The good part about this game is that there's no wrong way to play. If you don't want a big farm, you don't have to! And my farm is mostly the kegs, I have just a few patches of crops growing. There's some way to take an overhead screenshot of your whole farm, I'll try to figure out how so I can show you.

The sprinklers are SO handy! The improved ones are great -- once you water the seeds once, you never have to water them again!

Actually, the game gives you very very few in-game clues as to what people like. I used the wiki to look it up.