Somehow, my drawdown plan to get out of the daily drudgery of “playing” the Digital Farm Systems inworld game involves buying a few selected items. I’m selective about what I want: good quality mesh, well designed, that works with a traditional early 20th century aesthetic.

On the other hand, I discovered with dismay that I had 17 unsold “0 day” bulls at the community market where I’m trying to offload DFS content. So I discounted them heavily, made a joke about “start a herd,” and announced in the various groups. Within moments, all 17 were sold. So lesson learned, clever marketing can work even in a glutted market.

So I discounted a few more things, and have an idea of how to proceed.

A lot of the stuff I’m queueing up to “cook down” into scripted lunchboxes requires dairy products, which means virtual cows (which don’t give milk until the 9th day, grr). And cows require bulls, which also can’t “perform” until they’re 9 days old. That’s a lot of care/feeding. Bulls and most other male animals give fertilizer, required for food crops and produce crops. For now I’m sticking to cattle, as the virtual recipes for other meat animals are more complicated and require ingredients like salt – which is expensive and time consuming to acquire. Also, the feed for other animals is complex and requires resource/time heavy ingredients.

Cows and bulls: simple. But they keep having babies – so selling them off instead of continuing to raise them is key. Eventually I’ll cook them all down, and I could even sell off “milk cows” and “stud bulls” for decent prices. I have tons of fertilizer, and I could buy milk in bulk easily.

MEANWHILE, all of this energy expended thinking about virtual livestock is blocking me from working on new hats or trying to make something for the Dinkies market. I have ZERO interest in making/rigging stuff for human avatars.

I’m inspired by my fellow Steelheader Zaida Gearbox; she created beautiful decor and homes but is pulling back from selling on Marketplace. More of her items can be found in New Babbage. It’s across from the Academy, right on the trolley line. Look for the big Caspervend vendor on the second floor, it’s searchable.

I bought several of her cute shotgun cottages and some “Hoosier” style decor items for prettification of my mainland farm in Tweddle along the roadside (next to the new GTFO airport).

More to come; have to get going in RL for now.