Farm Town Economics

My kids and I have been enjoying building our farms on Farm Town together. Of course we all started out will very small farms and very few coins. So we had a discussion about how to use the coins that we had to our best advantage. In other words, to give us the highest return on our investment. I made up an Excel spreadsheet with the cost of each available crop, the prices that the crops could be sold, and the ROI for each crop. We could then plant our crops knowing that we were either planting the crop that would yield the most money for our investment, or a crop that simply looked cool and that we wanted to plant.

In Farm Town you can get hired to work on other people's farms. I acquired a buddy, named Michael, who I began to trade harvests with--I would harvest his crops, then hire him, in return, to harvest mine. I noticed that he always planted cabbage while I was planting strawberries. Now at first that didn't make sense to me because strawberries have an ROI of 2.83 whereas cabbage has an ROI of only 2.38...clearly you would make A LOT more money planting strawberries rather than cabbage!

Then all of a sudden I remembered something that I couldn't belive, afterwards, that I had forgotten...once our farms had grown to the extent that acreage was more of a limitation than coinage the economics of what crop to plant changed. Now it wasn't a matter of getting the biggest return for each coin spent, but the biggest return for each plot planted.

So the next step for me was to explain to the kids the different strategies for maximizing our returns. I don't think I delivered my revelation very smoothly, but after a couple tries Tyler began to grasp the concept. He got out a piece of scratch paper and began writing out some scenarios until he was able to explain it even better than me.

Thank you Farm Town for yet another revelation!

Farm Town Inspiration

Creativity
Farmtown has inspired me. Spending time being creative has been lacking in my daily activities for quite some time. This is partly because I've been focused on getting my body back into shape since last August which has cut into my "spare" time considerably. But it is mostly because I have not kept activities that invoke creativity as a part of my routine.

So I've been spending a bit of time figuring out this Farmtown game on Facebook. I like it because you get to earn your coins through your own diligent and persistent work. It is also set up so that other people can benefit from your farm and earn coinage by helping you harvest your crops. You can then buy stuff at the store to put on your farm.

So far I've been buying land. I've maxed out the size of my farm, and now get to focus more on buying the other stuff, like paths and buildings, to decorate my farm. Here is where the creativity is really kicking in. Although it's not too hard to move stuff around, once you get a lot of stuff on your farm it takes quite a bit of time to shuffle things so you don't want to have to move a lot of stuff too often. Plus there are plenty of things to get--buildings, fences, trees, flowers (as of today), animals, wagons, hay bales, crates, etc.--so you kind of want to have your farm somewhat planned out in advance.

Business Development
There is also something else that I've been realizing by working my farm: how to turn small amounts of cash into a larger amounts by reinvesting your earnings into your business every time you turn a crop around.

When you first start your farm you have a small amount of land, a few coins, you "win" a daily coin allotment, and you can earn coins by tending other people's farms. If you carefully invest the proceeds from each harvest into an expanded planting for the next harvest, you quickly start to earn a whole lot more cash with every crop.

I know this isn't a stellar revelation for most people, and I have to say that I logically understood this process before playing Farmtown, too. But what I have noticed is that my understanding is sinking deeper and becoming more profound. I am realizing at a more cellular level the importance of re-investing your profits back into your business to support its ongoing growth.

So with my new found creativity and realization I shall boldly go forth and begin to put energy and money into the business that I have been neglecting these last two years and begin to make that thing pay for itself!

Bikini Body Workout Log

Daily Workout Log

Saturday, June 13, 2009
P90X Cardio Routine (45 min)
My inner thigs and lats were sore afterward!

Sunday, June 7, 2009
7:14 a.m. to 7:44 a.m.: 4-minute walk/jog/run intervals
7:46 a.m. to 8:00 a.m.: jog up and down footall stadium stairs

What?

Currently I have three main interests tripping around in my brain:

1. working my body into bikini shape
2. growing my "side" business into my main source of income
3. completing various odd projects around the house that are in various stages of completion

Why?

I have noticed that I become obsessed, or perhaps more accurately “possessed,” when embarking on new endeavors that I initially find inspirational. There’s no middle ground. It’s all balls to the wall until I reach a breaking point. That breaking point could be physical exhaustion, mental exhaustion, or simply frustration to the point of tears that I haven’t reached my goal in some break-neck inconceivably fast period of time.

Then I quit or give up or set aside the project with the intention of attending to it at some other time in the future.

And there it sits, like a vulture on a dead tree limb, staring me down, weighing me down, slowing me down, keeping me in a paralytic state of incompletion—always feeling like there’s never enough time to do everything that I “should” be doing so I don’t do anything at all.

So what am I doing to fix the problem? I’m adding yet another task to my to-do list: keep a blog about my most current obsession (or obsessions).

The thought process is that it will be therapeutic. By writing about my status regarding the current topic of attention I will hopefully be forced to take a less manic pace and keep a more objective perspective. In short, become more balanced and realize more completion.

We shall see. :P