This article was originally published in November 2018. We're republishing it today in case you need it, and because they're nice farms.
Sometimes life's pretty stressful—like when you're waiting for the results of a crucial election day that could determine the future of your country, hypothetically. In times like those, nervously tapping your foot for 10 hours doesn't quite shake the stress out. It's almost enough to make you want to drop everything and go buy a farm. Alternatively, you can look at pictures of artfully composed, perfectly manicured videogame farms, sigh, and feel slightly at peace for the next three minutes of your life.
Nearly three years after release, Stardew Valley remains one of the most played games on Steam. A lot of those people are likely playing Stardew Valley in mulitplayer, but for others I think it's more zen, as they set out to realize the perfect farm layout they've meticulously designed before even starting a game. Thanks to the Stardew Planner, you can draw a farm in your browser, and the candy colored designs people come up with and post to the FarmsofStardewValley subreddit put my heart at ease. Then there are the actual in-game creations people post to upload.farm, a repository of more than 136,000 farms.
Let's just look at some really nice farms for a minute.