The Best Ways to Automate Your Farm in Stardew Valley

When you inherited your dying grandfather's farm and left behind your job at Joja Enterprises in Stardew Valley, you never imagined that you’d have so much work taking care of animals, crops, exploring mines and after all of that, chasing after some of the coveted bachelors (yes, Robin’s still married, it's not gonna happen) that you met in Pelican Town.

In all cases, at least one of the things you have to do to do well in the game can be automated, and free up more time for other activities (like trying to go after Robin after installing Robin's Romance mod.)

Automating your farm in Stardew Valley not only saves time, but also increases your efficiency and profits. With these strategies, you’ll be able to dedicate more time to other things, such as exploring the caves, socializing with the locals or simply relaxing.

So, we're going to give you tips on organization, items and mods so you can automate your farm in Stardew Valley and, if you have any questions, just leave a comment.

Ditch your watering can and automate your irrigation with Sprinklers. Quality Sprinklers water 8 surrounding tiles (a.k.a spaces, a.k.a. squares), while Iridium Sprinklers cover 24 tiles in a 5x5 pattern, excluding the center space. For maximum efficiency, arrange Iridium Sprinklers in a 3x3 grid and add Quality Sprinklers in horizontal and vertical rows to cover additional areas, such as flowers for beehives.

You can craft Sprinklers or purchase them from the Traveling Cart. Krobus also sells Iridium Sprinklers on Fridays. Upgrade them with Pressure Nozzles to increase the irrigated area or with Enrichers to automatically fertilize the soil.

Use tools such as Stardew Planner to plan out the layout of your crops, machinery, and buildings. This helps you optimize the space and efficiency of your farm.

After completing the Community Center bundles and the “Goblin Problem” quest, you’ll be able to purchase the Junimo Hut from the Wizard. Junimos will automatically harvest mature crops near the hut, except on rainy days.

To optimize them, strategically place your huts to cover as much area as possible. Keep in mind that Junimos don’t harvest inside greenhouses, so keep harvesting manually in these locations. If you want more efficiency, the Better Junimos mod significantly expands their abilities, allowing them to:

• Automatically plant seeds.

• Apply fertilizer.

• Work in the greenhouse and during the winter.

• Increase the area they cover.

• And a lot more.

The Auto-Gatherer automatically collects produce such as milk, wool, and eggs from barns and coops. Available at Marnie's Ranch after reaching level 10 Farming, each gatherer must be placed in its own building.

You can combine it with the AutoAnimalDoors mod, which automates the opening and closing of barn and coop doors based on weather and time, making sure your animals are always protected without the need for manual intervention.

While effective, the collector and the mod are not a substitute for the daily petting required to keep your animals happy. Combine the collector with the Autopetter for complete automation.

The Hay Dispenser transfers hay from the silo to the feeders in barns and coops. In Deluxe buildings, feeding is automatic. To avoid running out of hay, keep the silos stocked and store extra hay in chests if necessary. In specific situations, it’s possible to use a bomb to remove hay from the feeder, but do so with caution so as not to damage other items.

The Better Hay mod allows you to collect hay even if your silos are full or if you have no silos at all. It also allows you to take hay out of silos even if all animal feeding spots are full. It has configuration options to adjust what you want the mod to do (e.g. disabling hay from falling to the ground if you don't have room in your inventory, or disabling silo changes).

The Autopetter provides daily petting to your pets, keeping them happy. It can be purchased at JojaMart or found in the Skull Caverns from level 10 onwards, where there’s a chance to obtain it from treasure chests. To increase your chances of finding the item in the caves, use staircases to advance quickly and maximize your luck with appropriate food and rings.

To make it even easier, you can use the AutoFillPetBowl mod, which will automatically fill your pets' feeding bowls, making sure that they don't go without their food and you don't lose hearts with them. You can take care of everything and still keep your pets always well cared for.

Turn your harvests into higher-value products with Barrels and Preserves Jars. Barrels are ideal for high-value fruits, such as Ancient Fruit and Starfruit, to make wine. Jars on the other hand, are effective for lower-value fruits, such as Blueberries and Cranberries, to make jams.

Organize your machines into specific areas for easier management and maximize your profits with continuous production. You can further improve this with the Improved Barrels mod. With it, you’ll have 4 new types of barrels to make things easier and more efficient. Compared to regular barrels, the processing time of improved barrels doesn’t change, but the amount of ingredients and products is multiplied by:

• Copper Barrel – 5x

• Iron Barrel - 20x

• Gold Barrel - 80x

• Iridium Barrel - 320x

Crabpots automatically collect fish and many other items when placed in bodies of water. With the Luremaster profession, you don’t need to add bait to the traps. Place traps in different locations, such as rivers and oceans, to diversify the items you collect. Unwanted items such as trash can be recycled into useful resources.

But if you want to make things even more interesting, the Crab Pot Loot Has Quality And Bait Effects mod will improve the quality of your loot as your fishing skill level increases, and also gives different abilities and effects to each type of bait used. Different types of bait will have different results, so experiment with different ways to do your catching.

Fruit Trees produce fruit daily during their season after growing for 28 days. They don’t require watering and don’t die in the winter, making them a steady source of income. Plant them in advance to ensure production in the desired season, and use the greenhouse for year-round production. If you want to take advantage of this feature even more, then the Better Fruit Tree mod makes it so that fruit trees can be placed and grow even if there’s something in the 3x3 area around them. It also makes the fruit quality of your fruit trees increase year after year even if the area around them isn’t kept clean.

After getting 25,000 gold, Demetrius will offer the option to turn the farm cave into a fruit farm (with bats) or a mushroom farm. Choose bats for a variety of fruit or mushrooms for a steady production of different types of the fungi. The decision can be based on the needs of the Community Center bundles or the strategy for making recipes and medicines.

As always, there’s a mod that can help you make this decision. The Bats and Mushrooms Farm Cave mod allows you to have both benefits in your Cave. This way, you can choose one of the options and still receive the benefits of both, greatly improving the productivity of your farm.

Fish Ponds allow you to raise fish that produce roe and other valuable items. Some fish, such as Sturgeons, produce roe that can be turned into caviar, a profitable source of food. Manage the ponds by fulfilling the fish's requests to increase the population and diversify the types of fish to obtain different resources.

If you want to make the most of your fish ponds, you can install the Legendary Fish Ponds mod, and then you can use your legendary fish to get money and many useful items for you and your farm, instead of just keeping them as trophies on your wall. The items you’ll get from legendary fish depend on the type of fish and the type of pond it’s in, but they’ll always be useful items or items worth a good amount of money. So, happy fishing.