Tilling

The first step to starting your rice crop begins not in the spring, but in the winter. Over the winter, your soil will have hardened in the cold and there may even be a few rocks here and there, making the rice paddy an unforgiving place for crops to take root.

This is where tilling comes in; it is up to you to do something about that. You can till the soil with a hoe to turn it over and soften up the soil so that it can better absorb nutrients and that the rice crops can take root. There will always be a few large stones around the rice paddy too - 10 to remove in total.

The game counts three things when you till the soil:

1. Fertilizer (Yes/No)
2. Land Tilled (0% - 100%)
3. Stones Removed (0 - 10)

Firstly, let us focus on fertilization.

## Should I fertilize my land before I till?

In most cases, yes, *unless* you are focusing on the aesthetic stat of the rice.

Fertilizing your soil before you till is referred to as an "early fertilization" and doing so can mix nutrients thoroughly into the soil and improve the overall quality of the rice harvest. If you forgot to prepare some fertilizer the night before, you can use some Powder of Transformation to produce fertilizer instantly if you have any to spare.

## How do I till my land effectively, or even 100%?

Tilling your land can be hard work, especially if you can't see how much you've tilled. There is a skill (Furrow Sight) that allows you to see how much land you've tilled; do not worry about tilling 100% of the land until you obtain this skill. Until then, simply do your best; Sakuna will say things every once in a while when you hit certain percentages. The general order is:

1. *Whew, is it not yet finished?* (~25% tilled)
2. *I must be almost halfway there. Surely I've toiled enough by now?* (~50% tilled)
3. *That should do it. Agh, how draining.* (~75% tilled)
4. *Perfect! Greater work has never been done.* (~90% tilled)

You can use these to gauge your general progress, even after you obtain Furrow Sight.

The general rule for obtaining 100% tilled land is that *If you think you're done, you're not.*

Use Furrow Sight to make sure that when the skill is used, every single square inch of the rice paddy shows up golden. Go over your land again, and be sure to take extra care to till all around the edges of the paddy. Sakuna will become faster and better at tilling as time goes on, so keep at it and it'll get easier over time.

**Alternatively**, you can obtain a cow to till with later in the game, which can till land much more effectively, though the same principles still apply: try not to go over a patch of land only once if you're aiming for 100% tilling.

It's not the end of the world if you only till around 98% or so - it can be aggravating, but it will still ensure a very fine harvest.

As for the stones - you can simply keep count of how many of you've removed, which is a simple task. As you progress, you will eventually obtain Stone Crusher, meaning you can break stones as you till

## Skills

Here is a roundup of all the tilling skills that may aid you:

 Broad Furrow [1/2]
 Infinite Furrow [2/2]
 Gale of the Digger [1/2]
 Flash of the Digger [2/2]
 Stone Crusher

Tilling is not the only aspect of preparing for the rice crop to worry about, and so, the next step is planting, unless you have yet to sort and sow your rice.