There’s a good chance the first less common resource you’ll find yourself needing in Stardew Valley is hardwood. It’s used to create a number of crafting tools, and is required for the first upgrade to your house. You need it in abundance.
The most common and reliable place to get hardwood is from large stumps. Depending on the farm layout you choose, you may have a few of these stumps right in your field. Otherwise, you can find them in the secret forest located in the Northwest corner of Cindersap Forest (the area south of the farm). However, to get there, you need to clear a log with a steel axe.
And that’s the important part: in order to break the stumps you need a copper axe (upgraded at the blacksmith for 5 copper bars) and to get to the most reliable supply in the secret forest, you need a steel axe (upgraded at the blacksmith for 5 iron bars.)
To get a lot of hardwood, I’d recommend focusing on upgrading your axe. However, there are other ways to get it, you just might be causing yourself a bigger headache in the process.
Grow mahogany trees on your farm
Mahogany trees are a less common tree type that you can grow on the Stardew Valley farm using mahogany seeds. The most important feature about them is that chopping them down results in hardwood. You can get these in a number of places, but most reliably from cutting large stumps or killing slimes in the secret forest (again, requiring improved axes.)
If you’re lucky enough to find them here or through other means (such as in a golden coconut), then you can start your mahogany farm by planting it as you would any other tree. Once it’s grown, you can chop it down with a normal axe, or leave it as is and shake it occasionally to get more mahogany seeds to grow more trees.
There’s one problem with this process: mahogany trees have a variable growth time. Each night, they have a chance to advance to the next stage of growth, but it isn’t guaranteed. If you fertilize the tree, it had a higher chance, but it’s still not 100%. It’s a 15% chance it will hit the next stage if it’s unfertilized and 60% if it is fertilized. That means you might have a fully grown tree in a few days, or it can take much, much longer.
However, once you have a good grove growing on your farm, it’s easier to maintain a good population and cut them down as you see fit, keeping you supplied with a constant source of hardwood.
Cut mahogany trees on Ginger Island
In Stardew Valley, Ginger Island has mahogany trees just growing in the wild. This means you can simply visit the island and harvest a significant supply of both hardwood and mahogany seeds.
Obviously, this is a handy source of the material, but unfortunately, it won’t make it quicker to get a stockpile. That’s because you need to fix the boat in order to get to Ginger Island. To fix the boat, you need a bunch of materials, including 200 hardwood.
It’s something to keep in mind, but at this point in the game, you would probably already have a supply of hardwood.
The Lumberjack skill
Another decent source of hardwood is by getting the Lumberjack skill by leveling up your Foraging. Foraging can be leveled simply by chopping down trees or collecting wild plants from the environment.
You first need to pick the Forester skill when you reach level five in foraging. The Lumberjack skill is then an option once you get your foraging to level 10. With it, every tree that you chop down has a chance to drop hardwood. While this still makes it difficult to gather a steady supply of the resource, it does mean that you’ll continually gain a passive supply, just from going about your day.
But, to reiterate, the best source of hardwood in Stardew Valley is the respawning large stumps in the secret forest. This requires you to upgrade your axe before you can access it them.
