The Pantry: Farming Bundles
The Pantry Bundle will open after completing one of the Bundles from the Crafts Room. When you first enter this room, you can see that it was a store house of food, and like the Crafts Room, it contains a scroll on the ground. The Pantry initially looks like Unlockthis:
When approached and read, the scroll shows you the Crops and other goods the Junimos would like you to bring to the Community Center in order to receive a prize. Like the Crafts Room, you get small prizes for each individual bundle, as well as one large prize for completing all the bundles for the room. Also, like the Crafts Room, this contains a number of bundles that are specific to each Season.
While these bundles are fairly straightforward, it does require some good planning to achieve all the bundles expeditiously. I would encourage you to peruse all the bundles at the beginning of each season to determine what you can grow that season. If completing the goals of the Community Center bundles is your goal, you should focus your farming efforts on those goals. Some bundles require a significant time commitment, namely some items in the Artisan Bundles. Other require some level of luck for items to spawn, namely those in the Animal Bundle.
That said, let’s take a look at each bundle and focus on the best ways to manage each one.
Spring Bundle
The Spring Bundle contains only normal crops that grow in Spring. These are common crops all with different grow times can be purchased at Pierre’s. They are the following:
- Parsnips
- Green Beans
- Cauliflower
- Potatoes
Worth noting is that you are given 8 packets of Parsnips to help get you started on your farm. Since parsnips grow very quickly, your best bet is to sell those (either ship them or sell them to Pierre for immediate profits) and reinvest into the crops that take longer to grow. Keep in mind, you will need (for a later bundle) a few Gold Quality Parsnips, so don’t ignore them entirely! Also, the Green Beans grow on a lattice which you cannot walk between, so make sure you don’t plant more than 2 consecutive rows, or you’ll waste your money on crops that you can neither water nor harvest.
Your reward for finishing the Spring Crops Bundle is 20 Speed-Gro fertilizer. You will get the recipe for this at Farming Level 3 and you can purchase them for 100g apiece at Pierre’s General Store. It is very useful for planting crops that take considerable amounts of time to reach maturity, increasing growth by 10 percent.
Summer Crops Bundle
The Summer Crops bundle consists of crops that can only be grown during the Summer Season. Like the Spring Bundle, it consists of 4 crops, and they are:
- Tomato
- Hot Pepper
- Blueberries
- Melon
This is a fairly straight forward bundle – you simply need one of every type of crop. The best method to finish this bundle as early as possible is save up your funds from the spring crops and reinvest those profits back into the Summer Seeds as soon as possible. Also, you can start growing corn in the summer, which will continue to produce corn through both the Summer and Fall season. While not needed for the Summer Bundle, it is needed for the Fall Bundle. If you purchase the seeds for corn from Pierre’s, it’s best to buy as early as possible to maximize the return on the money you spent. Like the Spring Bundle, you will need a handful of Gold Quality Melons for a later bundle, so don’t forget to use fertilizer and plant a bunch to ensure that you have enough.
Your reward for this bundle is a Quality Sprinkler. The ability to craft this comes at Farming Level 6 and is fairly resource heavy, requiring an Iron Bar, Gold Bar and Refined Quartz, so getting one for free early is a boon to the Farmer. Since these Sprinklers water the 8 adjacent tiles, in a 3×3 pattern (excluding the middle for the sprinkler), it allows you to focus your efforts elsewhere.
Fall Crops Bundle
Like Spring and Summer before it, the Fall Crops Bundle requires crops that are commonly grown in the Fall Season. These crops are the following:
- Corn
- Eggplants
- Pumpkins
- Yam
As mentioned before, corn can also be grown in the summer, and the plants grown in summer will survive the transition to the Fall. Like all the seasonal crop bundles, this bundle is fairly straightforward. Since there are no crops that grow in the Winter, this will be the final seasonal crop bundle for the year. Also, since they are needed for a later bundle, if you can afford the investment, focus on growing a handful of gold quality Pumpkin, and hold onto as many gold quality corn as you can for the same reason.
Your reward for completion of this bundle is a beehive. If possible, get this bundle as soon as possible to take advantage of the beehive as it produces honey, which is a possible addition to a later bundle. It will need about 4 days to create honey, and does not produce honey in the Winter, but does produce in the Spring, Summer and Fall Seasons. Additionally, if different flowers are placed near the outside of a beehive, it will produce different types of honey. Each of these differential types of honey result in a special variant of honey that is worth more than the standard wild honey.
Quality Crops Bundle
We’ve made a few allusions to this bundle throughout the earlier seasonal bundles. This bundle requires other crops that were needed for the normal seasonal bundles, but you will need 5 Gold Quality of each. There are 4 possible crops that can be used, of which you need three to complete the bundle. These crops are:
- Gold Quality Parsnips (5)
- Gold Quality Melons (5)
- Gold Quality Pumpkins (5)
- Gold Quality Corn (5)
Since the corn grows for two seasons, you are more likely to obtain that earlier or without as much effort as other crops. The best way to ensure the best results in completing this bundle with the least effort possible is to fertilize the soil with either the basic or quality fertilizer prior to planting. The fertilizer will last for an entire season, so it can be used for more of the same crop if needed or for other crops if you’d prefer to grow something else after you’ve achieved your goal. Again, you only need three of the four, so if you plan well, this should be easy to achieve.
The reward for this bundle is a Preserves Jar, which can be used to turn fruit into Jelly or vegetables into Pickles. Both are good for increasing the base value of the fruit (2x+50g the base value for 2-3 days of time), but jelly is also a component of a later bundle, so this is a very useful free item.
Animal Bundle
The Animal Bundle can be a little frustrating. This bundle requires a significant capital investment – In order to fully upgrade your barn and coop you will need 77,000g, 2,550 wood and 1,100 stone (or 124,500g if you buy all the materials from Robin the Carpenter. Not only that, there are a few items that don’t always spawn well, adding a level of uncertainty that isn’t present in a lot of other bundles that require significant time and/or financial investments. There is a list of 6 possible items to use for this bundle, of which you need 5. Those items are the following:
- Large Milk (Cow)
- Large Egg (Brown)
- Large Egg (White)
- Large Goat Milk
- Wool
- Duck Egg
In order to obtain the large versions of these items, your animals – be they chicken, cow or goat – must all be fairly happy and mature. Make sure that they have plenty of hay. You can harvest hay from your farm after building a silo (another hefty investment), you can open your barn/coop doors and let your animals out (just don’t forget to make sure they’re all in before closing the door for the night!), or you can buy Hay from Marnie. Hay can be a tough resource to manage, particularly in the winter when it doesn’t grow. Wool is dropped seemingly randomly by rabbits or can be shorn from Sheep that are in the barn, but only once those sheep reach maturity. If you haven’t figured it out yet, you increase your animals’ happiness by petting them once daily.
Your reward for this bundle is a cheese press which is used to turn milk into cheese and used in the final farming bundle. Not only that, but it’s a great way to increase the value of the milk that your animal produce!
Artisan Bundle
This is the final bundle you will likely have to complete in the farming bundles for the Pantry set. While all the items in this set require considerable time and/or financial investment and/or luck to achieve, you are presented with a number of options. There is a list of 12 possible items that can satisfy the requirements of this bundle, but only 6 are required. Those twelve possibilities are the following items:
- Truffle Oil
- Cloth
- Goat Cheese
- Cheese (Cow)
- Honey
- Jelly
- Apple
- Apricot
- Orange
- Peach
- Pomegranate
- Cherry
If you’ve paid attention, and been careful about completing the other bundles quickly, this final bundle should not be an issue. If you have the animals required for Large Milk or Large Goat Milk and completed the Animal bundle (or crafted a cheese press on your own), you have likely already produced Goat Cheese or Cheese from a cow. If you’ve completed the Quality Crops bundle, you can use the Preserves Jar with fruit to create the Jelly. If you’ve completed the Fall Crops bundle, you can create the Bee House which is used to produce the Honey. If you have a pig, during the non-winter seasons, if you open the door during the day, there is a chance that it will hunt for truffles. If you create an Oil Maker, you can use the truffle with it to create Truffle Oil. If you have a Sheep or rabbits, you can use that wool to create cloth on a wool. Additionally, there is a chance that you can convert soggy newspaper into cloth in a recycling machine.
The other six options are fruit, which are primarily grown on fruit trees. While trees are definitely worthwhile in the long run, they are expensive up-front. Each tree will also require 28 days to grow to maturity before it bears fruit, so if you choose this route, it’s important to try to plan for a season ahead of when you purchase the tree. However, if you choose the Fruit Bat option for the Cave Farm, there is a chance that all these fruits will appear.
The reward for completing this bundle is a keg! It can be used to produce beer, pale ale or wine. Any fruit can be placed in a keg and in a week, it will increase the base value considerably. If you expect that you will try for more expensive late-game items, kegs are a necessity – so it’s very nice to get one for free early on.
Phew! You’ve completed the Farming Bundles for the pantry! After completing all the pantry bundles, the Junimos will repair the pantry, changing its appearance to this:
Additionally, you will find in a cut scene after that day that your Greenhouse has been repaired! We have covered the Greenhouse elsewhere, but it is a very powerful tool for farming both crops and fruit from trees year-round.
