How to Play Run Your Own Farmstead: First Steps and the Crop-to-Market Loop

Your first move in Run Your Own Farmstead is to follow the built-in tutorial from beginning to end — it runs about 20 steps and pays a 500 bonus when you complete it. After that, everything runs on one loop: plant crops on your plot, harvest them, carry the produce to your market in boxes, stock your displays, serve customers until the day ends, and reinvest what you earn into more crops, buildings, and staff.

Start with the tutorial

A new farm begins with a guided tutorial. It walks you through the basics one objective at a time — just follow each prompt until the game confirms the tutorial is complete and the 500 bonus lands in your balance. If you want a preview of the whole sequence, the sections below walk through it.

Before you spend that bonus: the game has redeemable codes for extra cash. The current list is kept on our Run Your Own Farmstead codes page.

How produce becomes profit

The game's official description sums it up as GROW & HARVEST, STOCK & SELL, BUILD & DECORATE, and EARN & EXPAND — and in practice, one pass through the cycle looks like this:

1. Plant. Choose a crop on your farm plot and plant it — you can start with crops like carrots and strawberries. Our how to grow crops page goes deeper.
2. Harvest. Collect each crop once it's ready.
3. Haul it over. Harvested produce travels in boxes from your farm to your market.
4. Stock the displays. Empty the boxes into your displays so customers have something to buy — our how to stock displays guide covers the details.
5. Sell. Customers shop from your displays, and once you've hired a cashier, they handle the payment side for you.
6. Close the day. When the in-game day ends, your profit from what sold comes in and funds the next round of planting.

Then repeat — restocking displays is a recurring part of the loop. Once your stalls are set up, the market guide has more on keeping sales moving.

After your first profitable day

Once you've had your first profitable day, the game opens up:

• Claim quests. Daily and weekly quests complete as you play — check in and claim the ones you've finished.
• Level up. Playing builds levels, and new levels unlock more things for your farmstead.
• Hire staff. Beyond a cashier to handle payment, you can hire a stocker who carries boxes and refills your displays, a farmhand to help with the farming itself, and even a janitor.
• Expand. Unlock additional buildings, plant more crops — extra strawberries, tomatoes — and buy upgrades for your staff.

The exact unlock order and prices can vary between runs, so don't worry if your progression doesn't match someone else's step for step.

Where it all leads

The long game is exactly what the loop suggests: grow, harvest, sell, expand, and repeat until that tiny starting plot has become a large farming business. Profits go back into more crops, more buildings, and enough hired help to automate the routine chores. From there, the how to make money page picks up where this one ends.