Tarp

Every farm starts with a tarp. The large planter box takes two and the small one a single tarp, the large water catcher wants two more, and the composter that turns farm waste into fertiliser another two. Before you lay out a greenhouse, count tarps, not wood.

You cannot craft or research a tarp, whatever the cloth recipe on this page says. Every one comes from road loot, the recycler or a trade, and each goes straight into the box. Recycling a tarp only returns some cloth, so never break one down for it.

The other big buyer is clothing. A hazmat suit takes four, which you feel the day your group starts running radiation monuments. Planters still come first, because they pay you back.

Say your first road run brings three home. Two go into a large planter for nine hemp seeds, the third into a small water catcher beside it, and the cloth from that first harvest goes into clothes while you hunt for the next tarp.