Farming, homesteading, and gardening have increased in popularity along with the trend of Green activity in the country currently. For those who don't own enough land to farm, vegetable gardens are the way to go. For those who can't plant outside, indoor pot planting is an option for some vegetables. And for those who don't have the space, time, or patience for growing plants in pots or elsewhere, there's FarmVille, Farm Town, (Lil) Farm Life, and other farming games on Facebook.com.

The most popular are FarmVille by Zynga, Farm Town by Slashkey, and (Lil) Farm Life by Green Patch Inc., with 28,556,516, 17,659,808, and 1,303,088 monthly active users, respectively. In each of these games, you get to choose and customize an avatar, and start farming the land you're given - a 12x12 plot. You'll get a few plowed patches with planted and possibly harvestable vegetables to start with. From there, you can plow more land, plant seeds, harvest the plants, sell the produce, buy buildings, fences, ponds, and other decorations, buy animals, buy trees that will continue to grow for multiple harvests, and become a qualified and respected high-level farmer. You can also visit your friend's farms to help them out, gaining some coins and experience along the way.

FarmVille and (Lil) Farm Life are very similar in look and feel, from the tools they have to how you use them. All three are extremely similar in look and play style, and you can do a lot of the same things on all of them. All three games allow for expansion of your farm up to 24x24. Farm Town was the first one introduced to me, and the first one I joined. It seems to me like a middle ground between the other two, having a good mix of lots of avatar customization and lots of farm land customization, plus having features the other two don't.

Farm Town is the only one of the three with rivers, paths, and flowers. They also have a marketplace and an inn, which you can visit to socialize with other users. The marketplace is where you can sell your produce and gifts, as well as hire other users to plow or harvest at your farm, or be hired by other users to work on their farm. While you can change your appearance at any time in any of the three games by clicking on your avatar, Farm Town is the only one that doesn't allow you to also change your gender.

FarmVille boasts the greatest customization for the physical aspects of your avatar, but only (Lil) Farm Life allows you to change your avatar's clothing. FarmVille also has the largest number of buyable items, but here also lies the greatest disadvantage. Some of their items can only be bought with Farm Cash. In all three games , you can spend real life money to get more coins (the common currency earned by selling produce, etc), however in FarmVille you can also spend real life money to get Farm Cash. So some items are only available to those who want to spend the real life money to get them.

FarmVille still has its other advantages: it is one of the two games that have ponds for sale (the other being Farm Town), and it has the nifty feature of being able to queue tasks. While your avatar starts plowing, seeding, or harvesting one field, or harvesting one tree, you can click on other fields or trees to be plowed, seeded, or harvested. The field or tree then becomes faded until the task there is completed. This makes for time efficient farming.

I personally think (Lil) Farm Life is the best for avatar customization, because you can not only change your avatar's physical features, but you can also change their clothing. This allows for a larger variety of possible combinations, even with fewer options for hair and facial features. (Lil) Farm Life, like FarmVille, allows for queueing tasks on your farm. Also, like other Green Patch Inc. applications, for every 10 gifts you send to friends, you save 1 square foot of rain forest! Farming AND saving the world - what could be better?

All three of these games have their advantages and disadvantages. Until I can decide which of the three I like best, I'll continue playing all of them. More of my Facebook friends have Farm Town than the other two, and more play FarmVille than (Lil) Farm Life. Farm Town, while having less avatar customization, offers the most play options, allowing you to do more than just care for your own farm. All three are great games, and it really depends on what you like to have in a Facebook farm game.

 * Because Farm Town doesn't allow you to change your gender after the initial selection, I was unable to find out what choices there are for female.

** In (Lil) Farm Life, male and female choices are almost identical as far as number of colors/styles. Unless noted otherwise, the numbers listed here are for both.