harvest moon © 2000 natsume.
You can get the Harvest Sprites to help you farm by pressing Select and going to Timer. Then turn off the game and the Sprites will actually water your crops and stuff while the game is off.
The game automatically saves every time you turn it off, so you can never just screw around and hope to start over by turning it off and loading.
Keep in mind that you only have one year to turn the farm around, so get cows fast and chickens even faster. Grow lots of grass very quickly.
Be sure to stop harvesting once it hits 5 PM, because anything placed in the shipping bin after 5 will be wasted and get you no money at all - it won't carry over to the next day.
Run everywhere - time ticks by too fast to walk. Never let up on B. Keep in mind that time stops once you enter any building, but I don't think it stops when you're "walking" around town.