I am haphazardly rushing back and forth between my farm in the valley and ginger island. Sometimes I buy two boat tickets on the same day!
Do you move your main residence to the island? Do you get the farm and island obelisks as soon as you can? Do you just check in on the island once or twice a week? How do you keep track of what's going on, on both farms?
In my most recent, when I got to Ginger Island, I didn't have anything important on the main farm that required daily attention: all crops sprinkled, animals could tolerate not being petted (if an animal is at two hearts or higher, then they won't lose friendship if they can eat grass outside [+8 from eating offsets the >=-8 from not petting]) crab pots & mushroom cave not important.
So the rhythm might be: wake up in Valley do all chores, make note if there's an important chore coming up, like a major wine relegating or crop harvesting, and prepare to come back on that day or the day before. Then go to Ginger Island and do your stuff for 1,2,3... 6 days, whatever, and then come back. Sometimes I have an extended 2-3 day cycle going. Wake up in Valley farm & do chores, go to Ginger Island, spent 1-2 nights there, go back to Valley farm between midnight-1am (or earlier if you prefer), go to bed, repeat.
If you keep a farm computer on Ginger Island, this can be a big help, because it will tell you how many crops are ready for harvest and how many machines are ready on the Valley Farm.
I definitely don't see a benefit in uprooting everything to make GI the "main" farm: Valley Farm will always have the animals, cellar, greenhouse, spouse. It might make sense to move some things to Ginger Island (e.g. maybe your crab pots) and it might make sense to have some things in both locations (e.g. semi-stocked kitchen and workbench, maybe some seed makers)
And if for example, you're not processing eggs or milk fast enough you could consider bringing some over with some machines and setting up there, but I wouldn't choose to do that. I'd probably just make more machines on that Valley farm so that I can process them faster when I'm there.
Finally, there are a few ways to really shrink the distance between them and make them able to operate like a single farm:
- The return scepter is obviously bougie but the Farm Obelisk is a good substitute
- Island Obelisk is obviously bougie, but before that the key to the town lets the boat operate at all hours. Island Totems also good: dragon teeth might seem crazy rare, but they're actually pretty easy to farm with a Burglar's Ring. A substitute might be a Beach Totem or Beach Obelisk.
- Horse Whistle allows your horse to be almost anywhere, including GI
- Junimo Chests let you store some items on both farms simultaneously, so you don't need to keep track which farm they're at or ferry them between farms
-Speed buffs are great. I do lots of SC runs with Burglar's Rings and have acquired tons of Crab Cakes. Eat one of those when you wake up and you have a speed buff all day. And of course coffee too.
-And finally, if it's too much, first take it easy, it's just a game. Second, automate what you can (e.g. sprinklers and). Third, when in doubt, choose the easy/ slow option: kegs instead of preserve jars, wine instead of beer or juice, ancient fruit instead of hops, ancient fruit instead of starfruit). Fourth, prioritize: if crab pots are taking up too much time for little return, just abandon them, it's okay.
