Originally posted by Grailoch:

For me it is the same issue I have with portals, food. Farms are not easily relocated (or, do I really want to set up a farm here for the short time I will be getting materials here?). Boars for sausage are either in Meadows or a boar farm I have set up, both possibly a long way away from my current material farming location. The difference is, with portals I can get back to Meadows/Farm/Etc very quick to restock food items (and later meads). Not so much without them.

I have, what I think is a fast and cheap approach to meadows farming. Maybe I've just been lucky with maps but I almost always find meadows relatively near that have one or more ancient stone circles. The area inside those is pretty much guaranteed to be flat, and usually at least some of the nearby land will be flat enough to be usable without hoe work.

I cultivate the area, stick a workbench in the center and a cheap pole fence connecting the stones. Usually put a chest or two next to the workbench too. I bring an initial stock of say carrots and three times that number of carrot seeds. Then I use a technique I read about somewhere - might have been here some time ago - about spiral planting. No grids, and most of the ones that are too close will grow in an extra day once their neighbors have matured - so basically just stand in one place, spin around, and plant in a spiral from outside in.

I stick my beehives in the farm too, and while I'm building up stock I hunt game. After a few weeks I just stash all that I can't carry (or just process the food nearby), mark it on the map and go back to what I was doing before I ran low on food.