Mountain Farm

How to play Mountain Farm

Mountain Farm is farming against the calendar. Your land is a mountainside of five terrace levels, from the valley floor up to the high pasture, and each level has its own frost-free window: twenty weeks or so in the valley, barely six at the top.

The almanac beside the mountain shows every window as a range — the last spring frost will come somewhere in these weeks, the first autumn frost somewhere in those — and this year's real dates fall inside them. A crop caught by frost before it is ready dies. Quinoa and rye are hardy and can take one frost; beans, potatoes and barley cannot. A ripe crop left standing too long, or caught by frost, rots.

Every week brings three days of labour. Cutting a new terrace takes all three, planting a plot takes one and harvesting one. The valley has only two plots, but crops grown higher up the mountain fetch more at market, so the farm has to climb. Plant too early and a late frost takes it; plant too late and the autumn frost does. You have two years, and the terraces you cut in the first are still there in the second.

Objective

Sell 180 coins of crops over two years on the mountain.

Features

• Five altitude levels, each with its own frost-free window
• An almanac that gives frost dates as ranges, not certainties
• Hardy crops that survive a single frost
• Terraces to cut, and higher crops that sell for more
• Two years, with the terraces carried over

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