Silo
| Silo | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Building |
| Cost | 100g |
| Materials | Stone (100); Clay (10); Copper Bar (5) |
| Size | 3x3 |
The Silo turns the grass growing wild across the farm into winter food, and it is the one building most farmers are told to put up before they own a single animal. The gold price is almost nothing, the materials are a morning's mining, and from the day it is finished every swing of the scythe starts banking hay instead of wasting it. That matters because grass stops growing in Winter while the animals keep eating, so a farm with no stored hay spends the cold season buying feed from Marnie's Ranch at full price. One silo holds enough to carry nine animals through Winter, which is the number that decides how many a farm actually needs.
Construction
Robin sells the plans at the Carpenter's Shop and needs two days to put the silo together. The gold cost is 100g, which is less than a single chicken, and the real bill is in materials: 100 Stone, 10 Clay and 5 Copper Bars. Stone and clay come out of the farm itself, clay from tilling any patch of dirt or sand, and five copper bars is a modest smelting job from the first few floors of the Mines. All of that is reachable in the first Spring.
Because it asks for so little, the silo tends to go up before the Coop or the Barn. Hay piles up in the meantime, so by the time the first animals arrive the feed problem is already solved.
Use
Each silo holds up to 240 hay. Clicking on it reports how full it is, and with several silos on the farm the reading is the combined total rather than one building's share. The same figure can be read off a Farm Computer, which saves the walk.
Hay does not have to be carried anywhere. The hay hoppers inside every Coop and Barn draw straight from storage, and the distance between the silo and the animal buildings makes no difference at all, so the silo can be tucked into an awkward corner without penalty.
Filling it happens mostly by accident. Cutting grass on the farm with a scythe has a one in two chance of sending a hay into the silo, and better tools improve that: the Golden Scythe pushes it to three in four and the Iridium Scythe banks hay from every clump. A melee weapon carrying the Haymaker enchantment adds another trickle, since clearing weeds then has a chance of producing hay as well. Hay already in hand can be put away by hand too, either by clicking the silo while holding it or by clicking a Hay Hopper.
Harvesting Wheat yields hay as well, but that hay lands in the inventory rather than in storage, so it needs depositing.
Notes
The winter arithmetic is worth doing once. An animal eats one portion a day, and the season has two festival days on which nobody needs feeding, so budget around 26 hay per animal to get from the first snow to the thaw. One silo therefore covers nine animals comfortably, and a farm running a full Deluxe Barn and Deluxe Coop needs three silos to be safe. Since grass goes dormant and yields less when cut in the cold, the sensible move is to strip the farm bare at the end of Fall, even if that means losing every tuft of grass, because it will regrow in Spring and the hay would not.
A chest can stand in for a second silo. Hay posted by Marnie, or pulled back out of a Hay Hopper, can be stored anywhere and tipped into the silo later when there is room. That is cheaper than a second building for a farm that only occasionally overflows.
A silo also quietly tidies the farm. Grass that would otherwise spread into crop space is worth cutting for the hay alone, which turns weeding into stockpiling.
All Buildings
Every entry in this group, with its key details.
| Name | Image | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Barn | 
|
- |
| Cabin | 
|
100g |
| Coop | 
|
- |
| Farmhouse | 
|
- |
| Fish Pond | 
|
5,000g |
| Gold Clock | 
|
10,000,000g |
| Greenhouse | 
|
35,000g |
| Junimo Hut | 
|
20,000g |
| Mill | 
|
2,500g |
| Pet Bowl | 
|
5,000g |
| Shed | 
|
- |
| Silo | 
|
100g |
| Slime Hutch | 
|
10,000g |
| Stable | 
|
10,000g |
| Well | 
|
1,000g |
| Witch's Hut | 
|
- |