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[mmp]

I'm dabbling with building fields outfoors. I put the field next to a pool, fully knowing that the field itself wasn't muddied. Nevertheless there was soil there, and the field was successfully built and later planted with wild strawberries.

Encouraged by this and finding some suitable seeds in my stores, I tried to create another plant, just like the succesful one above, next to water, with soil but without mud. The grower never planted it. The building just says that it's waiting Farming (Fields). It stood there forever, and nothing happened. I even took all the other duties away from the grower, leaving only Farming (Fields), and the guy just went slacking, obiviously without any intention of building the plant.

Convinced that he'd never do it, I removed the building that was never built, and tried another plot, with the same result. Why is this happening? Why did the grower create the first field without much delay and without any problems, and then never bothered to make the other designated fields on similar locations?

The path is not blocked, it is right next to embark location, a nice big open space.

I haven't done anything with burrows, active or otherwise, that's too advanced for me yet. Judging from what little I know and guess about them, the very farmer was happily gathering lots plants around the said field, until I told him to stop so I don't think this is about that either.

[Corai]

I cant see the cause of this, but advice.


You dont need the farms near water or mud. Just on dirt. Anywhere but a mountain/underground is fine.

[misko27]

Check if something is blocking it. trees, large shrubbery, angry badgers, rocks, i don't know, what have you. Can they access it? Is the build job suspended? if so, you can unsuspend, then listen to the cancellation message for clues.

[mmp]

Yeah, I figured out / knew that plants being next to water has no meaning, only that it has to be some sort of soil. But I had several small pools nearby so it really didn't make any difference.

If there would be trees or shrubbery or something blocking it, those blocks would be automatically left out even in the blinking preview of placement. For example, my successful strawberry plant was not full 3*3 plant, one or two bits of it were left out because of wrong base type. Can't see why they wouldn't access it, its on the same level and quite near the starting point. Multiple ways to reach that plot. As far as I know, I didn't (accidentally) suspend the build job either. I really am dumbfounded why this does not work.

Now that we are it, a couple of questions more:
- Is there anything to gain from mudding ground that already is of some soil type that you can already build a farming plant on?
- How many strawberry seeds do you need to plant fields? I'm pretty sure I had more than one when I planted the before mentioned plant, but only one square of the whole fieds looks to be sown, and I got the message of "needs more seeds"

[hjd_uk]

If the ground is already "soil" then adding mud will be of no benefit - i don't know whether more mud - more soil fertility but i dont think so.

Muddying floors is for when you have a stone room that otherwise cannot host a farm-plot.

As far as i know all plants only need a 1x1 tile of farm-plot to grow on,

1 Seed = 1 Tile of farm.

The rest, Make sure that :
- You have the seeds available to plant.
- A Dwarf with the Farming (Fields) job is active (and they aren't sleeping etc).
- The Farm-Plot is accessible ( no 3/4 water, trees, walls, burrow-restrictions etc etc ).
- The farm-plot settings are active for the desired plant-type and current season ( you cant grow strawberries in Winter ).

[Laurin]

The seed problem comes with the new stockpile/hauling system. Because the dwarves now take a whole barrel or bin to whereever they are working to plant seeds or gather items you get job cancellation spam.
To minimize this with farming make extra seed stockpiles near your farming plots and don't allow barrels on them. Also, forbid seeds on other food stockpiles.

I also encountered the problem with farmers not building a farming plot. Don't know why, it took ages and I suspended it, removed it and built it anew. Finally it was built.
Similar things happen with job orders in workshops. It seems that the dwarves are somewhat more lazy in the new version and hesitate to begin their work sometimes.

[mmp]

I was thinking that this might be a bug, but I weren't sure of it.

I've encounted yet another instance of lazy dwarf syndomre. I've marked an animal to be slaughtered, I have a dwarf designated as a butcher, and I have built butcher's workshop. The "Slaughter animal" -task is automatically added to the task list, but nothing happens even after an extended period of time. I've tried removing the task, but it reappears, and again no one does anything.

And now that I have started asking, I might as well continue. Exactly how hard it is for hens to produce offspring? I've had a rooster and two hens on a large outside pasture (with nest boxes of course), and then moved them inside to a pasture of about 5 *5 squares (again with nest boxes). I took these three when embarking, and autumn has come without a single chick.

[Trif]

Is the path blocked? Do you have any active burrows?

[Laurin]

About the chickens: You need to prevent the dwarves from gathering the eggs, either by forbidding them, by forbidding them in your stockpiles or by restricting access to the nestboxes for instance with a locked door.

[SharkForce]

not sure if it's still the case, but once upon a time planting seeds was not a 100% success rate at low skill levels. you may have tried to plant several strawberry seeds and failed, possibly, which could explain where your seeds went. at least, assuming failure to plant is still a possibility, anyways.

[knutor]

Never thought of forbidding eggs.  That's genius, if it works, I'm gonna try it in my fortress, right now.  Thanks for sharing that pro tip.  I usually disable collection of eggs in the food stockpile and the egg cooking in the kitchen tab of stock listings.