Fiddlehead Fern

Fiddlehead Fern

Type	Forage
Location	Foraging
Season	Summer; All on Ginger Island Jungle, Skull Cavern and Dangerous Mines
Sell Price	90g

The Fiddlehead Fern is a curled green shoot picked in the Secret Woods in Summer. It is the one foraged item the game files as a vegetable, and that double life is what makes it unusual. Picking it pays Foraging experience and answers to the Gatherer and Botanist professions, while selling it answers to Tiller and turns it into a crop product in a machine. No other item on the ground behaves that way. It is also the only reliable Summer green in a season otherwise full of berries and flowers, so it carries the Chef's Bundle and a late cooking recipe on its own.

Location

The Secret Woods is the home ground. The clearing behind the broken log north of the Wizard's tower refills with forage every day in Summer, and almost everything that appears there in that season is a fern. Two or three usually wait each morning, and a daily walk through the woods for the whole of Summer builds a stack that lasts the year.

The Skull Cavern grows them underground. The prehistoric floors, the dim earthy levels with bones in the walls, scatter ferns among the rocks. They also appear on levels 41 to 69 of the Mines while the Shrine of Challenge is switched on, which is the only way to find one inside the ordinary mine.

Ginger Island keeps a supply running all year. The jungle in the west of the island grows ferns in every season, so a farm that has opened the boat has a Summer crop available in Winter.

Green Rain adds a short burst. Chopping down the broad leafy trees that sprout on a Green Rain day drops ferns along with the fibre, and a Tapper left on one of those trees once it has finished growing keeps producing them afterwards.

Two merchants sell them. The Traveling Cart stocks ferns now and then at a price well above what they sell for, and Kent runs a stall at the Desert Festival that trades one for ten Calico Eggs, which is the cheapest route of the lot for anyone already collecting eggs at the festival.

Prices

A fern is worth more than most forage because the game treats it as a vegetable. The Tiller profession raises the price, which no other foraged item enjoys, and the Botanist profession guarantees iridium quality on every one picked off the ground. Those two together make a Summer of fern picking surprisingly profitable for a Foraging farm that has taken Botanist and a Farming farm that has taken Tiller.

Machines pay better still. A Preserves Jar turns a fern into pickles and a Keg turns it into juice, both worth more than double the raw shoot, and the Artisan profession adds to that again. Pickling is the obvious use for a chest full of woods forage once the bundles are done.

Sell prices by quality, with the bonus from each profession.

Quality	Price	Tiller (+10%)
Normal	90g	99g
Silver	112g	123g
Gold	135g	148g
Iridium	180g	198g

Uses

The Chef's Bundle on the Bulletin Board asks for a fern, and it is the hardest slot in that bundle to fill for a farm that never visits the woods in Summer. In a remixed Community Center the Wild Medicine Bundle in the Crafts Room can ask for five of them instead, so a careful farm keeps half a dozen in storage until the rooms are finished.

Fiddlehead Risotto is the dish built around the fern. The Queen of Sauce teaches it late, on the twenty-eighth of Fall in the second year, and the recipe needs oil and garlic alongside the shoot. The dish restores a great deal of energy and sells for roughly four times the fern it was made from.

The Sewing Machine takes ferns as well. A fern in the spool with cloth in the feed makes Green Overalls, and a fern in the spool with any dyeable garment colours that garment green instead. The green pot in the dye room at Emily and Haley's house accepts them for the same purpose.

Cooking Fiddlehead Fern with the other ingredients below makes these dishes.

Dish	Image	Ingredients
Fiddlehead Risotto		Oil (1), Fiddlehead Fern (1), Garlic (1)

The Community Center asks for Fiddlehead Fern in these bundles.

Bundle	Room	Amount
Chef's Bundle	Bulletin Board	1

Notes

Most of the valley likes a fern as a gift, which makes a Summer armful a cheap way to raise friendship with a long list of villagers at once. Abigail, Haley, Jas, Sam and Vincent are the exceptions and would rather have something else.

The ferns in the Secret Woods and on Ginger Island regrow on their own schedule, so clearing every one on a Monday does nothing to the Tuesday harvest.

All Foraging

Every entry in this group, with its key details.

Name	Season	Price
Blackberry	Fall	-
Cave Carrot	All	25g
Chanterelle	Fall	160g
Coconut	All	100g
Common Mushroom	Spring (Secret Woods); Summer (Forest Farm); Fall (Stardew Valley; Secret Woods; Forest Farm); All (Dangerous Mines; Ginger Island mushroom cave)	40g
Coral	All	80g
Crocus	Winter	-
Crystal Fruit	Winter	150g
Daffodil	Spring	30g
Dandelion	Spring	40g
Fiddlehead Fern	Summer; All on Ginger Island Jungle, Skull Cavern and Dangerous Mines	-
Ginger	All	60g
Grass	Spring; Summer; Fall	-
Hazelnut	Fall	90g
Holly	Winter	80g
Leek	Spring	60g
Magma Cap	-	400g
Morel	Spring	150g
Nautilus Shell	All (Beach Farm; Dangerous Mines); Winter (The Beach)	120g
Purple Mushroom	All	250g
Rainbow Shell	All (Beach Farm; Dangerous Mines); Summer (The Beach)	300g
Red Mushroom	Summer (Secret Woods); Fall (Secret Woods; Forest Farm); All (other)	75g
Salmonberry	15-18 Spring (bushes); All (the Farm Cave)	-
Sap	-	2g
Sea Urchin	All	160g
Seaweed	All	20g
Snow Yam	Winter	100g
Spice Berry	Summer; All (The Farm Cave)	80g
Spring Onion	Spring	-
Sweet Pea	Summer	-
Truffle	Spring; Summer; Fall	625g
Weeds	Spring; Summer; Fall	-
Wild Horseradish	Spring	50g
Wild Plum	Fall	80g
Winter Root	Winter	70g