One of the amazing parts of Stardew Valley has been the big content updates. These haven’t been small, either, but offer major new characters, storylines, events, and one of my all-time favorite adds: the beach farm. Being a “make 50 good sprinklers as fast as possible” type of guy, it might seem counter-intuitive that I would like the beach farm, but there’s something about this additional map style that is just amazing.
The beach farm definitely comes with some unique challenges but it also has hidden secrets, a beautiful layout, and is definitely a map that I’ve thoroughly fallen in love with. With a few basic ideas and a little help to tackle the obvious challenges, you’ll be enjoying the farm beach life in no time!
Let’s dive in to one of the most beautiful, challenging, and debated farm layouts in Stardew Valley!
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Full Stardew Valley Beach Farm Guide
The beach is a beautiful farm and it really sticks out as the most unique of all the farm designs. From an aesthetic perspective, it’s my absolute favorite of the unmodded farms that are available from Stardew Valley. From a mechanical standpoint…eh that’s a different story.
The balance or challenge to the Beach Farm comes from one big fact: that the 90%+ land is sand that can be farmed, but is not allowed to use sprinklers of any kind.
That makes the normal tactic of setting up a 400-500 spot farm automated with iridium sprinklers a no-go. There just isn’t enough room to pull that off.
This means the incredible beauty of what the Beach Farm has to offer means there are so many incredible options for beach farm design in Stardew Valley but trying to min-max the beach farm is just generally a no-go. If you’re a hardcore min-max the gold farm Stardew player, you probably won’t like the beach farm.
But if you’ve always wanted to test out some beautiful and unique layouts…this could be the special one for you.
Let’s dive into all the nuances of what your options are when it comes to the amazing, infuriating, and undeniably unique beach farm in Stardew Valley.
Cool Things About the Beach Farm
There are a lot of things to like about the beach farm layout for Stardew Valley, and I think even for players who don’t like the mechanical limitations that come with the beach, they would still admit there are several attractive things about the beach farm.
My favorite things about the beach farm
- Beautiful – The farm is just aesthetically beautiful
- Best House Interior (IMO) – Out of all the variations of the farmhouse where details change based on which farm you’re on, I think the interior of the beach farmhouse is absolutely beautiful and the best of the interiors, in my opinion, after over 1,000+ hours of play.
- Loot Crates – No not the bad kinds plaguing modern video games, but on the beach farm sometimes supply/loot crates just wash up and you get something free for scavenging it
- Hidden Easter Egg – There’s a very cool little secret to find from exploring the beach farm in Stardew Valley
- Ocean – Lots of free seaweed and fishing right on your property
- TONS of Hardwood – Between the stumps and logs there is a crazy amount of great hardwood available once you upgrade your tools in Stardew to the proper level.
- Tree Farms – Perfect set up for creating tree farms and/or orchards, and a more beautiful setup for doing so, IMO
- Spawns Foragables – Plenty of sea weed, as well as seasonal forage sometimes found down around the patch of ground that you can add sprinklers on.
- Water, Water Everywhere – No problem filling up the watering can as water is all around you everywhere.
- Forces a More Relaxed Play – If you’re looking to min-max into automated capitalism…the Beach Farm isn’t your jam. But having an area ripe for creative design, creative planting, and that makes mass planting hard means you are encouraged to do other things, often leading to a much more relaxed gameplay.
- Stone Owls – I’ve just had insane luck finding Stone Owls on the Stardew Valley beach farm, which is mostly luck but could be partially be because the beach farm is so big with so many uncluttered spaces.
The first thing that sticks out is the stunning visuals. There’s no denying that the Beach Farm is beautiful and it looks wonderful and unique in a way the other farm layouts aren’t able to match. It’s a layout that strongly encourages fishing, foraging, and creative designs or planning while it’s perhaps the least “farmy” of the farms with the notable exception of the Riverlands Farm.
Challenges from the Beach Farm
There are many but the most obvious one is the same reason so many Stardew players love the concept of a beach farm, but hate the farm itself. The biggest reason many people hate the Beach Farm in Stardew Valley is because you can’t use sprinklers on the sand – which is over 90% of the available farmland on the map.
That is huge challenge as even watering with an iridium water can in year two can get tiring when you fall back into the old habit of watering 300-400 seeds a day.
For most of us it’s not going to be a viable way to play and still have fun. It does mean for any amount of planting you will want to re-prioritize the iridium watering can because the more area you can cover quickly the better off the Stardew beach farm experience will be.
The biggest challenges of the beach farm
- Virtually no sprinklers, virtually no sprinklers, and, let me check, virtually no sprinklers
- While the farm is perfect for designing something great, the natural barriers, extra water, and unique shapes means the process from beginning to end can take a LOT of work to organize the way you want
- While seaweed, loot crates, and easy fishing are all great, they’re hardly giant needle movers to make up for the lack of sprinkler-able land and the need to plan to avoid building clutter with your animals
- Designed for season players, not a recommended first-time run-through farm
These are some major challenges, however the beach farm map can be a thoroughly rewarding experience.
Beach Farm Tips & Tricks for Stardew Valley
While Stardew is a “play your own game” more than about any other game I know, that doesn’t mean there aren’t good tips, tricks, or strategies help you get the most out of it because there absolutely are.
I actually have spent a LOT of time playing various beach farm files and while I’m normally the type of player who likes to rush and mass produce iridium sprinklers on literally every other type of farm, here it’s not possible. You might think that would mean I’m not a good match for this style of Stardew farm, but the opposite is true.
Whenever I want a calmer game, whenever I want to enjoy something beautiful in game form, whenever I want to have some busy work while thinking, planning, or ruminating on that future beachfront property in Belize I have planned for my early 50s retirement, this is the farm that I gravitate towards.
The following are some of my top tips for how to overcome the unique challenges of the Stardew Valley beach farm and make your time on this unique farm as fun and entertaining as possible.
Beach Farm Tip 1: Create a Path to the Small Sprinkler-Friendly Area
Sprinklers can’t be used on the sand, but there is a section of the beach farm southwest of your house down past some trees where the land is tillable and will support a limited number of sprinklers. While a lot of your early spring crops will be right by the house, you should still take the time to carve out a trail to this land and to clear it out.
Even before you get the axe upgrade you need, this will make it easier to get back and forth to this area, get you some much needed wood for early building construction since you’ll need to cut through the mess of trees to get there, as well as maple seeds and acorns to create a more organized tree farm where you want it to be (I personally like the mid to lower beach but to each their own).
By the time you have the ability to upgrade to quality sprinklers, you should be able to pay for the upgrade to the steel axe, allowing you to clear out the area and stat the process of mass watering and growing.
Beach Farm Tip 2: Race for the Steel Axe
The reason for this is that the one part of the beach farm that can take sprinklers is covered in logs, so as useful as the copper axe is for clearing out the many, many hardwood stumps across the beach, you need a steel axe to finish off clearing the one open area on the beach where you can set up sprinklers for growing a large number of crops.
The massive amount of hardwood you get is just bonus.
Beach Farm Tip 3: Race for the Iridium Watering Can, Then Enchant Late Game
As stated many, many times in both my Stardew Valley Watering Guide, as well as the article: Stardew Valley Which Tool Should I Upgrade First? article, things change when you’re on the beach.
If you’re on the beach farm and still want a conventionally large field you must race to get the iridium watering can. Being able to water 18 tiles at a time is crucial if you can’t bring sprinklers into the equation.
This makes the beach farm much easier to handle, much more fun, and once you get to the late game (Ginger Island & the forge) you should look at enchanting the watering can. While endless water or not taking any energy are both great, for the beach farm I actually recommend working until you get the reaching enchantment which moves the can from 6×3 to 5×5.
This doesn’t sound like much until you think about it in grid form and realize how fast watering goes when you just go straight to 5×5 right away and can hit 25 spots a pop.
Beach Farm Tip 4: A Little Bit of Planning Goes a Long Way
While I generally don’t plan way in advance but just start building one building at a time, one update at a time, one task at a time, and then just work around my decisions later. However, with the beach farm because of its unique geography taking some time to plan things out a bit after you’ve spent the first few days getting to know it is a really good idea.
If you just jam the barn and coop to the left of the house like so many of us do, you’ll find yourself really blocking yourself from the northern trails, from the greenhouse, and struggling constantly with the growth of trees on the farm…which you don’t want to clear cut because you’ll want some sap later, right?
Planning where you have your tree farms, your buildings, your silos, and everything else will give you a smarter layout that reduces headaches from expanding along the way. If you tend to set stuff down and plan later – well the beach farm can become a mess.
So do yourself a favor and do some planning before just placing forges, chests, kegs, and buildings close by to whatever looks open at the time. Over the long haul it will save you a lot of re-organization headaches, not to mention the wasted in-game days spent on doing that organizing because you didn’t plan things out the first time.
I am extremely guilty of doing this multiple times, so no judgement, but a little bit of planning goes a long way so you’re not rearranging buildings, kegs, preserve jars, bee hives, or have an orchard of fruit trees in literally the worst place possible to block absolutely everything.
Beach Farm Tip 4: Race to Finish Up the Greenhouse
Opening up farmable space that you can sprinkler up is important and since that’s only a very small part of the actual beach farm, that makes the greenhouse even more valuable because that is more tillable space that you can set up with iridium sprinklers, and with farming so much more challenging on this farm having a greenhouse filled with the most valuable crops regardless of season is even more valuable.
Starfruit, ancient fruit, sweet gem berries, coffee – having them growing constantly is a huge boon especially since certain common routes to getting a multi-million farm is much harder with the Beach Farm than all others except the (virtually unplayable) River Farm.
So put extra motivation behind racing that section of the community center that lets you unlock the greenhouse. Sooner the better.
Beach Farm Tip 5: Remember the First Season of Min-Maxing Is the Same
The general strategy for min-maxing without using glitches or exploits like clay farming is generally the same regardless of farm, and keeping that in mind at least gets you off on the right foot for the Beach Farm since even on the other ones you won’t get quality sprinklers until usually summer, and most of them mid to end of summer.
Those first steps:
- Plant like crazy to level up farming skill
- Fish every spare moment in week one for food/energy to level up and money
- Plant massive strawberry crops
- Mine like crazy
- Plant summer crops (Melons!) in massive numbers
The deviation comes in summer where you usually break out the sprinklers to automate it. After the very first harvest of summer on the beach farm, just give yourself a break and don’t do a second giant crop.
Prepare the sprinkler-friendly patch of land and then otherwise feel free to take it easy on the rest.
While you’re not rolling mega crop into mega crop, following the first min-max steps can still set up the sprinkler-friendly section of farm while allowing you to buy some important animal buildings and decide on which direction you’re going to take the farm.
Beach Farm Tip 6: Save/Produce Coffee Beans for Year 2
Being able to fill every sprinkler space with plants that produce every other day so you can just harvest away without worrying about needing more seeds to plant is a great way to take advantage of it. While coffee isn’t a valuable crop in Stardew by conventional standards, they produce every other day and in huge numbers.
If you plant them all on fertilizer or quality fertilizer and have 100+ plants going, trust me, it adds up very, very quickly. Plus you then have unlimited coffee to zoom around the map if you’re a speed demon like me and just need to go faster all the time.
If you don’t go with coffee, you still want to focus more on crops that grow and keep producing without needing more planting. While these are still a bit annoying due to the lack of sprinklers on the rest of the beach farm, that time saved from having to replant is important since so much time is still spent watering crops instead of setting up an automatic watering system like on other farms.
Beach Farm Tip 7: Go Nuts on the Crab Pots
The beach farm in Stardew Valley has multiple sections of beach the perfect setup for a very long line of crab pots that you can set up. This allows long rows of sometimes dozens of crab pots set up. Make bait, stock them up, and then put them in a place on your farm you run by frequently. Set up a chest nearby for easy bait storage and this is another way your farm can just keep producing while you’re using your precious time elsewhere.
Nice thing about crab pots: they don’t spoil so if it’s collection day and you have a Skull Cavern to defeat or a Ginger Island to explore, just go and come back for collections whenever it’s convenient. You should be good to go!
How Do You Make Money on the Stardew Valley Beach Farm?
Making money can be a bit of a challenge at some points as the mass crop producing just doesn’t work as well, but that’s no reason to despair. There are many ways to get around this and make a profitable farm that still gives you a chance at those Magic Silos, Return Scepter, or Golden Clock.
The best thing to do to make money on the beach farm in Stardew, I’ve found, is start Spring season 1 like you were doing a regular min-max on another farm (See Step 5 further up the page). Plant massive crops, fish like crazy on day three, and then do some serious mine diving, because all of this is still important.
I’ll also add in that I prefer to spend time cutting trees to speed my foraging skill up past level 5 before Salmonberry season. This is because if you get two berries per bush, you can spend those days when you’re out of energy running around gathering a ton of berries.
Usually I end up with north of 350, which basically means endlessly energy the rest of the game (because by the time you’d run out you should have leveled up and found multiple Stardrop Fruit for permanent energy boots) and makes the endless mining and watering a lot easier. It also lets you sell all your fish instead of keeping some for energy, and is more efficient than having to run across the map for spring onions.
After planting that first mega melon crop in early summer (and that’s the LAST mega crop I’m willing to plant) I find the key is not fighting the beach farm to try to make it like the others but to play to its strengths.
To me that means barns in the south where there is tons of grass growing everywhere, crabpots laid out in long sections (after getting quality sprinklers set up on the small square of land that takes them), and focusing my limited crops on beach sand with things that give multiple harvests.
Blueberries and cranberries might have been nerfed, but you can get enough to feed a shed full of kegs for many seasons without killing yourself watering and planting.
I’ll also do a lot of fishing. Once you’re up in levels so you can catch iridium fish all the time, it’s an easy way close to home to level up those skills to go after legendary fish.
Things that help with making money on the beach farm:
- Fish and forage – if the farm is going to make these available grab them and toss ’em in the bin!
- Take the Artisan Perk – this is going to be an animal heavy farm
- Get those tappers out early and often and cultivate an organized tree farm to keep a consistent flow of oak resin, maple syrup, and pine tar
- Go for big barns with lots of pigs since purple star truffles + truffle oil means insane profit
- Put out 50+ lightning rods. You’ll want to keep some batteries on hand, but they also sell for 500g a piece making thunderstorms very profitable if you’re set up right.
- So does cheese and goat cheese with the artisan perk (and mayo for that matter)
- Get the greenhouse up early to maximize the places where you can water crops with sprinklers
- Set up massive rows of crab pots to harvest from
- If you have an upgraded hoe, hoe up the ground in winter as there are tons of snow yams and winter roots to be found
And late game you can always set up massive sprinkler crops of pineapples and ancient fruit on Ginger Island and just cheat 🙂
Making Money on the SV Beach Farm without Sprinklers – Great Video
While more creativity and versatility is needed to make beach farms extremely profitable, I find the beauty and uniqueness of the many beach farm layouts out there makes the effort well worth it – and delivers a new experience that breathes more life into a game that can start looking the same after 1,000+ hours on more conventional farm types 🙂
What Is the Best Beach Farm Layout?
That depends on what you mean by best, but I understand most players want a very profitable farm that doesn’t require all their time while still providing some degree of organization and style. There’s a reason most of us don’t just build 10 deluxe barns, fill them with pigs, and call it a day, even if from a profit standpoint that is a pretty insanely rich farm.
Honestly this is going to be a personal preference though I love barns at the bottom, fruit tree orchard in the middle, and then crops/sheds to the side, but to each their own.
This is one of those questions where googling “beach farm layout” brings up a lot of Stardew Valley beach farms from players proudly sharing their layouts and some truly impressive builds. Take a look at all the various setups and it quickly becomes clear just how versatile the farm can be.
You don’t need a beach layout guide, just some creativity and a willingness to try a variety of design layouts to get a look that you like and is fully functional.
What’s with the Beach Farm Secret Cave?
This was one of my favorite discoveries when playing the beach farm layout for the first time. Explore the beach farm thoroughly and at one point you’ll see a dock with a cave. This Stardew Valley beach farm secret cave is actually reachable. Look around behind the hill, where you can’t see your character, and there will be a “give” that allows you to run through the cave to the dock.
Fish off the end. Sometimes you catch just fish but if you get lucky, you will actually get a really cool special item that then fits perfectly with the aesthetic of your cool new beach house.
Trust me, you’ll know it when you catch it.
The beach farm secret cave in Stardew Valley isn’t anything extraordinary but it is a cool little detail with a nice hidden secret that just adds to this new piece of the Pelican Town aesthetic so well.
You still have the normal cave, as well, where you make the choice of either fruit bats or mushrooms. The mushroom cave is even more the choice with the beach farm because the energy/sprinkler limitations on massive crop fields makes the need for more food, and steady income, even more important with a beach farm layout than with most of the other farm types available.
Beach Farm Stardew Valley FAQ
Can you min-max the beach farm in Stardew Valley?
Not to the same level as the other farms. There is still an area that can produce a decent number of crops with sprinklers, but because of that limited space the strategy of mass spamming Strawberries into blueberries (or melons or starfruit) into pumpkins won’t work as well because of limited spaces.
However, doing what you can with this strategy while buying up rare seeds to plant in fall can allow you to cobble together the two most common methods for making $1 million in year one to min-max as allowed.
Can you use sprinklers on the beach farm in Stardew Valley?
No. The soil is too sandy for sprinklers to work. The only section of the beach farm where you can use sprinklers is down and to the left of the farm house through a big clump of trees where there is land that looks like normal farmland.
How do you make money on the Beach Farm in Stardew Valley?
The beach farm offers plenty of great opportunities for making money in Stardew Valley! While foraging, treasure crates, and fishing is a bit limited (especially since ocean fish from the farm tend to be on the low side of value), there are still options. The beach farm is a great place to grow orchards of fruit trees or normal trees & tappers (especially in the south) while going with mushrooms for the cave matters.
Keep an eye out for seaweed to forage, gift crates that wash up every so often, and prioritize unlocking the greenhouse if you want to grow some serious money crops since you can obviously set up a greenhouse layout with sprinklers on the beach farm.
Fishing is another option since you can catch some ocean fish right there on your farm, but this one where you get creative. Unleash the pigs or chickens, create a fruit orchard, or create a tree farm full of tappers.
This is a time to get creative and crucial because while watering like crazy non-stop is okay for the first season and change in most files before you can put up mass sprinklers, the reason people put up mass sprinklers is because that is not a viable long-term way to play for most of us and still have fun.
Stardew’s Beach Farm: A Beautiful Addition to An Already Incredible Game
Despite how much I love the multiple iridium sprinkler set up to just set up a massive farm and forget it, I really do love the beach farm. It’s aesthetic is great, you can build incredibly cool and beautiful looking farms, and because of the limited amount of land you can put sprinklers on there is just something about the map that encourages you to enjoy an unoptimized laid back run that lets you really enjoy the game at your own pace as you do something different.
While there are some creative ways to still min-max a rush towards a million gold in year one if you want, it’s one of the worst farm layouts to do this with, at least in year one.
And honestly it’s a layout that really encourages that original Stardew Valley vibe of being calm, doing your thing, and just exploring and creating in a way that creates something unique and beautiful.
So follow these tips, and enjoy your unique and stunning new beach farm. Whatever your other thoughts on it, playing one file through on Stardew Valley’s beach farm is worth it – and the screenshots are beautiful and frankly just out of this world!
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Proud to embrace the locally created moniker of “Corrupt Overlord” from one of the all time great Lords of Waterdeep runs, Shane is one member of the Assorted Meeples crew and will be hard at work creating awesome content for the website. He is a long-time player of board games, one time semi-professional poker player, and tends to run to the quirky or RPG side of things when it comes to playing video games. He loves tabletop roleplaying systems like Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, Werewolf, Fate, and others, and not only has been a player but has run games as DM for years. You can find his other work in publications like Level Skip or Hobby Lark.