Perusing Facebook a few days ago, I came across an application used very frequently among those who have a profile on the website.

The application, called Farmville, caught my attention. I had noticed the application on the home pages of many of my Rockhurst friends. So, I had to give it a shot.

And so began my quest to become the best (virtual) farmer the world has ever seen. 

For those unfamiliar with the game, you start out with a plot of land, a plow tool, 200 gold coins and five Farmville dollars to use at your will. The only way to make any more money is to harvest seeds or to put a credit card on the account to add money to the Farmville bank.   

After being hypnotized by the annoyingly monotonous music, I personalized my avatar to appear as what I like to call a contemporary farmer—a look that includes a purple Mohawk and overalls. With my farmer personalized, the time came for me to embark on my virtual farming adventure with my mission being to amass the most money I could. 

To begin, I plowed roughly one sixth of my allotted land and began to mull over the decision at hand, what seeds to plant. 

Unfortunately, the game only gave me a few choices of plants to start out with:  the always popular strawberry seeds, which are the cheapest and the quickest to harvest, the soybean seeds, the eggplant seeds and the wheat seeds, the most expensive seed.

I decided to go with the strawberry and wheat seeds, and before you knew it, I was the top strawberry salesman in my neighborhood (editor’s note: my neighborhood only consists of me and two others).  

As the next few days went on, I made up my mind; it was time to go into the animal business.  Even with a very limited selection from milk cows, pigs, sheep and (limited time only!) turkey, I found it necessary to have some other living organism on my farm besides me. 

I chose the turkey because, as we all know, Thanksgiving is coming up. Having a Thanksgiving Day meal without a turkey is like Easter Sunday without the Easter bunny – it just doesn’t work.

With new life on the estate my farmer had new found responsibilities like nurturing the turkey to full health in time for Thanksgiving.

I decided that there would need to be some shade over the land for the turkey, as well as my farmer to cool off.  My “forest” consists of the seasonal Yellow Maple tree and an apple tree.

After all is said and done, I am on pace to have a great Thanksgiving meal with my two virtual neighbors, a lot of strawberries, a lot of apples and a lot of wheat. Okay so it doesn’t sound that good, but at least I have a turkey.