At the end of the year, after receiving their profit, each family must pay their living expenses. This is determined by the class the family chooses or is assigned. More cows can be purchased at the beginning of each new year. This is all that is needed to start the game. Later more variations can be added in, such as increasing the population, assigning families to a certain class status or logging the nearby forest and using technology to increase carrying capacity, etc.
All numbers given here are suggestions only.
Many of these will change in later variations, and you may find reasons to change them yourself. Remember, these are suggestions only. You may select some students to help you to allow you the freedom to observe and interact more. For example, one student can serve as the banker, one as the scorekeeper. The score keeper records how many cows each family has on the commons and computes the profit per family.