After almost exactly a year, I am very excited to announce that I have finally completed Sitlington Animal Park!
Here's the very final progress update before I post a full walkthrough tour in the coming weeks.
I spent the past week finishing off the final section, the farm, with more field crops and housing for livestock.
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| The entrance to the farm with the goat milking facility on the right |
Farming is super complicated in real-life and there's so much you have to consider when building them. I tried my best with this farm and — to my very untrained eye — I think it looks accurate enough but an actual farmer might look at it and see issues.
I started the week by adding the last few field crops that fill up most of the area. As mentioned before, there aren't many you can actually use in the game, so I had to get creative with some ordinary plants. Triodia grass, for example, made a pretty good stand-in for wheat so I added a big field of it.
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| Triodia grass makes for some authentic looking wheat! |
Other than maize, I also added a field of sunflowers as you sometimes see farmers growing those for their seeds. As an added bonus, they look pretty and add a nice splash of colour.
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| Sunflowers are harvested for their seeds so I added a field of them to my farm. |
I ran out of space to build a storage area for the crops once they're harvested so let's just say they're stored elsewhere (farms use multiple plots of land in real-life so it's not unrealistic). I'm going to use the same excuse for the harvesting equipment as the game was sadly too laggy to actually build it.
Next, I worked on my livestock: the egg-laying hens and the dairy goats. One of the big things to worry about with free-range chickens is foxes, so I surrounded the enclosure with a tall fox-proof fence (it's basically just a tall mesh fence with hotwire running along the top).
In real-life, Sussex chickens are reared for their meat and eggs but, if I owned a farm, there'd be no way I'd allow any of my animals to be slaughtered, so they're strictly for eggs here. They've got access to a huge pasture and a large state-of-the-art house.
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| The free-range chickens — the house in the back was based on something I saw online. It has three small shutters which allow the chickens in and out, plus some windows for natural sunlight (on the other side). I planned on fully furnishing it with an interior but the game was too laggy. |
The goats gave me the biggest headache because I couldn't work out how to build a milking area (Alpine goats are renowned for their milk; it's what the park makes its famous ice cream with). I was going to make an interior with all the milking equipment but the game was laggy enough and I just wanted the project finished, so I just built the exterior. The goats get to roam a large pasture with some climbing logs (that they never climb sadly).
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| The Alpine goat is famed for its milk so the farm uses them to produce milk for their famous ice cream! |
And that wraps up the farm! I feel like I rushed it in some places but I'm happy with it overall. I learnt a lot too which will hopefully make it easier to build farms in future.
After working on it for so long, it's such an amazing feeling to have it complete. Even though I've thoroughly enjoyed working on it, I can't wait to move on to something new.
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| A general view of the farm with the chickens, goats and crops |
I'll be going on holiday for a week next week but when I get back, I'll work on a walkthrough tour (both written and video). Plus, ZHSplays has offered to tour it on his channel so keep an eye out for that!
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