Frontier Farming

[Zazazu]

Worse than the regular bugs.  The regular bugs aren't on the lot all the time.  The ladybugs are.

And they don't protect enough to be worth it. Indoor plants always win. By the way, in case anyone missed it: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=229680. Indoor crops, on a foundation or the fourth floor if it tickles you, and no floaters.

Kyna, I chucked the pets rules. Make no sense to me, as my pets don't exactly inspire me. You can't teach your kid to study because Rover hasn't met the top of his career? Uh, why? But then, I'm not keeping score or anything, so I customize challenges as much as I like.

Gus- 24 plants? Interesting math there. 2 on each side would be a 4x4. That's 16.

EDIT: Doi, it's not one of those on-the-line objects like the sprinkler. I stand corrected. Shows how much I grow outside of a greenhouse.

[Gus Smedstad]

I did say within 2 tiles, didn't I?  That's a 5x5 square with the center occupied by the ladybug house.  Hence, 24.

 - Gus

[Kyna]

Before I started putting fruit trees in greenhouses I found that to be effective I needed to put one bughouse per fruit tree.  Any less and I'd have to spray.  Since the point of them is to avoid spraying I used a lot of them to achieve that end, and suffered the performance hit. 

Then I came to my senses and realised playability was more important then realism, and now all my fruit trees go inside a greenhouse.

[Tamha]

No chance of Plant Sim from DJS: http://www.djssims.com/index.php?id=385#comments

[Gus Smedstad]

Excellent.  I tried searching for that on my own, but my Google-fu was insufficient.

 - Gus

[Berg]

Well, I started this challenge the other night! You didn't say anything about the lot size so I chose a small lot, mainly because I prefer smaller lots overall, but also because I wanted my sim to spend his cash on the essentials rather than land. I built a small cabin with two bedrooms, one living/dining area and a kitchen where the bathtub also resides. Toilet in an outhouse, according to the rules. I put the fridge in a tiny basement with access from the kitchen, for an illusion of a root cellar.

The welcome wagon included the townie Brandi Le Tourneau (three bolts! Whaa!) and she moved in before the day ended. She brought a mere 2,000 but had some stuff in her inventory. I kept a piano and a rug, sold the rest (I thought about it as her dowry...) but maybe the rules should be tweaked/more specific about those things? I also bought a phone to make her quit her job but I sold it back, of course.

Anyway, I didn't use ladybug houses or sprayed for the first four days or so, but finally I gave in and allowed my sim to spray. The whole garden was infested with bugs and the lag was terrible! I didn't know exactly how bad it could be before - everything crawled even on the fastest speed. So I sprayed. As you said, it's even more work for them, and we can pretend that they're using some home-brewn stuff, or picks the bugs off by hand.

Now the silly part... I was sure I already had the hack from DJS, because the thought of plantsims never appeladed to me (heck - I'm yet to have my first werewolf!). But I hadn't, obviously. So my sime became a plantsim. Twice. On the same night.

Well, I immediately changed him back to normal sim with the Puppy Killer but his motives became refreshed so I had to fiddle around a bit to make them about the same as when he transitioned.

I started in autumn and now it's winter, and for realism I'm not letting them grow anything until spring. They have twins on their way but a stocked fridge and about 2,000 in cash so I think they'll make it.

Date boquets, by the way? Can you sell them or do we kep them?

[Gus Smedstad]

Small lots are good for this, actually.  When I was fiddling with the idea, I used a 2x2 lot.  Sort of a sharecropper thing 

Technically you shouldn't sell the boquets, since it's a source of income other than farming, but it's such a time-inefficient way of making money with no community lot timewarp available that I think we can ignore it.

 - Gus

[Aggie]

Technically you shouldn't sell the boquets, since it's a source of income other than farming, but it's such a time-inefficient way of making money with no community lot timewarp available that I think we can ignore it.

If you really are dead-set against any sort of income from anything other than crops, you could always specify that the bouquets and such should be placed in someone's inventory.

[J. M. Pescado]

Technically you shouldn't sell the boquets, since it's a source of income other than farming, but it's such a time-inefficient way of making money with no community lot timewarp available that I think we can ignore it.

Eh, I'm pretty sure people still bought those back in the old days.

[morriganrant]

Sounds a bit like my hippie(or native American) challenge i made for myself. Except for the fact that my sims can use the toy bench(with the idea that they are producing wooden toys or totems) and can sell paintings (with the idea thats its either native or primitive art).

Makes this a bit easier with simslice's animals. A bit more realistic as well. For your needs using the animals for a food source in winter would be likely. My hippies weren't allowed to use them at all. (I gave them a vegan diet with the exception of fish) for my native Americans the animals had to be a substitute for anything that would normally be hunted.

I recommend a trip to Simsmod board for those talking about keeping honey bees. They have a functional Beehive there.
http://www.pc-sims.com/smb/showthread.php?t=6158

[marjchaos]

Odd note on ladybugs.  My family is from small-town California, and in the Spring ladybugs migrate through there.  They congregate in a huge dry riverbed apparently in the hundreds of thousands.  Local boys go and scoop them up, put them in containers and sell them to farmers.  So while ladybug colonies do not conjure up the frontier days, I think it wouldn't be totally unrealistic for wild west types to utilize them in similiar ways as modern day california farming areas.  I like the ladybug house in-game and do not get lag w/ them.