I don’t deny it. If you’ve survived to midgame, you shouldn’t have any problems getting together your toolset. At the same time, though, if you’ve survived to midgame, it’s probably too late to start planting.
Again, that’s the entirety of the point. Forging is doable, but not during the first spring. Hoes don’t drop anywhere yet. Therefore, planting doesn’t get done the first spring. Kevin just mentioned that he saw this as a problem, so I suggested a partial solution (which will probably make more sense once the tool quality system is fully implemented).
As a sidenote, an answer to the ‘crops take too long to grow’ problem might be mutant plants. Mutant poppies are already growing everywhere… by the same token, perhaps anything you plant, forced to subsist on contaminated water and acid rain, might similarly mutate. Let the growth cycle start off unusually fast, and then allow it to be overclocked by certain fertilizers… possibly including some unsavory ones, made from tainted meat and other rotting organics. The faster the growth cycle, the more likely to mutate, and crops exposed to certain tainted substances are also more likely to come out bad. Mutant crops might come out just fine, or even better than fine… but they might also be blighted in unappetizing ways, rot on the vine, or be obviously tainted and poisonous (tainted veggy)… or even become plant monsters.
It’s possible that you might be able to find a nice sealed greenhouse somewhere which can quickly grow pure crops without exposing them to local conditions, but it’d be a pretty huge find, and would require power to keep the plants nice and warm throughout the harsh winters… not to mention that it’s a big fragile glass house, easily wrecked by the uncaring hordes.
