A character's Farming skill score shows how good he/she is at making decisions critical to the smooth running of a piece of farmland (e.g. when to plant crops and to harvest, what livestock to raise and what to feed them, dealing with pests and disease, etc.).
The maximum size of farm that a character can run is equal to 4 hectares (or 10 acres) of good farmland (or twice that area of grazing land) per point of Farming skill that the character has. The actual physical labour on the farm need not be done by the character him/herself. Each worker on a farm can farm up to 4 hectares of good farmland (or 10 acres) productively; hence a character can run a farm labour force of up to one labourer for each point of Farming skill that he/she has. Specialisms in type of farm count towards the size of farm (and labour force) that a character can successfully run.
Every year, the character running a farm must make a dice roll using his/her Farming (including specialism in running a farm) + ST to determine what the yield from the farm has been that year. There is a modifier on the dice roll based on the weather (from -5 for major crop failure, -3 for floods or drought, through +0 for a normal year to +2 for a bumper harvest year).
Each 4 hectares of good farmland (or 8 hectares of grazing land) produces a yield equal to the dice roll result multiplied by 5s. Out of this income, the farmer must pay his/her expenses, which will normally include:
For example, Edward is a farmer with a Farming skill score of 5 with 3 points of specialism in hill-farming, and a ST score of +1. He can run a hill farm of up to 64 hectares (160 acres) [= (5+3) x 4 x 2] of grazing land. He actually runs a hill farm of 48 hectares grazing land, which he, his wife and their 4 grown-up children work on. The weather is normal during the year. At the end of the year, Edward makes a dice roll; his basic value is 9 (=5+3+1+0); he chooses to roll 2D+3 and rolls a 3 and a 2, making a dice roll result of 8. The total farm income will be 8 x 5s x 6 = 240s. Out of this income, Edward has to pay the living expenses of the family 150s (= 6 x 25s), the rent to the land-lord 72s (= 6s x 12), plus the taxes of 24s (= 240s x 10%), making total expenditure of 246s. Edward just fails to break even that year and has to eat into some of the family's meagre savings.