need an enclosed space with at least 50% sunlight coverage. This means it must be built outside with as much exposure to the sun as possible and out of a clear material such as glass.

A greenhouse is ideally built out of glass blocks in an outdoor setting.

Once a greenhouse has been successfully built, it’ll take a few in-game hours before you start to see the warming effect take place. When the greenhouse is all warmed up, any temperature-sensitive functions like crop growth and honey production can continue just a little longer in cooler temperatures. Beware that heat-sensitive crops can be heat-damaged in a greenhouse if it gets too warm.

Fresh Produce Preservation

Once you have fresh produce like meat or fruit, you then want to make sure it has a long shelf life before it starts to perish and become Rot. All food has a way of extending life, and there’s a few ways to go about this.

First and foremost, appropriate storage methods for food. You wouldn’t want to store food in something like a basket, so you need something solid and air-tight like a Storage Vessel. These are the ideal ways to store food, extending the life of fruits, vegetables, and grains. Cooked foods like stews and porridges can be stored away in Crocks, which can store up to 4 servings of food and extend shelf life. These can be handy for stockpiling food for the winter, but their shelf life can also be extended by sealing them up with fat or wax.

Next, it’s a Cellar. This is a type of room formation that can further extend the life of any perishable and helpful in the production of cheese. These small rooms have a few factors to them that affect how well they can preserve produce. Cellars must be kept away from sunlight, so an underground room is perfect for a cellar. The walls are an important factor as some blocks are better at cooling than others, requiring a solid surface and a natural material such as soil or stone. Doors can also play an important cooling role, as reinforced doors can aid in a better cellar.

A cellar with some Crocks and Storage Vessels. Food decay is significantly reduced in a cellar, allowing for long term storage. A cellar can also be used for food ripening, like for Cheese.

If all else fails and you still have fresh produce that needs to be preserved, there is always salt-curing meats and pickling vegetables. This extends the shelf life of perishable foods, but be warned that this can also reduce the nutritional value. If longer life is all that matters, then all you need to do is find some Halite and grind it into salt. Fruits are unable to be preserved, but they can be pressed into juice and fermented into alcohol, which can extend their shelf life, but may also cause intoxication. Grains can also be fermented, though extending shelf life of grain as an alcohol isn’t necessary.

Abuzz with Bees

Listen closely the next time you are in a forest. If you are lucky, you can hear the busy swarms of bees. These little workers are instrumental in crafting some handy items as well as some cooking. You can attract a wild swarm of bees into a Skep by populating the area with flowers. Once you have a Skep, you can start your apiary operation, populating more Skeps for more Bees.

Bees are the primary source of Honeycomb, which can produce Honey for food production and Wax for sealing Crocks.

The efficiency of a Skep’s swarm depends on how many flowers are around and how big the swarm is. Poor populations will be slow, but they will grow bigger over time under the right conditions. Populating Skeps can reduce the swarm size, so don’t worry if a population shrinks. When a Skep is ready to harvest, get ready to flee. Breaking a Skep with a large swarm will anger the bees, so it’s best to run, unless you have a Dummy nearby to distract them.

When you break a harvestable Skep, you will get pieces of honeycomb. You can squeeze honeycomb to produce honey and wax. The wax can be used to preserve food in a crock, and honey can be topped on food. It can also be used to produce jam for berries, or sealed away to ferment into Mead.

Livestock and Animal Husbandry

There are various animals that can be found throughout the world, some of which can be used to start a livestock farm. Of course, getting the animals isn’t easy, as different animals will need trapping or corralling into pens. Some animals like chickens can be trapped with a small trap, but bigger animals or baby animals will require bigger traps. Other animals cannot be trapped and require using their aggression or fear to trap them in a pen.

Keep animals in a well-fenced, well-lit area or in a barn for protection inside and out. A fence is quick and easy to set up, while a barn can prevent snow buildup.

Once you do have animals, you can keep them around to breed, raise, and eventually slaughter. Some animals may attempt to escape their pen, especially around winter when snow builds up, so make sure to build tall fences or create a well-lit shelter. Animals will also need regular feeding, otherwise they will starve and reduce in weight. The less weight an animal has, the less meat they have. Weight is very likely to go down as winter approaches and food becomes scarce, so when push comes to shove, it may be best to use your livestock’s meat.

Livestock such as chickens, sheep, and goats can provide food or food products without the need for slaughter. They can provide readily available protein or dairy to make more food. Cheese is one such product that can be produced, and this can last for over a year!

Fruits of your Labour

One of the easiest ways to gather food is to harvest berries from bushes. They’re a quick and easy snack, but they can also be used in cooking as part of the fruit category. Berries grow all year round, slowing growth in winter as the conditions become too cold for growth.

Occasionally, you may have noticed some small trees around the place. These aren’t like your typical Oak, Maple, or Birch trees, but fruit trees. At the start of the world, you’ll most likely see them in their plain stage, and as winter approaches, they will become dormant. However, once winter passes, they will awaken and enter a flowering stage. Once they flower and the conditions remain right, you can pick the fruits off these trees. Unlike berry bushes, fruit trees will only bear fruit once a year.

A young fruit tree. It is currently not in a state for fruit growth, but once spring arrives, expect flowers and fruits.

Fruit trees can be propagated, but the conditions required can be precarious. You can use a knife on a fruit tree branch to get a cutting, where you can either plant them in soil or graft onto another fruit tree. Grafting can yield better survival chances, but requires another fruit tree if convenience is important. Survival is also dependent on the temperature, where a tree can die if it gets too cold or too warm.

Plan(t) Ahead

Various crops have different growth rates and temperature tolerances. Some crops like Turnips only have 5 growth stages, but other crops will take longer, requiring up to 12 stages of growth in order to harvest in some cases. Temperature tolerance is also an important factor, as too high or too low a temperature can damage or destroy crops. This means slower growth times, lower yield, or a chance for the crop to die.

Each crop has different growth stages, with some maturing faster than others. A turnip crop will only need 5 stages before harvest, but flax will require 9 stages.

Some crops are better suited for warm climates while others are good with temperate climates. Check the seeds you would like to plant and see what minimum and maximum temperatures are. Warm climate crops are best planted in the summer time where temperatures will not go below freezing. To help along temperate climate crops in the months leading to winter, plant them in a greenhouse.

Get your hands dirty

There are five different blocks of soil that can be used for farming. These are Barren, Low, Medium, and High Fertility Soil, and Terra Preta. You’re most likely to find Low and Medium Fertility Soil across the whole world, while High Fertility is much harder to find, but more rewarding for growth. Barren Soil is not good for farming and will only have a 11% growth rate per nutrient at best. Terra Preta, on the other hand, is great for farming! This does require a bit of crafting, but allows for the fastest growth.

Various soil blocks that can be used for farmland. The less fertility soil has, the slower crop growth is. Conversely, higher fertility can increase how fast crops can grow. Moisture will also apply to growth speed.

Nutrients can also be artificially increased by using various fertilisers. If you ever get Rot, you can seal 64 litres of it into 16 units of Compost, boosting the soil’s Nitrogen. Bones can be ground into Bonemeal to boost a soil’s Phosphorus content, while Potash and Saltpeter can boost the Potassium content of soil.

Rotate, rotate, rotate

Crops will want one of three nutrients: Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P), and Potassium (K). When a crop is planted, it will drain the soil of the required nutrient as well as grow at the rate of nutrients available. This means once a crop is harvested, that soil will have a depleted nutrient. That’s not to say the soil is unusable - if a soil’s N is depleted, it will still have P and K. So, what does that mean? Crop rotation!

Soil has different growth speeds based on the nutrient abundance. Each level of fertility has different nutrient capacities, with Barren only having 5% nutrient level, while Terra Preta has 80%. When a crop of a specific nutrient is harvested, the nutrient available will be reduced, but the rest will remain untouched.

Every time you harvest a crop, take a look at what nutrients are remaining and plant the next crop. Over time, the crop will regenerate nutrients, allowing for the cycle to continue. Don’t forget to water your crops to help the growth speed, as low water can also impact how efficient nutrients work.

Bonus - Global farming operation

If you have been playing Vintage Story for a while, then you might know that the months leading up to, during, and after winter can be boring if you have nothing to do - nowhere new to explore in the freezing temperatures, no parts to make new gear, not even building operations can go ahead safely. What if there was a way to just skip winter?

Well, did you know that there are equators across the world? Every 50,000 blocks is an equator, and it will either be a polar or tropical region. Polar regions will never leave winter, but tropical regions have no concept of winter. Areas between temperate and tropical are good at keeping the cold at bay without getting too warm, and that means when winter arrives, you can still grow crops. Obviously, this is a long way to go for a farm, so Translocators are the best way to travel long distances.

As seen in the Environment stats, we are in a part of the world where, despite it being winter, the outside temperatures in the afternoon are still hovering above 10C, with it being cooler at night. This means we can keep growing crops out here without worrying about the cold.

Be aware that skipping winter means that the region will become rather hostile in the summer, becoming too hot for a number of crops, and even yourself.

Start your next farming operation

Of course, despite this being an exhaustive list of things that can be done to prolong food stores in Vintage Story, there’s plenty of smaller and niche mechanics to help with farming and husbandry. Not to mention the ever-changing nature of Vintage Story as the game progresses. With these tips, you can get a headstart on gathering food before the turn of the season.

The best way to maximise farming operations is to have more hands, and to get more hands is to create a server. Lucky for you, it’s easy to get a Vintage Story started! Check out our affordable plans, then simply create a new Vintage Story server. Don’t forget to check out our handy guides on how to set up and run your Vintage Story server.