A player seeing a baby chicken leaving the coop in Stardew Valley.
Screenshot by Dot Esports

Stardew Valley Meadowlands farm explained: layout, starter items, and downsides

A new world of possibilities.

Stardew Valley’s 1.6 update gave us the option to start our countryside life on a new type of farm—the Meadowlands farm. Each farm has a unique layout that and encourages different skills, and this farm focuses on raising animals.

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Meadowlands farm layout

Meadowlands farm map.
You’ll save a lot of money with this farm. Screenshot by Dot Esports

Each map in Stardew Valley is better for one of the following activities: farming, foraging, fishing, mining, and combat. You always get the abandoned Greenhouse, a body of water, and a cave, but the layout is always different between maps.

Meadowlands encourages raising animals. It comes with a coop so you won’t have to build one, saving you 4,000g, 300 wood, and 100 stone. You can even move the coop later, like any other building.

On the left side, the farm is bordered by two intersecting rivers. You can’t access the other patches of land, though, so the farm is a bit smaller than the standard layout. You can fish in the rivers, though.

Meadowlands farm starter items

Stardew Valley player in front of a package.
No more seeds. Screenshot by Dot Esports

When you first start the game, you’ll find 15 Hay inside the package instead of the 15 Parsnip seeds, and inside the coop are two baby chickens, saving you another 1600g. The farm itself offers a unique starting resource: Blue Grass. It helps you get better products from your animals, faster. Aside from that, the starting resources on the farm are the same as the standard map with a lot of grass, stones, wood, and trees.

Meadowlands farm downsides

Stardew valley player near the coop in Meadowlands farm.
Crops will be less eficient. Screenshot by Dot Esports

Since the Meadowlands farm is all about raising animals, there isn’t much space for plating crops, and the small lake is much further away from your house. This makes watering a large number of crops at the start of the game much more time-consuming.

If you plant all your crops near your house, you’ll have to clear a way to the lake and make your way back and forth when your watering can runs out of water. Because of that, the well is an essential item for your farm.

We recommend planting crops near one of the lakes, walking to the crops in the morning until you build a well near your house.


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Author
Nádia Linhares
Nádia is a Brazilian freelance writer who works for Dot since 2020. She has covered everything from Pokémon to FIFA. Video games are an essential part of her life, especially indie games and RPGs. You can catch her playing Overwatch in her spare time, but she writes better than she aims.