the co-op jobs

   co-op jobs can be an easy way to earn a ton of xp and coins without too much effort. they can also be a huge annoyance when your neighbors join in and forget to harvest their share of the crops!
   there are several ribbons that you can earn for  completing the co-op jobs. one of the ribbons (best of the rest) is for being mvp. it is usually much easier to earn the gold medal if you plan ahead a bit. message a neighbor or two and ask if they would like to do a co-op. when you ask ahead of time, it's so much easier to coordinate who will plant what, making the job easier for everyone. some people prefer to plant the longer-growing crops, while some prefer the super short-growing crops.
   if you are trying to earn your 'best of the rest' ribbon, let your neighbors know so you can ensure that you harvest the most crops. this usually (not always) works how you intended. many times, i have been on a job with the intention of getting mvp, only to have a neighbor join the job at the last minute and plant and harvest a ton of crops. this can be very annoying.
   to prevent this sort of unexpectedness, you can pre-seed your farm. pre-seed, what?!?! yes, pre-seed your farm! before you start any of the jobs, have a look and figure out which one you want to do. let's say you want to do the 'bakery delivery' job, so you need to harvest 1450 wheat in 1 day 7 hours to get the gold. awesome. plant your whole farm with wheat, but DO NOT start the job yet. when you come back to your farm in 12 hours, the wheat should be ready to harvest. start the job before you harvest or do anything.
   once the job is started, use the fully upgraded combine to harvest and seed the wheat. since the combine harvests, plows, and seeds all in one click, it tricks the game into counting the wheat that you're harvesting as the wheat that you just seeded.
   let's say that you have 350 plots on your farm. using the combine and it's tricky trickery, you will have seeded 350 plots of wheat and harvested 334 plots wheat (according to the co-op counter). you have to have planted some wheat before you can harvest any wheat, so the first 16 plots that you harvest don't count toward the co-op. cow ewe gnome.

the orchard and the trees

   the tree level thing works like this: so far, there are two levels of trees. the level one trees produce level two trees and level two trees produce level two trees (with the exception of the golden and caramel apple trees). an example would be the plum tree (level one) and the golden plum tree (level two), the confetti tree (level one) and the disco ball tree (level two), the gulmohar tree (level one) and the mountain ebony tree (level two), and so on. 
   you can figure out which tree is level one and which is level two by looking inside the orchard. if you hover over one of the pictures of the trees inside, a picture of another tree slides down and says "makes seeds for:" and shows another kind of tree. usually the relationship between the level one and level two trees are kinda obvious, but not always. cow ewe gnome.

the pigpen

   the pigpen is a great way to earn a ton of coins. normally, pigs take two days to be ready to harvest. if you put them in the pigpen, you can earn twice as many coins!
   the pigpen holds 40 pigs when fully expanded and can be harvested daily. the saddleback pig is available in the market for 300,000 coins and earns you 3,000 xp when purchased. 
   when you harvest your pigpen, you earn 1,000 coins for each saddleback pig that you have inside.
  you probably won't be able to buy 40 saddleback pigs in one sitting (i know i can't) so check the news feed. you can fill your pigpen up with the different breeds of pigs that your neighbors are sharing on the feed. then, as you can afford it, remove a pig from the pigpen and buy a saddleback pig to take its place.
   the plain pig, black pig, and ossabaw pig all harvest for 30 coins each. if you are trying to decide which pig to remove from the pigpen to make room for a saddleback pig, i would choose one of those three first. cow ewe gnome.

the basics of the dairy farm (i call it a dairy barn)

   dairy barns are great because they hold up to 40 cows and you can harvest them all in just one click. with your coins, you can buy up to five dairy barns. you can purchase additional dairy barns for farm bucks but why bother... 
   if you are the type of farmer who likes to share lots of bonuses with your friends, you should keep one bull in each of your dairy barns. when you harvest a dairy barn with a bull inside, you might get lucky and produce a calf to share with your neighbors.
   personally, i find that most of the calves posted by my neighbors are fairly common ones, like the baby calf or the brown calf, which are boring. to prevent boring calves being born, i only keep a bull in one dairy barn and have the other four dairy barns filled with the more common cows (no bulls). i have one dairy barn dedicated to the rare cows (like the blue cow or the tuscan cow) that i've purchased with farm bucks.
   you won't always produce a calf, but when you do, it will definitely be a good one. cow ewe gnome.