How to Clear Your Overgrown Farm Efficiently Within a Year?

It’s your first day in Stardew Valley, but how can you clean the mess left for years? This helpful guide will help you clean up all debris on your grandpa’s homestead before the first year ends.

The player standing outside the farm and showing disgust.
Average beginners upon seeing their messy farm.

As Robin and Lewis do the proper introductions, you’ll have a glimpse of what your late Grandfather’s farm looks like. Debris spreads across the place, and your task is to clear it using hand-me-down tools.

It’ll take a while to restore its beauty with all the weeds, stumps, and stones lying around.

Not to mention the limits of clearing your farm because of how little energy you have. You’re at risk of passing out and losing some of your items and gold when the energy bar becomes empty.

You can clear the farm your way (with little to no guidance), and potentially miss valuable resources in the long-term game. Or you can follow everything in this guide to make tidying things more efficient, easier, and enjoyable.

Reasons to Clear the Farm

The player planting seeds, decorating, and constructing buildings in a clear farm.
There are different goals as to why players clear their farm in Stardew Valley.

Why put in all the effort cleaning your Stardew Valley farm when you’ll quit playing someday? Why is it important? Will it make the place better aside from the aesthetics?

The game is fun and addictive despite the visuals, so quitting this masterpiece is impossible.

However, many beginners miss the opportunity of scaling faster because they don’t appreciate empty spaces.

In Stardew Valley, swinging your axe and pickaxe are the first steps for your earliest success. Here’s why:

Tillable Tiles

An empty land to sow seeds is essential in generating your early game income. As a rule of thumb, more extra soil to till, more crops, and profit you’ll earn. If your place is messy and you have seeds you want to plant, start clearing the debris.

Space for Buildings

Barns, slime hutches, and coops are some of the infrastructures that’ll come in handy for side earnings. It can also give you access to different items and ingredients for future quests. However, saving up free tiles for a building is required to make this happen.

Decorative purposes

Sooner or later, your farm will get tedious with each passing day. That’s why investing time to clean the overgrown mess is a good idea. We’ll leave it to you whether you’ll prioritize function or form.

Making the Farm Neat

It’s crucial to clear a path towards the house in all directions. This method will save you from passing out because you’ll never know where the debris may block you.

You might have one or more reasons to clear your farm, but these are the helpful tips once you begin the heavy work:

1. Mind Your Stamina

A two-frame-photo of the player feeling sluggish from overworking.
Stamina lets you work in Stardew Valley. Once it drops, be extra careful.

Be mindful of your energy when chopping trees or breaking stones on your first day. Remember: every tool except the Scythe costs two energy when performing an action. So it’s a smart move to hover your cursor over the energy bar to track its depletion.

Controlling yourself using a tool can make you extra efficient as well. Unintentional swings happen, and like it or not, it’s best to stick with the Scythe or Sword to avoid exhaustion.

If you have zero energy, don’t worry, you can walk to your bed and sleep early if you’re near the cabin. You’ll wake up fresh and recharged the following day to continue tidying up the farm.

2. Avoid Cutting Grasses

An ominous player warning others to abstain cutting grasses in their overgrown farm.
Grass slows your movement, but is a great source of animal food!

Unless you have a silo, spare every grass you’ll see! Sure, it’s inconvenient to walk in this block, but they serve a better purpose in the mid-game.

Set aside the cutting part and save enough resources to construct a silo. After which, you can scythe all of it and convert it to hay for your farm animals.

3. Save Every Mixed Seeds

The farmer holding mixed seeds and fiber seeds after clearing the farm in Stardew Valley.
The recent patch made Mixed Seeds more valuable on your farm.

Cutting fibers sometimes drop Mixed Seeds, and it’s pretty rubbish at first glance. However, it can be a great alternative if you’re out of seeds for the season. You can also craft Fiber Seeds, which yield a generous amount of fiber.

Hoarding Mixed Seeds may do little in speeding up the cleaning process, but it can save you tons of gold.

4. Waste No Resources

Poor farmer in the mountain lake who lost his resources after cutting Pine Tree in the wrong direction.
Cut in the wrong direction again? Let’s fix that.

Cutting trees in the wrong direction could end up wood and sap in water or outside the map. But if you equip a magnetic ring, you’ll get the items faster before it drops.

But what if you don’t have the accessory?

It’s simple. Place yourself in the opposite direction where you’d like the tree to fall, and start hitting. Even better, show the tool’s hit location to avoid missing the wrong spot and keep resources dropping outside your pickup range.

5. Use Bombs

A bomb exploding in the farm (for clearing purposes) after being set by the player.
It’s a crazy idea but using any explosive is a quick way to clear your farm.

Bombs are single-use consumables in Stardew Valley for clearing a specific area while mining. It’s also a faster way to clear your farm before sunset. However, it’s costly from the Dwarf, and getting the crafting ingredients is tricky.

There are three types of explosives in-game: Cherry Bomb, Bomb, and Mega Bomb. Each has a different explosion range, cost, and crafting recipe in making one. You can unlock all three as you get experience points while mining. 

Using the Mega Bomb would be great for quick results since it covers a large part of your overgrown farm. It has a radius of six to eight tiles, which is pretty impressive. Stand back, wait for the fuse, and enjoy the show.

6. Upgrade Your Tools

The in-game screen of Clint's workshop upgrade.
Upgrading your tools in Stardew Valley is a great advantage in clearing a farm efficiently.

Increasing your tool’s quality can make them stronger and use less energy on your end. Clint, the Blacksmith, offers such upgrades, but you’ll need metal bars and gold. It’s pricey but still provides an efficient solution to avoid depleting energy (if you don’t have refreshments yet).

7. Craft Field Snacks

An in-game screen of leveling up in Stardew Valley.
Field Snack – a consumable you can craft after Day 1.

Speaking of refreshments, every newbie farmer has a field snack on their backpack. Consider it a nice treat for your hard work in the tiring fields of Stardew Valley. Consuming it will give you 45 energy, enough to cut another tree.

Crafting this item is easy: it only costs maple, acorn, and pine seed. And the best part? You can make more field snacks the more you cut trees on your farm.

8. Visit the Spa

The player recharging in a Spa after a long day of hard work in the farm.
The Spa restores your energy for zero costs.

On the 3rd of Summer, a message will pop up saying an earthquake happened last night. As a result, the boulder blocking North of Town is open, and you’ll find a convenient place to relax – the Spa.

It’s not just a place to take a break as a player but also your character in Stardew Valley. That’s because if you stay long enough, you’ll restore energy, get back to work, and repeat the process until bedtime.

Having access to the spa cuts your trouble crafting or buying energy-restoring consumables that are mostly inaccessible.

Farm Layout May Slow You Down

Out of seven maps in Stardew Valley, the Standard and Four Corners will take more time to tidy up. On the other hand, the Beach and Riverland are not a big problem because there’s more water than land.

If you look at the aerial view of every farm type, you’ll notice a drastic difference in what to expect during the clearing process. Each of them is either challenging or slightly easy, but the layout won’t matter if you consider the tips above.

Changing Season is the Real Problem

Every season, debris will spread around the farm, and you’ll deal with it for the rest of the game. This scenario makes changing crops every season harder because you’ll find weeds despite the heavy fences. 

You have no choice but to repeat the same procedure until you have the Gold Clock – a late-game building. Plus, it costs 10,000,000g, which I doubt will be possible in the first or second year.

Not unless you have the luxury Gold Clock, have fun clearing all the mess in your farm on the early game while you earn gold.

Meet the author

Stardew Valley is perhaps the most chill game out there. If you're a new player and hoping to join Pelican Town, we've got your back with all the basics.

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