spreading jam

Everyone’s heard of Zynga’s Farmville – if you haven’t, where on earth have you been? –  and a good proportion of you will have played it, most notably mums! But, have you ever thought what it would be like playing with real life animals on a real life farm? Well, introducing – the MyFarm experiment.

The MyFarm experiment, from The National Trust, takes the essence of Farmville, and applies it to a real life scenario. For a buy-in of a £30 annual subscription, you could be one of 10,000 online farmers actively contributing to the decisions made on the Trust’s Wimpole Estate. You’ll be able to visit the farm for free, to see the fruits of your ‘labour’ and, as quoted from the website:

Farmers will vote at least once a month on different issues to do with the everyday running of the farm. The three big themes are the crops we grow, the livestock we breed, and the wider impacts of the farm on our environment and wildlife.

With an online community of 10,000 farmers voting on the various activities in and around the farm, it looks set to be an immersive experience for those involved, and it’ll be interesting to see how the experiment pans out. (And whether it spurs any further crowd-sourced farming efforts.)

So, why become a farmer?