How to get to up my farming level ASAP?

[NotSoSnarky]

I know that you get your farming level raised through picking up crops, and for petting farm animals/getting the animal products from them. I just seem to take forever with upping the farming level compared to other skills.

 

[Hollyfox]

The farming level takes a long time if you're not growing a lot of high experience crops, so maybe try growing crops that give more experience like kale.

 

[Gridball Pom Queen]

Crops lots and lots of crops. Also, pick Meadowlands Farm. It comes with two built in chickens.

 

[Terdin]

Or poppy in summer, and amaranth in fall, to mention crops for the other two seasons that have fairly short growth time and a decent amount of exp.

 

[Albino Chipmunk]

Grow a lot of crops. For season it depends
For spring kale is a good choice for xp
For summer hops is nice though do note when mature it produces everyday. So like what Terdin said you can grow poppies.
During fall I would go bok choy for xp.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Here's a quick comparison of obtaining the first 2 levels of Farming XP (380 XP), let's take some info from the Wiki:

Parsnips: 48 total, 4 days each for 192 days, 960g total Seed price, ~1900g total sell price, ~940g profit

Cauliflower: 17 Total, 12 days each for 204 days, 1360g total Seed price, ~3315g total sell price, ~1955g profit

Potatoes: 28 Total, 23 total harvests (@1.25 Taters per), 6 days each for 138 days, 1150g total Seed price, ~2520g total sell price, ~1370g profit

In this example, you get Farming XP 30-35% faster from

Potatoes. But at the cost of lower profit, more runs to buy seeds from Pierre and more days planting and harvesting.

I'm sure there is a calculator somewhere to maximize Farming XP per time invested but I prefer less effort at all times so I go to

Cauliflower (

Melon and

Pumpkin in later seasons) for the fewer times I need to buy seeds, plant, and harvest and at least I'm getting best profit per tile that way.

Farmed tiles = effort, so fewer tiles means less effort and more time to doze off Fish lazily at the river.

 

[WorstDecorator]

paradoxically the solution to quick farming levels is mining heavily.

the sooner you can "set it and forget it" with a bunch of sprinklers (yes, even the "underwhelming" basic sprinkler), the better. Time never stops being a limited resource. Automate your watering as soon as possible, and expand the number of crops you can grow at once. More you grow, more you pick, faster you gain farming XP.

 

[Lew Zealand]

OK I went and made a spreadsheet of XP and Profits for Spring Crops with the intent of giving a typical Spring Year 1 experience in the game for Farming. Non-first-year options are included for completeness and comparison as Strawberry is an entirely different strategy Year 2 compared to its truncated Year 1 experience. Here's a screencap of the file, I'll make it available to access in the Guides and Resources forum later today. And I'll hopefully have time tomorrow to add Summer, Fall, and (lol) Winter to complete the chart.

Edit: Sortable Crop XP and Profits chart in G&R forum

I'll discuss the choices made here in the Guides and Resources forum but some realistic for Year 1 assumptions (IMO) are made here.

And tl;dr for most in Year 1:

Fastest XP:

Kale
Fastest g:

Potato,

Cauliflower
Lowest effort:

Cauliflower

IMO Best balance of XP, g, and effort:

Green bean

 

[WorstDecorator]

green beans are great if you go the "upgrade your can" route rather than the sprinkler route. very easy to keep them lined up just the way you need them to be

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Just a massive number of cheap crops, depending on the context of when/how soon you're trying to up your farming levels, you can even use super cheap and dirty crops and leave them out to get watered by the rain.
Wheat over the summer/fall is the prime candidate, as wheat seeds only cost 10g per, need only 4 days of watering, are harvestable with a scythe, and can be processed into 400g beer (assuming you have the level 10 artisan skill, which you totally will after harvesting all that wheat) using a keg, if you decide to get some basic processing infrastructure up and running.